Reducing Gun Violence
The St. Louis Consent-to-Search program, which is a part of the National Institute of Justice’s Reducing Gun Violence publication series, describes the effects of implementing various strategies aimed at reducing gun-related violence. Violence is a topical issue for many American cities and this report will be useful for anyone who is willing to adopt a strategic and reasonable approach to reducing a number of gun-related activities in a community, or who simply wants to learn more about this issue.
The author describes specific examples of implementing strategies, discusses its successes and failures, and suggests data-driven recommendations for implementing future programs. The article starts with an innovative program, which took place in St. Louis in 1994, when a violence rate was at its peak. Basic idea of this program is cooperation between police and community. A great number of guns were concentrated in the hands of teenagers. Police came to a conclusion that parents were willing to cooperate under the circumstance of gun confiscation and no following prosecution.
The research describes the results of this program and its nationwide recognition. Despite its success the program was finally terminated and the author notes valuable lessons that can be used for avoiding similar mistakes. The main point is that its success depends on the interaction between the law enforcement and community, which is a sound idea. Besides the aforementioned strategy, other tactics of recovering firearms are described in the research, which makes it full and comprehensive. Although the tactic eventually failed, the author defines its main stages drawing up a table and distinguishing the methods, goals and mistakes of each phase. Moreover, the research includes the description of outcomes, as well as any possible challenges that can be face when implementing any of the tactics.
It is fair to say that the research is quite complete; the author comes across the points of program isolation, uncommitted leadership, lack of training and many other aspect that are often omitted in many similar researches. Moreover, a list of specific pieces of advice of how to improve any program is included. Although the research is extensive, the conclusion is not quite complete. The author should have also included more information regarding the effectiveness of implementing these programs in the future. On the whole, the paper is thorough and …
