In response to the epidemic of inner-city violence in Chicago neighborhoods, Gary Slutkin found that it helps to look at the situation as one would an epidemic of contagious disease outbreak.
In 2000, he founded CeaseFire (now known as Cure Violence), to try to “treat” West Garfield, one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city — as a public health problem rather than a criminal justice issue. Shootings dropped dramatically.
Slutkin’s idea has since been replicated in communities across the country, including Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which in 2010 began taking a public health approach to gun violence.
(READ the story in the New York Times)