Advancing Urban Peace: Preventing Gun Violence and Healing Traumatized Youth
| Author | Jason Corburn,DeVone Boggan,Khaalid Muttaqi,Sam Vaughn,James Houston,Julius Thibodeaux,Brian Muhammad |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14732254211020138 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14732254211020138
Youth Justice
2022, Vol. 22(3) 272 –289
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14732254211020138
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Advancing Urban Peace: Preventing
Gun Violence and Healing
Traumatized Youth
Jason Corburn , DeVone Boggan,
Khaalid Muttaqi, Sam Vaughn, James Houston,
Julius Thibodeaux and Brian Muhammad
Abstract
This descriptive article highlights the inner-practices of a trauma-informed, healing-centered, urban gun
violence reduction program called Advance Peace. We find that the Advance Peace model uses a unique
curriculum called the Peacemaker Fellowship, that offers intensive mentorship, caring, and ‘street love’ to
youth at the center of gun violence. The Advance Peace approach is one public safety model that may help
young people of color heal from the traumas that contribute to gun violence while also reducing gun crime
in urban neighborhoods.
Keywords
community, gun violence, healing, racism, street outreach, toxic stress, trauma
Introduction
Community-based gun violence reduction models act as an alternative to heavy-handed
policing and may be one of the most successful urban youth gun violence reduction initia-
tives in the United States and globally (Abt and Winship, 2016; Braga et al., 2019; Butts
et al., 2015). These programs stop the transmission of violence in a manner similar to that
of public health interventions designed to curtail epidemics, and typically involve com-
munity mobilization, street outreach, and partnerships among frontline staff in police,
probation, and social services sectors (Braga et al., 2001; Hemenway and Miller, 2013;
Slutkin and et al, 2018). Yet, the youth offenders and victims of urban gun violence are
often dealing with the traumas of living in communities with long histories of structural
violence and racism, including racial segregation, chronic withdrawal of social services,
Corresponding author:
Jason Corburn, School of public Health & Department of City & regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley,
316 Wurster Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Email: jcorburn@berkeley.edu
1020138YJJ0010.1177/14732254211020138Youth JusticeCorburn et al.
research-article2021
Original Article
Corburn et al. 273
dehumanization through police violence, and alienation from other government institu-
tions, all of which can contribute to gun violence (Jacoby et al., 2018; Ross and Arsenault,
2018; Tucker et al., 2019). A number of community-based gun violence reduction pro-
grams that enroll youth, such as Ceasefire and Cure Violence, focus on interrupting gun
conflicts, changing social norms around violence, and offering participants some alterna-
tives to street life such as education, employment, and other services (Braga et al., 2019;
Kennedy, 1998; Papachristos and Kirk, 2015; Slutkin and et al, 2018). However, few of
these community-based programs focus explicitly on addressing the traumas that have
harmed those involved in, and are exposed to, gun violence. A growing body of work is
calling for more trauma-informed approaches to preventing community gun violence,
where young people are co-designers of mentorship and violence reduction strategies
with professional mentors, and where healing from trauma, not just changes to violent
behaviors, is a key focus (Ginwright, 2018; Muhammad, 2018; Norris, 2020; Sered,
2019).
In this article, we describe the elements of a new, community-based urban gun violence
reduction program called Advance Peace. Advance Peace (AP) is a not-for-profit organi-
zation that uses street outreach workers to implement a trauma-informed, healing-focused
approach to prevent gun violence and support healthy community development. AP is in
operation in five American cities, including Fresno, Richmond, Sacramento, and Stockton,
California, as well as Ft. Worth, Texas. At least 20 other cities are considering adopting its
approach, yet little is known about its practices. Previously published studies suggest that
AP is having a positive impact on participants and in the cities where they work. For
example, in Sacramento gun homicides and assaults were reduced by 21 per cent after the
18-month AP program from June 2018 through December 2019, compared to the average
number of gun homicides and assaults from the same 18-month period in the previous
4 years (Corburn and Fukutome-Lopez, 2020). In addition, Sacramento did not have a
juvenile homicide from 2018 to 2019, which were the first 2 years of the AP program in
that city. In Stockton, the AP program reported interrupting 32 potential gun homicides
through street-level resolution of imminent gun conflicts, as well as mediating 136 com-
munity conflicts that could have escalated into gun violence (Corburn and Fukutome,
2019). In Richmond, California, gun homicides and assaults have been reduced by over
65 per cent since the program began and 97 per cent of program participants are still alive
and 83 per cent have not been injured by a firearm (Matthay et al., 2019; Office of
Neighborhood Safety (ONS), 2019).
As impressive as these data might be, still little is known about how this program oper-
ates and what are the distinguishing characteristics of its trauma-informed, healing-cen-
tered approach. This article offers in-depth description of how the AP program is
established and operates in a city, particularly how it engages young people that have been
disconnected from almost every institution set-up to support them and who find them-
selves at the center of gun violence. It does not attempt to evaluate its efficacy or impacts.
However, in our process analysis, we suggest how the AP approach might be focused as
much on healing youth from the traumas of violence as on preventing gun crime. As we
explore in more depth below, AP focuses its program on engaging the small number of
highly influential youth offenders from each community and enrolling them in what they
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