Agreement - Goodwill Industries of Michiana - Outreach Team to Support Group Violence Intervention

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likelihood of group and gang based retaliatory shootings. At the relational level, having close contacts that are members of a street group increases the likelihood of an individual committing a violent crime. By reaching out to the close friends and family of victims of violent crime, the outreach unit may be able to interrupt pressure from friends and families to enact revenge shootings. At the community level, a lack of social networks can lead to more crime. An outreach team working on strengthening community ties could contribute to a culture of nonviolence that discourages retaliatory shootings. In summary, engaging victims of violent crone and their communities is an important strategy for decreasing gun violence. Currently the VCIU is doing some outreach to victims of violent crime and their communities. Unit members knock on doors and leave door hangers after shots are tired in a neighborhood, attempting to talk with residents and assure them that the police are available if they should need any assistance. According to community reports, this strategy gives neighborhood members a feeling of support. However, police officers do not have the time, resources or relationships to be able to engage in intense contact with communities and victims after a shooting ---often leaving victims and their communities with nowhere to turn except to retaliatory violence. Other GVI locations have filled this gap with outreach workers. These outreach workers, who are often from the communities where they work, connect with street group members before a conflict escalates to a shooting and after a shooting or attempted shooting, trying to interrupt retaliatory shootings. In addition, the outreach teams engage the broader community in anti -violence efforts. According to the NNSC, "street outreach of this kind can add enormous value to GVI.s6 This outreach model has also been used in the CeaseFire program in Chicago. According to a comprehensive evaluation of the program, gun violence decreased in six of the seven CeaseFire sites, and in four of the sites this decrease could be directly associated with CeaseFire—with declines in attempted and actual shootings of 17 to 24 percent.' In Lowell, Massachusetts, a similar outreacli program was deemed as successful by youth survey respondents - -proximately 63 percent of all respondents indicated they knew first-hand of fights in which outreach workers intervened and/or prevented.$ An outreach model provides promising possibilities for decreasing violence in U.S. cities. As traditional law enforcement strategies continue to be unsuccessful for decreasing gun violence across the nation, South Bend has an exciting opportunity to join a new strategy that has shown results. A community outreach unit will improve and extend South Bend's already impressive results in decreasing gun violence by addressing personal, relational, and communal drivers of group and gang based gun violence. Project Description The South Bead Group Violence Initiative (SBGVI) has had community outreach as a goal of the initiative since its inception. Thus far, the outreach has been limited to those involved in gun violence who are about to be released from prison. Isolated incidents of outreach in the community have occurred by a couple individuals working with SBGVI; however, the manpower to staff a street outreach program currently does not exist. The creation of the Violent Crime Impact Unit (VCII) in the South Bend Police Department has been a beneficial partnership for SBGVI and the police officers in this unit have made concerted efforts to reach out to the community after shots have been fired in the neighborhood. 6 Group Violence Intervention: An Implementation Guide. 2013. Washington, D.C.: National Network for Safe Communities, htt s://nnscommunities.or ti loads/GVI Cuide. df. 7 Skogan, Wesley G., Susan. M. Hartnett, Natalie Bump, and Jil I Dubois. 2008. Cxecutive summary evaluation of CeaseFire-Chicago. Chicago; Northwestern Institute for Policy Research, , htt r�:llwww. i pr.nortbwes#ern.edu/publications/papersJurhan-pa I icy-ancl-community devel opment/does/ceasetire-pdfs/executi vesummary. nd f 8 Polladl , Kcshia lvl., Shannon Frattaroli, Jennifer M. Whitehill, and Karen Strother. 2011. Youth perspectives on sheet outreach workers: Results From a community -based survey. Journal of Conununity Health 36: 469-76.