---
title: "Focused Deterrence of High-risk Offenders"
type: "Response Guide"
year: "2016"
canonical: "/guides/81"
---
STRATEGIES FOR POLICING INNOVATION
PROBLEM-ORIENTED GUIDES FOR POLICE
RESPONSE GUIDE SERIES NO. 13
# FOCUSED DETERRENCE OF HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS
Michael S. Scott
# Table of Contents
- [FOCUSED DETERRENCE OF HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS](#focused-deterrence-of-high-risk-individuals)
- [STRATEGIES FOR POLICING INNOVATION PROBLEM-ORIENTED GUIDES FOR POLICE RESPONSE GUIDE SERIES NO. I3](#strategies-for-policing-innovation-problem-oriented-guides-for-police-response-guide-series-no-i3)
- [FOCUSED DETERRENCE OF HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS](#focused-deterrence-of-high-risk-individuals)
- [MICHAEL S. SCOTT](#michael-s-scott)
- [ABOUT THIS GUIDE](#about-this-guide)
- [ABOUT THE STRATEGIES FOR POLICING INNOVATION GUIDES](#about-the-strategies-for-policing-innovation-guides)
- [ABOUT THE RESPONSE GUIDES SERIES](#about-the-response-guides-series)
- [ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](#acknowledgments)
- [THE LOGIC AND RATIONALE OF FOCUSED DETERRENCE](#the-logic-and-rationale-of-focused-deterrence)
- [OVERVIEW](#overview)
- [FOCUSED-DETERRENCE THEORY](#focused-deterrence-theory)
- [THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE](#theory-versus-practice)
- [Felbab-Brown 2013](#felbab-brown-2013)
- [THE ROLE OF ANALYSIS IN FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVES](#the-role-of-analysis-in-focused-deterrence-initiatives)
- [TYPES OF ANALYSES CONDUCTED FOR FDIs](#types-of-analyses-conducted-for-fdis)
- [THE PHASES AND CORE ELEMENTS OF FOCUSED DETERRENCE](#the-phases-and-core-elements-of-focused-deterrence)
- [PHASE I PROGRAM PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION](#phase-i-program-planning-and-implementation)
- [LAW ENFORCEMENT PARTNERS](#law-enforcement-partners)
- [SOCIAL SERVICE PARTNERS](#social-service-partners)
- [KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, SPI CASE STUDY: IMPLEMENTATION](#kansas-city-missouri-spi-case-study-implementation)
- [COMMUNITY PARTNERS](#community-partners)
- [PHASE 2 HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUAL SELECTION](#phase-2-high-risk-individual-selection)
- [CAMBRIDGE/SOMERVILLE/EVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS, SPI CASE STUDY: OFFENDER SELECTION](#cambridgesomervilleeverett-massachusetts-spi-case-study-offender-selection)
- [Repeat Offender Prioritization and Tracking](#repeat-offender-prioritization-and-tracking)
- [PHASE 3 NOTIFICATION](#phase-3-notification)
- [Your persistent and serious offending has called you to special attention. The government and the community insist that you stop your offending because it is hurting people and the community. If you are willing to stop, you will be provided with all the necessary assistance to create a successful, law-abiding lifestyle for yourself and your family. If you are not willing to stop, you and your criminal associates will be subjected to all available enforcement means to compel you to stop. ${ }^{19}$](#your-persistent-and-serious-offending-has-called-you-to-special-attention-the-government-and-the-community-insist-that-you-stop-your-offending-because-it-is-hurting-people-and-the-community-if-you-are-willing-to-stop-you-will-be-provided-with-all-the-necessary-assistance-to-create-a-successful-law-abiding-lifestyle-for-yourself-and-your-family-if-you-are-not-willing-to-stop-you-and-your-criminal-associates-will-be-subjected-to-all-available-enforcement-means-to-compel-you-to-stop-19)
- [CHULA VISTA, CALIFORNIA SPI CASE STUDY: NOTIFICATION](#chula-vista-california-spi-case-study-notification)
- [PHASE 4 ENFORCEMENT/ SERVICE DELIVERY](#phase-4-enforcement-service-delivery)
- [CONCENTRATING LAW ENFORCEMENT SANCTIONS ON A FEW HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS](#concentrating-law-enforcement-sanctions-on-a-few-high-risk-individuals)
- [CONCENTRATING SOCIAL SERVICES ON THE SAME FEW HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS](#concentrating-social-services-on-the-same-few-high-risk-individuals)
- [CAMBRIDGE/SOMERVILLE/EVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS, SPI CASE STUDY: ENFORCEMENT/SERVICE DELIVERY](#cambridgesomervilleeverett-massachusetts-spi-case-study-enforcementservice-delivery)
- [MOBILIZING INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL](#mobilizing-informal-social-control)
- [EXTENDING SANCTIONS TO OTHER MEMBERS OF THE HIGH-RISK OFFENDER'S CRIMINAL GROUP](#extending-sanctions-to-other-members-of-the-high-risk-offenders-criminal-group)
- [FOLLOWING UP ON PROMISES](#following-up-on-promises)
- [PHASE 5 FOLLOW-UP COMMUNICATION](#phase-5-follow-up-communication)
- [KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, SPI CASE STUDY: FOLLOW-UP COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS](#kansas-city-missouri-spi-case-study-follow-up-communication-and-social-network-analysis)
- [PHASE6 ASSESSMENT](#phase6-assessment)
- [DETERMINING WHETHER FOCUSED DETERRENCE IS EFFECTIVE](#determining-whether-focused-deterrence-is-effective)
- [DETERMINING WHETHER FOCUSED DETERRENCE IS FAIR](#determining-whether-focused-deterrence-is-fair)
- [DETERMINING WHETHER FOCUSED DETERRENCE IS AN EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES](#determining-whether-focused-deterrence-is-an-efficient-use-of-resources)
- [ADMINISTERING AND LEADING A FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVE](#administering-and-leading-a-focused-deterrence-initiative)
- [It is challenging to sustain effective collaborations over time. No one institution by itself can mount a meaningful response to complex youth violence problems. Institutions need to coordinate and combine their efforts in ways that could magnify their separate effects. (Braga, Hureau, and Winship, 2008)](#it-is-challenging-to-sustain-effective-collaborations-over-time-no-one-institution-by-itself-can-mount-a-meaningful-response-to-complex-youth-violence-problems-institutions-need-to-coordinate-and-combine-their-efforts-in-ways-that-could-magnify-their-separate-effects-braga-hureau-and-winship-2008)
- [ADMINISTRATION](#administration)
- [LEADERSHIP](#leadership)
- [APPLYING FOCUSED DETERRENCE TO SPECIFIC CRIME PROBLEMS](#applying-focused-deterrence-to-specific-crime-problems)
- [GANG VIOLENCE](#gang-violence)
- [DRUG MARKETS](#drug-markets)
- [DOMESTIC VIOLENCE](#domestic-violence)
- [ORGANIZED CRIME](#organized-crime)
- [CONCLUSION](#conclusion)
- [APPENDIX: EVALUATED FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVES](#appendix-evaluated-focused-deterrence-initiatives)
- [REFERENCES](#references)
- [ABOUT THE AUTHOR](#about-the-author)
- [MICHAEL S. SCOTT](#michael-s-scott)
- [ENDNOTES](#endnotes)
# STRATEGIES FOR POLICING INNOVATION PROBLEM-ORIENTED GUIDES FOR POLICE RESPONSE GUIDE SERIES NO. I3
## FOCUSED DETERRENCE OF HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS
## MICHAEL S. SCOTT
This project was supported by Grant No. 2013-DP-BX-K006 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a component of the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice \& Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement of the product by the author(s) or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.
The Internet references cited in this publication were valid as of the date of this publication. Given that URLs and websites are in constant flux, neither the author(s) nor the Bureau of Justice Assistance can vouch for their current validity.
(c) 2017 CNA Corporation and the Arizona Board of Regents. The U.S. Department of Justice reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable license to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use, and authorize others to use, this publication for Federal Government purposes. This publication may be freely distributed and used for noncommercial and educational purposes.
www.bja.usdoj.gov
July 2017
# TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS GUIDE ..... I
About the Strategies for Policing Innovation Guides. ..... 1
About the Response Guides Series ..... 1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..... 3
THE LOGIC AND RATIONALE OF FOCUSED DETERRENCE ..... 4
Overview ..... 4
Focused-Deterrence Theory ..... 4
Theory versus Practice ..... 4
THE ROLE OF ANALYSIS IN FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVES. ..... 6
THE PHASES AND CORE ELEMENTS OF FOCUSED DETERRENCE ..... 8
Phase 1: Program Planning and Implementation ..... 9
Phase 2: High-Risk Individual Selection ..... 11
Phase 3: Notification ..... 13
Phase 4: Enforcement/Service Delivery ..... 15
Phase 5: Follow-Ip Communication ..... 18
Phase 6: Assessment. ..... 20
ADMINISTERING AND LEADING A FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVE ..... 22
Administration ..... 22
Leadership ..... 23
APPLYING FOCUSED DETERRENCE TO SPECIFIC CRIME PROBLEMS ..... 24
Gang Violence ..... 24
Drug Markets ..... 24
Domestic Violence ..... 25
Organized Crime ..... 25
CONCLUSION ..... 26
APPENDIX: EVALUATED FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVES ..... 27
REFERENCES ..... 31
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ..... 34
ENDNOTES ..... 35
# ABOUT THIS GUIDE
## ABOUT THE STRATEGIES FOR POLICING INNOVATION GUIDES
In 2013 the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funded CNA to work with the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing to develop a series of Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI) ProblemOriented Guides for Police. The purpose of these guides is to provide the law enforcement community with useful guidance, knowledge, and best practices related to key problem-oriented policing and SPI principles and practices. These guides add to the existing collection of Problem-Oriented Guides for Police.
SPI is a BJA-sponsored initiative that supports police agencies by helping them develop and implement practices that are informed by research conducted in partnership with external researchers. SPI is a strategic approach that brings more science into police operations by leveraging innovative applications of analysis, technology, and evidence-based practices. The goal of SPI is to improve policing performance and effectiveness while containing costs, an important consideration in today's fiscal environment.
SPI is a collaborative effort between BJA, CNA (SPI training and technical assistance provider), and local law enforcement agencies that are testing innovative and evidence-based solutions to serious crime problems.
For more information about the Strategies for Policing Innovation, visit www.smartpolicinginitiative.com.
## ABOUT THE RESPONSE GUIDES SERIES
The Response Guides are one of three series of the ProblemOriented Guides for Police. The other two are the ProblemSpecific Guides and the Problem-Solving Tools Guides.
The Problem-Oriented Guides for Police summarize knowledge about how police can reduce the harm caused by specific crime and disorder problems. They are guides to preventing problems and improving overall incident response, not to investigating offenses or handling specific incidents. Neither do they cover all of the technical details about how to implement specific responses. The guides are written for police-of whatever rank or assignment-who must address the specific problems the guides cover. The guides will be most useful to officers who:
- Understand basic problem-oriented policing principles and methods
- Can look at problems in depth
- Are willing to consider new ways of doing police business
- Understand the value and the limits of research knowledge
- Are willing to work with other community and government agencies to find effective solutions to problems
The Response Guides are intended to be used differently from the Problem-Specific Guides. Ideally, police should begin all strategic decision-making by first analyzing the specific crime and disorder problems they are confronting and then use the analysis results to devise particular responses. But certain responses are so commonly considered and have such potential to help address a range of specific crime and disorder problems that it makes sense for police to learn more about what results they might expect from them.
