19who is likelier to be involved. There are
violence-reduction strategies that follow
from these findings and have been tested
empirically. American police depart -
ments are not ignoring those strategies
completely, but there is plenty of room for
improvement when it comes to funding
and executing them.
One simple strategy is to police the hot
spots. This has been tried and evaluated
extensively, with some studies employing
the scientific gold standard of randomly
assigning different participating areasto
be policed in different ways. (Other
studies are “observational,” meaning
that researchers look at crime trends in
areas where certain methods are used but
do not assign the methods at random. This
leaves open the possibility that cities that
introduce these methods also tend to
make other changes that affect crime
trends.) In a recent literature review,
Harvard’s Thomas Abt and Christopher
Winship suggested that hot-spot policing
has reduced violence by up to a third in
places where it’s been tried. Importantly,
hot-spot policing does not appear merely
to displace crime, as nearby areas do not
experience crime increases.
The character of policing matters too.
“Broken windows” methods—based on
the concept of creating order by policing
minor infractions—are effective, but
they work best when the community
cooperateswith the police to set standards
of acceptable behavior. It’s less effective
for police to become an occupying
force, imposing order by cracking down
on every tiny violation of the law with
“zero tolerance.”
Technology can help keep an eye on hot
spots as well. Many cities have worked
with a company called ShotSpotter to
install sensors on rooftops and other ele-
vated structures; these devices detect
gunshots and notify the police of their
locations. This makes the police aware of
incidents that might not have been
reported otherwise and allows them to
analyze data on shootings.
Abt and Winship also reviewed
“people-based approaches,” those pre -
mised on the fact that it is possible to
identify individuals with a higher likeli -
hood of committing violence or becoming
victims of it. Easily the strongest tech -
nique of this sort, one with a track record
of reducing violence by about half, is
called “focused deterrence”: “the identifi -
cation of specific offenders and offendinggroups, the mobilization of a diverse
group of law enforcement, social ser -
vices, and community stakeholders,
the framing of a response using both
sanctions and rewards, and direct, re -
peated communication with the indi -
viduals and groups in order to stop their
violent behavior.” The idea is for
authorities and community groups to
pull every lever available to them to
reduce the possibility of violence among
those most likely to engage in it.
Such programs work and yet struggle
for support. Many cities try focused
deterrence only half-heartedly or let their
programs fade over time. Chicago’s
CeaseFire program, which deploys form -
er gang members to help defuse volatile
situations, has in recent years faced
opposition from police (who don’t like
working with ex-offenders) and funding
cuts from the state, for instance.
There is also good evidence that when
we find individuals at an elevated risk of
committing violence (or committing
violence again), “cognitive behavioral
therapy” can help them. This is a
psychological technique that works to
change thinking patterns. Those under -
going it are pushed to think about how
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before they act. As simple and obvious
as it sounds, randomized trials show that
it works to reduce youth violence. It’s a
promising avenue for schools and
rehabilitation programs.
To be sure, it would be entirely
possible to take these measures and
work harder to keep guns out of the
hands of criminals. In a piece in these
pages in 2015 (“Fewer Guns, Less
Homicide?”; December 21), I suggested
several ways to do the latter, such as
requiring background checks on all gun
buyers, making the gun-tracing system
more efficient, improving mental-health
records, and prohibiting those with
misdemeanor stalking convictions from
owning guns. Universal background
checks are a no-go in this Congress,
though the others remain possibilities.
But gun control is not the only way to
reduce gun violence. It’s probably not
even close to being the best way. Vio -
lence overwhelmingly occurs in specific
geographic areas and among a tiny
percentage of the population, both of
which we can identify in advance. By
focusing on these places and people, we
can bring violence levels down without
infringing on individual rights and
picking unwinnable political fights.3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/11/2017 1:52 AM Page 19