Promising Strategies To Reduce Gun Violence - Office of Juvenile ...

Profile No. 2 (continued)
neighborhoods. Probation officers introduced
researchers to a sample of young
probationers who were interviewed in focus
groups or individually in winter 1994 and
summer 1995. Many of the juveniles said
they had guns for self-defense and joined
gangs for protection.
The main thrust of the KSG analysis consisted
of geographical mapping over the
summer of 1995. The working group of
practitioners pooled their knowledge and
provided the researchers with information
on gang size, turf, alliances, and conflicts.
They also classified 5 years of youth homicide
victimization data and tied it to gangs.
Boston had 61 gangs with about 1,300 members
from 4 neighborhoods; these groups
committed 60 percent or more of the youth
homicides in the city. Based on this information,
researchers constructed a territorial
map of the identified gangs, containing
practitioners’ estimates of membership size
and sociograms of alliances and antagonisms.
This territorial map identified which
gangs should be targeted in order to disrupt
key sources of conflict. Network analysis
also led to strategies to communicate a deterrence
message to targeted gangs by identifying
cliques that would, in turn, be most
efficient at getting that message out to the
largest number of gang members.
The researchers were fortunate in having
access to a very rich gun data set from the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
(ATF). Every gun that had been used in a
crime and which had come into police hands
since 1991 had been traced and included in
the ATF data set. Out of 1,550 records of
guns from youth ages 21 and under, 809
were traceable to Federal firearm licensees,
first retail purchases, or both. ATF analyzed
the type, caliber, make, geographic origin,
and “time-to-crime” age for each gun; the
proportion of guns with obliterated serial
numbers; the number of guns that had been
used in substantive crimes versus those
seized by police on possession charges; and
adult versus youth gun patterns. In addition,
ATF determined that at least half of the
guns came from very small and infrequent
purchases by straw purchasers and that
these purchasers rarely received law enforcement
attention. Interviews with youth
confirmed the belief that guns were readily
available to them—through illegal purchase
or borrowing. A gang might have only a few
guns, but they were available to all members.
Contrary to common belief, youth
shunned guns that had been used in burglaries
because they knew that the weapons
had been used in other crimes and did not
want to be held responsible.
The supply-side research dispelled the generally
held belief that Boston youth gangs
obtained their guns from southern States
with lax gun laws. Contrary to expectations,
34 percent of traceable guns were first sold
at retail in Massachusetts and close to 15
percent were from nearby New England
States. Most of the guns recovered were
handguns and semiautomatic pistols. Semiautomatic
weapons had the shortest “timeto-crime”:
more than 40 percent were less
than 2 years old. Serious crimes typically
involved more shotguns, more in-State
guns, and fewer obliterated serial numbers
than guns associated with the possession
charges of less serious youth offenders. In
summary, the supply-side analyses indicated
that new guns were coming into the youth
illicit market at close to first retail sale.
Law enforcement strategies
Operation Ceasefire
Operation Ceasefire is a coordinated
citywide strategy established in May 1996
to deter youth firearm violence. Ceasefire
operates as a system, focusing interventions
28 Promising Strategies To Reduce Gun Violence