Readers are cautioned that the Response Guides are designed to supplement problem analysis, not to replace it. Police should analyze all crime and disorder problems in their local context before implementing responses. Even if research knowledge suggests that a particular response has proved effective elsewhere, that does not mean the response will be effective everywhere. Local factors matter a lot in choosing which responses to use.
Research and practice have further demonstrated that, in most cases, the most effective overall approach to a problem is one that incorporates several different responses. So a single response guide is unlikely to provide you with sufficient information on which to base a coherent plan for addressing crime and disorder problems. Some combinations of responses work better than others. Thus, how effective a particular response is depends partly on what other responses police use to address the problem.
These guides emphasize effectiveness and fairness as the main considerations police should take into account in choosing responses, but recognize that they are not the only considerations. Police use particular responses for reasons other than, or in addition to, whether or not they will work, and whether or not they are deemed fair. Community attitudes and values, and the personalities of key decision-makers, sometimes mandate different approaches to addressing crime and disorder problems. Some communities and individuals prefer enforcement-oriented responses, whereas others prefer collaborative, community-oriented, or harm-reduction approaches. These guides will not necessarily alter those preferences, but are intended to better inform them.
These guides have drawn on research findings and police practices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia.
Example Problem-Oriented Policing Guides
Even though laws, customs, and police practices vary from country to country, police everywhere experience common problems. In an increasingly interconnected world, it is important that police be aware of research and successful practices beyond the borders of their own countries.
Each guide is informed by a thorough review of the research literature and reported police practice, and each guide is anonymously peer-reviewed by a line police officer, a police executive, and a researcher prior to publication. CNA, which solicits the reviews, independently manages the process.
For more information about problem-oriented policing, visit the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing online at www.popcenter.org. This website offers free online access to:
- The Problem-Specific Guides series
- The companion Response Guides and Problem-Solving Tools Guides series
- Special publications on crime analysis and on policing terrorism
- Instructional information about problem-oriented policing and related topics
- An interactive problem-oriented policing training exercise
- An interactive Problem Analysis Module
- Online access to important police research and practices
- Information about problem-oriented policing conferences and award programs
# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Problem-Oriented Guides for Police are produced by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, whose officers are Michael S. Scott (Director), Ronald V. Clarke (Associate Director), and Graeme R. Newman (Associate Director). While each guide has a primary author, other project team members, CNA and BJA staff, and anonymous peer reviewers contributed to each guide by proposing text, recommending research, and offering suggestions on matters of format and style.
The project team that developed the guide series comprised Herman Goldstein, Ronald V. Clarke, John E. Eck, Michael S. Scott, Rana Sampson, and Deborah Lamm Weisel.
Members of the San Diego; National City, California; and Savannah, Georgia police departments provided feedback on the guides' format and style in the early stages of the project.
Vivian Elliott oversaw the project for CNA. Phyllis Schultze conducted research for the guide at Rutgers University's Criminal Justice Library. Andrea Wiltse and Bettina Kimpton at CNA edited this guide. Liz Summers designed this guide.
Representatives from the Kansas City, Missouri; Chula Vista, California; and Cambridge, Massachusetts Strategies for Policing Innovation sites and subject matter experts Joseph McHale and Julie Wartell contributed to the case studies.
# THE LOGIC AND RATIONALE OF FOCUSED DETERRENCE
## OVERVIEW
Focused deterrence is a crime reduction strategy in which carefully selected high-risk offenders (prolific or particularly violent criminal offenders) receive concentrated law enforcement attention and, simultaneously, offers of concentrated social services through direct, persuasive communication and rigorous follow-up of these commitments. ${ }^{1}$ Focused-deterrence initiatives (FDIs) commonly include such aspects as identification of prolific offenders, scripted offender notification meetings, coordinated and strategic prosecution, provision of social services to individuals willing to accept them, and careful monitoring of individuals' actions. They are not merely enforcement crackdowns or a method of making life difficult for selected individuals.
This guide is aimed primarily at police officials who are considering or have been tasked with launching an FDI. It will explain the following:
- The logic behind focused deterrence.
- The core elements of focused deterrence.
- How focused-deterrence initiatives ought to be structured and led.
- Evidence of the effectiveness and fairness of focused deterrence initiatives.
- How focused deterrence applies to various crime problems.
- How different communities have applied focused-deterrence principles.
Indeed, when carefully and properly implemented, FDIs have great potential to enhance the perceived legitimacy of the police and the public's trust in them in communities where these have often been lacking.
## FOCUSED-DETERRENCE THEORY
The focused-deterrence-or "pulling-levers"-strategy originated in a problem-oriented policing initiative to address youth-gang gun violence in Boston in the late 1990s. ${ }^{2}$ Since then, dozens of jurisdictions in the United States have adopted and adapted the model. ${ }^{3}$
The focused-deterrence approach stems from the deterrence theory of crime, which asserts simply that people are discouraged from committing crimes if they believe they are likely to be caught and punished certainly, severely, and swiftly. These three punishment elements theoretically work best in concert: if any one of the elements is weak, the threat of punishment is diminished and the person is less deterred from committing the crime. Specific deterrence refers to instances when the individual punished is discouraged from offending again. General
deterrence is when other people become aware of an individual's punishment and are discouraged from committing similar offenses. FDIs aim primarily to deter high-risk offenders from reoffending, but if properly publicized to offenders' associates and to the wider public, general deterrence can occur as well.
The police role in deterring crime lies principally with the first element-certainty. By law, police are not intended to have much influence on the severity of punishment, at least not official punishment meted out under the criminal law: for the most part, that is left to legislatures, prosecutors, and judges to decide. Nor do police have much say in the swiftness of punishment: that lies largely in the hands of the courts. Much of traditional police work is designed to increase the likelihood that those engaged in criminal activities are caught and brought to court. Police patrols, rapid response to crimes in progress, and criminal investigations all are intended to boost the chances that criminals will be detected.
## THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE
Criminal deterrence theory is sound, with the evidence most strongly supporting the certainty of punishment rather than the severity or swiftness of it. ${ }^{4}$ Several factors work against the effectiveness of deterrence-based strategies.
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{a}$ Many programs funded through the U.S. Department of Justice replicated Boston's initiative, including the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative, Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative, and the Strategies for Policing Innovation. The National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College maintains a listing of jurisdictions that have implemented or are implementing some form of focused-deterrence strategy, which can be viewed online at http:// nnscommunities.org/impact/cities.
For example, not all offenses are reported to police, police do not detect or apprehend many offenders, prosecutors are not able to bring formal charges against all arrestees, judges and juries do not convict all those who are tried for crimes, punishments meted out (usually fines, jail time, community service, or some form of conditional release) are not always perceived as sufficiently harsh, and the imposition of punishment sometimes occurs long after a crime has been committed. Sometimes, even when people will be punished harshly and quickly, they do not believe ahead of time that they will be. Ultimately, punishment deters only to the extent that people believe that they will be caught and that the punishment will be certain, severe, and swift. Finally, it only deters if people do not want to be caught and punished (which, odd as it sounds, is not always the case).
"The broad concept [of focused deterrence]... is to move law enforcement forces away from random non-strategic-at times outright haphazardstrikes based merely on random intelligence flows, or from blanket 'zero-tolerance' approaches against lowest-level offenders, and toward strategic selectivity and to give each counter-crime operation enhanced impact."
## Felbab-Brown 2013
"The revised focused deterrence model offers some progress in that the improved integration of criminal justice and social services potentially broadens the legitimate opportunities available to at-risk individuals. In addition, the model aims to improve the legitimacy of law enforcement by making police action commensurate with criminal behavior and consistent across cases, bringing together the community and the police as a united front against violence, and communicating sanction risk to offenders in a stern, yet respectful, tone."
Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012
It is easy to assume that everyone understands the risks of being caught and punished if they commit crimes, and to assume that they fear consequences. The reality in most communities, however, is that relatively few people are caught for each crime they commit and, even when people are caught, the punishments they endure are often far less severe or swiftly administered than might be expected. ${ }^{3}$ This means that the general threat of punishment from routine policing and prosecution is relatively weak, and more prolific offenders-
who have cycled through the justice system many times-know this better than most people. Thus, although prolific offenders know that their odds of getting caught and punished over time are nearly certain, their odds for any particular crime they commit are rather low. ${ }^{5}$
Focused deterrence aims to address some of the weaknesses in the application of deterrence theory. As its name implies, it focuses official and community attention and resources on the relatively few individuals who commit a disproportionate number of crimes, typically violent crimes, and removes any sense of anonymity they might believe they enjoy. It builds on known information about prolific repeat offenders. ${ }^{6}$ Incidentally, prolific violent offenders are also frequently victims of violent crime resulting from victim/victim associate retaliation. ${ }^{6}$ In addition, because prolific gun offenders, as well as their shooting victims, usually have extensive histories of involvement in the justice system, they are often on some form of conditional release (bail, probation, parole), which gives criminal justice officials legal leverage over them (hence leverpulling). ${ }^{7}$
Focused-deterrence initiatives can also work through situational crime prevention mechanisms. Situational crime prevention aims to reduce crime opportunities by making it harder for people to commit crimes, increasing the risk of getting caught, making crime less rewarding, and removing the provocations and excuses that encourage them to commit crimes. Focused deterrence can actually help in most of these regards. ${ }^{8}$ For instance, it can increase people's perceived risks of getting caught or deny them others' assistance (because they too are deterred by the prospect of being carefully monitored, making it more difficult for the high-risk offender to commit crimes).
Focused deterrence can further weaken people's motivation to continue offending by providing them with the assistance necessary to start a non-criminal lifestyle. If, for example, highrisk offenders succeed in getting a job or assistance for their family—which they value—they have something meaningful to lose by returning to offending. On a related note, most FDIs explicitly incorporate restorative justice principles in making high-risk offenders more acutely aware of how their offending has harmed individual victims, the community at large, their own families, and themselves.
Depending on how an FDI is designed, its effects may be operating not only through deterrence theory and situational crime prevention, but also through such other theories as Broken Windows, collective efficacy, informal social control, and procedural justice. Focused deterrence is a shorthand description for a multi-faceted strategy that has many important features working simultaneously to change people's attitudes and behaviors in a variety of ways. ${ }^{9}$
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{6}$ In conjunction with this guide, read Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 11, Analyzing and Responding to Repeat Offending, by Nick Tilley.
${ }^{7}$ For a brief explanation of situational crime prevention, see the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing webpage at http://www.popcenter.org/about/?p= situational.
# THE ROLE OF ANALYSIS IN FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVES
It's tempting for busy police departments to try to implement an FDI "off the shelf"-that is, to merely replicate the approach taken by another police agency. This will likely prove to be a big mistake. Central to the logic of both problemoriented policing and SPI is that all policing problems have important local dimensions that must be understood in order to develop responses that work in that community for that particular problem. Understanding the general principles of focused deterrence and how other jurisdictions have adopted (and adapted) it is important but not sufficient.
