Don't Shoot
One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America
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Gang- and drug-related inner-city violence, with its attendant epidemic of incarceration, is the defining crime problem in our country. In some neighborhoods in America, one out of every two hundred young black men is shot to death every year, and few initiatives of government and law enforcement have made much difference. But when David Kennedy, a self-taught and then-unknown criminologist, engineered the "Boston Miracle" in the mid-1990s, he pointed the way toward what few had imagined: a solution.
Don't Shoot tells the story of Kennedy's long journey. Riding with beat cops, hanging with gang members, and stoop-sitting with grandmothers, Kennedy found that all parties misunderstood each other, caught in a spiral of racialized anger and distrust. He envisioned an approach in which everyone-gang members, cops, and community members-comes together in what is essentially a huge intervention. Offenders are told that the violence must stop, that even the cops want them to stay alive and out of prison, and that even their families support swift law enforcement if the violence continues. In city after city, the same miracle has followed: violence plummets, drug markets dry up, and the relationship between the police and the community is reset.
This is a landmark book, chronicling a paradigm shift in how we address one of America's most shameful social problems. A riveting, page-turning read, it combines the street vérité of The Wire, the social science of Gang Leader for a Day, and the moral urgency and personal journey of Fist Stick Knife Gun. But unlike anybody else, Kennedy shows that there could be an end in sight.
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In a matter-of-fact, street-smart style, coming from years of working with police officers, gang members, and community workers in some of America's most dangerous neighborhoods, Kennedy, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explains his remarkably effective strategies for combating violent crime. When research showed that only a disproportionately small number of criminals commit most of the most serious crimes, Kennedy had the police identify gang members on parole or probation and urge them to come to a meeting. At the gathering were members of the gangs' families, community service providers, and the police, who explained the legal risks the perpetrators faced (most gang members didn't know) and demanded that shootings stop. If the killings continued, the perpetrators would not receive another chance; instead, they'd be met with severe punishment, and their entire gang would be targeted. When this program, called Operation Ceasefire, was first tried in Boston in the '90s, violence plummeted by almost two-thirds, and Kennedy chronicles the difficulties in implementing the program to meet the needs of 50 other cities. Warning against the country's "orgy" of incarceration, which disproportionately targets black males in America's most vulnerable neighborhoods, this heartfelt book shows what can happen when police, gangs, and communities come together to address some of America's most intractable social problems.
