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Assessing the effects of the Group Violence Intervention on firearm violence in Philadelphia

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Abstract

Objectives

This study assesses the effects of a Group Violence Intervention (GVI) implementation in Philadelphia on group member-involved (GMI) firearm violence. Because the implementation began in August 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health restrictions necessitated relying on individualized Mobile Call-In Team (MCIT) custom notifications, rather than large-scale call-in meetings, as the primary implementation method.

Methods

During the January 2020–May 2022 study period, not all at-risk group-units received GVI treatment at the same time. Likewise, not all census tracts received GVI treatment at the same time. Given this variation in treatment initiation, a quasi-experimental stepped wedge design assessed the effect of GVI treatment on GMI shootings on the dimensions of both group and place. Estimates were calculated using Poisson regression. The effects of treatment dosage were also assessed.

Results

A group-unit, post-treatment relative to pre-treatment, experienced, on average, a significant 38.6% reduction in shootings per week. Where a census tract received between 4 and 7 doses relative to 0 doses (pre-treatment), there was a significant 51.0% reduction in GMI shootings per week.

Conclusions

A GVI implementation through custom notifications appears to maintain the effectiveness of GVI. Future research should assess the role of GVI components, including both enforcement actions and social services, as mechanisms for GVI effectiveness in a custom notification-based implementation.

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Notes

  1. Procedural justice hypothesizes that citizens will have less satisfaction with governmental entities where they perceive that these entities fail to act in a just and fair manner (Haberman et al., 2016; Kochel et al., 2013). When governmental entities act in a trustworthy manner and treat citizens with respect, citizens will view governmental authority as legitimate, thus promoting compliance with the law (Kennedy & Ben-Menachem, 2019; Weisburd & Majmundar, 2018).

  2. Besides affecting the mode of GVI implementation, the COVID-19 pandemic was also associated with an increase in firearm violence in Philadelphia (Afif et al., 2022; Johnson and Roman, 2022). It is possible that the pandemic intensified existing social and structural disadvantages associated with urban firearm violence.

  3. Data concerning the approximate membership size of the groups was available for 58 of these 66 groups. 33 groups have 30 or fewer members as of 2022. Also, 11 groups have more than 30 members but fewer than 50 members; there are 14 groups with 50 or more members.

  4. Thus, Group-Unit X randomly receives the dosage pattern for Group-Unit Y, Group Unit-Y randomly receives the dosage pattern for Group-Unit D, and so forth.

  5. Descriptive numbers (t-tests) were calculated for the sensitivity tests. For the first sensitivity test, treatment was associated with a significant reduction in shootings per week per group. On average, a group experienced 0.10 shootings per week pre-treatment and 0.07 shootings per week post-treatment (p < 0.01). For the second sensitivity test, treatment was associated with a significant reduction in shootings per week per group-unit during the period between January 2020 and December 2021. On average, a group experienced 0.06 shootings per week pre-treatment and 0.04 shootings per week post-treatment (p < 0.01).

  6. Descriptive numbers (t-tests) found that, on average, in an untreated tract (N = 104), there were 0.05 shootings per week pre-division-treatment and 0.07 shootings per week post-division-treatment (p < 0.01). On average, there was 0.014 GMI shootings per week pre-division treatment and 0.013 GMI shootings per week post-division treatment.

  7. In much the same way that treatment dose or intensity is often correlated with the severity of illness and mortality (de Grooth et al., 2020), it is possible that higher GVI doses were correlated with the severity of violence risk for a group-unit. More precisely, higher GVI doses are not less effective than lower doses — instead, the level of risk for group-units requiring more doses may reduce shootings more than otherwise would have occurred with fewer doses or 0 doses.

  8. Preliminary qualitative research has been conducted to assess GVI recipients’ sense of factors that may contribute to desistence.

  9. As to groups subject to enforcement actions at some point during the study period, preliminary analyses showed that a group experienced, on average, a significant 42.8% reduction in shootings, post-action relative to pre-action.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks staff and leadership, current and former, from the following organizations and government agencies: City of Philadelphia Office of Violence Prevention, Philadelphia Police Department, National Network for Safe Communities at City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Delaware Valley Intelligence Center, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department. She also would like to acknowledge Greg Ridgeway, Ph.D., co-principal investigator on the summer 2020 evaluation proposal. Additionally, the author thanks the Journal of Experimental Criminology anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

Funding

In 2020, the City of Philadelphia asked the University of Pennsylvania to conduct an independent evaluation of the current implementation of GVI in Philadelphia. This study presents the main quantitative results of that evaluation. The Urban Affairs Coalition (UAC) provided the necessary funds for the evaluation to the University of Pennsylvania; the funds were made possible through a grant awarded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and funded by the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

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Moyer, R.A. Assessing the effects of the Group Violence Intervention on firearm violence in Philadelphia. J Exp Criminol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-023-09601-w

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