Focused Deterrence Strategy Reduces Group Member Involved Shootings in New Haven, CT

(Excerpt) Despite a decrease in homicides during the 90s and early 2000s, New Haven’s homicides once again began trending upward starting in 2003. By 2011, New Haven recorded 34 homicides, just shy of its 1991 high of 36; the city’s murder rate of 26.2 per 100,000 steadily outpaced the rates of larger cities such Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and mirrored that of Oakland, California. To address the rising death toll, state officials, city leadership, and the newly returned chief of police, Dean Esserman, moved to implement a group violence reduction strategy that had shown success in other urban centers, such as Cincinnati, Chicago, and Boston. This strategy is based on the tenets of focused deterrence.