“The so-called Boston Miracle,” CYS, July 2010

OVERVIEW

Across the country, youth violence has been in decline since the epidemic of the early 1990s. For example, in Boston in 2009 there were 23 youth who were killed in the city, a far cry from the 73 who were killed in the peak of the violence in 1990. While Boston's improved situation has mirrored the improvements at the national level, some cities have seen no improvement at all, and even Boston's progress has been very unsteady. Therefore it would be instructive to consider Boston as a case study: to look at the particular tactics that developed within the city, what made those tactics effective and what their limitations were. Specifically, the so-called "Boston Miracle" refers to the years between 1997 and 2000 when there were less than 20 youth homicides per year. The crucial elements in the Boston Miracle were a change in the way that the police interacted with the public and the rise of community organizations that took an active role in violence prevention. The focus of the new approach was Operation Ceasefire, begun in 1996, when religious leaders, community groups, police and parole officers cooperated with the intent of preventing youth murders and youth arrests.

In the late 1980s, such cooperation would have been hard to imagine. Violence was becoming increasingly more common as gangs fought for control of the drug market, leading to the record-high tally of murders in 1990. Meanwhile, police had no experience dealing with gang conflicts, and even denied that there was a gang problem. In ignorance of the social and community-based nature of gang violence, the police responded with targeted crackdowns that searched and arrested large numbers of young people. While this tactic was moderately successful at disrupting gang activity--crime rates did in fact decline--it alienated the majority of the community and prevented the police from approaching the heart of the problem. In the early 1990s, the Police Department began to reform its policies and to change the way it related to the community. This reform entailed the removal of overly aggressive officers, the end of widespread searches, the focused disruption of the illegal firearms market and a department-wide intent of winning the community's trust.

One early return from this movement was a reorientation of the parole office called Operation Nightlight. Throughout the 1980s, parole officers largely stayed in their offices and made little efforts to enforce violations. Nightlight was a coordination between the parole office and the police's youth violence team: in 1992 the two groups began to patrol the streets together, communicating to youth that probation could not be ignored with impunity. As a team they entered homes (which police alone could not do without a warrant) where they could talk with youth and their parents. While this was an important step forward (and has since become a standard practice statewide), levels of youth violence remained high in the years after the program was started.

As the police began to reach out to the community, the community was reaching out to the police as well. The African-American religious establishment, which had previously been fragmented and gave no special attention to the issue of youth violence, was propelled into urgent action by an unprecedented gang melee and stabbing in a church sanctuary—during a funeral for a teenager who had been shot and killed (Morningstar Baptist Church, 1992). The service was for a gang member who had been killed in a drive-by shooting, and the opposing gang entered the building. This unprecedented (in our experience) intrusion and the melee over church pews created chaos among the crowded mourners shocking the city and its churches. The city’s African-American clergy's response was to unite into a coalition to strategize and do whatever could possibly be done to prevent future violence—even if it meant working closely with the police. Taking their name from the number of principles in their manifesto, the group called themselves the TenPoint Coalition.

The ministers found themselves on a well-trodden path. A group of academic theorists from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government had recently approached the Police Department with a new community-oriented policing model to respond to the changing nature of urban violence. The police were interested, and TenPoint became one of their primary liaisons to the community. The program was called Operation Ceasefire, and it involved the cooperation of police institutions, parole officers, State and Federal justice agencies, academics, youth workers and ministers.

During this crisis of the early 1990s, coinciding with the increase of “crack cocaine violence,” a little heralded initiative of youth themselves is often missed. It began with friendships and conversations among urban and suburban youth ministers who thought it a good idea to get their youth groups together. Their “coming together” sparked interest among teenagers of Christian faith to share their stories, to support one another, and take action in the city. The spontaneous result for a few years was a dynamic, youth-led collaboration called “Coming Together.” Politicians, educational leaders, and Irving Fryer, star player for the New England Patriots, who had been converted from drugs and trouble, came to speak to their rallies which in some cases were covered by Boston media. Their events brought up to two thousand youth together; major speaking slots and workshops were covered by high school students themselves. This, surely, was part of the “Boston Miracle.”

Community members often see youth violence as the community's own personal problem, feeling that the police are meddling outsiders who will only make the situation worse. The police, in turn, have often responded to their lack of legitimacy by pursuing harsher tactics, which serves to confirm the community's suspicions. The goal of Operation Ceasefire was to unite these two parties around their common interest in preventing violence. Community groups like TenPoint would use their influence as respected figures in the community to give the police some degree of legitimacy, recognizing that some youth were dangerous enough to require discipline from an outside source. The police, in turn, would hold up their end of the bargain by using more community-friendly tactics, recognizing that only a very small number of youth are behind most of the violence, and treating the rest of the community with respect. The community would apply its own services and solutions to high-risk and violent youth with less threat of police interference, but in cases that were hopeless or beyond anyone's control the community could provide the on-the-ground information that the police needed to make an arrest.

