Unique New Plan to Reverse Violence in Chicago

Earlier this month, Derrion Albert, a young honor role student in Chicago was beaten to death with a wooden plank, apparently after stepping into a massive fight between two groups of neighborhood youths. As we have reported previously on this blog, the murder rate in Chicago is quite high -- and Derrion's death has (unfortunately) provided even more of a galvanizing force to address and quell the violence.

The New York Times recently reported on a new initiative underway in Chicago to use statistics and probability to identify likely victims of gun violence. Funded by the federal government at a price tag of $30 million, this plan involves targeting the 10,000 young people at highest risk of becoming victims to the tide of gun violence in the city's south side. Having conducted a survey of 500 victims of violence, the Chicago Police Department has devised a system of predicting the characteristics of potential victims -- and then flooding their lives with adult attention, giving them paid jobs, and providing a community advocate on whom they could call any time of day or night.

As the Times article reports:

"The students at highest risk of violence, by statistics, are most likely to be black, male, without a stable living environment, in special education, skipping an average of 42 percent of school days at neighborhood and alternative schools, and having a record of in-school behavioral flare-ups that is about eight times higher than the average student.

Attacks have typically happened beyond a two-hour window from the start and end of school — that is, late at night or very early in the morning — and blocks away from school grounds, where neighborhood boundaries press against one another.

Within the three dozen or so schools where 80 percent of the victims in the study attended classes, the plan calls for a rethinking of the security philosophy so that policies favor mental health strategies and prevention over policing and punishment. And officials are becoming more strategic about providing safe passage to school by increasing police enforcement and by keeping tabs on gang and clique activities in real time as their turf wars hopscotch around school catchment areas."

There is, of course, some concern that 10,000 students will be consuming $30 million of resources; and some people from these communities beset with violence are skeptical that anything will work. But Ron Huberman, the new chief executive of the and a former police officer, is convinced that targeting small numbers of students will yield large-scale results.

What do you think? Does this kind of plan represent the best use of crime data in action? What are some of the potential consequences of this initiative -- and do you think it will bring the peace that Chicagoans are looking for?

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Here's another good article from the Chicago Tribune about the young people who were involved in Derrion Albert's death.

And here is a CNN report featuring short video clips of the beating. Please be forewarned: it is quite disturbing.

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Another Offspring of the Marriage Between Crime Data and the iPhone

"Warning: Stay alert. Do not get hurt."

That's what the iPhone said to me, in a very masculine voice, when I tried out the new application "Are You Safe? Sacramento." I had typed in an address recommended to me -- I don't live in Sacramento, otherwise the phone would have used GPS to identify my current location -- and discovered that, in that immediate vicinity, my "personal defcon" threat level was 2 (or orange, which is high), and that there had been 4 homicides, 27 assaults, 4 robberies, and 19 car thefts in this immediate vicinity in 2008. Additionally, I learned that a car had been stolen "about 0 ft. from here, on 05-22-2008. It occurred at 17:15, according to the record. If you are parking your vehicle you might want to think about finding a garage. You might be able to glean more context by examining the offense description: 10851(A)VC TAKE VEH W/O OWNER."

This, fine readers, is what is available to you if you live in Sacramento, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Milwaukee, or Indianapolis; you own an iPhone; and you are willing to pay $0.99. It is the union of publicly available crime data, GPS mapping, fancy application graphics (behold, the "threat meter"), and the long-standing human obsession with personal safety.

Its uses, according to the application makers, include:

• "Visiting and unfamiliar with the city?"
• "Debating whether to walk or take a cab?"
• "Headed to an area you haven't been to before?"
• "Not sure if you should park your car on the street?"

For outsiders to a neighborhood, it might be a helpful tool (likely, the people who have lived in the neighborhood for a while don't need a "threat meter" to tell them what crimes have been happening in the area recently). And to be fair, there's good reason to have as much data about any place as you can -- I wonder, however, whether there is an element of hysteria in this kind of thing. If this kind of technology takes root broadly, is it yet another way of stigmatizing neighborhoods that indeed have serious public safety concerns? Perhaps this application could be balanced with information about local block associations or dates for the next precinct community council meeting.

What are your thoughts about this kind of technology? Please comment!

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CrimeReports.com

We learned about a new website, CrimeReports.com, that aggregates crime reports from across the country and allows you to search for them in any locality. The idea is that local law enforcement agencies feed their data (likely also available on their own websites) to this site, allowing for open-source national sharing of crime data.

Although the site is still getting some agencies on board -- New York City, for example, has no crime data, although it is available on the NYPD website -- it seems like a great way to build knowledge, bring criminal justice agencies on board with Web 2.0 technologies, and create open-source sharing about crime patterns in places across the U.S.

If you click on the "Analytics" tab at the upper right, you'll be able to see exactly which localities provide data and even generate charts for various crime entities. The displays are dynamic so that you can break down "theft," for example, into more precise categories of crime. This is definitely a win for community-based organizations in need of crime data for grant-writing purposes as well.

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"Outbreaks Near Me"

You may have noticed that we're a little obsessed with technology, and especially the iPhone, at Rethinking Reentry.

It was hard to pass, therefore, on this story about a new iPhone application, called "Outbreaks Near Me." With all the hysteria about H1N1 (Swine Flu), this app provides users with a way of tracking outbreaks of the disease near them. Users can even upload "outbreak reports" with pictures and descriptions.

Creators at Children's Hospital Boston and the MIT Media Lab admit that the current version isn't able to weed out fake reports from real ones, but say that the tool has real potential if it is adopted among a wide swath of the population.

The thing we're pondering, of course, is whether this kind of application could have other uses, particularly in problem-solving justice. Putting aside the issue of access to technology for the moment (we are well aware that most reentrants don't have the means to acquire and maintain an expensive iPhone), of what use could this technology be in criminal justice circles?

• What if employers could post jobs to the application (a "jobs outbreak!") and reentrants could find open positions and (more importantly) find employers friendly to people with criminal records?
• What if parole officers could post their own reviews of local service providers for their colleagues to see? Or share information about a recent spate of relapses in a certain neighborhood for other law enforcement officials to be aware of?
• What if service providers could get real time information about reentrants who are new to the neighborhood (hmmm, we'd have to make sure this is legal ...) so that they could better target them for services and support?
• What if reentrants could post reviews of stores, service providers, faith institutions, or other community stakeholders who helped them out (a "good will outbreak!") and would be willing to help others returning to the community?

Any of these ideas would make the process of return certainly more efficient, and with the possibility of pictures and video, perhaps enriching for the technology consumer.

As always, if you have any ideas, we'd love to hear about them! How might this technology be useful in your criminal justice pursuits?

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NY Times Finds Murders Higher In Warmer Weather

According to a New York Times' analysis of homicide data from 2003-2008 murders rise in the warmer months. Perhaps this is not news to most New Yorkers, but the article is interesting. Click here to read the article. We also liked the interactive map.

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