Focused Deterrence or “Pulling Levers” Group project 4

Members: Nicole Chanquet, Souk Doss, Brandon Godfrey, Vinnie Martin, Vijeit Ros

What is pulling levers?

Focused deterrence strategies place enforcement, social services and other supports, and the important voices of communities, in order to create a powerful deterrent to particular behavior by particular high-risk groups and individuals.

Focused deterrence: Known as pulling levers is a way to attempt to deter specific criminal behavior through fear of specific punishment. Focused deterrence strategies place enforcement, social services and other supports, and the important voices of communities, in order to create a powerful deterrent to particular behavior by particular high-risk groups and individuals.

The main focus of focused deterrence is to decrease individuals to commit violence, make the local community divert individuals away from crime and improve police community relations as well.

History: The focused deterrence approach originated in a problem oriented policing initiative to address youth gang gun violence in Boston in the late 1990’s. Ever since, many jurisdictions in the United States have adopted and practiced this approach.

Focused Deterrence Theory

Specific Deterrence: Refers to when an occasion imposes punishment and therefore makes an individual discouraged from offending again.

General Deterrence: Refers to when other people become aware of an individual’s punishment and are discouraged from committing similar offenses

Theory Versus Practice: Not all offenses are reported to the police, police do not detect or apprehend many offenders, and punishments such as fines, jail time, or community service are not always perceived as sufficiently harsh. In addition, punishment deters only to the extent that people believe that they will be caught and that the punishment will be certain, severe, and swift.

Definitions

Certainty: How likely it is of being caught and punished for the commission of a crime.

Severity: The length of a sentence.

Swift: How long until an individual may get caught for their actions the punishment must occur within a short time after the offense is committed.

The Process of Focused Deterrence

The 5 key tasks

Find those at risk of being involved with violence
Hold an intervention meeting
Provide services to those who want to change
Have community members provide ongoing support
Enhance enforcement for persons and groups that persist in crime

Find those at risk of being involved with violence

Must be important to note how identifying those at risk is to conduct group audits with community leaders and local police to identify the conflicts within a community. Collecting information must be done by officers in all different aspects. Although research is important, agencies do have to note the civil rights protection and keep equity.

Hold an intervention meeting

It is said in order for focused deterrence to work, the criminal population must be aware of the deterrence strategy as a whole. These meetings can help offenders recognize and change their self destructive behaviors.

Provide services to those who want to change

This is vital because it gives these individuals an opportunity to switch around their lives for the better. In addition, it is said that the services component of focused deterrence tends to be the least covered in practice, which is ultimately sad due to the fact that these services are just as important as sanctions for disobedience.

Examples of services

Counseling
Substance abuse treatment
Housing
Education
Employment training and placement
Help in obtaining identification cards (including a driver’s license, a non-driver state identification card, or a social security card)

Have community members provide ongoing support

A key aspect of focused deterrence is ongoing support, and monitoring of at risk individuals from the community.

Examples of community members who provide this support include:

Family members
Friends
Community Organizations
Churches
Schools
Other individuals who want to avoid trouble

Enhance enforcement for persons and groups that persist in crime

Actions taken on individuals who persist in crime are to sanction them swiftly, with certainty and proportionality.

For example: Subjecting offenders to stricter sentencing

In addition, an agency wanting to use a focused deterrence strategy must need an organized staff.

For example:

Organized Staffing
An interagency enforcement group who is responsible to coordinate the strategy and the teams	A research and evaluation group that will track how well the strategy is working and identify and help resolve problems	An analysis and intelligence team that will identify which offenders are at sufficiently high risk of violence to be included in the intervention
A team that will run communications efforts: with intervention recipients and groups, divided into Individuals who will run formal intervention meetings. Individuals who will run ongoing communications with intervention recipients and those in the community monitoring them.	A team that carries out enforcement efforts against offenders and offending groups; the team includes both law enforcement and prosecutors (who bring enhanced charges for groups and persons that persist in criminal behavior).	A team that coordinates providing services to individuals who choose to make a positive change away from violence and crime, including individuals who serve as Outreach links to community organizations and other agencies that will provide the services. Case managers who will help individuals get the services they need.

