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Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

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Transcript available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/transcripts/?p=191

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The show interviews participants from an exemplary program/award winner via the National Criminal Justice Association. Those interviewed include: Karhlton Moore, Executive Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, Dr. Robin Engel, Director of the University of Cincinnati Policing Institute and Greg Baker, Executive Director of Community Relations of the Cincinnati Police Department.

The Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) is a US Department of Justice-funded, multi-agency and community collaborative effort that was initiated in April 2007. The program is designed to quickly and dramatically reduce gun violence with sustained reductions over time.

The initiative is a focused deterrence strategy loosely modeled after the Boston Gun Project in the mid-1990s.  The cornerstone is a partnership among multiple law enforcement agencies (local, state and federal), social service providers and the community that systematically gather information from multiple sources to identify and target violent street groups that continue to engage in violence. The group then delivers a clear and unified “no violence” message to these violent groups. The message explains that violence will bring law enforcement attention to the entire group, offers alternatives and articulates community norms against violence.  The anti-violence message is powerfully communicated through a number of different mechanisms, including call-in sessions with probationers and parolees, direct contact (with street workers/advocates, police, probation and parole officers) and community outreach.  The core enforcement step is to “tax” groups for violence “through any convenient legal means, such as drug enforcement” and create conditions within the group such that members will control each others’ violent behavior.

Initial assessments of the effort indicate a 40 percent reduction in group member involved homicides.

The contact person for the program is Greg Baker at greg.baker@cincinnati-oh.gov .

The web site for the National Criminal Justice Association is www.ncja.org.

Bethany Broida from NCJA arranged the program. The show is hosted by Leonard Sipes. The producer is Timothy Barnes.

Meta terms: Police, law enforcement, Cincinnati, criminal justice, leadership, crime, criminals, criminal justice