Don’t shoot.

Criminologist David M. Kennedy’s (1) strategy for reducing gang violence has dramatically reduced youth homicide rates nationwide. Dubbed the “Boston Miracle,” this strategy brings together all the key actors in a neighborhood from the police and community members to gang members, drug dealers, and their mothers and grandmothers to openly discuss their issues. Boston’s youth murders were cut by two thirds after installation of the program (2).

To find out how it’s done, listen to an interview with David Kennedy by Dave Davies on NPR’s Fresh Air (3). To learn more, watch the author discuss his book and the ideas behind it in a video from C-SPAN2 (4).

If that knocked your socks off, take a look at our next cool topic, I don’t understand why you don’t agree with me! If you want to peruse all of the previous sock-knocking blog entries, visit the Knocked My Socks Off archive. (links to another blog site)

(1) David Kennedy is the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control and a criminal justice professor at John Jay College in New York City. He has spent much of the last 25 years on the ground in the country’s most dangerous neighborhoods, working with communities to find solutions to crime.

(2) Kennedy DM. Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America. New York, NY: Bloomsbury USA; 2011.

(3) Interrupting Violence With the Message ‘Don’t Shoot.’ [Fresh Air audio]. National Public Radio. November 1, 2011. https://www.npr.org/2012/11/09/164732917/interrupting-violence-with-the-message-dont-shoot. Accessed December 10, 2012.

(4) Kennedy DM. Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America.[C-SPAN2 BookTV video]. Presented at: Harvard Book Store; October 17, 2011; Cambridge, MA. https://www.booktv.org/Watch/12908/Dont+Shoot+One+Man+A+Street+Fellowship+and+the+End+of+ Violence+in+InnerCity+America.aspx. Accessed December 10, 2012.