Research Team
Project Overview
In partnership with the Philadelphia Office of Violence Prevention and the Urban Affairs Coalition, CJP researchers are evaluating the Philadelphia Group Violence Intervention (GVI), an evidence-based approach to reducing group-involved violence. GVI focuses on the small number of individuals whose group-involved violence is concentrated in hot spots. GVI targets outreach to high-risk individuals offering incentives for compliance and swift consequences for criminal activity. Besides this focused deterrence basis, GVI also emphasizes access to social services and community-level support.
The University of Pennsylvania research team is conducting a rigorous empirical evaluation of GVI in Philadelphia by answering the questions:
- What is the effect of the intervention on each street group where at least two or more group members on the roster were successfully contacted?
- What is the place-based effect of the intervention?
- What effect does GVI have on community perceptions of community health and law enforcement?
- For GVI participants who have successfully changed their behavioral patterns, what aspects of GVI did they perceive to be the most or least useful? What key factors do they identify as instrumental to changing behavioral patterns? Are these factors part of GVI? External to GVI?