Initial History of Focused Deterrence or Pulling Levers

Pulling Levers was first used In Boston to try to stop Gang Violence.
“The other part was what the Gun Project’s interagency working group eventually came to call a “pulling levers” strategy.”
“They could disrupt street drug activity, focus police attention on lowlevel street crimes such as trespassing and public drinking, serve outstanding warrants, cultivate confidential informants for medium- and long-term investigations of gang activities, deliver strict probation and parole enforcement, seize drug proceeds and other assets, ensure stiffer plea bargains and sterner prosecutorial attention, request stronger bail terms (and enforce them), and even focus potentially severe Federal investigative and prosecutorial attention on, for example, gang-related drug activity.”
It has been used in many American Cities and through federally sponsored violence prevention programs. The concept is to key in on a particular crime and study it deeply and deploy more officers searching for that specific crime and also tell the criminals why they are being hunted so much.
This approach has been used for a multitude of crimes and the results have good showing a reduce in the particular crime.
“In Boston, youth homicide fell by two-thirds after the Ceasefire strategy was put in place in 1996.”
Police figured out quickly they would not be able to crack down on every gang but they made it clear if a gang committed violence they would come after them very hard. This made some gangs reluctant to be violent becuase they knew they had a higher chance of being caught.
For example the police would raid gangs houses not for the purpose of drugs but to show that violence has serious punsihment and will not be tolerated.
Pulling Levers is very effective in reducing crime and it allows Police Officers to be more effective.

General Steps to establishing focused deterrence or pulling levers

First, strategies that address the problems in a given area must be mapped out. From the beginning stages of a Neighborhood Watch effort, it is essential to incorporate neighborhood involvement and identify ways to deal with the crime patterns of that area.
The second step involves building a partnership between law enforcement officers and residents. This is not always an easy hurdle to overcome since citizens are often angry with law enforcement for not doing anything about the crime problem in their community. For a Neighborhood Watch program to be successful, it is essential that officers understand the needs of a neighborhood and work as role models for neighborhood crime prevention efforts.
The third step is to assess the needs of a given neighborhood. In many cases, law enforcement and community members do not have the same focus. For instance, law enforcement may be focusing their attention on a problem that the neighborhood is not concerned about, such as attempting to address major crimes throughout the city. On the other hand, community members may be more concerned about crimes such as bicycle thefts or graffiti, which are considered minor from a police standpoint. Effective Neighborhood Watch programs unite law enforcement and residents and encourage them to collectively determine what problems should be addressed and how.
Fourth step is selecting and training an active body of volunteers that are led by organized and motivated leaders is critical. Without motivation and organization, volunteers may be uninspired to participate and quit out of frustration.
The fifth and final step is to develop meaningful projects. Often, after a Neighborhood Watch has addressed its original issue, members lose interest. It is important for leaders to remain enthusiastic. One way to accomplish this is to create and embark upon new projects so that there is always a goal towards which the team is aspiring. Projects may include building a neighborhood playground or painting over graffiti, for instance.
Although there are 5 simple steps in place to follow, this does not mean the program will work magically overnight.
Our agencies and communities have to work hand in hand to make sure our communities are safe now and for years to come.

Effects or results from pulling levers

The idea of pulling levers

Is also known as focused deference, a problem oriented policing strategy. This indicates that the general premise of this strategy is focused to a specific crime problem, rather than a general broad response to crime. Some of these problems more commonly known include robbery, motor vehicle theft, and gang or gun violence. Anthony Braga in an article mentions “A relatively small number of people, often involved in gangs and criminally‐active groups, are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime.” (Braga et al. 2019). This means focuses deterrence policies need to focus only on a small proportion of the general population to lower the crime rate.

This can lead to what seems as if it is targeted policing

As these criminal activity generally occur in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood or a minority community, this may cause conflict with the community and the Police Departments attempting to target these individuals. Anthony Braga states “The use of focused deterrence strategies enhances collective efficacy in communities by emphasizing the importance of engaging and enlisting community members in the strategies developed” (Braga Et al. 2019). This is a positive effect. The strategy essentially focuses on listening to the woos or grievances of the community they are serving, and allows the Police Department to operate effectively with the community, which ultimately extends the guardianship of the neighborhoods. Guardianship of an area is important to reduce crime as these areas have more eyes and observers which will deter criminal activity in general.