Every community's problems are distinctive in some respects, even if they are similar in most respects to those types of problems in other communities. Often the key to success is in discovering the distinctive features of the local problem that suggest specific interventions tailored to those features. ${ }^{10}$ Perhaps one community's problem is less about highly organized adult gangs and more about loose confederations of youths with overlapping group loyalties. Or in one community, violence is confined to small geographic areas, whereas it is dispersed over large areas in another. Perhaps the cultural norms of crime groups vary by location, or the weapons or drugs of choice differ. Any of these and a number of other factors, once understood, could point an FDI in a somewhat different direction than others. Local analysis of a problem will inform decision-makers as to which way to turn. ${ }^{d}$
The following conditions can vary across jurisdictions in ways that will be important to the development and implementation of a local FDI:
- The nature and local dynamics of violence problems (e.g., gang-related, domestic-related, drug-related, moneyrelated, gun-related, culture-related)
- The local features of offenders' social networks (e.g., the extent to which offender groups are organized, secretive, and territorial and have clear leadership)
- The volume and severity of violent incidents
- The specific law enforcement authority granted to police,
prosecutors, courts, and corrections agencies under state and local laws
- The availability of critical social services
- The willingness of local law enforcement and social service agencies to support the collaboration
- The willingness of the local community and high-risk offenders' close relations to support the collaboration
Nearly all FDIs have been guided by careful data analysis for at least the following purposes:
- To define the nature, scope, and severity of the local problem
- To understand the local dynamics of the problem, including the motives, methods, and social networks related to the offenses being addressed and the multi-generational nature of the problem
- To assist in selecting individuals to target
- To craft specific interventions that match local conditions and resources
- To assess whether the initiative is being properly implemented, as well as the impact the response is having on the specific problems being addressed
The following illustrate the types of analyses that might be beneficial in an FDI:
- Mapping geographical turf areas of known gangs
- Mapping the known network and state of relations among gangs (e.g., actively feuding, passive rivals, affiliated, no relationship) ${ }^{e}$
- Classifying underlying motives to violent incidents
- Interviewing known offenders to learn about motives, methods, and risk perceptions ${ }^{f}$
- Studying and depicting the social relationships, through social network analysis, of gang- or group-involved offenders and their associates, friends, and relatives
Often overlooked is the need to collect and analyze data
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{d}$ For further information, see Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 11, Analyzing and Responding to Repeat Offending, by Nick Tilley. See the Rochester, NY, reports (Klofas, Delaney, and Smith, 2005) for excellent examples of local problem analyses.
${ }^{\text {e }}$ For further information, see Intelligence Analysis for Problem Solvers, by John E. Eck and Ronald V. Clarke, available at: http://www.popcenter.org/library/reading/pdfs/Intell-Analysis-for-ProbSolvers.pdf.
${ }^{\text {f }}$ For further information, see Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 3, Using Offender Interviews to Inform Police Problem Solving, by Scott Decker.
## TYPES OF ANALYSES CONDUCTED FOR FDIs
- Analysis of official crime data (Uniform Crime Reports/National Incident-Based Reporting System)
- Analysis of census data
- Analysis of data on 10 years of homicides
- Systematic ride-alongs with police
- Incident reviews and analysis
- Observations at homicide scenes
- Interviews with family members of homicide victims
- Observations at funerals of homicide victims
- Review of homicide files for drug involvement
- Focus groups with jail inmates
- Focus groups with residents of high-crime neighborhoods
- Analysis of autopsy and toxicology reports
- Examination of school records for homicide victims and suspects and comparison with those of a matched sample of peers
during FDI implementation. This ongoing assessment of what components are actually being implemented-both on the enforcement side and on the service-provision side-is vital to making mid-course corrections and to building a detailed record of implementation that will aid subsequent assessments of the initiative's impact on the targeted problems. ${ }^{11}$
In most early FDIs, external researchers from local universities led or assisted in data analysis. Police analysts, if available, should likewise be involved. So, too, should the police detectives, patrol officers, gang- and drug-squad officers, prosecutors, and others who work directly with known offenders or who work the areas or cases associated with the problem, so that the data-driven aspects of an FDI can be validated with the experiences of police officers working on the problems on a day-to-day basis. ${ }^{12}$ Data analysts and line-level law enforcement officials bring different sets of knowledge and expertise to the analysis, both of which are critically important.
Keep in mind that FDIs are a still relatively new innovation and, as such, not all of the important issues concerning them have been thoroughly examined through careful research. Accordingly, some of the recommendations in this guide are based on a limited set of practitioner experiences rather than on firm research findings. There is much yet to be learned about FDIs through both practitioner experience and research.
# THE PHASES AND CORE ELEMENTS OF FOCUSED DETERRENCE
There are five general phases in most FDIs: 1 Program Planning and Implementation; 2 High-Risk Offender Selection; 3 High-Risk Offender Notification; 4 Enforcement/Service Delivery; and 5 Follow-Up Communication. ${ }^{13}$ The National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College has produced a series of practice briefs and implementation guides providing detailed recommendations for the various aspects of planning and executing an FDI. See http://nnscommunities.org/our-work/ all-guides for access to the briefs and guides. An additional phase-6 Assessment-is also strongly recommended to gauge the initiative's fairness and effectiveness and to adapt the initiative accordingly. Figure 1 summarizes objectives for each phase, followed by descriptions of each phase's core elements.
Figure 1. Phases and Core Elements of a Focused-Deterrence Initiative
| PHASE | OBJECTIVE |
| :--: | :--: |
| PHASE 1 Planning and Implementation | - Engage the community - Engage police personnel - Engage external partners to secure support and resource commitments - Establish clear program goals and objectives - Establish administrative infrastructure |
| PHASE 2 High-Risk Individual Selection | - Develop and test a high-risk offender-selection methodology - Identify high-risk offender candidates - Select high-risk offenders |
| PHASE 3 High-Risk Individual Notification | - Build rapport with high-risk individuals' families, friends, and supporters - Invite high-risk offenders to the notification - Conduct the notification meeting |
| PHASE 4 Enforcement/ Service Delivery | - Carry out enforcement and prosecution for high-risk offenders who refuse to desist from offending - Provide services to high-risk offenders who desist from offending and request assistance |
| PHASE 5 Follow-Up Communication | - Inform high-risk offenders and their criminal associates of consequences (positive or negative) that follow from compliance or noncompliance and why - Keep FDI partners informed about actions taken to penalize or assist high-risk offenders - Inform the general public about FDI principles and major actions and outcomes |
| PHASE 6 Assessment | - Determine whether the FDI is being implemented as designed or intended - Determine whether the FDI is having the desired impact of reducing targeted crimes - Determine whether the FDI is perceived as fair |
# PHASE I PROGRAM PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION
Focused-deterrence initiatives require a great deal of coordination and collaboration among government and non-government organizations, as well as community groups. Accordingly, careful program planning and implementation are critical to an initiative's success. At minimum, if you are tasked with organizing an FDI, you must line up and coordinate the agencies and organizations needed to impose sanctions on and provide services to high-risk individuals. Below are examples of key law enforcement, social service, and community partners in FDIs:
## LAW ENFORCEMENT PARTNERS
- Local police (municipal and county levels)
- Federal law enforcement agencies (e.g., Federal Bureau of Investigation; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms \& Explosives; U.S. Marshals Service)
- State law enforcement agencies
- Federal and state prosecutors (e.g., U.S. Attorney's Office and state attorney general offices)
- Local prosecutors (e.g., district, state, county, city attorney offices)
- Probation and parole agencies (for adult and juvenile offenders if FDI includes both)
- Pretrial services agencies
## SOCIAL SERVICE PARTNERS
- Employment and job training organizations
- Youth and gang outreach organizations
- Child and family services organizations
- Schools (if juveniles are among high-risk offenders)
- Churches and other faith-based organizations that provide social services
- Housing authorities
- Public and mental health organizations
## KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, SPI CASE STUDY: IMPLEMENTATION
In the spring of 2012 the Jackson County prosecutor, mayor of Kansas City, and Kansas City police chief were all new to their offices and shared a vision to implement focused deterrence. They formed the Kansas City No Violence Alliance (KC NoVA), which became the first collaborative effort ever attempted to reduce Kansas City's homicide rate.
As law enforcement and prosecutorial players were mandated to come to the table, the challenge KC NoVA faced was to use community strength to augment their efforts. KC NoVA made it a priority to identify prospective partners early in the implementation process and facilitated informational sessions about focused deterrence to civic and community groups. The informal networking that occurred after these sessions helped KC NoVA find organizations willing to contribute. After one of the informational sessions, KC NoVA discovered a group of mothers who had all lost their children to homicide; this group called themselves "Mothers in Charge." The mothers would become the most prominent supporters and by far the most impactful of speakers at the call-in sessions.
Proper implementation will require agencies to conduct significant internal training in focused deterrence. The Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) integrated a focused-deterrence educational module into the mandatory annual training all employees received. KCPD also focused on the realignment of investigative and uniformed personnel to accomplish the enforcement needs of focused deterrence. Crime analysts, gang detectives, uniformed street impact officers, and other officers who investigated weapons violations were co-located and placed under one chain of command.
The process of implementing focused deterrence requires agencies to be more surgical in their crime prevention efforts and facilitates positive police and community engagement. By fostering a culture of prevention and outreach instead of arrest and prosecution, the KCPD has seen significant support for its efforts to enhance police legitimacy.
## COMMUNITY PARTNERS
- Informal community leaders (i.e., citizens who have earned general respect from others in the community)
- Neighborhood associations
- Local clergy
- Local chapters of civil rights organizations
- Business associations
- Youth service organizations
- Researchers
Non-government and non-social service community members play key roles in FDIs, particularly in expressing community values, desires, and commitments to high-risk offenders, as well as monitoring individuals' behavior and reporting transgressions to police. Ex-offenders who have successfully turned away from criminal lifestyles and become responsible community members are particularly valuable in this regard. In some FDIs, a reformed offender speaks to the group to encourage the high-risk offenders to change their lifestyles and to testify as to how they did so. ${ }^{14}$ Community members can also provide law enforcement and social service providers with valuable information about community dynamics and issues that help them better understand how a particular community functions. ${ }^{15}$ Lay community members are not likely to be as productive serving on project steering committees because most will lack the necessary expertise and authority-as well as the time and other resources-required for effective participation.
One of the main lessons learned from early FDIs is that the partnerships and collaborations necessary to make them effective take serious effort to establish and maintain, particularly in jurisdictions that lack a positive history of such multi-partner collaborations. When relations between police/prosecutors and communities (especially minority communities) are strained, perhaps owing to policing and prosecution practices that are perceived to unfairly discriminate against minority-group members, FDIs may be impractical until at least a basic level of community trust in police and prosecutors is restored. ${ }^{\text {b }}$
Each of the key partners listed above has unique perspectives on crime control and on different groups' respective roles in it. It is not always easy, for example, for police and clergy, or for prosecutors and social workers, to understand and respect one another's perspectives on crime control, let alone try to integrate them.
If strong, trusting relationships among these various partners do not exist in a community prior to establishing an FDI, stakeholders must be prepared to invest time in building them before officially launching the FDI. Someone with a thorough understanding of focused deterrence should carefully explain its principles to others not familiar with them and listen to others' concerns and viewpoints in crafting the local collaboration. ${ }^{i}$ In several jurisdictions, a year or more was spent building the coalition before the actual work was undertaken. ${ }^{16}$
Kansas City No Violence Alliance Planning Meeting
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{\text {b }}$ See Braga and Winship 2006 and Kennedy and Wong 2009 for descriptions of the work done to restore minority communities' trust in the police before implementing their FDIs in Boston and High Point, North Carolina, respectively.
${ }^{i}$ Kristen Maziarka 2014, a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, conducted an interesting analysis of the competing rhetoric surrounding the Kansas City FDI, with some rhetoric emphasizing the tough law enforcement dimensions of the initiative, and some rhetoric emphasizing its supportive social-service dimensions.
# PHASE 2 HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUAL SELECTION
After establishing the basic structure of an FDI and securing the necessary commitments from key partners, you should consider how and on what basis an FDI intervention would target high-risk offenders.
The process adopted to select high-risk offenders for inclusion in the FDI must be objectively fair, and the high-risk offenders must not believe they were targeted arbitrarily or randomly but rather because of the frequency and/or severity of their criminal behavior. ${ }^{17}$ High-risk offenders must believe that they can cease being law enforcement targets by changing their own behavior, that they can control what happens to them, and that they bear responsibility for being a targeted person. It is equally important that judges, defense counsel, probation and parole officers, offenders' families, and the general public believe that the criteria for targeting high-risk offenders are fair and lawful.
