Browsing by Subject "gun violence"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    An Ethnographic Study of Black Teenagers, Gun Violence, and the Youth Control Complex in Indianapolis
    (2025-05) Luthe, Allison Leigh; Tucker Edmonds, Joseph; Hyatt, Susan; Silva, Lahny; Vogt, Wendy
    The violent gun-related death of teenager David Lowery in 2020, alongside troubling statistical trends, catalyzed this research on teen gun violence in Indianapolis. While Black teenagers are not inherently more violent than their white counterparts, they often live in racially segregated neighborhoods that foster isolation, economic hardship, and higher crime rates. Structural inequities, combined with historical disinvestment, leave these communities vulnerable to cycles of violence. This study employs community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles and multi-modal ethnography, centering teenage voices—including a teenage co-researcher and video producer—to explore the lived realities of youth impacted by gun-related offenses. Data collection began with semi-structured interviews of ten young people charged with gun-related crimes as teenagers by the Marion County Prosecutor's Office. These youth described peer influence, social media portrayals, and fear as motivations for carrying firearms. To address gun violence, teenagers recommended increased community activities, mentoring, and counseling, alongside improvements to their neighborhoods, such as repairing abandoned homes and fostering deeper relationships with youth. Many expressed feelings of entrapment within their environments, highlighting the need for safe spaces that instill hope and provide tangible opportunities for change. The research team created a short film based on interview data and screened it with youth workers and stakeholders within the youth control complex to gather feedback and spur discourse. The significance of incorporating a teenage co-researcher is amplified through storytelling, demonstrating how participatory approaches shift narratives around expertise and youth agency. This project revealed four critical recommendations: (1) Reconsider who is an expert as research is designed and carried out: (2) Dismantle the youth control complex and focus resources no developing relationship sand connections with families; (3) Foster discussion and conversation for an educated civil society; (4) Critique the failure of local elected officials and public policy to support families and build thriving neighborhoods. This study contributes to conversations on violence prevention, racial justice, and youth advocacy, emphasizing how rethinking expertise and prioritizing youth-led initiatives can generate systemic solutions to gun violence rather than merely treating symptoms.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Criminal Justice and Suicide Outcomes with Indiana's Risk-Based Gun Seizure Law
    (AAPL, 2019-06) Swanson, Jeffrey W.; Easter, Michele M.; Alanis-Hirsch, Kelly; Belden, Charles M.; Norko, Michael A.; Robertson, Allison G.; Frisman, Linda K.; Lin, Hsiu-Ju; Swartz, Marvin S.; Parker, George F.; Psychiatry, School of Medicine
    This article examines the application and effectiveness of a 2006 Indiana law designed to prevent gun violence by authorizing police officers to separate firearms from persons who present imminent or future risk of injury to self or others, or display a propensity for violent or emotionally unstable conduct. A court hearing is held to determine ongoing risk in these cases; a judge decides whether to return the seized firearms or retain them for up to five years. The study examines the frequency of criminal arrest as well as suicide outcomes for 395 gun-removal actions in Indiana. Fourteen individuals (3.5%) died from suicide, seven (1.8%) using a firearm. The study population's annualized suicide rate was about 31 times higher than that of the general adult population in Indiana, demonstrating that the law is being applied to a population genuinely at high risk. By extrapolating information on the case fatality rate for different methods of suicide, we calculated that one life was saved for every 10 gun-removal actions, similar to results of a previous study in Connecticut. Perspectives from key stakeholders are also presented along with implications for gun policy reform and implementation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Evaluation of a Comprehensive Approach to Reducing Gun Violence in Detroit
    (2014) Bynum, Timothy S.; Grommon, Eric; McCluskey, John D.
    Increasingly criminal justice agencies are integrating “data based” approaches into their operational strategies. This “new” model of criminal justice suggests that analysis of data on recent crime and violence incidents can lead to a more focused and targeted effort than previous enforcement efforts. Through such efforts, individuals, groups, and locations that exhibit a high level of gun violence within a limited geographic area are identified and a variety of intervention are then implemented. These interventions typically include both enforcement as well as offender focused interventions. These efforts differ from prior enforcement strategies in that they emphasize the integration of a problem analysis component in which data analysis is used to identify the patterns of gun violence in a small target area and enforcement resources are concentrated in this area. However, this approach also differs from previous “crackdown” enforcement strategies in that there are also community and offender intervention components that are integral to this model. The community component seeks to identify ways in which the community can be involved in working with law enforcement to reduce gun violence in this area. This is often through increased community meetings, and establishing more frequent and effective means of communication between the community and local law enforcement. In addition, the enforcement strategies used in this model are data and intelligence driven. As such they are focused on identifying the most problematic locations, groups and individuals that are most responsible for gun violence in this community. This report documents the implementation and outcomes of the implementation of Project Safe Neighborhoods in one of the jurisdictions in which this model was first implemented.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Understanding Victim Cooperation in Cases of Nonfatal Gun Assaults
    (Sage, 2019-12) Kroovand Hipple, Natalie; Thompson Garrity, Kristina; Huebner, Beth M.; Magee, Lauren A.; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Victims play a central role in criminal case processing, but research suggests many victims do not report crimes to police or cooperate in a police investigation. This study extends the literature on victim cooperation by examining the effect of incident-level variables and neighborhood characteristics on victim cooperation in nonfatal shooting incidents. The sample includes 1,054 nonfatal shooting victims from two Midwestern cities. Results using binary logistic regression suggest that incident and victim characteristics are significantly associated with cooperation, but race conditions the effect of injury severity and motive on cooperation. The willingness to cooperate among Whites is contingent on injury severity while non-White victims do not become markedly more cooperative when confronted with serious injury. Race also moderates the relationship between crime motive and cooperation. This work demonstrates the need to incorporate nonfatal firearm violence into studies of victim cooperation and gun crime more broadly.