Other positive effects of focused deterrence or pulling levers include other avenues or windows of responses. Things such as policing and prosecution is one approach, but including other methods includes avenues of rehabilitation of the criminal. This can either be done through social work, drug courts, probation, just a general helping approach of criminals, which would lower the recidivism rate and save the cities, or states the tax payers’ money and a more long term effect with the crime rate (Kennedy. 1999).

The Boston Miracle

Pulling levers approach had ultimately reduced the gang on gang homicide violence rate. To the point where other departments adopted similar methods or approaches to address their gang homicide rates. Indianapolis Police Department uses this method, and Nicholas Corsaro states “ ...findings suggest ‘something happened’ to gang homicides that did not happen to non-gang homicides, which adds further support that the pulling levers initiative was the driving force behind the overall reduction in homicide in Indianapolis.” (Corsaro & McGarrel. 2009).

Positive Impacts include

Specific targeting of known offenders to reduce crime without affecting the general population
Positive community involvement to combat crime
Dissemination of information and methods
Additional methods to address offending, such as the referral systems to other agencies

CONCLUSION

Focused deterrence strategies, also known as “pulling levers” policing programs, have been increasingly implemented in the United States and other countries to reduce serious violent crime committed by gangs and other criminally active groups, recurring offending by highly active individual offenders, and crime and disorder problems generated by overt street‐level drug markets.

Key features of focused deterrence strategies

Selection of a particular crime problem, such as youth homicide or street drug dealing.
Forming an inter-agency enforcement group, which often includes local police, probation, parole, state and federal prosecutors, and federal law enforcement agencies.
Conducting research, usually by drawing heavily on knowledge from front-line enforcement personnel, to identify key offenders or groups of offenders and the context of their criminal behavior.
Developing a special enforcement strategy to direct at identified key offenders or groups of offenders and influence the context of their offending by using any and all legal tools (known as “pulling levers”) available to sanction the targeted population.
Matching enforcement actions with parallel efforts to direct social services and the moral voices of communities negatively affected by the targeted criminal behavior to those key offenders or groups of offenders.
Communicating directly and repeatedly with the targeted criminal population to inform them of the heightened scrutiny they are being subjected to, what acts or “triggering events” (such as shootings) will get special attention, what increased enforcement and sanctions will follow, and what they can do to avoid increased attention. This message is often disseminated during a “forum,” offender notification meeting,” or “call-in,” in which offenders are invited or directed (usually because they are on probation or parole) to attend these face-to-face meetings with law enforcement, social service providers, and representatives from the community.

The results of our review support the position that focused deterrence strategies do generate noteworthy crime control impacts. In 19 of the 24 eligible studies, researchers reported that the implementation of the evaluated program was associated with a statistically significant crime reduction effect on a targeted crime problem. The results of our meta‐analysis of effect sizes suggests a statistically significant, moderate overall mean effect in favor of focused deterrence strategies. When these second‐order effects were measured, focused deterrence programs did not result in significant crime displacement impacts. Rather, focused deterrence programs tended to generate diffusion of crime control benefits that extended into proximate areas and socially connected groups that did not receive direct treatments. These findings, in combination with the strong theoretical literature supporting the mechanisms of focused deterrence, provide solid support for the adoption of such programs by police agencies. The efficacy of focused deterrence interventions is grounded in three theoretical perspectives—specific deterrence, problem-oriented policing, and procedural justice. Generally, focused deterrence strategies combine deterrence and problem-oriented policing strategies in an effort to reduce crime.

These programs draw on deterrence principles of swift, certain, and severe sanctions with problem-oriented policing principles of identifying problems, opening communication between agencies, and developing an interagency strategy for crime reduction (Braga & Weisburd, 2011; Corsaro & Engel, 2015).
This is achieved by integrating various entities within the criminal justice system, including law enforcement, researchers, and community partners, to construct a unified message with specific requirements and sanctions for chronic, often violent, offenders at a high risk of continued engagement in violence (Corsaro & Engel, 2015; Engel, Tillyer, & Corsaro, 2013; Kennedy, 1997).

