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6 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 141 (2008-2009)
Losing Faith - Police, Black Churches, and the Resurgence of Youth Violence in Boston

handle is hein.journals/osjcl6 and id is 143 raw text is: Losing Faith? Police, Black Churches, and the Resurgence of Youth Violence in Boston Anthony A. Braga, David Hureau, and Christopher Winship* I. INTRODUCTION Boston received national acclaim for its innovative approach to preventing youth violence in the 1990s.1 The well-known Operation Ceasefire initiative was an interagency violence prevention intervention that focused enforcement and social service resources on a small number of gang-involved offenders at the heart of the city's youth violence problem.2 The Ceasefire strategy was associated with a near two-thirds drop in youth homicide in the late 1990s.3 While the sudden decrease in youth homicide was surprising and certainly newsworthy, the Boston approach was also noted for its extraordinary police-community relationship spearheaded by the Ten Point Coalition of activist black clergy.4 The involvement of black ministers in the Ceasefire strategy provided a mechanism of transparency and accountability to the minority community that conferred the legitimacy * Anthony A. Braga is a Senior Research Associate and Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a Senior Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, University of California, Berkeley. David Hureau is a Research Associate in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Christopher Winship is the Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. The research presented here was supported by funds from the Russell Sage Foundation and The Boston Foundation. The points of view represented here are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Russell Sage Foundation, The Boston Foundation, Boston Police Department, or the Ten Point Coalition. The authors would like to thank Commissioner Edward Davis, Superintendent Paul Joyce, Superintendent Kenneth Fong, Deputy Superintendent Earl Perkins, and Carl Walter of the Boston Police Department for their assistance in the acquisition of the data presented in this article. We also would like to thank Brian Welch and Baillie Aaron for their excellent assistance in the completion of this article. 1 See, e.g., Fox Butterfield, In Boston, Nothing is Something, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 21, 1996, at A20; Gordon Witkin, Sixteen Silver Bullets: Smart Ideas to Fix the World, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP., Dec. 29, 1997, at 67; Charles Radin, Reaching Up Against Crime: Partnerships, Awareness, Behind Boston's Success, BOSTON GLOBE, Feb. 19, 1997, at Al. 2 David Kennedy, Anne Piehl & Anthony Braga, Youth Violence in Boston: Gun Markets, Serious Youth Offenders, and a Use-Reduction Strategy, 59 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 147, 147-96 (1996); Anthony Braga et al., Problem-Oriented Policing, Deterrence, and Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Boston's Operation Ceasefire, 38 J. RES. IN CRIME & DELNQ. 195, 195-225 (2001). 3 Braga et al., supra note 2, at 204. 4 Christopher Winship & Jenny Berrien, Boston Cops and Black Churches, 136 PUB. INT. 52, 52-68 (1999); Jenny Berrien & Christopher Winship, An Umbrella of Legitimacy: Boston's Police Department-Ten Point Coalition Collaboration, in SECURING OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE: NEW APPROACHES TO JUVENILE JUSTICE AND YOUTH VIOLENCE 215 (Gary Katzmann ed., 2002).

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