As Gun Deaths Surge, Researchers Focus on Experiences of Community Violence Interventionists

Landmark study reveals extreme levels of exposure to violence, risk of being shot for street outreach workers

Newswise — EVANSTON, Ill. — Sixty percent of violence intervention workers in Chicago have witnessed a shooting attempt, 32 percent have witnessed someone else get shot while at work, 20 percent have been shot at while at work, and another 2 percent have been shot and injured on the job.

These are among the sobering findings of the Violence Intervention Worker Study (VIeWS), a landmark study conducted by the University at Albany and Northwestern University. Led by sociologists David Hureau of UAlbany and Andrew Papachristos of Northwestern, the study is the first to provide a comprehensive look at the lives and working conditions of these essential workers who play a pivotal role in violence prevention.

With gun-related homicides in the U.S. at the highest level in 25 years, Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs are being widely discussed at the federal and local levels as a key strategy for curbing gun violence. However, until now, almost nothing was known about those individuals carrying out the lifesaving work of CVI, also known as street outreach workers.

For the study, the research team surveyed nearly the entire street outreach workforce in Chicago, reaching 181 individuals from 15 organizations — a 93 percent response rate. Results indicate that 80 percent of CVI workers arrived at a scene of violence before traditional first responders, such as police and emergency medical technicians. Unlike traditional first responders, these workers not only respond to acute violence, but maintain a presence in its aftermath, helping affected parties cope and managing the threat of retaliation and additional violence.

“For many good reasons, this is a moment when policymakers are making significant investments in street outreach,” said Hureau, executive director of the Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center and assistant professor at UAlbany’s School of Criminal Justice. “Our results suggest that a meaningful portion of this investment should be dedicated to supporting the safety, health and well-being of the people who perform this important community work — not just scaling up the practice as it currently exists.”

This summer, Hureau will lead the next phase of the study, expanding the research to Albany and other New York communities.

UAlbany’s Theodore Wilson, an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice, and PhD student Hilary Jackl were also involved in the Chicago research.

The study was co-designed and facilitated with longtime violence interventionists and CVI leaders Jalon Arthur, director of strategic initiatives at Chicago CRED, and Christopher Patterson, assistant secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services Office of Firearm Violence Prevention.

Among the findings:

The average violence interventionist is typically a Black or Latino male in his early 40s, with a high school diploma or GED
More than 80 percent work full time in violence intervention
Workers regularly confront scenes of gun violence, injury and death
Nearly 12 percent were personally shot at in the past year during the course of their professional duties

“Understanding and supporting this vital workforce is essential in building community-based responses to violence. Outreach staff are, literally, putting their own lives on the line without any of the resources to cope and manage the exposure to violence and stress we are seeing in this study,” said Papachristos, a professor of sociology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of the Arts and Sciences, a faculty fellow with the university’s Institute for Policy Research and faculty director of the Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3), which coordinated research for the study.

Hureau is the lead author of two papers stemming from the project, focusing on exposure to violence and traumatic stress among CVI workers, which are under review at leading scientific journals. You can view a working paper, or read a summary of the VIeWS study online.

Next Steps

In partnership with the New York State Youth Justice Institute, based at UAlbany, Hureau will lead the roll out of VIeWS surveys in New York to 12 state-supported SNUG Street Outreach programs this summer.

Funded by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) and state Office of Victim Services, SNUG provides street outreach, hospital response, case management and social work services to communities with high rates of gun violence, with programs in Albany, the Bronx, Buffalo, Hempstead, Mt. Vernon, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Syracuse, Troy, Wyandanch and Yonkers.

The project is being partially funded by a grant from the DCJS Research Consortium with additional support from the YJI. DCJS and the YJI will use the survey results to better understand the experiences of street outreach workers and support their work.

Follow up surveys of Chicago’s street outreach workers are planned for 2022. The Chicago research was partially supported by a grant made to Northwestern University by Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.

Source: University at Albany, State University of New York