Initially, you must decide what type of high-risk offenders to focus on. Most early FDIs have chosen to focus on violent gang-affiliated or drug-market offenders. Alternatively, the initiative could focus on chronic nuisance offenders or on domestic violence offenders. Some police agencies have considered testing the approach on chronic drunk drivers; to date, this has not been done.
Second, you must decide, within the general type of offending being targeted, what threshold of frequency or severity of offending will qualify an individual for becoming a target. Will the most prolific offenders be targeted? The most dangerous? Or some blend of the two?
Third, you must decide whom to target among those who meet the objective criteria listed above. In some early FDIs, decision makers preferred targeting individuals who were believed to have special influence within criminal networks (i.e., so-called "shot-callers," "impact players," or carriers of criminal ideas and motives). ${ }^{18}$ The logic is that by changing the attitudes and
behavior of these individuals, there is greater likelihood of indirectly changing the attitudes and behaviors of others whom they influence. Though social influence is more subjective than other factors, such as the number of prior offenses, you should make an effort to base the selection criteria on reliable evidence, not on hunches, speculation, or dislike of an individual.
Selecting the right individuals to target requires a blend of documented evidence of prior offenses, law enforcement practitioners' understanding of offenders' motives and social influence, and a deliberate process for choosing from among target candidates. You should strive to reach consensus among partner agencies and organizations as to the specific criteria. Among critical criteria that argue in favor of targeting a particular individual are the following:
- The candidate has significant influence among other offenders
- The candidate is personally involved in committing or ordering violent acts
- The candidate is currently engaged in illegal activity
- The candidate is vulnerable to official criminal justice intervention (e.g., is a suspect in an active police investigation, has pending criminal charges, or is in the community on conditional release from jail or prison)
You and others selecting individuals for FDI attention should also consider the criteria for formally removing an individual from focused-deterrence attention. Obviously, if an individual is reincarcerated or dies, they would be removed from FDI attention, but because FDI attention entails both heightened risk of punishment as well as heightened social services, formally removing individuals from FDI attention is not always going to be in individuals' best interests.
"...[F]rom my experience, many offenders in [focused-deterrence initiatives] do not know or understand why they have been singled out. As hard as it is to believe, offenders often do not comprehend the extent of their criminal histories, and they end up expressing feelings of being unfairly singled out. So, part of a good FDI is to educate the offenders on why they are part of it."
Lieutenant (Ret.) Tom Woodmansee, Madison (Wisconsin) Police Department (Woodmansee 2015)
# CAMBRIDGE/SOMERVILLE/EVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS, SPI CASE STUDY: OFFENDER SELECTION
The Cambridge/Somerville/Everett (Massachusetts) FDI was nontraditional in several ways. A key difference from most FDIs was in Phase 2: Offender Selection. Not only did the pool of potential offenders come from three separate jurisdictions that were combined into one database, but much wider criteria were also used for the selection decision. Whereas most FDIs focus on either violent offenders or one specific type of offender (i.e., drugs or domestic violence), the Cambridge Police Department-led effort created a "social harm index" to select the offenders on whom to focus. They believed that many of the most prolific people were not only committing crimes, but also involved in social harm in other ways that affect the public and police.
This data-driven approach included several steps. All people (not just offenders) who were in the three participating police departments' records were combined into a custom-designed database. Every offense was given a weight based on comprehensive empirical guidelines established by the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission. This offense score, along with the person's role and how recent the incident was, were inputs to an algorithm created to calculate a total score based on every contact for every person in the database (see the graphic below for a screen shot of the system). The ability to filter and search by age, crime type, and category was also provided. This allowed specialized units to create custom lists to prioritize their work (e.g., homeless, juvenile, mentally ill). One type of analysis that was done to confirm the importance of this selection focus was comparing the percentage of offenders responsible for the percentage of crime versus social harm. They found that 10 percent of the offenders were responsible for 26 percent of the crime, but that 10 percent of the offenders were responsible for 70 percent of social harm.
## Repeat Offender Prioritization and Tracking
Step 1: Set Weights for Offenses and Roles
| Offender Management | Incident Management | QUIT |
| :--: | :--: | :--: |
Step 2: Filter and Search
# PHASE 3 NOTIFICATION
Because FDI success depends heavily upon high-risk offenders comprehending the consequences of their actions- whether to persist or desist in offending-you need to carefully consider the content and delivery of core messages to them. In essence, the message to targeted high-risk offenders in FDIs is that:
## Your persistent and serious offending has called you to special attention. The government and the community insist that you stop your offending because it is hurting people and the community. If you are willing to stop, you will be provided with all the necessary assistance to create a successful, law-abiding lifestyle for yourself and your family. If you are not willing to stop, you and your criminal associates will be subjected to all available enforcement means to compel you to stop. ${ }^{19}$
Ideally, communicating with the high-risk offenders occurs individually and in a group setting. In most early FDIs, the twin promises of intensive enforcement and social assistance are delivered directly to high-risk offenders in meetings called offender-notification meetings, call-ins, or forums. But first, high-risk offenders must be compelled to show up to a meeting. This can be done by sending them a carefully worded official letter, perhaps from the police chief, making a persuasive invitation to the meeting. That can be reinforced by persuading individuals' family members to encourage the high-risk offenders to attend. And, of course, if the high-risk offenders are on conditional release, their probation or parole
Kansas City No Violence Alliance Call-In Meeting
officer can insist they attend. All efforts must be made to get the individual to the meeting on the date and time set, which is often a difficult task. Assuring them that they will not be arrested at the meeting certainly helps in this regard.
Most often, high-risk offenders are mandated to attend by their probation or parole officers, inevitably creating a coercive aspect to the proceedings. Preferably, these meetings are held in somewhat neutral public facilities, such as courthouses, schools, or community centers, rather than in police facilities, to reinforce the idea that the approach is not solely about using coercive authority. Delivering the message in such an open fashion-in front of so many officials, community members, friends, families, other high-risk offenders, and perhaps even the press-helps remove any sense high-risk offenders might have that they and their crimes are well hidden or that no one cares.
Key components of the intensive enforcement message include the following:
- The prospect of intensive enforcement must be credible: idle threats that are not carried out under the conditions promised will undermine the entire effort
- Each criminal justice agency represented should specify the actions it is prepared to take against high-risk offenders and their criminal associates if they persist in offending
- Assurances should be made that all the different criminal justice agencies-at local, state, and federal levels-will be communicating and coordinating with one another about each high-risk offender
- The enforcement message should be delivered in a civil and respectful but firm tone ${ }^{20}$
It is imperative that all speakers at notification meetings adhere consistently to this multi-faceted message. If speakers go offscript and convey inconsistent messages, it undermines the impact of the notification. ${ }^{21}$
Having a notification meeting coordinator can help ensure that the meeting goes as planned. A coordinator can keep to a tight agenda, ensure that speakers stick to the scripted messages, communicate the meeting's ground rules (e.g., high-risk
offenders may not leave and may not ask questions or negotiate during the main part of the meeting), ensure that there is adequate security at the meeting, and ensure that everyone is seated in an appropriate place.
The core message should be reiterated, whether on the street or in follow-up meetings with offenders, by whatever means available (e.g., verbally or through printed flyers, signs, or letters).
# CHULA VISTA, CALIFORNIA SPI CASE STUDY: NOTIFICATION
Focused deterrence is a central part of the Chula Vista (California) SPI project to reduce repeat domestic abuse. Modeled after domestic violence (DV) reduction efforts in High Point (North Carolina), West Yorkshire (United Kingdom), and Fremont (California), the Chula Vista effort focuses on both 'verbal-only' calls and DV crimes because in more than half of DV calls in Chula Vista no crime has been committed. Offenders are considered "Level I" upon an initial verbal-only call, "Level 2" after a second verbal-only call, and "Level 3" when a crime has been committed. Level 3 offenders are asked to sign a written warning that includes seven key points that the responding officer reads to them (see reference
I need to read this warning to you, word-for-word, because we have a new approach to domestic violence offenders in Chula Vista.
1. We will not tolerate domestic violence. It's a crime against the family and community.
2. The Chula Vista Police Department, District Attorney's Office, and Probation Department created a task force to prevent domestic violence. Your case will be handled by the Task Force.
3. Unless you stop abusing your partner, you'll receive a great deal of attention from the Task Force.
4. You're now subject to future unannounced police visits.
5. Any future incident involving you will be a priority for us. We'll track you down if you flee the scene of a crime.
6. We'll see what else you can be prosecuted for, including old cases that were dismissed.
7. This new approach is being driven by us, the POLICE-not the victim.
graphic, also provided in Spanish).
If Level 3 offenders ignore the warning and re-offend, they are elevated to Level 4. Level 4 offenders receive a personalized "call-in" notification by the DV project coordinator (a Chula Vista police officer). The DV coordinator goes unannounced to the offender's home to make this contact. If the offender is not home, the officer will leave a card to let the suspect know she has stopped by and attempt to contact the offender by telephone or at another location, such as place of employment.
As part of the notification, the DV coordinator also talks to any family members present at the home. For example, the DV coordinator spoke with the mother of an offender (who was babysitting at the time of the home visit), a sister (who was allowing the suspect to live with her), and a brother who worked with the suspect. Most family members have been supportive of the DV program and appreciative of the contact.
# PHASE 4 ENFORCEMENT/ SERVICE DELIVERY
As vital as it is to deliver core messages effectively to high-risk offenders, following up on the commitments made, whether through enforcement or through assistance, is equally vital. In this phase, you need to work out precise protocols for each enforcement action and assistance service that you have built into your program plan.
## CONCENTRATING LAW ENFORCEMENT SANCTIONS ON A FEW HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS
Police, prosecution, and corrections officials collectively can bring a variety of strong sanctions to bear on high-risk offenders, including the following:
- Pre-arrest monitoring (including intensive police and corrections officials patrols in areas where targeted groups/ individuals are known to be)
- Arrest (e.g., serving warrants, building new cases)
- Prosecution (devoting intensive time and resources to cases against high-risk offenders, assigning the same prosecutor to handle all matters relating to high-risk offenders [vertical prosecution], recommending enhanced penalties to the court)
- Sentencing (post-release monitoring and enforcement of conditions of release, including frequent drug testing, home visits, creating and monitoring compliance with special conditions of release)
- Disruption of conditions at locations where offenders often commit crimes (e.g., open-air drug markets)
- Monitoring of feuds between individuals or groups and warning both high-risk offenders and high-risk victims to avoid violence and/or temporarily incapacitating offenders and safeguarding victims
- Seizure and forfeiture of illegal assets ${ }^{1}$
A key policy decision is whether to build prosecutable criminal cases against high-risk offenders before notifying them that they are targets and offering them the choice of law enforcement or ceasing offending. In High Point, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, for example, police and prosecutors built strong, prosecutable cases prior to the notification meetings, essentially offering the high-risk offenders the choice of ceasing their offending or being arrested on the spot. ${ }^{22}$ In other FDIs, prosecutable cases are not built ahead of time, but only if and when high-risk offenders continue their offending. Holding prosecution in abeyance is obviously more feasible with nonviolent crimes than with those in which the individual has used violence.
Many FDIs have found it important that both local and federal prosecutors be integral partners to ensure that effective prosecutions are mounted, when necessary, and that decisions about prosecuting individuals are made strategically, and not on an ad hoc basis.
