To Stop Crime, Hand Over Cash
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A police liaison officer told us this startling fact: An estimated 70 percent of shootings and homicides in Richmond in 2009 were caused by just 17 individuals, primarily African-American and Hispanic-American men between the ages of 16 and 25.
We employed street-savvy staff members, whom we called neighborhood change agents. Think of their work as a kinder version of stop-and-frisk, more like stop-and-blend with the profile subjects, to build healthy, consistent relationships with those most likely to shoot or be a victim of gunfire.
Once we’d identified the city’s potentially most lethal young men, we invited them to a meeting (the first was in 2010). Then came the big innovation of the Operation Peacemaker fellowship program. We offered those young men a partnership deal: We would pay them–yes, pay them–not to pull the trigger.
The deal we offered was this: If they kept their commitment to us for six months–attended meetings, stayed out of trouble, responded to our mentoring–they became eligible to earn up to $1,000 a month for a maximum of nine months. ...
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