Cure Violence Model Expansion - Interventions for Youth Victims of Gang Crime

The Supporting Victims of Gang Violence Grant Program provides funding for localities to increase the availability of direct support services for victims of gang-related violence and to develop or enhance the responses to children and youth exposed to gang-related violence in their homes, schools, and communities. This program is authorized by Pub. L. No. 116-6, 133 Stat. 13, 113.

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council will collaborate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Program to Interrupt Violence through Outreach and Treatment (PIVOT) at Grady Memorial Hospital, and the Atlanta Police Department to implement the Cure Violence model currently being piloted in Atlanta to youth who are victims of gang-related crime or who are at high risk of gang violence. The intervention proposed is a violence interruption model using credible messengers to intervene with youth one-on-one, connect them with wraparound services, and provide intensive case management. The goals are to help victims overcome trauma, prevent retaliation and re-victimization, and change the norms surrounding conflict individually and within the community. Specific objectives are to (1) improve the connection of victims to wraparound services to eliminate any factors that may contribute or lead to re-victimization or retaliatory violence; (2) change individual and community norms surrounding violence; (3) convene "town halls" with the Cure Violence project staff, PIVOT staff, service providers, and law enforcement to streamline service provision and referrals; (4) reduce youth victimization and re-victimization as a result of gang-related violence; and (5) reduce youth retaliatory violence following gang-related violence.

CA/NCF