## CONCENTRATING SOCIAL SERVICES ON THE SAME FEW HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS
Two of the distinctive features of focused deterrence are that 1 the special assistance offered to high-risk offenders is contingent on their ceasing their prolific offending and 2 the services offered to each individual meet that person's particular needs, interests, desires, and commitment.
Individualized needs assessments should occur rather than offering all offenders a standard array of services, a practice that is generally regarded as more effective in the correctional rehabilitation field. ${ }^{23, \mathrm{k}}$ Focused deterrence is greatly strengthened if the assistance and services offered have been researched and deemed effective. Well-intentioned but untested assistance will not suffice. Obviously, providing social services in this manner is resource-intensive, so the number of individuals targeted at any time cannot be too large or the effort's effectiveness will be diluted. Having a dedicated case manager to coordinate the different social services provided to offenders is highly recommended.
Among the social services most likely to be important to highrisk offenders are the following:
- Job and job-interview training
- Employment
- Drug and alcohol treatment
- Mental health treatment
- Family assistance (food, clothing, medicine, utilities, child care)
- Transportation
- Housing
- Education assistance
- Life-skills coaching
- Anger management
- Mentoring/support from other ex-offenders
- Spiritual counseling
In some communities, all of these services are already available; their provision merely needs to be linked to the FDI. In other communities, the FDI will need to develop these services anew.
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{1}$ See Response Guide No. 7, Asset Forfeiture, by John Worrall.
${ }^{\mathrm{k}}$ There are diagnostic tools that researchers have specially validated as effective for violent offenders (Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins, 2012).
# CAMBRIDGE/SOMERVILLE/EVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS, SPI CASE STUDY: ENFORCEMENT/SERVICE DELIVERY
As mentioned in the Phase 2 case study, the Cambridge/Somerville/Everett (Massachusetts) SPI project was a nontraditional focused-deterrence effort. The notification phase 3 involved a call-in, except that offenders attended voluntarily. Community members also played a key support role in letting the offenders know that the police and community together wanted to help them stop engaging in harmful behavior but would also together hold them accountable should they re-offend. The importance of the community presence at the notification was also related to a unique enforcement and service delivery strategy. The police departments used a case management team that consisted of a police officer (detective or sergeant), a licensed social worker (hired by the police department specifically for the project), a coordinating service provider, and a community outreach worker for an integrated enforcement and service delivery approach. The police social worker played a critical role in this comprehensive and unusual collaboration across criminal justice and social service agencies to create a broad network to share offender information, quickly identify those who weren't following through with programs, and ensure a coordinated continuum of treatment.
Offenders enrolled in this program and worked with the case management team to develop an individualized plan to move toward a healthy, crime-free lifestyle. Participants met with the case manager in person at least once per month with phone calls in between. Case managers were extremely proactive in coordinating meetings, ensuring that offenders attended court hearings and program services, and engaging other criminal justice and community partners.
Instead of the traditional call-in at which offenders are offered services and warned about re-offending at the one meeting, the Cambridge/Somerville/Everett effort focused on providing resources and coordinated follow-up with the goal of support and prevention. If the offenders chose to re-offend, they were still held accountable by the police for these actions. The police officers went beyond their typical enforcement-only role to a more holistic, collaborative, problem-solving approach for each habitual offender.
## MOBILIZING INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL
In many respects, FDIs aim to change community norms regarding drug dealing, violent crime, the police, and criminal justice and then mobilize forces of informal social control to reinforce those new norms among individuals within that community. ${ }^{24}$
Police, prosecutors, courts, and corrections agencies represent formal social control. Family, friends, and non-government social groups and individuals represent informal social control. Both types are important in influencing individuals' behavior, but prolific offenders often receive quite different messages. The government might tell them unequivocally to stop offending, but their families and friends do not tell them the same thing, excuse their offending, or encourage them to continue
offending. To the degree that police and other criminal justice officials can bring influential people into high-risk offenders' lives to reinforce the message that their offending-particularly their violent offending-must stop, the overall message is greatly strengthened.
The key to getting this to happen is for police and their colleagues to give the informal social controllers a good reason to side with the government in persuading offenders to change their lives. In many FDIs, people such as clergy from the highrisk offenders' communities have been enlisted as important allies in delivering messages of non-violence to high-risk offenders-sometimes directly to the high-risk offenders when the clergy hold sway with them, but more often indirectly by encouraging high-risk offenders' family members to deliver the message.
## EXTENDING SANCTIONS TO OTHER MEMBERS OF THE HIGH-RISK OFFENDER'S CRIMINAL GROUP
For crime problems in which individuals operate as part of a criminal group, including gangs, it follows that individual members influence one another's actions. This means that for focused deterrence to maximize its impact, the threat of enforcement sanctions should be extended beyond one highrisk offender to encompass others in the group. This is like the football coach making the whole team run extra laps if one player makes a particular kind of mistake. If one crime group member fails to heed the official warning-for example, not to use lethal violence-then all group members are subjected to enhanced enforcement. This is a classic example of using formal social control as leverage for getting informal social control to operate in the same direction: ideally, each group member discourages other group members from engaging in prohibited behavior because no individual wants to suffer the consequences, and each group member is discouraged from prohibited behavior because s/he doesn't want to be responsible
for bringing about consequences against the rest of the group. As an illustration, in the Lowell, Massachusetts, FDI, any act of prohibited violence also resulted in intensive enforcement against the group's illegal gambling activities, thereby causing all group members to suffer consequences because of one member's actions. ${ }^{25}$
## FOLLOWING UP ON PROMISES
After the initial message of focused enforcement is delivered to a group of high-risk offenders, the credibility of that message is reinforced when a high-profile offender or group of offenders who subsequently engage in illegal activities experiences harsh and swift punishment. In 2003-2004, the Rochester, New York, FDI lost some of its effectiveness by a failure to carry out enforcement in the wake of continued violence. ${ }^{26}$ The swiftness and certainty of the consequences matter more than their severity, although severe consequences carry added weight to the deterrence message.
# PHASE 5 FOLLOW-UP COMMUNICATION
To reinforce the initial core messages delivered to high-risk offenders, it is important to have follow-up communication with them-and with their offending associates-about what actions (positive and negative) were imposed and why.
Once certain, severe, and swift punishment is meted out to high-risk offenders who failed to heed the warnings and who continued their violent behavior, it becomes critical to communicate to others-both within and outside the high-risk offender's crime group-that this punishment was delivered and why. ${ }^{27}$ It is equally important that when high-risk offenders accept offers of assistance in turning away from violent crime, the actual delivery of those services, as well as the benefits to those receiving them, be communicated to others.
Another purpose of spreading the word about enforcement action taken against a high-risk offender is that it lets others know that if they persist in their own offending, they will likely find themselves in the next group of high-risk offenders. Therefore, it is critical that these communications focus on
individuals who, while not immediate high-risk targets, are among the next-most likely to be targeted. Social network analysis ${ }^{28}$ can help decision-makers determine whom high-risk offenders are linked to (either as allies or rivals) so that FDI partners can then inform those allies and rivals as to what happened to the high-risk offenders. ${ }^{29}$
It is also important to keep community members informed of both successes (i.e., high-risk offenders who are doing well) and failures (i.e., high-risk offenders who returned to crime and were punished accordingly) to keep them engaged in the effort. ${ }^{30}$ Because high-crime neighborhoods commonly have high turnover among residents, FDI partners should occasionally try to inform new residents about the initiative and the new community norms. However, delivering these enforcement and assistance promises to too wide of an audience can weaken the credibility of the message. ${ }^{31}$
# KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, SPI CASE STUDY: FOLLOW-UP COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS
The use of social network analysis (SNA) will allow focused-deterrence strategies to be surgical and effective. In Kansas City, Missouri, SNA revealed that violence was concentrated in a social structure of fewer than 900 persons in approximately 60 groups or gangs. The homicide rate in this socially connected group was calculated to be more than 100 times the national average.
Implementing SNA is possible for almost any focused-deterrence effort. Most law enforcement agencies already collect a large amount of relational data through field interview forms, arrest reports, and offense reports. Structuring the data and training a crime analyst are the first steps in using SNA to address a problem. In Kansas City, there were no technological costs associated with conducting SNA other than the time commitment of the crime analyst and research partner, who used free software tools such as Excel and Pajek. As of 2016, there were at least five crime analysts in Kansas City who conducted SNA for focused deterrence or other crime strategies.
Criminal networks were reviewed for all stages of focused deterrence in Kansas City. For example, the social service committee used SNA to identify at-risk youth with direct relational ties to adults engaged in criminal behavior. This gave the Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) the ability to conduct focused deterrence without ignoring the juveniles. The messaging committee utilized SNA to pick individuals with positions of "centrality" to attend the call-in sessions. The enforcement committee also relied on SNA to identify the various levers to pull within group enforcement operations. Analysts at KCPD
"Probation and parole partnerships can be utilized to mandate attendance at call-ins. This sociogram from a gang in east Kansas City shows that persons on probation and parole (highlighted in red) often hold strategic positions of centrality in social networks."
layered in additional information to highlight the different group affiliations, probation and parole status, current wanted status, and many other factors to drive strategic decisions.
# PHASE6 ASSESSMENT
After the initial group of high-risk offenders has been notified and some time has passed in which they have either persisted in or desisted from their offending, you should assess how well the initiative is working. Properly assessing an FDI should include both a process evaluation and an impact evaluation. A process evaluation should assess how and whether the action plan was implemented. An impact evaluation should assess the impact the initiative had on the targeted problems. This should include assessing whether it is effective, fair, and efficient. ${ }^{1}$
## DETERMINING WHETHER FOCUSED DETERRENCE IS EFFECTIVE
Possible indicators of an FDI's effectiveness include the following:
- Reductions in the types of crimes that are the focus of a particular FDI, such as violent crime, drug-related crime, gun-related crime, robbery, or domestic violence
- Reductions in offending (especially of targeted offenses) by high-risk offenders after their notification
- Reductions in offending (especially of targeted offenses) by non-high-risk offenders who are likely to have learned about the consequences to high-risk offenders
- Improvements in community members' perceptions about community safety
Although research evidence is not sufficient to declare focused deterrence unequivocally effective in reducing violence, evaluations conducted to date demonstrate mostly positive impacts on the targeted crime problems. ${ }^{32} \mathrm{~A}$ review of 10 reasonably rigorous evaluations of FDIs concluded that they are "associated with an overall statistically significant, mediumsized crime reduction effect." ${ }^{33,34}$ Among jurisdictions that have implemented the strategy's essential elements, most have realized significant short-term reductions in the types of violence the initiative was designed to address. ${ }^{a}$ A major open question is whether focused deterrence can be effective over the long term within any jurisdiction. ${ }^{34}$
More is known from research evaluations about the net impact of FDIs on targeted crimes and on crime groups' behavior than is known about how the intervention changes individuals' behavior. ${ }^{35}$ This needs more careful study. Nonetheless, we know from FDI assessments that some high-risk offenders, even if only a relatively few, make remarkable lifestyle changes. Some do not succeed in turning their lives completely around. Some continue criminal offending, although usually committing less serious offenses. Some try to get jobs and live a non-criminal lifestyle but don't succeed. Focused deterrence appears to be more effective at reducing crime and improving conditions in the areas affected by it than at completely rehabilitating habitual offenders. ${ }^{36}$
The strategy is admittedly hard to evaluate because it encompasses a combination of specific interventions, not just one. ${ }^{37}$ This means that although some evaluations may conclude that the strategy effectively reduced violence, they may not be able to identify the components that made it work and why. ${ }^{38}$ As a prime illustration, even in the highly acclaimed Boston initiative of the 1990s, it is difficult to specify what contribution each of the various interventions-including public health measures, police-probation partnerships in monitoring offenders, police-clergy partnerships, and enhanced federal gang prosecutions-made to the initiative's overall success. ${ }^{39}$ Although it's likely that each of these interventions were integral to the multi-faceted strategy, observers and other jurisdictions seeking to replicate Boston's success often focus on one intervention to the exclusion of others. Because the primary objective of FDIs is to improve safety in the community, rather than to isolate causes, some uncertainty about multi-faceted interventions is probably inevitable. ${ }^{\text {a }}$
How quickly an FDI can be expected to generate positive results can vary depending on the nature of the targeted problem. When prolific violent offenders are targeted, results have often been dramatic and almost immediate. When nonviolent offenders are targeted, the impact may take longer to materialize. ${ }^{40}$
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{1}$ See Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 1, Assessing Responses to Problems: An Introductory Guide for Police Problem Solvers, by John Eck, for a better understanding of assessment in the context of policing, as well as Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 11, Analyzing and Responding to Repeat Offending, by Nick Tilley, for more specific guidance on evaluating repeat-offender initiatives.