Pulling levers programs, most commonly involving firearm violence including homicides and assaults, are a specific implementation of focused deterrence where agencies collaborate to prevent further violent crime by “pulling every lever legally possible following a violent incident” (Engel et al., 2013, p. 406). The available empirical evidence suggests that focused deterrence strategies generate noteworthy crime reduction impacts and should be part of a broader portfolio of crime reduction strategies available to policy makers and practitioners. The strongest crime reduction impacts from focused deterrence strategies were associated with focused deterrence programs designed to reduce serious violence generated by ongoing conflicts among gangs and criminally active groups. Accordingly, even though we have a strong logic model for predicting positive outcomes in focused deterrence programs, we have little knowledge of which of the mechanisms underlying that model have the strongest impacts on outcomes. focused deterrence strategies designed to change offender behavior through a blended enforcement, social service and opportunity provision, and community‐based action approach, are effective in controlling crime. focused deterrence may provide a mechanism for general deterrence among a broad pool of potential offenders. Violent gangs when specifically targeted by focused deterrence policing may not be affected

References

(n.d.). Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://www.chegg.com/reader/9781108286954/218/ Chapter: Policing and the Lessons of Focused DeterrenceDavid M. Kennedy Police Innovations text

Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. (n.d.). Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/focused-deterrence-high-risk-offenders

Focused Deterrence In Depth. (n.d.). Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TL261/better-policing-toolkit/all-strategies/focused-deterren ce/in-depth.html

About Neighborhood Watch | National Neighborhood Watch. (n.d.). Blue Water Media. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.nnw.org/about-neighborhood-watch

Corsaro, N., Brunson, R. K., & McGarrell, E. F. (2009, October 14). Problem-Oriented Policing and Open-Air Drug Markets: Examining the Rockford Pulling Levers Deterrence Strategy [PDF]. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University–Carbondale

Operation Ceasefire (Boston, Mass.) | Youth.gov. (n.d.). Youth.Gov. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://youth.gov/content/operation-ceasefire-boston-mass

Braga, A., & Weisburd, D. (2012, March 04). The Effects of "Pulling Levers" Focused Deterrence Strategies on Crime. Retrieved October 09, 2020, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.4073/csr.2012.6

Focused Deterrence In Depth. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TL261/better-policing-toolkit/all-strategies/focused-deterrence/i n-depth.html

Anthony A. Braga, David Weisburd, Brandon Turchan (2019). Focused Deterrence Strategies Effects on crime: A Systematic Review. Campbell Systematic Reviews 2019. Link - https://doi.org/10.1002/cl2.1051

Henderson S.M., Peterson S.S., Engel R.S. (2017) Pulling Levers to Prevent Violence: “The Boston Miracle,” Its Adaptations, and Future Directions for Research. In: Teasdale B., Bradley M. (eds) Preventing Crime and Violence. Advances in Prevention Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44124-5_24 - 31 Val. U. L. Rev. 449 (1996-1997)

Pulling Levers: Chronic Offenders, High-Crime Settings, and a Theory of Prevention - https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/valur31&div=25&id=&page=

Corsaro, N., McGarrell, E.F. Testing a promising homicide reduction strategy: re-assessing the impact of the Indianapolis “pulling levers” intervention. J Exp Criminol 5, 63 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-008-9065-1 LINK - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-008-9065-1

Braga, A. A., Weisburd, D., & Turchan, B. (2018). Focused Deterrence Strategies and Crime Control. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(1), 205–250. https://doi-org.umasslowell.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12353

Clark-Moorman, K., Rydberg, J., & McGarrell, E. F. (2019). Impact Evaluation of a Parolee-Based Focused Deterrence Program on Community-Level Violence. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 30(9), 1408–1430. https://doi-org.umasslowell.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/0887403418812999

Engel, R. S. (2018). Focused Deterrence Strategies Save Lives. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(1), 199–203. https://doi-org.umasslowell.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12358 https://doi-org.umasslowell.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12353

Roman, C.G., Link, N.W., Hyatt, J.M. et al. Assessing the gang-level and community-level effects of the Philadelphia Focused Deterrence strategy. J Exp Criminol 15, 499–527 (2019). https://doi-org.umasslowell.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11292-018-9333-7

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