Considered a pioneer in the high-level action-research approach to public safety, criminologist David Kennedy has spent his career deterring gang violence in America through community-based violence reduction.
He has played a key role in group violence intervention studies that have proven to reduce violence in some of the country’s most historically crime-ridden areas, including the Boston Gun Project in the mid-1990s.
The way violence works in most cases is in very small groups, often less than 1% of a city’s population, and an even tinier fraction, what Kennedy described as “impact players,” drive most homicides and nonfatal shootings in a community.
On Wednesday, he spoke to Utah lawmakers, law enforcement, educators and others involved in the state’s Youth Violence Prevention & Public Safety Working Group on how to reduce violence and community concerns in Utah, specifically in places like Salt Lake County, where defense attorney Mark Moffet said youth gun violence is becoming a critical issue.
If an individual joins a gang at age 19 and stays involved in that lifestyle for the next 10 or so years, there’s a 15% chance that person will not survive, meaning that nearly 1 in 7 would die from violence, Kennedy explained.
“Pretty quickly you get to a world in which essentially everybody gets killed or seriously assaulted living this life,” he said, adding that another study found that “if you were in this high risk world, it was literally safer for you to be on the ground in an active combat theater in Afghanistan than it was to be walking around in your own neighborhood.
“If somebody close to you has been shot, you and those around that victim are about 10 times more likely to be shot,” Kennedy said. This is what law enforcement calls the “cousin rule.”
Maritza Huipe holds a sign during a rally against gun violence outside the state Capitol, Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. | George Walker IV, Associated Press
For years, Kennedy said that traditional methods of reducing crime, such as law enforcement and prevention, have failed, though noting that their work is commendable. “The most powerful root cause of violence is violence. Something happens today. Something else happens in response to it tomorrow. Something happens in response to that the next day. … And the most effective thing we can do about violence prevention is something very immediate to make things safer.”
That means creating a certainty of consequences, using credible messengers and offering immediate, tangible help, not just long-term programs.
In this May 21, 2015, photo, former gang member and current Project VOYCE teacher and mentor Sir Martin talks with his students during a class Martin teaches at Manual High School, in Denver, Colo. Martin joined the nonprofit Project VOYCE, which stands for Voices of Youth Changing Education, when he was 16, a year after joining the Crips gang. | Brennan Linsley
If an offender continues to break the law, they need to understand that it is a guarantee that they will come under legal scrutiny, Kennedy explained — a strategy they used against gangs in Boston in the ’90s.
Law enforcement “essentially figured out a way to turn their (criminals’) chronic criminality against them. And they would literally go to these groups, talk to them face to face, and say, ‘We are making you a special project.’”
They would focus on one specific gang and threaten them with every level of legal repercussion possible:
“We can’t even do anything about all of your criminality, but you’re the most violent group in the city as we speak, and that means that until you stop being the most violent group in the city, we are going to take advantage of all of your criminality and make your life miserable. We will shut down your street drug markets. You won’t be able to drink beers or smoke joints in public. We’ll enforce your probation and parole conditions, which you’re mostly getting away with. We’ll tow your unregistered cars, we’ll stop you, and cite you for driving without a license. We’ll go to the DA and the U.S. attorney and get them to pay special attention to your open cases. We’ll bring the animal control people in, and we’ll take away your abused pitbulls.”
“It always works,” he said.
Kennedy stated that to prevent youth from adopting a gang lifestyle, community members who have served time for gang violence and turned their lives around, as well as families who have lost loved ones to gang violence, are the most effective persuaders.
They’re much more effective than a police officer or a prevention advocate would be, he noted.
Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, who leads the youth violence prevention group, said his main takeaway from Kennedy’s expert experience is that learning these strategies doesn’t necessarily inspire him to create more legislation. Instead, he aims to coordinate efforts with people and initiatives already working to solve the issue in Utah.
Family members, friends and community members gather for a vigil, Sept. 15, 2016, in Brentwood, N.Y., at a memorial near the scene where teens Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas were found dead. A member of the violent MS-13 street gang pleaded guilty Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, for his part in the murders of four people, including the two teenage girls who were attacked with a machete and baseball bats as they walked through their suburban Long Island neighborhood. | Mike Balsamo, Associated Press
