Program Profile: Ceasefire (Oakland, Calif.)

This is a focused-deterrence group violence reduction strategy (GVRS) designed to reduce or control gun violence in Oakland, Calif. The program is rated Effective. The intervention was shown to reduce total shootings, gang-involved shootings, suspected gang-involved shootings, and gang shooting victimizations in treatment block groups relative to matched comparison block groups. These differences were all statistically significant.

An Effective rating implies that implementing the program is likely to result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals/Target Population

In 2012, the homicide rate in Oakland, Calif. was almost seven times that of the national homicide rate (Braga et al. 2018). As a result, the City of Oakland engaged the California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC) to help design an intervention (the Ceasefire intervention) that could help reduce serious gun violence. The Ceasefire intervention uses focused-deterrence group violence reduction strategies (GVRS) to reduce or control gun violence. Problem analysis research showed that gang members were involved in nearly two thirds of gun homicides in Oakland between 2012 and 2013 (Braga et al. 2019); therefore, the Ceasefire GVRS intervention focused on gun violence related to gang members in the city.

Program Components

Ceasefire uses the key elements of the GVRS, which include trying to change behavior by understanding the underlying crime-producing dynamics and conditions that contribute to recurring crime problems, and implementing a blended strategy that involves law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions.

The CPSC partnered with the Oakland Police Department (OPD) to understand the underlying nature of gun violence in the city. A gang audit was used to identify specific gangs (including their rivalries and alliances with other gangs), and social network analysis was used to target gangs and determine the potential diffusion of the deterrence message to socially connected gangs.

The OPD leads an interagency Ceasefire enforcement group consisting of federal law enforcement agencies and state and county criminal justice agencies. The broader Oakland Ceasefire Partnership includes the mayor’s office, social service agencies led by the human services department, and community-based leaders and organizations. Enforcement actions are coordinated through OPD Ceasefire units, which consist of five centralized units of eight officers each and a gang investigations unit (Braga et al. 2019).

When the Ceasefire GVRS intervention is implemented (in response to serious gun violence from specific gangs), the OPD develops special enforcement strategies tailored to the vulnerabilities of the targeted gangs. The Ceasefire partnership communicates directly and repeatedly with the targeted gangs to 1) inform them that shootings will no longer be tolerated, and continued gun violence will receive special enforcement attention; 2) describe the kinds of increased enforcement and sanctions that will be focused on them; and 3) offer services and opportunities to gang members who want to stop their violent behavior. These direct messages are distributed to targeted gangs through custom notifications to individual gang members in the street, at their homes, or during group “call-ins,” which are face-to-face meetings with law enforcement, social service providers, and representatives from the community. The Ceasefire partnership not only communicates to target gangs, but also to their rivals and allies, to ensure that they also understand the violence prevention intervention being implemented.

Program Theory

The Oakland Ceasefire GVRS intervention is based on deterrence theory, which suggests that some are discouraged from crime involvement when the perceived cost of criminal activity exceeds the perceived benefits (Zimring and Hawkins 1973). There are two types of deterrence—specific and general deterrence. Specific or focused deterrence involves applying sanctions directly to individuals to dissuade them from committing future criminal acts. General deterrence concentrates on preventing crimes by the public through the threat of punishment. Research has found that person’ perceptions of punishment are critical in generating deterrent effects (Nagin 1998). Thus, by targeting particular criminal offenses perpetrated by a small number of highly active persons who are exceedingly susceptible to criminal justice sanctions (Durlauf and Nagin 2011), focused deterrence has been characterized as having important crime control characteristics. Focused deterrence strategies, such as Ceasefire, communicate directly to targeted persons that their continued criminal behavior will no longer be tolerated and that the criminal justice system will apply a variety of punishments when these behavioral standards are violated (Braga et al. 2019). Focused deterrence strategies intentionally exploit social ties among gangs and criminally active groups to produce “spillover” violence reduction impacts. This concept is consistent with general deterrence theory and suggests that individuals are discouraged from committing crimes because of their knowledge of punishments experienced by other law violators (Stafford and Warr 1993).

Study

Braga and colleagues (2019) conducted a quasi-experimental study in Oakland, an urban city in Calif., to evaluate direct and spillover effects of the Ceasefire group violence reduction strategies (GVRS) intervention. The researchers compared yearly shooting trends from January 2010 to December 2017 (i.e., the study period) between gangs and census block groups that received the Ceasefire intervention, which was implemented in February 2013, with shooting trends for gangs and census block groups in the comparison group, which did not receive the Ceasefire GVRS intervention.

