Happy New Year Crime and Murder

Today's Post editorializes about the need to deal with "Losing Youths to Homicide." (Also see the story in today's paper, "Rise in Young Killers Vexes D.C.")

The subhead of the editorial is:

A comprehensive approach is needed to a crime trend that resists solutions.

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This is so frustrating. Of course that's what's needed. Why is it that DC continues to ignore the best practice example on how to deal with this: Boston!?

Boston's Operation Ceasefire was an effort (described in the article "Straight Outta Boston" from Mother Jones Magazine, but written up in many many places over the years) to interdict youth violence with a multi-pronged approach of dealing with gangs, guns, and with far closer supervision of criminals after release. See this case study "Boston Strategy To Prevent Youth Violence -- Boston, MA" from the National Institute of Justice, for more information.

Operation Ceasefire seems to be a much broader approach than DC's easier and looser focus on rehabilitation with mimimal structure. See "Teen Offenders Spared the Rod" from the Post. Post columnist Colbert King has written many many aggravated columns over the past couple years about what he sees as the failures of this approach. (E.g., "Rehabilitation. Just a Bygone Word?")

It is heartening that DC is using the somewhat counter-intuitive model of shifting the service of homelessness from temporary shelter to permanent housing combined with wraparound services, because it is more cost-effective and successful from the human services standpoint. See "million-dollar murray" by Malcolm Gladwell from the New Yorker, about why it is best to shift to the permanent housing model, even if it seems to reward negative behavior.

Instead of giving lots of money to favored DC nonprofit organizations, why not develop a truly integrated and comprehensive approach to reducing youth crime in substantive ways, comparable to the "Boston Miracle" and comparable to how DC is now addressing homelessness?