High Hopes - Addressing Urban Violence

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the 20th century German theologian, executed for opposing Adolph Hitler’s holocaust, said that the test of the morality of a society is how it treats its children. Recent media reports have been released indicating that with two weeks left before summer break, a record 36 Chicago Public Schools students have been murdered this school year, marking the third straight year that youth homicides have climbed into double digits. Chicago has surpassed New York City and Los Angeles for having the highest youth homicide rate in the nation.

The number of youths murdered in Chicago points to troubling trends across the nation regarding youth violence. Dexter Voisin, a researcher at the University of Chicago who studies the impact of violence on adolescents, points out that those with nonfatal injuries are almost 100 times that of homicide rates. Voisin said, "You think for about every one kid who is murdered, 100 kids witness the murder or are victims of nonfatal injuries, of robberies, muggings and gang-related incidents. A lot of times, this exposure goes undocumented or unreported."

Black youths, he said, are two times more likely than white youths to fail or drop out of school, and at the same time they are also eight to 10 times more likely to be victims of homicide than whites.

Against the backdrop of this death toll, there are those in Chicago seeking to turn around these trends and offer hope to troubled impoverished Chicago neighborhoods where gangs, drugs and guns are pervasive.

CeaseFire Chicago is one such program. CeaseFire is an evidence-based public health approach to reducing shootings and killings. Their methods for reversing the violence epidemic use highly trained street violence interrupters and outreach staff, public education campaigns and community mobilization. Against apparently overwhelming odds, CeaseFire is one of the techniques being used to turn around the trends of youth rising youth violence in Chicago and make neighborhoods safer. To learn more, go to http://www.ceasefirechicago.org/.