Title: The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders. Series: Research in Progress Preview Author: Jeffrey Roth Published: National Institute of Justice, November 1998 Subject: Gun violence, juvenile violence 11 pages 17,000 bytes ------------------------------ Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS at 800-851-3420 (877-712-9279 for TTY users). ------------------------------ U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice Jeremy Travis, Director Research Preview Research in Progress Seminar Series November 1998 ------------------------------ The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders Summary of a Presentation by Jeffrey Roth, The Urban Institute Concern about the proliferation of handguns among young black men led Judge Willie G. Lipscomb, Jr., of Detroit to launch a program designed to change attitudes and behavior in the hope of preventing gun violence. In the Handgun Intervention Program (HIP), offenders who had been arrested for carrying concealed weapons were required, as a condition of pretrial release, to attend a class in which they would learn the negative consequences of gun use and be challenged to take personal responsibility for reducing those consequences. Begun in 1993, HIP has had upwards of 6,000 participants, more than 90 percent of whom were African-Americans. In an NIJ-sponsored study, researchers from The Urban Institute found that, as a result of HIP, attitudes toward gun use improved significantly in the short run. However, many participants questioned whether their behavior would change because they felt the dangers of the street required them to carry a gun. Program elements The rationale behind HIP is that attitudinal and behavioral changes might prevent the young men who have been carrying weapons from carrying them or actually using them. Thus, the program is designed to underscore the consequences of weapons use. It attempts to awaken the participants to issues of personal choice, individual responsibility, and the role of nonviolence in African-American history. The 4-hour Saturday classes, which are held in a courtroom, consist of the following components: --Slide presentation of gun murder victims, designed to make the threat real and personal. The message is that the class participants could also be killed in this way. --Information packet of facts about handguns and discussion of handguns. --Peer presentations by older felons. The participants hear, from men not much older than themselves, about the dangers of handgun use, how to avoid violent situations, and similar topics. --Socratic dialog led by Judge Lipscomb. Three topics in particular are presented as subjects for debate or discussion: the heritage and responsibilities of African-Americans, the responsibility for being a role model for younger men, and the special burdens of gun violence on the African-American community. --Optional vow of nonviolence. On average, 80 to 90 percent of the group agree to take this vow, which pledges them not to initiate violence. Measures of change The evaluation measured changes in seven categories of gun-related attitudes and knowledge: --Risks vs. benefits of carrying a handgun: Are people in dangerous situations safer if they carry a weapon? --Alleged inevitability of gun violence: Can gun violence be prevented? --Ethics of the situation: Is it acceptable, for example, to seek revenge with a gun? --Status: Does carrying a gun increase a person's status in the community? --Personal responsibility: Are people accountable for their own life and for violence in their neighborhood? --Situational avoidance of violence: How can various threatening situations be handled without a gun? --Knowledge: Do participants know such facts as blacks' high rate of homicide victimization? Methodology The sample consisted of 446 people, divided about equally into a test group that attended the class and a control group that did not. The mean age of both groups was 26, and both were the same in employment status and other demographic characteristics. Both groups were reportedly at high risk for violence: 75 percent reported that at some point in their lives they had been shot at; 80 percent said that friends or family members had been killed by guns. Attitudes were measured twice for the entire sample. The initial measurement was taken in lockup just before arraignment. The second was conducted 12-14 days later just before the second court appearance. The test group was assigned to attend HIP on one of the Saturdays between the two appearances. Researchers were unable to obtain a statistically valid sample for a third measurement 6 months later. Early effects of the program The attitudes of the HIP group improved on nearly all measures of each of the seven concepts: Risks vs. benefits: Between the first and second measurements, the HIP group registered