Program Goals
Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) in Chicago, Ill., is a nationwide federally funded initiative designed to bring federal, state, and local law enforcement together to promote “a comprehensive and strategic approach to reducing gun crime” (Papachristos, Meares, and Fagan 2007, p. 225). The initiative promotes several context-specific strategies that can be implemented in different cities. Chicago’s PSN program is based on three broad goals: 1) to reduce demand among people convicted of gun offenses, 2) to reduce supply by identifying and intervening in illegal gun markets, and 3) to prevent gun violence. The demand-and-supply reduction goals rely on a combination of efforts to increase the perceived costs of illegal gun use and to change the behavior of people with histories of gun violence. The prevention component is intended to alter their perceptions of the legitimacy of the law and the costs of punishment to deter potential gun-related offending.
Target Population
PSN is targeted mainly at individuals who are most likely to be involved in firearm violence—presumably, those with a history of gun offending. The initiative also concentrates on areas with a high likelihood of gun violence, such as neighborhoods with disproportionately high levels of gang activity and poverty.
Program Components
The majority of Chicago’s PSN strategies take place at the community level. These include community outreach and media campaigns, school-based programs, and various programs specifically geared toward people known for gun offenses. The most influential strategy applied at the community level is the use of offender notification meetings. PSN also implements multiagency case review and prosecutorial decisions, as well as law enforcement strategies to combat illegal gun offending.
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Offender notification forums. This component is intended to change normative perceptions of gun crime among the offending population. Each forum involves about 25 individuals who are selected to attend based on three criteria: 1) residence in the intervention communities, 2) at least one prior gun-related or violent offense, and 3) a 3- to 6-month prior release from prison. The goals of the hour-long forums are to deliver a message regarding the consequences of offending and to alter the generally negative opinions that they might have about law and law enforcement. Organizers communicate the message that attendees can choose to have a life that does not involve serious offending. The meetings are held at places such as parks, community colleges, or churches, as opposed to law enforcement venues. Meetings consist of three segments, each of which is designed to promote a specific aspect of the PSN initiative. In the first segment, law enforcement representatives discuss details of PSN efforts and highlight gun laws and sentences. The message from law enforcement emphasizes the legal consequences of engaging in violence or having a gun. Representatives discuss the various avenues they can take to arrest and prosecute people who commit gun offenses, should participants choose to reoffend. The second segment involves a presentation from an ex-offender in the community; this individual is usually an older former gang leader who is now a street intervention worker. During this segment, the ex-offender discusses his personal experiences with crime and his decision to reform his behavior. The third segment emphasizes available opportunities for ex-offenders, using speakers from various community programs, including temporary shelter, job training, behavior counseling, mentorship and union training, education and GED courses, and substance-misuse prevention and treatment assistance. During this segment, several local employers also present information on available employment opportunities in the community.
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Multiagency gun recoveries. This component involves having a unified law enforcement team specifically focused on increasing the rate of gun seizures. The team consists of agents from the Chicago Police Department; the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Cook County (Ill.) State Attorney’s Office; the U.S. Attorney’s Office; and the City of Chicago’s Department of Drug and Gang House Enforcement. The goal of the team is to concentrate all available resources on gun crime in target areas, emphasizing supply-side firearm policing activities. The team has two main roles: 1) to investigate cases surrounding gun trafficking, use, and sales in target areas; and 2) to conduct gun seizures and serve warrants for pending firearm cases.
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Federal prosecutions. For this component, the PSN task force assigns local and federal prosecutors to meet biweekly, to review every gun case in Chicago. They then determine whether the cases should be prosecuted at the state or federal level. Prosecutions at the federal level are much more severe than those at the state level, so these cases are reserved for more serious offenses. The goal of the review process is to identify cases involving an individual with a previous history of gun violence, which fall within the target areas, and that have an accompanying severe or aggravating circumstance that qualifies the case for federal prosecution.
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Federal sentencing. This component is intended to increase severity of punishment for those convicted of gun offenses. It is based on the premise that federal prosecutions for gun offenses tend to result in lengthier sentences. While program activities do not directly affect sentencing practices, the severity of potential punishments for gun crime are communicated to the general public through PSN billboard and radio advertisements, and to the target populations during offender notification meetings.
Key Personnel
The Chicago PSN initiative elicits the participation of a multiagency task force of members from law enforcement and local community agencies, including representatives from the Chicago Police Department, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois Department of Corrections, the Cook County Department of Probation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, the City of Chicago Corporation Counsel, the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, and the Chicago Crime Commission.
Program Theory
The PSN Chicago strategy is based on the notion that deterrence and incapacitation can reduce crime. In addition to its roots in criminological theory, the Chicago PSN strategy is also rooted in norm-based psychological theories of behavioral economics.
Deterrence strategies stress the importance of calibrating the severity, certainty, and swiftness of a sanction for reducing offending. Deterrence is a key concept in the rational choice theory of criminology, which asserts that individuals weigh the costs and benefits of offending (Wallace et al. 2016). Deterrence strategies are based on the notion that any sanction that increases criminals’ perceived risks of committing an offense can deter them from carrying out the act. PSN techniques rely on a combination of efforts to increase perceived costs of illegal gun use for the purpose of promoting deterrence. Several components of PSN demonstrate principles of deterrence by increasing sanctions for gun offending, including relying more heavily on federal prosecutions and using offender notification forums to inform targeted populations about the sanctions for gun offending.
Incapacitation strategies are based on the notion that crime can be reduced by removing high-risk persons from society. PSN Chicago relies on this approach, as evidenced by the emphasis on people with histories of gun use, as well as the emphasis on increasing prosecutions for those who have committed gun offenses. Finally, the psychological norm-based approach relies on the idea that people comply with the law when they respect their governing authority and believe the law is legitimate. This approach is based on a belief in the fairness of legal norms and procedures to promote the underlying moral bases of law (Papachristos, Meares, and Fagan 2007). PSN Chicago applies this approach to alter perceived social norms and preferences within high-crime areas in Chicago. This is evidenced by the use of offender notification forums, which are intended to increase dissemination of deterrence and social norms messages, stress potential consequences of gun use, and offer nonviolent behavioral alternatives.