${ }^{2}$ Arguably, randomized controlled experiments would be ideal in determining whether FDIs are effective in achieving their objectives. To date, none have been conducted. Independently conducted evaluations with some control groups (e.g., quasi-experimental designs) and reliable statistical data analysis are the next most reliable.
${ }^{a}$ See Appendix for a summary of FDI evaluations conducted to date.
${ }^{a}$ Determining whether a focused-deterrence strategy is effective and what precisely causes the effect would require a rigorous evaluation design-one that would involve randomly assigning high-risk offenders to either a focused-deterrence response strategy or some other strategy (including perhaps no special intervention at all). To date, no study has used a randomized controlled experimental design, which is often the strongest design for determining causation.
Properly assessing FDIs requires considerable expertise in social science research methods and statistics, ideally doctoral-level expertise. If an agency does not have this expertise in-house, it is highly recommended that FDI partners engage an external research partner-perhaps at a local university-who possesses both the technical expertise and the knowledge and experience of working with criminal justice practitioners in an action-research model. Such expertise is not always easy to find. If an agency lacks the resources to pay for an external evaluator, internal personnel should nonetheless document how the FDI operates and capture and analyze as much data as possible.
## DETERMINING WHETHER FOCUSED DETERRENCE IS FAIR
Possible indicators of an FDI's fairness include the following:
- Improvements in community attitudes toward police and other criminal justice officials
- Noticeable shifts in community norms from tolerating or excusing criminal behavior to discouraging it
- Expressed perceptions by community members that the FDI is fair to the high-risk offenders and to the community
- Perceptions that the FDI officials (both criminal justice and social service) are trustworthy and that they deliver on their promises
Historically, police efforts that target specific individuals for enforcement are subject to criticism as being fundamentally unfair because of the perception that individuals are being targeted for who they are rather than for what they have done. Properly administered, FDIs can not only escape charges of unfairness but also be perceived as extraordinarily fair, even to the individuals being targeted for attention. When this occurs, overall police-community relations and the public's belief in the legitimacy of the police stand to improve. This is so for several reasons:
- The process for selecting offenders to target:
- Is established prior to any individuals being nominated
- Is based on clear, objective criteria relating to individuals' proven offending history
- Is conducted such that individuals' identities are revealed only after targeting selections are made
- Is conducted by a group of decision-makers representing different perspectives
- Is conducted transparently
- Is documented
- Is data-driven
- Individuals are not targeted merely for law enforcement; they are simultaneously offered valuable social services that, if accepted, would help them improve their life circumstances.
- The active involvement of civilian analysts and/or external researchers, social service providers, and community members provides evidence that FDIs are not merely clever ways of putting offenders behind bars.
FDIs are likely to be perceived as fairer than some alternative approaches to reducing gang violence, such as the use of civil gang injunctions, which have been challenged on both ethical and legal grounds as being unfair because they punish all gang members irrespective of their individual behavior and because they prohibit even what is seen as otherwise lawful and harmless activity. ${ }^{41}$
Some objection to FDIs should be expected, not because it is unfair to high-risk offenders, but because it provides high-risk offenders with prioritized social services, arguably at the expense of other people in need of such services. ${ }^{42}$
## DETERMINING WHETHER FOCUSED DETERRENCE IS AN EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES
There is not much reported information about the costs of running an FDI, and costs are likely to vary widely across jurisdictions depending on specific activities undertaken, size of the initiative, how costs are accounted for, which costs are tallied, and other factors. One study of two FDIs revealed that the actual costs for police personnel to work directly on focuseddeterrence activities-including community mobilization, communicating with high-risk offenders' families, crime analysis, incident and case file reviews, and undercover investigations-for one year ranged from $\$ 90,000$ to $\$ 150,000$ (in 2011 dollars), the rough equivalent of $11 / 2$ to $21 / 2$ full-time police officers. ${ }^{43}$ The study wasn't able to account for a number of important cost variables, such as costs that the police would have spent anyway addressing the same problems using some strategy other than focused deterrence, costs associated with non-police personnel, and cost savings from reduced criminal behavior, or determine whether focused deterrence is cost-effective in achieving its goals. However, considering the rather significant crime reductions realized in several FDIs that have been carefully evaluated, and considering the high monetary and non-monetary costs of violent crime to a community, the direct police costs reported in this study are likely to strike many as well spent (in addition to improved rates of conviction, higher case clearance, and fewer parole violations).
# ADMINISTERING AND LEADING A FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVE
As one would expect, FDIs are particularly challenging to organize, lead, and administer because they involve multiple partner organizations, each with its own mission, culture, rules, management structure, and resource base. Moreover, at least at the outset, each organization is being asked to think anew about its work and its relationship to partnering organizations. ${ }^{44}$
Multi-agency collaborations, which are essential to FDIs, are notoriously difficult to sustain for the long term. ${ }^{45}$ It can prove difficult to keep all the law enforcement, social service, and community partners engaged in and committed to the collaboration and to the core principles of focused deterrence. This proved to be the case in several of the early FDIs. ${ }^{p}$ Boston's successful efforts of the late 1990s appear to have fallen apart by about 2000; when gun violence rates again rose substantially, the Boston initiative was revitalized, beginning around $2007 .{ }^{46}$
## It is challenging to sustain effective collaborations over time. No one institution by itself can mount a meaningful response to complex youth violence problems. Institutions need to coordinate and combine their efforts in ways that could magnify their separate effects. (Braga, Hureau, and Winship, 2008)
FDIs can alter conventional information flows and decisionmaking protocols both within and among the participating organizations, and such disruptions have to be carefully managed. ${ }^{47}$ Heeding the recommendations below regarding program administration and leadership can help sustain FDIs over the longer term.
## ADMINISTRATION
Ideally, the core partners should write and formally agree to a protocol for the FDI, which can be modified over time as necessary. At a minimum, the protocol should identify:
- A consensus definition of the problem the collaboration is organized to address and its ultimate goals
- What information will be shared with whom and on what basis
- When and where partnership meetings will be held
- Who will assume leadership of the collaboration, including for convening and running meetings, resolving disputes, and holding partners accountable for fulfilling promised actions
- What actions will be taken and services provided by respective collaboration partners and under what conditions
Given that FDIs, by design, are multi-partner collaborations involving criminal justice, social service, and community organizations, such an initiative requires some organizational structure to support its management. Generally, multilevel steering groups are required to manage FDIs. ${ }^{48}$ They should include the following:
- Top-level policymakers from the participating organizations to establish general policies and procedures, secure resources, monitor progress toward goals, and resolve major organizational disputes
- Supervisors to provide daily oversight and supervision, select high-risk offenders, review analysis findings, manage high-risk offenders' files, hold participating organizations accountable for promised actions, and resolve minor operational disputes and issues
- Line-level representatives to implement specific responses for high-risk offenders ${ }^{6}$
There is no one sure formula, but some division of responsibility between policy and operations will almost assuredly be necessary. A degree of flexibility is required to adjust how the initiative is managed on the basis of local conditions. ${ }^{49}$
At some point, FDI partners will need to decide whether the initiative is intended to be short term only or more permanent. If the goal is to make it permanent, then it will be necessary to shift from the usual sort of task force management structure to something more institutionalized. For example, the Cincinnati FDI considered institutionalization, and it created a formal management structure and adopted corporate management practices that would not depend on particular individuals to sustain it. Even so, this new formalized structure endured a good deal of trial-and-error turmoil before it normalized. ${ }^{50}$ The High Point, North Carolina, FDI institutionalized the focused-deterrence approach to the point that subsequent extensions of the approach to other policing problems required far less explanation to or persuasion of key stakeholders. ${ }^{51}$
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{p}$ See Tita et al. 2003, reporting on the difficulties in delivering promised social services in the East Los Angeles FDI; Braga 2008, reporting that studies of the Stockton, Los Angeles, Boston, and Minneapolis initiatives all reported difficulties sustaining the original collaboration beyond a few years; and Kennedy 2006, citing examples of FDIs in Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Baltimore.
${ }^{6}$ See Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 7, Implementing Responses to Problems, by Michael Scott, for further discussion of managing the implementation of police problemsolving projects.
Various police organizational structures have been tried in implementing focused-deterrence strategies. Basically, there are two types: a specialist approach and a generalist approach, with some agencies opting for a blend of the two. In a specialist approach, a small group of officers and detectives has direct contact with the high-risk offenders, manages their cases, and directs enforcement actions against them. In a generalist approach, information about high-risk offenders is shared widely with officers throughout the police agency, and all are encouraged to take stricter enforcement action against them. The specialist approach is preferred for customizing interventions to each high-risk offender, but the generalist approach might be the only viable approach for police agencies with limited personnel resources.
## LEADERSHIP
FDIs also require strong leadership. Often police officials emerge as the natural leaders, partly because they squarely bear responsibility for addressing crime problems and partly because they are used to being in charge. However, too heavy a hand by police officials can compromise collaboration and run the risk that other partners will come to see the collaboration as primarily a police initiative. A sense of joint ownership of the initiative appears to be vital to its continued success. There is merit in having joint leadership, with at least one leader coming from the criminal justice partners and one from social service/community partners. Whoever exerts coordination and leadership needs to work hard to establish and maintain this sense of joint ownership.
Special care must also be given to leadership transition. It is often the case that highly competent people take the lead in launching FDIs, and eventually they get promoted in rank or transferred to other desirable positions. Their replacements must be similarly competent, credible, and committed. Changes in agency-level or unit-level leadership can bring about abrupt changes in support for focused-deterrence efforts, for better or for worse.
Leaders of FDIs, as well as line personnel who will work directly with high-risk offenders, must understand and support the principles underpinning FDIs. Because some principles run counter to the norms of criminal justice officials (as noted earlier) on the one hand, and of social service providers on the other, you should take great care to select personnel who will work directly with high-risk offenders. In addition to ensuring that they are properly skilled and experienced, these individuals must be properly educated about focused-deterrence principles.
It is also important that police personnel who are not directly participating in the FDI be educated about the focuseddeterrence approach so that if and when their assistance is needed, they are more likely to give it enthusiastically. ${ }^{52}$ In several police departments, widespread support from officers was gained in large measure by having an officer with a solid reputation and credibility among other officers openly support the initiative.
# APPLYING FOCUSED DETERRENCE TO SPECIFIC CRIME PROBLEMS
Because FDIs are essentially aimed at reducing or eliminating criminal offending by prolific offenders, and because prolific offenders tend to commit lots of different kinds of crimes rather than specializing in one or a few, FDIs hold potential to reduce a range of crime types in addition to the one that the initiative is primarily intended to address. For example, an FDI that targets violent gang members who run illegal drug markets might, in addition to reducing drug dealing and drugrelated violence, reduce such crime types as thefts of and from vehicles, street robbery (including drug rip-offs), burglary, street prostitution, domestic violence, and a number of nuisance offenses.'