increasingly less belief that possessing a gun put one in control of a threatening situation. An even larger percentage came to feel that carrying a gun was not worth the risk of arrest. Inevitability of gun violence: The percentage who believed the axiom, "Sometimes you just can't avoid a gun fight," decreased between the two measurements. Ethics: The percentage attending HIP who believed it was acceptable to use a gun in various circumstances declined, and the percentage who believed that nonviolence historically has improved black peoples' lives increased. Status: The proportion who believed guns improved one's standing decreased. Personal Responsibility: Reactions were mixed, depending on the particular subissue, although for the most part the shift in attitudes was positive. Situational avoidance: Among HIP attendees, there was a shift toward the beliefs that if you need a gun for some activity, you are better off staying home and that if you need a gun to fit in with your friends, it might be better to make different friends. Knowledge: For HIP attendees, there were large increases in the percentages who correctly answered three questions about gun homicide risks. In the short term (first two stages of testing), attitudes toward the negative consequences of gun violence improved significantly. Long-term results were available only for defendants diverted from adjudication--a small, nonrepresentative subsample. No statistically valid conclusions could be reached about the third stage of testing 6 months after the class. Attitudinal vs. behavioral change Preliminary analyses indicate that despite HIP's positive effects on attitudes, effects on behavior were small at best. This is not surprising in view of the outcome of focus groups held among the participants immediately after the class to obtain feedback about the program. A few participants felt the program was a useless exercise. Others reported that they were very optimistic about the program's effectiveness, although the researchers felt these individuals may not have fully understood Detroit street life and may have been expressing hopes, not beliefs. The vast majority of focus group participants, about 80 percent, although skeptical about the program, nevertheless felt they had benefited from it and might think differently as a result. But they did not anticipate changes in behavior, because they felt that carrying a gun was still necessary since the streets were dangerous. The findings suggest that the Handgun Intervention Program changes attitudes but that it may be difficult to maintain the attitude changes over the long run and convert them into behavioral changes. If fear of the streets expressed by focus group participants is any indication, conditions in the community militate against substantive behavioral change, even if favorable attitudes do not dissipate over the long term. To better understand these conditions and their relationship to attitudes and behavior, the researchers are studying patterns of recidivism (for example, the percentage of people rearrested on gun charges), as well as individual and neighborhood characteristics, to uncover their connections. This phase of the study is nearing completion. ------------------------------ This document is based on Dr. Jeffrey Roth's presentation to researchers and criminal justice practitioners as part of NIJ's Research in Progress seminar series. His study was sponsored by NIJ (grant number 95-IJ-CX-0106). Dr. Roth is Director of Crime Control Policy Studies at The Urban Institute. A 60-minute VHS videotape of the seminar, The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders, is available for $19 ($24 in Canada and other countries). Ask for NCJ 171126. Use the order form on the next page to obtain this videotape and any of the other tapes in the series. ------------------------------ Findings and opinions in this document do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. ------------------------------ FS 000231 ------------------------------ The Latest Criminal Justice Videotape Series from NIJ: Research in Progress Seminars Learn about the latest developments in criminal justice research from prominent criminal justice experts. Each 60-minute tape presents a well-known scholar discussing his or her current studies and how they relate to existing criminal justice research and includes the lecturer's responses to audience questions. In addition to The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders, reported on in this Research Preview, the other tapes available in VHS format are: NCJ 152235--Alfred Blumstein, Ph.D., Professor, Carnegie Mellon University: Youth Violence, Guns, and Illicit Drug Markets. NCJ 152236--Peter W. Greenwood, Ph.D., Director, Criminal Justice Research Program, The RAND Corporation: Three Strikes, You're Out: Benefits and Costs of California's