All of these groups then took the same bargain to the youth themselves. In settings from parole meetings to informal conversations to formally-arranged gang forums the same offer was given: that nonviolent crime would be handled normally by the police department, but that violent crime (and especially gun violence) would be met with a particularly swift and certain response. Community agencies like TenPoint offered support services for high-risk youth: everything from summer jobs to drug treatment to formally mediated gang truces. They strove to make it clear to youth that anyone who was willing to abandon violence would have every opportunity to do so, and would even be free from the meddling of the police, but that those who were unwilling would have to face the combined power of police and community.

From the police's perspective, Operation Ceasefire was a way to concentrate their resources. The justice system lacks the manpower and funding to prosecute every infraction and to pursue every lead: studies have found that one of the most consistently effective ways to reduce crime is to put more cops on the street. Operation Ceasefire began by targeting a particularly violent gang conflict. Every possible sanction was imposed on the youth involved, and federal-level punishments were threatened. The goal was to prevent violence, rather than to make arrests and prosecutions: if the youth gave up their conflict then the battle was won. If the threats and sanctions were not enough to convince them then arrests would follow, as when 23 members of the Intervale Posse were arrested in 1996. The hope was that the threat of such action would be enough to deter other gangs from violent behavior.

In the short-term, Operation Ceasefire was very successful: in the four years (1996-2000) after the program was started the number of youth homicides (13-24) in Boston was cut in half. In fact, in the two-year period (1996-1997) there were no teenage homicides. This was the Boston Miracle. Many sides have taken credit for this amazing achievement—depending on whether you are talking to police and probation, politicians, streetworkers and youth organizations, or valiant black pastors who had taken to the streets and Organized TenPoint Coalition.

A long-term solution would prove more difficult. While Operation Ceasefire's social contract sounds tidy in theory, in practice it led to a constant political struggle between community leaders, police and youth. Youth continued to elude the control of both police and community, and the police consistently urged harsher responses than the community was willing to accept. Meanwhile, both the community leaders and the police began to lose focus. The religious leaders of TenPoint began traveling the country to encourage wider adoption of their program's model, while back in Boston the organization itself was losing effectiveness. The Police Department, in turn, was distracted by scandals, national security concerns and partisan infighting. When youth violence began to rise in the early years of the 2000s, the police responded with broad crackdowns leading to countless arrests for minor charges but doing little to disrupt gangs. Additionally, much of the new wave of violence took place within the Cape Verdean community, a mostly Catholic enclave where Tenpoint's Protestant ministers held little sway. Surveys show that during this period the public became more concerned about crime and less confident in the police's competence. In 2005 and 2006, youth homicide rates climbed back up to 40 per year.

In 2006, both police and community began to refocus. A new police commissioner was appointed, who led the Department in renewing their commitment to community cooperation, reinstituting the policies of the late 1990s. TenPoint, in turn, began to realize their mistakes and to return to the practices that made them successful in the first place. The results have begun to look promising: in 2008 there were 32 youth homicides, and in 2009 there were 23. At time of writing, 2010 is on pace for 32 youth homicides, though the rest of the year is yet to play out.

Further analysis, particularly from those who were key, active participants in the Boston Miracle—and witnessed its unraveling—needs to be written and studies. Pastors such as the Rev’ds. Bruce Wall, Eugene Rivers, Ray Hammond, John Borders, Miniard Culpepper, and others need to lauded… and heard.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What do you think of this article? From what you know, does it seem to be a fair depiction of the events of this period? Why or why not? 

2. If the above is true, what valid principles does it suggest for responding to urban youth violence?

3. How is the undoing of the Boston Miracle to be explained? Who can help us do so?

4. How hard do you think it would be to replicate Operation Ceasefire's results in another city? What factors would be needed to ensure that such an attempt would be successful?

IMPLICATIONS

1. Effective youth violence prevention requires strong police-community trust and cooperation as well as effective policing tactics.

2. Police cannot do this alone. Negative constraints of youth violence are needed, but a positive reversal of a youthful culture of violence through positive development programs are more long-term effective.

3. Successful interventions must be carefully maintained in the long run so that their results do not wear off.

SOURCES

Winship, Christopher and Jenny Berrien. (1999) "Boston Cops and Black Churches." Public Interest, 52-68.

Braga, Anthony A, David Hureau and Christopher Winship. (2008) "Losing Faith? Police, Black Churches, and the Resurgence of Youth Violence in Boston." Ohio State Law Journal, 141-172.

Braga, Anthony A., and Christopher Winship. "Creating an Effective Foundation to Prevent Youth Violence: Lessons Learned from Boston in the 1990s." Rappaport Institute Policy Brief PB-2005-5 (September 26, 2005)

Braga, Anthony A., David M. Kennedy, Anne M. Piehl and Elin J. Waring. "Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project’s Operation Ceasefire" National Institute of Justice, September 2001.

Braga, Anthony A., and Christopher Winship. "Partnership, accountability and innovation: clarifying Boston's experience with pulling levers," in Police Innovations: Contrasting Perspectives. Weisburd, David and Anthony A. Braga, eds. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Peter Bass (with Dean Borgman) cCYS