DOJ and APRI Target Gun Violence

By Steve Dillingham, APRI Chief Administrator

APRI’s Research Office and Community Prosecution Program have embarked upon a host of new community prosecution initiatives, and, most importantly, research and training activities focusing on gun violence. In recent weeks, APRI staff has met with numerous officials of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to learn more about federal experience and perspectives in targeting gun violence. Meetings and data collection efforts are underway with national law enforcement organizations, local prosecutors and government officials and community participants. The issue of gun violence is clearly a priority of the Congress and the Bush Administration. Attorney General John Ashcroft has identified combating gun violence as one of three DOJ top priorities, and has assembled a group of advisors to assist him in planning and administering an effective approach.

APRI has learned that DOJ will be devoting more resources for U.S. attorneys to prosecute federal gun law violations. A related initiative will also provide new federal monies for local prosecutors. Just as the 106th Congress came to a close, it appropriated $100 million for local community prosecution grants: $25 million for general community prosecution, and $75 million for community gun violence prosecutions. DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) will formally announce and solicit applications for funding up to a total of 600 state and local community gun prosecutors across the country. Jurisdictions will be eligible to request funds for hiring one to four prosecutors to handle firearms related offenses, particularly offenses where the offender is a convicted felon, on probation or parole, or possesses a firearm during the commission of a drug or gang-related crime. Current plans call for recipients to receive $40,000 per year for three years for each new prosecutor. Solicitations and applications will be conducted electronically through the BJA website at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/.

“Project Exile” is the federal-state-local gun violence initiative that has recently received wide attention and is being studied and replicated. It began in 1997, in Richmond, Virginia. Initiated primarily as a federal effort, it soon gained support and assistance from local police, prosecutors and community organizations. The program utilizes stiff sentences and bond rules, and targets three groups: felons with guns, gun/drug cases and gun/domestic violence cases. A major component of the program is an outreach/education effort to reach communities and criminals. A clear message is used to deter gun violence: “an illegal gun gets you five years in prison.” Local news media, advertisements on billboards and city buses and community outreach in schools, businesses and faith-based organizations will be used to communicate the messages. Project Exile participants report that concise, consistent and widely recognized messages have proven effective.

Available measures of Project Exile indicate astonishing success. When the program first began in 1997, Richmond had the second highest murder rate in the nation—reporting 140 murders, 122 murdered with firearms. By 1999, the number of murders had declined to 72, with a similar drop in armed robberies.1 Two economists recently estimated the project’s benefits in reducing violence in Richmond as totaling from $150 million to $240 million.2 While the precise impact on crime in Richmond remains uncertain, there is convincing evidence that lives have been saved and injuries prevented—and at reasonable cost. Based upon reported successes in Richmond, other cities and states are moving to adopt similar initiatives. For example, cities pursuing such initiatives now include: Rochester, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Oakland, CA; Birmingham, AL; Baton Rouge, LA; and Camden, NJ. Similar efforts are underway in more than a dozen cities participating in the “Safe City” initiative involving BATF. Also, efforts that began in Ft. Worth, Texas, have been expanded to include the entire state, similar to Virginia’s efforts to expand Project Exile statewide.

APRI Board Member and Baltimore City, MD, State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy instituted a successful Community Gun Prosecution initiative several years ago to deal with convicted violent felons who are subsequently arrested for firearms possession. Her program, entitled “Automatic Five Campaign,” requires that all such offenders in Baltimore City receive the mandatory five-year minimum sentence called for under Maryland law. She reports that this program has been an extremely successful crime prevention tool by preventing violent felons from committing yet another crime of violence with a gun.

In view of the national interest in identifying and replicating community successes in prosecuting and reducing gun violence, APRI is expediting its efforts to identify what works and to assist local prosecutors across America by delivering state-of-the-art training and technical assistance. There are a number of reasons to believe that APRI can be a key contributor to this national effort:

• APRI, as an affiliate of the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA), is uniquely positioned to work closely with the nation’s estimated 2500 local prosecutor offices with potential interests in this initiative.
• APRI has more than a decade of leadership and proven results in community prosecution training and technical assistance, including regularly training prosecutors at the National Advocacy Center and across the nation on this topic.
• APRI has a widely respected Office of Research that has been actively engaged in the study of community prosecution, and is now studying gun violence prosecution initiatives that include Project Exile.
• APRI has completed a survey of community prosecution practices, is planning a national census on the topic, and has assisted the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in its national survey and census of local prosecutors’ offices.
• APRI is developing an interdisciplinary course in community prosecution that includes a gun violence prosecution component.
• APRI understands the effectiveness of combined community policing and prosecution activities, and is actively engaged in furthering such partnerships.

In summary, APRI is excited about a national program to combat violence by implementing effective community prosecution programs that utilize federal-state-local partnerships, innovations and proven practices. This program offers tremendous promise by coupling increased resources to local and federal prosecutors with effective training, technical assistance and research. For APRI, these services are Job One!

For more information, contact Michael Kuykendall, Community Prosecution Program Manager and Senior Attorney, or Elaine Nugent, Director of Research, APRI.

1 Project Exile Report, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division, October 1, 2000.

2 Gun Violence: The Real Costs, Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Oxford University Press, 2000.