Focused Deterrence Strategies Save Lives

After a brief reprieve, violence reduction is again in vogue. In the past year, media headlines regarding increases in violent crime and gang violence (often MS-13 specifically) have dominated the national news and the political landscape. Just a brief glance at the leading headlines from 2017 tells the familiar and overly simplistic story: Violence is increasing, driven by gangs, and the solution is more law enforcement and increased sanctions for violent offenders. This renewed attention on violent crime, and the accompanying rudimentary narrative of its causes and solutions, has easily infiltrated into political and policy discussions at the federal, state, and local levels. Yet scholars Anthony Braga, David Weisburd, and Brandon Turchan (2018, this issue) seize an opportunity to remind researchers, practitioners, and policy makers about the importance of identifying and implementing violence reduction strategies that have scientifically demonstrated impact. It is a basic call back to the importance of implementing evidence-based policing initiatives (Sherman, 1998) and for the continuing need to bring science to the streets. Braga and his colleagues (2018) present a compelling case for the effectiveness of focused deterrence strategies to reduce violence. Through their research, they provide an update to a previously published Campbell Collaboration systematic review of the impact of focused deterrence strategies on violence reduction (Braga and Weisburd, 2012). Using similar methodology, Braga et al. (2018) update that review and meta-analysis, as well as provide additional insight regarding the impact of focused deterrence strategies. Some researchers may be surprised (as I was initially) that in the 6 years after their initial review, the number of qualified evaluations more than doubled (10 studies identified in 2010 compared