New Mandatory-Sentencing Law. NCJ 152237--Christian Pfeiffer, Ph.D., Director, Kriminologisches Forschungs-institut Niedersachsen: Sentencing Policy and Crime Rates in Reunified Germany. NCJ 152238--Arthur L. Kellermann, M.D., M.P.H., Director, Center for Injury Control, and Associate Professor, Emory University: Understanding and Preventing Violence: A Public Health Perspective. NCJ 152692--James Inciardi, Ph.D., Director, Drug and Alcohol Center, University of Delaware: A Corrections-Based Continuum of Effective Drug Abuse Treatment. NCJ 153271--Marvin Wolfgang, Ph.D., Director, Legal Studies and Criminology, University of Pennsylvania: Crime in a Birth Cohort: A Replication in the People's Republic of China. NCJ 153272--Cathy Spatz Widom, Ph.D., Professor, State University of New York-Albany: The Cycle of Violence Revisited Six Years Later. NCJ 153273--Wesley Skogan, Ph.D., Professor, Northwestern University: Community Policing in Chicago: Fact or Fiction? NCJ 153730--Lawrence W. Sherman, Ph.D., Professor, University of Maryland: Reducing Gun Violence: Community Policing Against Gun Crime. NCJ 153850--Scott H. Decker, Ph.D., Professor, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Susan Pennell, San Diego Association of Governments: Monitoring the Illegal Firearms Market. NCJ 154277--Terrie Moffitt, Ph.D., Professor, University of Wisconsin: Partner Violence Among Young Adults. NCJ 156923--Orlando Rodriguez, Ph.D., Director, Hispanic Research Center, Fordham University: The New Immigrant Hispanic Populations: Implications for Crime and Delinquency in the Next Decade. NCJ 156924--Robert Sampson, Ph.D., Professor, University of Chicago: Communities and Crime: A Study in Chicago. NCJ 156925--John Monahan, Ph.D., Professor, University of Virginia: Mental Illness and Violent Crime. NCJ 157643--Benjamin E. Saunders, Ph.D., and Dean G. Kilpatrick, Ph.D., Medical University of South Carolina: Prevalence and Consequences of Child Victimization: Preliminary Results From the National Survey of Adolescents. NCJ 159739--Joel H. 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NCJ 163058--Eric Wish, Ph.D., Director, Center for Substance Abuse Research, University of Maryland, Dependence and Drug Treatment Needs Among Adult Arrestees. NCJ 163059--Jeffrey Fagan, Ph.D., Professor, Columbia University, Adolescent Violence: A View From the Street. NCJ 163921--Patricia Tjaden, Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Center for Policy Research: The Crime of Stalking: How Big Is the Problem? NCJ 164262--Andrew Golub, Ph.D., Principal Research Associate, National Development and Research Institutes, Inc.: Crack's Decline: Some Surprises Across U.S. Cities. NCJ 164725--Ronald Huff, Ph.D., Professor, Ohio State University: Criminal Behavior of Gang Members. NCJ 164726--James Austin, Ph.D., Executive Vice-President, National Council on Crime and Delinquency: Sentencing Guidelines: A State Perspective. NCJ 165585--Garen Wintemute, M.D., Director, Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California-Davis: Predicting Criminal Behavior Among Authorized Purchasers of Handguns. NCJ 167027--Lorraine Green Mazerolle, Ph.D., Director, Center for Criminal Justice Research, University of Cincinnati: Using Gunshot Detection Technology in High-Crime Areas. NCJ 167028--Stephen Mastrofski, Ph.D.; Roger B. Parks, Ph.D.; Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Ph.D.; Robert E. Worden, Ph.D.: Community Policing in Action: Lessons From an Observational Study. NCJ 167029--Christian Pfeiffer, Ph.D., Director, Kriminologisches Forschungs-institut Niedersachsen: Trends in Juvenile Violence in European Countries. NCJ 167882--Dennis Kenney, Ph.D., Research Director, Police Executive Research Forum: Crime in the Schools: A Problem-Solving Approach. NCJ 168626--Pamela Lattimore, Ph.D., and Kevin Jack Riley, Ph.D., National Institute of Justice: Homicide in Eight Cities: Trends, Contexts, and Responses. NCJ 169597--Adele Harrell, Ph.D.; Urban Institute: Drug Courts and the Role of Graduated Sanctions. NCJ 170033--David Altschuler, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University: Reintegrating Juvenile Offenders Into the Community: OJJDP's Intensive Community-Based Aftercare Demonstration Program. NCJ 170603--Felton Earls, M.D., Harvard School of Public Health: Linking Community Factors and Individual Development: Progress in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. NCJ 171156--Todd Clear, Ph.D., Florida State University, and Dina Rose, Ph.D., State University of New York: When Neighbors Go to Jail: Impact on Attitudes About Formal and Informal Social Control. NCJ 172853--Alfred Blumstein, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, and Allen Beck, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics: The Growth of Incarceration in the U.S.: Where Are All the Prisoners Coming From?