jonetta rose barras: The unclear impact of violence interruption in DC

By jonetta rose barras On Jun 10, 2022 Last updated Jun 23, 2022

The Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (NEAR) Amendment Act, passed in 2016 by the DC Council, was supposed to provide a comprehensive public health approach to preventing crime in the District, with attention to victims and potential victims as well as perpetrators. However, a report released earlier this week by the Office of the DC Auditor makes clear that the impact of the ambitious, multifaceted legislation is, well, unclear.

The six-year-old law established the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE), which has chief responsibility for many of the initiatives — including the highly touted Pathways employment program. The separate Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants has implemented a hospital-based violence intervention program and provided financial assistance to businesses and homeowners to purchase and install security cameras on their properties. The Metropolitan Police Department, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Behavioral Health were required to form a Community Crime Prevention Team, designed to reduce crime and increase access to social services for people coping with mental illness, substance abuse or homelessness; a version of the initiative has been implemented, but it is not faithful to the legislative intent. The Office of Violence Prevention and Health Equity within DC Health was not implemented consistent with the law either.

Generally speaking, the implementation of programs or initiatives has been uneven and haphazard, as is made evident in the report. Moreover, data have been collected partially and inconsistently, complicating the ability to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the NEAR Act.

“One result of uneven implementation is that NEAR Act programs underemphasize primary prevention … and instead focus on secondary prevention,” auditors wrote in the nearly 100-page report titled, “NEAR Act Violence Prevention and Interruption Efforts: Opportunities to Strengthen New Program Models.”

In other words, auditors believe that the program doesn’t jump in before there is an adverse health impact. Rather, the ONSE initiatives often address the early stages or post-diagnosis. For example, individuals participating in Pathways generally already had some interaction with the criminal justice system. If it were primary health, the office would focus more on individuals who are at risk.

Consider this analogy: A person comes from a family where individuals have died from heart disease. Rather than wait for that person to show symptoms, a physician might prescribe a particular diet and exercise plan that is geared toward preventing conditions that might lead to heart disease.

The audit covers the life of the law and associated programs through mid-2021, a fact that drew complaints from Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Christopher Geldart. “We believe the initial target release date was prior to the end of Fiscal Year 2021,” he said in his written response to the findings within the report. “The scope was unexpectedly expanded through June 30, 2021, and the audit does not include any references to the extensive work done in the latter half of 2021 and thus far in 2022.”

He may want to call that a blessing. It’s doubtful that the general facts as presented in the report would have changed. Truth be told, it might have been far worse with even more unfavorable information provided by lead auditor Jason Juffras and his colleagues in their report.

“Progress toward the ultimate goal of the NEAR Act — to reduce the toll of violent crime on individuals, families and communities — cannot be demonstrated by existing evidence, which largely touches on program activities, outputs and intermediate outcomes,” the auditors added.

Despite increasing investment of local taxpayers’ money urged by the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety over the years, there has been no full-scale professional and scientific evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the various programs and initiatives, including Pathways and violence interrupters.

I raised that concern in previous reporting. In July 2020, a spokesperson for ONSE said that the agency had decided to forgo “costly or time-consuming program evaluations” as its programs were “still evolving and data was limited.” He said officials were working with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Government Excellence to help improve its “performance management“ and “data infrastructure,” among other things.

That was almost two years ago. The DC auditor’s report issued this week has revealed critical information that should concern elected officials and the public.

Consider Pathways, for example. It is considered the flagship program. Individuals ages 20 through 35 are provided classroom training, subsidized employment and, if necessary, assistance securing temporary housing. They may also receive every-other-week cash payments of up to $250, according to the audit.

Despite that significant support, 53 of the total 117 participants in the first five cohorts — that’s 45% — were engaged in criminal activity during or after their enrollment in Pathways. They were arrested a total of 103 times for such offenses as homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and other weapons violations, the audit noted.

“The good news is that the other half were not,” Auditor Kathy Patterson told me during a telephone interview earlier this week in which we discussed the bleak aspects of the report. She asserted, however, that this is enough to show “Pathways is reaching its target.” But there’s no data to demonstrate the full extent of its effectiveness: “In this kind of program you can’t prove what hasn’t happened.”

In a press statement released a day after our conversation, Patterson seemed to be holding onto a sliver of a silver lining: “The good news is that structures and services are in place that did not exist when the Council enacted this law.

“The challenge is to build on new program models, make them stronger, continue measuring, and keep improving,” Patterson added.

I understand her position. With violent crime on the rise and some residents afraid of even leaving their houses or driving their cars because of armed carjacking, no one in the city wants to abandon anything that may help reduce the problem, or with some massaging could yield positive results. Unfortunately, a strategy to dramatically improve existing programs and initiatives has yet to be presented.

Council members have repeatedly and substantially enhanced funding for the ONSE, however. It began in 2018 with a budget of $2.1 million. By FY 2022 that had jumped to $28.7 million.

Among other things, money has gone to hire more violence interrupters in more communities — perhaps too many areas, given the available staffing of 32 full- or part-time workers and 10 case managers. According to the audit, ONSE has them working in “22 priority communities” in wards 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. In many cases, they work half-time, so it works out to the equivalent of 21 full-time employees.

“In February 2021, eight priority communities were served only by a part-time VI [violence interrupter], four priority communities were served by a single full-time VI, and one priority community was served by a floater,” according to the report. That personnel pattern “concerned some anti-violence leaders and advisory neighborhood commissioners interviewed by ODCA.”

Auditors put it bluntly: Violence interrupters in ONSE are spread too thin.

Geldart didn’t disagree in his response. Interestingly, he noted the difference between the funding of violence interrupters through ONSE and those working through the Cure the Streets initiative supervised by the Office of the Attorney General. With 26 full-time interrupters working at six sites, the latter has a budget of about $4.7 million and spends an average of $777,000 per site, while the former has a budget of $3.9 million and spends $178,000 per site. ONSE has five fixed-price contracts with several community organizations to provide the interrupters.

Regrettably, the audit report doesn’t provide sufficient details about Cure the Streets and what has happened since it was launched. The public may be even more in the dark about it. Ensconced in the OAG, there has been minimal debate about its effectiveness or even which communities should be served. An online article by AG Karl Racine doesn’t satisfy the need for public input and review.

Despite the obvious problems with implementation of violent interrupters and the rest of the NEAR Act, Patterson has not advocated that the city ditch the whole thing and start fresh. “One of the things that concerns me is that politicians like to announce new things,” she told me, adding that, “There are some minuses and some pluses, too.”

Discerning exactly what they are is the task.

Geldart said that the administration “will continue to work with a data and research specialist to evaluate the current violence interrupter programs.” He also agreed with the auditor’s call for the merger of Cure the Streets’ and ONSE’s prevention programs. “The District’s violence interruption programs should all be under the purview of the mayor, although effectuating that recommendation is at the council’s discretion,” Geldart wrote in his response to the report.

What says the council?

Ward 5’s Kenyan McDuffie, who authored and ushered the law through the legislature, did not reply to my request for a comment. A spokesperson for Ward 6 member Charles Allen, who has oversight of ONSE and the attorney general as chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, said he wasn’t available and did not provide a written comment about the audit as I had requested.

Is the council more interested in talking about creating a public health approach to community violence than it is in actually ensuring effective programs are developed that produce measurable results? I have my suspicions.

jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.