CeaseFire

Andrew Layman:  PCB CEO

Dr Gary Slutkin is Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the University of Ilinois in the USA.   He is also a senior advisor to the World Health Organisation.   He has been in South Africa, however, as the founder of a programme known as CeaseFire, about which he has done presentations in several places, including Pietermaritzburg.    His programme, located in Chicago, is all about violence reduction, and specifically, the curtailment of fatal shootings.    An evaluation done over three years by the US Department of Justice, revealed that the decrease in shootings and killings in CeasaFire zones was between 41% and 73%.   In five of the eight neighbourhoods in which the programme was running, a 100% reduction in retaliation murders was achieved.   

A reader may wonder what epidemiology has to do with crime prevention.    As explained by Dr Slutkin, human behaviour exhibits the features of an epidemic.    It is contagious to the degree that people, largely sub-consciously, imitate the behaviour of others in the group or groups in which they belong.    Very common behaviour traits are identified in families, for example, as these get passed from one generation to another.     Our fashion trends are clear illustrations of this contagion, and in areas where circumstances are appropriate, violence becomes common currency.    This has happened in many parts of our own country, and elsewhere, and in the US, certain parts of Chicago and elsewhere had become notorious for gun violence.    Slutkin presented graphs to show how the pattern of violence in particular countries over time, was an unmistakable match to the pattern of certain epidemics.  The CeaseFire programme uses similar interventions to those that would be employed to deal with an epidemic.   The first step would be to identify and isolate the people most likely to infect others.    In order to achieve this, the programme employs violence interrupters who, because of their credibility ‘on the street’ are able to identify the people who, for one reason or another, might resort to shooting someone else.     The direct activities of these interventionists are supported by outreach workers whose task it is to change behaviour within communities; to substitute the spread of violence with the spread of positive community and social behaviours, such as education, for example.     Key to the success of the programme is employment of the right people, people who are able to identify closely with the community in which they serve to the extent that they are trusted and responded to in a constructive way.    They all undergo extensive and intensive training before embarking on their high risk missions.

I asked the question: who pays?    The answer is that funding comes from a variety of sources including welfare and charitable foundations and trusts, corporate entities and government agencies and departments.     The major funders listed on the website (www.ceasefirechicago.org) number twenty-six, of which eight are sources ranging from local to federal government. 

This is a programme that our country could do with.   Who would pay, I wonder?   In answer to my question, Dr Slutkin indicated that the cost of funding the programme was negligible by comparison to the cost of the killings and violence.   This makes absolute sense, of course.   But I don’t think that we are very good at evaluating cost.   We spend freely without much analysis of the value of the return, and we are not inclined to count cost unless it is clearly reflected in a statement of expenses.     There are many examples of this.   An accurate evaluation of the total cost of road accidents, for example, would surely show that it is worth spending a great deal more on preventative interventions.   Similarly, the long-term, but not itemised, costs of poor education and health services justify greater investment.      CeaseFire is an ideal project to be managed by a non-profit organisation, but as we know, these are inclined to struggle along with inadequate funding.     We don’t have a plethora of foundations as one finds in the US, while government seems singularly loathe to utilise, and pay for, the services of the NGO sector.           

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