There was a total of 374 block groups, with 187 block groups (49 percent) containing at least one gang. Of these 374 block groups, 83.4 percent had at least one shooting occur between 2010 and 2017. Block groups with more than one gang were considered “treated” from the month that the Ceasefire intervention was implemented with the first gang. A block group was considered “untreated” if it did not intersect with gang turf or if it included gang turf but did not include any treated gangs. In the study, PSMATCH2 propensity score matching routines were used to develop matched treatment and comparison block groups. There were 47 treatment block groups and 95 comparison block groups. A growth curve regression model was used to compare the matched treatment block groups with the comparison block groups, controlling for other covariates.

Additionally, the study authors conducted a comparison using social network analysis to determine directly treated and indirectly treated gangs within a highly violent and densely connected network of Oakland gangs. Shooting review data indicated that 76 distinct gangs were involved in more than one shooting incident during the study period. Of the 76 active gangs, the Ceasefire intervention was directly applied to 15 gangs and indirectly to 13 gangs that were socially connected to the directly treated gangs through rivalries and alliances. A PSMATCH2 radius-matching routine was used to develop matched treatment and comparison groups, which resulted in 28 (directly and vicariously) treated gangs and 48 untreated gangs.

The outcomes of interest included total shootings, quarterly gang-involved shootings, quarterly suspected gang-involved shootings, and total gang shooting victimizations. Serious gun violence was measured through computerized records from the Oakland Police Department official reports of Homicide by Firearm and Assault with a Firearm on Person. A growth curve negative binomial regression model was used to analyze the quarterly change in gang-involved shootings for the treatment and comparison group gangs during the 8-year study period. There were two separate difference-in-differences estimators used to measure the impact of the Oakland Ceasefire program on total shootings involving directly and indirectly treated gangs, compared with all other nontargeted gangs. The study authors did not conduct subgroup analyses.

No cost information is available on this program.

More information can be found on the program’s website: https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/oaklands-ceasefire-strategy .

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Braga, Anthony A., Gregory Zimmerman, Rod K. Brunson, and Andrew V. Papachristos. 2018. Oakland Ceasefire Impact Evaluation: Key Findings. Oakland, Calif.: City of Oakland.

Durlauf, Steven, and Daniel S. Nagin. 2011. “Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both Be Reduced?” Criminology & Public Policy 10:13–54.

Gravel, Jason, and George Tita. 2015. “With Great Methods Come Great Responsibilities: Social Network Analysis in the Implementation and Evaluation of Gang Problems.” Criminology & Public Policy 14:559–72.

Kennedy, David. 2006. “Old Wine in New Bottles: Policing and the Lessons of Pulling Levers.” In D. Weisburd and A. Braga (eds.). Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives . New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 155–70.

Kennedy, David, Anthony A. Braga, and Anne M. Piehl. 1997. “The (Un)Known Universe: Mapping Gangs and Gang Violence in Boston.” In D. Weisburd and T. McEwen (eds.). Crime Mapping and Crime Prevention. Monsey, N.Y.: Criminal Justice Press, 219–62.

Kennedy, David, Anne M. Piehl, and Anthony A. Braga. 1996. “Youth Violence in Boston: Gun Markets, Serious Youth Offenders, and a Use-Reduction Strategy.” Law and Contemporary Problems 59:147–96.

Nagin, Daniel. 1998. “Criminal Deterrence Research at the Outset of the 21st Century.” In M. Tonry (ed.). Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, Volume 23 . Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press,1–42.

Papachristos, Andrew V., and David S. Kirk. 2015. “Changing the Street Dynamic: Evaluating Chicago’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy.” Criminology & Public Policy 14:525–58.

Stafford, Mark C., and Mark Warr. 1993. “A Reconceptualization of General and Specific Deterrence.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 30:123–35.

Zimring, Franklin, and Gordon Hawkins. 1973. Deterrence: The Legal Threat in Crime Control. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Focused Deterrence Strategies

This practice (also referred to as “pulling-levers policing”) includes problem-oriented policing strategies that follow the core principles of deterrence theory. The strategies target specific criminal behavior committed by a small number of individuals who chronically commit offenses, such as youth gang members or those who repeatedly commit violent offenses, who are vulnerable to sanctions and punishment. The practice is rated Promising for reducing crime.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?