Some FDIs concentrate on offenders living and operating in defined neighborhoods and areas, usually running organized drug markets. In essence, these initiatives combine a focus on high-risk offenders with a focus on high-risk places and thereby employ a combination of individual-based responses, such as focused deterrence, and place-based responses, including hot spot policing-particularly to drug markets. These blended initiatives may complicate efforts to disentangle the effects of focused deterrence from the effects of place-based responses, but the blended response might make the most sense, given the nature of the local problem. Other FDIs are less tied to particular places; they target high-risk offenders from across an entire jurisdiction and are not necessarily linked to a particular class of violent offending, such as that associated with illegal drug markets.
It is also possible to design FDIs that more precisely address specific problems and that might not have a general crimereduction effect. For example, an FDI that targets street prostitutes, sex predators, drunk drivers, or chronic nuisance offenders is less likely to reduce general crime because prolific offenders of those types are less likely to be crime generalists.
It is not yet reliably known whether the concept will work in the same way for offending that is largely individualistic or that involves just one repeat offender and one repeat victim as it does for offending that involves larger groups of individuals who influence one another's behavior greatly, such as gangrelated offending.
## GANG VIOLENCE
Most of the FDIs to date have been directed at youth-gang violence, broadly defined. This includes small groups that self-identify as gangs up through large, highly organized, and structured gangs. It includes gun violence that is intricately tied to a gang's activities (e.g., establishing and defending turf, settling business disputes, and retaliating for offenses committed against the gang), as well as violence that is loosely tied to gang membership (e.g., a gang member settling a personal dispute). ${ }^{53}$
When addressing gang-related problems, you should read the following other Problem-Oriented Policing Guides:
- Drive-By Shootings (Problem-Specific Guide No. 47)
- Drug Dealing in Open-Air Markets (Problem-Specific Guide No. 31)
- Graffiti (Problem-Specific Guide No. 9)
- Gun Violence Among Serious Young Offenders (Problem-Specific Guide No. 23)
- Home Invasion Robbery (Problem-Specific Guide No. 70)
- Witness Intimidation (Problem-Specific Guide No. 42)
## DRUG MARKETS
FDIs are particularly worth considering in addressing retail drug markets, as extensive research and experience have demonstrated that traditional, high-volume drug enforcement approaches have largely failed to eradicate the markets and, in many respects, have only made the problems-and the communities in which they operate-worse. ${ }^{54}$
In Lansing, Michigan; High Point and Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Rockford, Illinois, the FDIs all focused on open-air drug markets and the offenders committing crimes around them. ${ }^{55}$ Particularly with drug market problems, it is vital that those running the FDI develop a firm understanding of the social networks that make up the drug market. This includes understanding who works for whom, who makes what kinds of decisions, how discipline is maintained within the criminal network, and how violent incidents are or are not connected to drug-market operations.
[0]
[0]: ' The initial Boston FDI expanded after several years to address other crime problems, such as offender re-entry to the community and crime-prone families. However, because the resources available to deal with these problems were diluted, the expansion did not appear to have a positive impact (Braga and Winship, 2006).
One of the most distinctive features of the Boston and High Point FDIs, as well as others that have involved illegal drug markets and predominantly African-American offenders, is that gaining community cooperation in police-led efforts to curtail criminal activity required some critical self-examination by police and prosecutors about their traditional approaches to drug control.
Traditional police approaches to illegal drug markets have emphasized high-volume stop-and-frisk tactics, jump-outs, buy-bust operations, and service of drug search warrants. Many teenaged and young adult African-American males have come to feel that they are treated poorly by police and that police tactics sweep into their net as many wholly innocent people as they do those actually engaged in illegal activity. These experiences of young African-American males are shared with and felt by their families as well, leading to a collective mistrust and resentment of police and, by extension, the rest of the criminal justice system.
In many African-American communities beset by drug trafficking and its attendant violence, one of the effects of this traditional drug-control approach is to leave many community members-including those not involved in illegal activityambivalent about illegal drug markets. On the one hand, they suffer greatly from the ills of illegal drug dealing and therefore have reasons to want it stopped, but on the other, they so resent police treatment of their community that they do not exercise their moral authority by decreeing drug dealing as unacceptable behavior in that community. And some police and prosecutors form perceptions that nearly everyone in African-American neighborhoods where illegal drug markets operate is somehow complicit in the illegal activity.
Neither the community perspective nor the criminal justice perspective is entirely accurate, but neither are they entirely inaccurate. This dynamic often leads to a silent standoff between the community and the police. More recently, some police and prosecutors have been willing to openly acknowledge the damage some drug-control strategies and tactics have had on African-American communities, and such acknowledgment can help secure community cooperation in focused-deterrence efforts. Reportedly, in Boston, High Point, and elsewhere, when such open acknowledgment occurred, progress was made in police-community cooperation on controlling illegal drug markets and the individuals who ran them. ${ }^{56}$
For addressing drug-related problems, you should read the following other Problem-Oriented Policing Guides:
- Drug Dealing in Open-Air Markets (Problem-Specific Guide No. 31)
- Drug Dealing in Privately Owned Apartment Complexes (Problem-Specific Guide No. 4)
## DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
The High Point, North Carolina, police have applied the focused-deterrence approach to domestic violence. ${ }^{57 a}$ They developed the following tiered approach for dealing with domestic violence offenders:
- The most serious offenders were targeted for immediate criminal prosecution.
- The next-most serious offenders were brought in for in-person group notification meetings (including promises of certain, severe, and swift consequences, coupled with promises of assistance).
- The next-most serious offenders received personalized one-on-one meetings with detectives soon after their first domestic violence arrest, informing them of possible future consequences if their offending persisted.
- The next-most serious offenders or those who were not arrested in a domestic disturbance were informed at the scene by patrol officers of possible future consequences if their offending persisted.
An early assessment showed impressively low rates of re-offense across all four groups, with no reported worse consequences for victims whose batterers were targeted for this special intervention. ${ }^{58}$
When addressing domestic violence problems, you should read Domestic Violence (Problem-Specific Guide No. 45) in conjunction with this guide.
## ORGANIZED CRIME
Focused-deterrence approaches have been used and could be further used to respond to organized crime, such as national or international drug trafficking or terrorism groups. To date, there do not appear to be any clear successful examples. ${ }^{59}$
[0]
[0]: ${ }^{a}$ See Sechrist et al. 2012 for more implementation details on High Point's Offender-Focused Domestic Violence Initiative.
# CONCLUSION
A focused-deterrence approach to dealing with high-risk offenders is, relatively speaking, in the early phases of application and testing across the police profession, but the evidence of its effectiveness and fairness to date is promising. It builds on prior knowledge about responding effectively to repeat offenders, but it goes well beyond that knowledge mainly by harnessing the power of intensive support offered to individuals willing to stop their offending and accept the assistance and the power of deterrence through certain, severe, and swift punishment. Moreover, focused-deterrence harnesses state and community authority in persuading high-risk offenders that everyone's lives, their own included, are better out of a life of crime than in it.
Two of the more unexpected aspects of focused deterrence, at least to its skeptics, are that 1 police and prosecutors are sometimes willing to forgo enforcement and assist known persistent offenders, and 2 persistent offenders can heed official warnings or willingly stop offending. Early FDIs have
demonstrated that police and prosecutors have been willing to sacrifice an arrest or a conviction in exchange for a cessation of further offending. In addition, at least some repeat offenders have grown weary of the criminal lifestyle with its constant risks of incarceration, injury, or death and are willing to stop offending if given the right mix of incentives.
Focused deterrence challenges deeply held beliefs of police and prosecutors that persistent offenders are incapable of giving up a life of crime, and of persistent offenders that police and prosecutors desire only to make their lives miserable. Adopting a focused-deterrence approach requires a leap of faith on the part of all involved. But, as demonstrated by the several dozen jurisdictions across the country that have implemented FDIs, with proper attention to the important details of developing, implementing, and monitoring an FDI, such a leap can be well rewarded by less crime; fewer crime victims; safer communities; rehabilitated, socially productive ex-offenders; and enhanced perceived police legitimacy.
# APPENDIX: EVALUATED FOCUSED-DETERRENCE INITIATIVES
This table summarizes each focused-deterrence initiative that was evaluated at the time of publication, listing the jurisdiction in which it was launched, its years of operation, the type of offenses it aimed to address, the FDI name, its effectiveness, the research design, and the publication reference. Studies have been included even where no rigorous impact evaluation was conducted. Each FDI has unique features: you should read the detailed studies to learn which features might work well in your community.
| CITY | YEAR(S) | TARGETED OFFENSES | INITIATIVE NAME | HOW EFFECTIVE? | RESEARCH DESIGN | STUDIES |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Boston,
Massachusetts | 1995-2000 | Gang-related gun violence | Boston Gun Project / Operation Ceasefire | Youth gang violence decline of 63\% citywide (statistically significant reductions in homicides, shots fired, gun assaults, youth gun assaults); positive effects held for 5 years until initiative was significantly diluted.
