this is global health

Welch Wanderings
Dialing Down Violence
chris hartlove
Cautious optimists: Outreach worker Tard Carter (left) and gun violence prevention researcher Daniel Webster on Baltimore’s Safe Streets.
It’s the kind of story you won’t see on The
Wire.
A young gang member discovers he’s on
another gang’s hit list and confides in a community
worker. The worker arranges a meeting.
It begins with a roomful of rivals, armed
and angry. But it ends with two men, who
might have been linked by a bullet, hugging
each other with relief.
This mediation was among the first
by Safe Streets, a Baltimore City program
launched with guidance from Daniel Webster,
ScD ’91, MPH, deputy director of the
Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of
Youth Violence (JHCPYV).
During 2007 and 2008, Safe Streets
debuted in four of Baltimore’s most violent
neighborhoods. Outreach workers, many of
them former gang members, began developing
relationships with high-risk youth and
helping them get job training, build interview
skills and—above all else—settle disputes
without guns.
Through the first three and a half years
of the program, Safe Streets achieved reductions
in nonfatal shootings or homicides (or
both) at every site. In Cherry Hill, homicides
dropped 56 percent and shootings 34 percent.
Attitudes also changed dramatically.
McElderry Park youth were four times more
likely to express “little or no” support for
using violence than those in a comparison
neighborhood.
“People understand that violence begets
violence,” Webster says. “In essence, these
guys [are] looking for someone to come in
and change the rules, to give them an excuse
to walk away.”
Tard Carter, a veteran mediator who
works the streets of East Baltimore, agrees,
adding, “Poverty brings forth frustration.
Frustration brings forth unwise decision
making.”
He’s proud that four recent Safe Street
graduates plan to apply to Baltimore’s Police
Academy.
“Although I’ve studied gun violence and
its prevention for 23 years,” Webster says, “it
wasn’t until I started working with this program
and … violence interrupters like Tard
that I gained a deeper understanding of gun
violence and the challenges faced by many
urban youth.”
It’s an opportunity Webster tries to
share by inviting Carter (among others) to
lecture at Hopkins and join in public speaking
engagements. The pairing works well,
says Webster. His research can help show
how Carter’s mediations are correlated with
homicide reductions, while Carter’s stories
validate Webster’s empirical findings.
Looking ahead, Webster is cautiously
optimistic. New research projects include
evaluating a similar program in New Orleans
and launching a study of Baltimore’s underground
gun market—both with Carter acting
as a consultant. Safe Streets also recently
opened a new site in the Park Heights neighborhood,
with funding from a CDC grant. It
represents JHCPYV’s first success garnering
funds to bring Safe Streets’ skilled mediators
into another high-need area.
And that may be the highest priority.
The main thing Webster says he’s learned
from this effort is “how important it is
to get the right people and give all the credit
to them.”
—Rebecca Widiss
8 JOhns hOpkins public healTh / spRing 2013