ST. LOUIS 鈥 Programs aimed at breaking up violence in the city鈥檚 toughest neighborhoods before police get involved will continue for another year despite lingering questions about effectiveness.
The Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which includes Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, Aldermanic President Megan Green, and Comptroller Darlene Green, approved a $1.9 million contract with Mission 狐狸视频 this week to cover expenses over the next year.
The contract builds on work that began four years ago, when officials budgeted $7 million for programming pioneered by Chicago-based nonprofit Cure Violence, which professes to fight crime like a kind of disease.
The approach calls for training people from areas affected by violence to mediate conflicts, discourage retaliatory shootings and gradually work to change the culture in their communities. Officials in 狐狸视频, reeling from another violent summer, hoped it might help cut into a homicide rate that had regularly ranked among the highest of in the country.
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In 2020, the city hired the nonprofit Employment Connection and the Urban League of Metropolitan 狐狸视频 to make the programs reality in the Hamilton Heights, Wells Goodfellow and Walnut Park neighborhoods on the North Side, and in the Dutchtown area on the South Side.
Homicides dropped in those areas in the first year of operations, and officials cheered that as progress.
But an analysis by Rick Rosenfeld, the longtime criminologist at the University of Missouri-狐狸视频, called those results into question. Using crime reports from the police, he found that the decline in homicides and gun assaults in neighborhoods getting the Cure Violence treatment wasn鈥檛 much different from that seen in areas with similar demographics, but without the program.
At a press conference Thursday, Wilford Pinkney, who oversees the city鈥檚 portfolio of alternative crimefighting programs, said he was not familiar with Rosenfeld鈥檚 analysis. He said Washington University performed a similar study, and that the city has received some results. He declined to comment on the study further before it is released publicly.
Pinkney also warned that the effectiveness of violence interruption programs can be hard to truly quantify. Deterring a single shooting is a success, he said.
City data indicate the program had interrupted nearly 400 disputes over its lifespan through June, and resolved roughly 60% of them. 鈥淚nterruptors,鈥 as they are called, also conditionally resolved about 20% of them, meaning they brokered an agreement between parties that, if followed, would resolve the conflict.
Pinkney also addressed the change in contractors, from Employment Connection and the Urban League to Mission 狐狸视频. He said Mission 狐狸视频鈥 proposal stood out for its focus on taking care of the program鈥檚 employees, including by raising pay and offering help getting other jobs.