Some evidence that homicide reductions were significant and associated with the focuseddeterrence intervention | Time-series analysis; quasi-experiment (Braga et al., 2001) | Braga, Kennedy, Waring, \& Piehl 2001; Rosenfeld, Fornango, \& Baumer 2005; von Ulmenstein \& Sultan 2011 (case study narrative) |
| Boston,
Massachusetts | 2007 | Gang-related gun violence | Operation Ceasefire | Statistically significant 31\% reduction in shootings by targeted street gangs, compared with nontargeted gangs. | Quasi-experiment and growth-curve regression modeling | Braga, Apel, \& Welsh 2013; Braga, Hureau, \& Papachristos 2014 |
| Chicago,
Illinois | 2003-2004 | Gun violence (initiative also entailed guninterdiction and prosecution strategies) | Chicago's Project Safe Neighborhoods | 37\% reduction in homicides in target areas; 16$34 \%$ reduction in shootings in target areas; little impact on aggravated assault-and-battery rates, however; evaluation concluded that focuseddeterrence strategy likely accounted for most of the positive impact. | Quasi-experiment | Papachristos, Meares, \& Fagan 2007; Skogan et al. 2009 |
| Chicago,
Illinois | 2009-2010 | Gang-related gun violence | Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy (initiative appears to be targeted and intensive law enforcement without community or social service interventions) | (Case study design with no quantitative impact evaluation.) | Unknown | von Ulmenstein \& Sultan 2011 (case study narrative only) |
| CITY | YEAR(S) | TARGETED OFFENSES | INITIATIVE NAME | HOW EFFECTIVE? | RESEARCH DESIGN | STUDIES |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cincinnati,
Ohio | 2007-2010 | Gang-related gun violence | Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence | 61\% reduction in homicides involving high-risk offender groups six months after implementation; however, over time, homicide reduction declined to $35 \%$. | Quasi-experiment | Engel et al. (2008, 2009, 2010); von Ulmenstein \& Sultan 2011 (case study narrative) |
| High Point,
North Carolina | 2004-2007 | Drug market and drug-related crime | High Point Drug Market Intervention | 26\% reduction in drug-related crime and 57\%-reduction in violent crime in initial targeted neighborhood four to five years after initial intervention, with no evidence of spatial displacement and some evidence of diffusion of benefits to nearby areas; similar results obtained for two of three additional neighborhoods; 57\% of high-risk offenders were charged with some crime after the intervention, and few showed evidence of turning their lives around, but most stopped drug dealing; 12-18\% reductions in violence in targeted areas were statistically significant when compared with nontargeted areas within the city, with little evidence of displacement of violence to other areas but little evidence of a diffusion of benefits, either. | Pre-post intervention analysis; multiple longitudinal methods | High Point Police
Department (2000, 2006); Dalton 2003; Frabutt et al. 2009; Frabutt et al. 2004 (process evaluation only); Kennedy \& Wong 2009; Corsaro et al. 2012 |
| Indianapolis,
Indiana | 1999 | Gun violence | Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership | Homicides declined by a statistically significant 34\% immediately after implementation, through one year. | Time-series analysis; quasi-experiment | Chermak \& McGarrell 2004; McGarrell et al. 2006; Corsaro \& McGarrell (2009a, 2010) |
| Kansas City,
Missouri | 2014 | Homicide and aggravated assault with a firearm | Kansas City No Violence Alliance (NoVA) | Statistically significant 27\% reduction in monthly average number of homicides; statistically insignificant $6 \%$ reduction in monthly average number of aggravated assaults with a firearm, but effect diminished over time. | Time series and bivariate analysis | Novak et al. 2015 |
| Los Angeles | 2000 | Gang-related crime, including violent gun crime in East L.A. neighborhood | None | Some reductions in gang-related crime, including violent crime in target area; some evidence of diffusion of benefits, and no evidence of displacement to adjacent areas. | Quasi-experiment | Tita et al. 2003; Tita, Riley, \& Greenwood 2003 |
| CITY | YEAR(S) | TARGETED OFFENSES | INITIATIVE NAME | HOW EFFECTIVE? | RESEARCH DESIGN | STUDIES |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lowell,
Massachusetts | 2002-2003 | Gang-related gun violence | Project Safe Neighborhoods | Statistically significant 24\% reduction in gun assaults and 50\%reduction in gun homicides after implementation. | Quasi-experiment | Braga, McDevitt, \& Pierce 2006; Braga et al. 2008; von Ulmenstein \& Sultan 2011 (case study narrative) |
| Madison,
Wisconsin | 2011-2013 | Repeat violent offenders | Community Against Violence | (Internal assessment only; not yet formally evaluated.) | (internal assessment only; not yet formally evaluated) | (Internal assessment only; not yet formally evaluated) |
| Minneapolis,
Minnesota | 2007-2008 | Drug market and drugrelated crime (with relatively low levels of violent crime) in McFerrin Park neighborhood | Nashville Drug Market Initiative | Statistically significant 55\% reduction in illegal drug-possession incidents, $28 \%$ reduction in property crimes, $18 \%$ reduction in police calls for service, and no reduction in reported violent crime in target area, with evidence of some diffusion of benefits to nearby areas. | Time-series analysis
Quasi-experiment; time-series analysis | Kennedy \& Braga 1998
Corsaro \& McGarrell (2009b) |
| Newark | 2004-2006 | Gun-related violence | Operation Ceasefire | Small but statistically significant reduction in gunshot admissions to area hospitals. | Time-series analyses | Boyle et al. 2010 |
| New Orleans | 2012-2014 | Gun-related violence | Group Violence Reduction Strategy | Statistically significant 17-31\% reduction in homicides, compared with, comparable cities and with pre-intervention period within the jurisdiction, with greatest reductions in gang-related, firearmrelated, and young Black male victim homicides. | Two-phase quasiexperiment; time-series analysis | Corsaro \& Engel 2015 |
| New York City | 2012 | Gun-related violence in Brownsville, Brooklyn neighborhood | Brownsville AntiViolence Project | (Case study design with no quantitative impact.) | (Impact evaluation not complete) | Picard-Fritsche, Swaner, \& Lambson 2014 (process evaluation only) |
| Providence,
Rhode Island | 2006-2007 | Drug market and drug-related crime | None | Calls for police service in target area declined 58\%, drug-related crime by $70 \%$, and drug complaints by $81 \%$ one year after intervention. | Simple before-after comparison | Kennedy \& Wong 2009 (reporting others' data) |
| CITY | YEAR(S) | TARGETED
OFFENSES | INITIATIVE
NAME | HOW EFFECTIVE? | RESEARCH
DESIGN | STUDIES |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rochester,
New York | 2003-2004 | Homicides of young Black males (many of which were related to interpersonal disputes and drug-related robberies) | Project Ceasefire | Statistically significant but modest reductions in homicides and robberies of young Black males after intervention, but subsequent increases in homicides cast doubt on intervention's effectiveness; a reduction of homicides of young Black males from $29 \%$ to $9 \%$ over one year (2003-2004) was a promising development, but aggravated assault rates remained steady. | Multiple regression analysis | Delaney 2006;
Klofas, Delaney, \&
Smith 2005 |
| Rockford,
Illinois | 2007-2008 | Drug market and drug-related crime in
Delancey Heights neighborhood | Rockford Pulling Levers
Deterrence Strategy | Statistically significant 22\% reduction in nonviolent offenses; non-statistically significant 14\% reduction in violent offenses. | Quasi-experiment | Corsaro, Brunson, \& McGarrell 2009 |
| Stockton,
California | 1997-1998 | Gang-related gun violence | Operation Peacekeeper | Statistically significant 35\% reduction in gun homicides, with some effects lasting at least several months beyond the intervention. | Time-series analysis and quasi-experiment | Wakeling 2003;
Braga 2008 |
| Winston-
Salem, North
Carolina | 2004-2005 | Drug market and drug-related crime | New Hope Initiative | Approximately 8\% increase in violent crimes and decrease of $30 \%$ in property crimes in target area 3 years after initial intervention (unclear if results tested for statistical significance). | Pre-post intervention analysis | Dalton 2003; Frabutt et al. 2009; Harvey 2005 (process evaluation only) |
# REFERENCES
Boston Police Department. 1998. Operation Ceasefire: Deterring Youth Firearm Violence. Submission to the Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing. Available at http://www.popcenter.org/library/awards/ goldstein/1998/98-08(W).pdf.
Boyle, Douglas J., Jennifer L. Lanterman, Joseph E. Pascarella, and Chia-Cherng Cheng. 2010. "The Impact of Newark's Operation Ceasefire on Trauma Center Gunshot Wound Admissions." Justice Research \& Policy 122: 105-123.
Braga, Anthony A. 2008. "Pulling Levers Focused Deterrence Strategies and the Prevention of Gun Homicide." Journal of Criminal Justice 36: 332-343.
Braga, Anthony A., Rob Apel, and Brandon C. Welsh. 2013. "The Spillover Effects of Focused Deterrence on Gang Violence." Evaluation Review 37: 314-342.
Braga, Anthony A., David M. Hureau, and Andrew V. Papachristos. 2014. "Deterring Gang-Involved Gun Violence: Measuring the Impact of Boston's Operation Ceasefire on Street Gang Behavior." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 301: $113-139$.
Braga, Anthony A., David M. Hureau, and Christopher Winship. 2008. "Losing Faith? Police, Black Churches, and the Resurgence of Youth Violence in Boston." Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 6: 141-172.
Braga, Anthony A., and David M. Kennedy. 2012. "Linking Situational Crime Prevention and Focused Deterrence Strategies." In Nick Tilley and Graham Farrell (eds.), The Reasoning Criminologist: Essays in Honour of Ronald V. Clarke. London: Routledge.
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# ABOUT THE AUTHOR
## MICHAEL S. SCOTT
Michael S. Scott is the director of the Center for ProblemOriented Policing and clinical professor at Arizona State University's School of Criminology \& Criminal Justice. He was formerly a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School; chief of police in Lauderhill, Florida; served in various civilian administrative positions in the St. Louis Metropolitan, Ft. Pierce, Florida, and New York City police departments; a senior researcher at the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF); and a police officer in the Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department. Scott chairs the judging committee for the Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing. He was the 1996 recipient of PERF's Gary P. Hayes Award for innovation and leadership in policing. Scott holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
# ENDNOTES
${ }^{1}$ Kennedy (1997, 2006); Braga 2008.
${ }^{2}$ Kennedy 1997; Boston Police Department 1998; Braga et al. 2001; Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006; McGarrell et al. 2006; Braga 2008.
${ }^{3}$ Felson and Boba 2010.
${ }^{4}$ Nagin 2013.
${ }^{5}$ Kennedy (2009a).
${ }^{6}$ Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006.
${ }^{7}$ McGarrell et al. 2006; Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006.
${ }^{8}$ Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012; Skubak Tillyer and Kennedy 2008; Klofas, Delaney, and Smith 2005; Braga and Kennedy 2012.
${ }^{9}$ Braga and Weisburd 2012; Papachristos, Meares, and Fagan 2007.
${ }^{10}$ Dalton 2003.
${ }^{11}$ Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012.
${ }^{12}$ Heinrich and Braga 2010.
${ }^{13}$ Frabutt et al. 2009.
${ }^{14}$ Papachristos, Meares \& Fagan 2007.
${ }^{15}$ Frabutt et al. 2009.
${ }^{16}$ Dalton 2003; Frabutt et al. 2009; Braga, Hureau, and Winship 2008.
${ }^{17}$ Braga 2008.
${ }^{18}$ Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006.
${ }^{19}$ Kennedy 2006.
${ }^{20}$ Kennedy 2006.
${ }^{21}$ Picard-Fritsche, Swaner, and Lambson 2014.
${ }^{22}$ Frabutt et al. 2009; Corsaro and McGarrell (2009b).
${ }^{23}$ Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012.
${ }^{24}$ Kennedy (2009a).
${ }^{25}$ Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006.
${ }^{26}$ Delaney 2006.
${ }^{27}$ Braga 2008; Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006.
${ }^{28}$ Scott 1988; Papachristos 2009; Papachristos, Braga, and Hureau 2012.
${ }^{29}$ Braga, Hureau, and Papachristos 2014.
${ }^{30}$ Frabutt et al. 2009.
${ }^{31}$ Delaney 2006.
${ }^{32}$ Braga and Weisburd 2012; Kennedy 2006; Braga 2008; Wong et al. 2011.
${ }^{33}$ Braga and Weisburd 2012.
${ }^{34}$ Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012.
${ }^{35}$ Braga, Hureau, and Papachristos 2014.
${ }^{36}$ Kennedy and Wong 2009.
${ }^{37}$ Kennedy 2006; Corsaro, Brunson, and McGarrell 2009.
${ }^{38}$ Braga 2008, citing Wellford et al. 2005 and Ludwig 2005.
${ }^{39}$ Braga and Winship 2006.
${ }^{40}$ Corsaro, Brunson, and McGarrell 2009.
${ }^{41}$ Melde 2013.
${ }^{42}$ Melde 2013.
${ }^{43}$ Burgdorf and Kilmer 2014.
${ }^{44}$ Heinrich and Braga 2010.
${ }^{45}$ Corsaro and Engel 2015.
${ }^{46}$ Braga, Hureau, and Winship 2008.
${ }^{47}$ Maziarka 2014.
${ }^{48}$ Dalton 2003; Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012.
${ }^{49}$ Klofas, Delaney, and Smith 2005.
${ }^{50}$ Skubak Tillyer, Engel, and Lovins 2012.
${ }^{51}$ Sechrist et al. 2012.
${ }^{52}$ Frabutt et al. 2009.
${ }^{53}$ Braga, McDevitt, and Pierce 2006.
${ }^{54}$ Kennedy and Wong 2009.
${ }^{55}$ Kennedy and Wong 2009; Corsaro, Brunson, and McGarrell 2009; Corsaro and McGarrell (2009b).
${ }^{56}$ Kennedy (2009b); Kennedy and Wong 2009.
${ }^{57}$ Sechrist et al. 2012.
${ }^{58}$ Sechrist et al. 2012.
${ }^{59}$ Felbab-Brown 2013.