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Sen. Durbin Instrumental in Funding Project Ceasefire

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Mon Nov 08, 2004 at 11:37:18 AM EST
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Bump and Update: We just learned that Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), soon to be the Democratic miniority whip, was instrumental in appropriating $950,000 for Project Ceasefire.

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Original Post: 11/7 10:30 am

Chicago's homicide rate is down. Many in law enforcement, as well as civic leaders and criminologists, attribute it to Project Ceasefire.

Violence, like alcoholism or drug abuse, has become a disease in Chicago, a disease that has taken on epidemic proportions. This group of more than a dozen former thugs and gang members prepared to become outreach workers in an aggressive campaign aimed at reining in street violence the same way public health groups have gone after AIDS and tuberculosis.

"To tell people they need to let the street life go, you have to have let it go yourself," Tio Hardiman, the program's community coordinator, told the trainees. "We're trying to change the way people think. What we're trying to say is it's abnormal to shoot someone. There's nothing normal about that."

Project CeaseFire is in nine of Chicago's police districts. The homicide rate in these districts dropped 28 percent this year. In districts without the project's presence, homicides are down 20 percent.

The job of the police is to catch people once they've crossed the line," said Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist and director of CeaseFire. "Our job is to keep them from crossing that line in the first place."

Here's how Project CeaseFire began:

Launched by the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago, CeaseFire hires outreach workers, many of them ex-convicts and reformed gang members, to canvass violent neighborhoods and talk directly to high-risk individuals. Their goal is to alter the mind-set that violence is an appropriate behavior and offer alternatives, from GED programs and drug counseling to steady jobs. CeaseFire workers--who get paid an average of $27,000 a year--also directly intervene in street conflicts and mediate tense gang situations where lives are on the line.

Part of the success of the project may be due to increased funding.

The state increased the program's funding from under $1 million last year to about $5 million this year. There are now 70 outreach workers, up from 20 last year, and CeaseFire has a presence in 12 different Chicago-area communities and four other cities across the state.

There's a lot more in this article, we recommend reading all of it. Could it work in South Central LA? Would it be better than "broken windows" policing? Maybe they should give it a try.

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