Presentation of Attorney General Denise George Committee on Rules - - PDF document

Presentation of Attorney General Denise George Committee on Rules and Judiciary Thirty-Third Legislature of the Virgin Islands Thursday, June 11, 2020

Good morning Chairwoman Sarauw, Senators, legislative staff, and to those

• f you in the listening and viewing audience. I was asked yesterday to be here this

morning to present my written testimony into the record on Bill No. 33-0126. The purpose of this proposed legislation is to amend Title 3, chapter 1of the Virgin Islands Code, by adding a new section 27i, which would establish the Virgin Islands Office of Gun Violence Prevention under the Office of the Governor (“the Office”). It is self-evident why the creation of such an Office would be deemed necessary and appropriate. The “fires of frustration and discord are burning” throughout the territory—today, there are too many people living in fear of walking the streets; too many people who purportedly rely on firearms as a means of resolving disputes; and too many lives being lost at the hand of firearms.1 Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to explain this rash of violence, and more than token solutions will be needed if we are to combat this crisis in a meaningful and constructive way. Therefore, the Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General will support today’s contemplated measure because it seeks a holistic

1 John F. Kennedy, Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights (June 11, 1963), in

PUBLIC PAPERS OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES: JOHN F. KENNEDY, 1963, 469 (1964).

Presentation of Attorney General Denise N. George Bill No. 33-0126 Thursday, June 11, 2020 Page 2

approach to solving gun violence, in a manner that will employ the skill sets of individuals comprising a wide variety of fields and occupations. The time has come for this type of comprehensive project to be undertaken. Although I am a firm believer that aggressive law enforcement is among the most effective deterrents to violent crime, I also realize that the usual solution of incarceration is not the only means of curbing gun violence in the territory. According to a law review article published late last year, the United States has the highest number of inmates in the world, and the Virgin Islands ranks among the highest with 542 inmates per 100,000 individuals.2 It is not enough to just lock people up and expect the underlying problems leading to incarceration to simply vanish—more can, and should be done, to confront these issues. Today’s proposed measure is a step in the right direction. However, despite our support of today’s legislation, I would like to make a few suggestions. First, the proposed Office should operate within the confines of certain timetables. In other words, they should be allotted so much time to gather and analyze data, then be given another timeframe in which to formulate a gun- violence plan or initiative based on the data collected, and finally, there should be a timeframe in which the Office is to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan once initiated through objective, standardized criteria. Second, we suggest that the Office

2 Leipold, Andrew D., ARTICLE: IS MASS INCARCERATION INEVITABLE?, 56 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1579,

1591 (2019).

Presentation of Attorney General Denise N. George Bill No. 33-0126 Thursday, June 11, 2020 Page 3

seek the aid of academics and other researchers from the University of the Virgin Islands, or another institution of higher education that may specialize in these types

• f undertakings. While the measure alludes to the Office’s interaction between

public and private entities, there is no specific mention of an academic researcher who specializes in statistical data collection, analysis, and the like. We believe that the proposed Office should conduct in-depth studies relating to crime and gun violence in the Virgin Islands before embarking on any one particular gun violence reduction path, and this should be mandated in Bill No. 33-0126. After all, “[u]nderstanding the specific characteristics and typologies of homicide is helpful for the design of policies aimed at bringing about a significant reduction in violence. Different types of homicide call for specific interventions.”3 “For example, efforts to prevent domestic homicide should focus mostly on intimate partner violence and child abuse,” while “[r]educing gang-related homicide requires approaches that go beyond mere violence prevention.”4 And, there are other specific strategies focusing

• n street homicide—a broader term that would include gangs but also other

underlying causes for gun violence, such as drugs. For example, “several studies have found that crime and homicide are not distributed equally across space, but, rather, tend to be concentrated in hotspots. Accordingly, the focus of policy

3 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (“UNODC”), Global Study on Homicide, p. 29 (Vienna, 2019). 4 Id.

Presentation of Attorney General Denise N. George Bill No. 33-0126 Thursday, June 11, 2020 Page 4

interventions has shifted from the investigation of individuals to dealing with criminogenic places.”5 This concept of a research-based initiative is not novel. Take for example, the Boston Gun Project, which “was a problem-oriented policing initiative expressly aimed at taking on a serious, large-scale crime problem: homicide victimization among youths.”6 “Like many large cities in the United States, Boston experienced an epidemic of youth homicide between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Homicide among persons ages 24 and under increased by 230 percent—from 22 victims in 1987 to 73 victims in 1990—and remained high well after the peak of the epidemic.”7 To understand and try to prevent these homicides, the Project organized a working group in January 1995. This working group was composed of frontline practitioners from a variety of agencies who would work with academics “to sort out what was happening on the streets, design a plausible intervention, work with the agencies involved to implement the intervention, and evaluate its impact.”8 The focus of the group concentrated on two issues—gun trafficking and fear generated from crime in particular neighborhoods. The group “framed these two dimensions in gun market terms. Gun trafficking and other routes in the illicit acquisition of firearms represented the supply side of the problem. Fear

5 Id. 6 U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Reducing Gun Violence: The Boston Gun Project’s

Operation Ceasefire, located at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/188741.pdf.

7 Id. 8 Id.

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and/or other factors that might be driving illicit gun acquisition and use represented the demand side.” Over the course of several years the project—dubbed Operation Ceasefire—was successful in seeking “to change the perpetrators’ behavior by, on the one hand, understanding the dynamics and conditions that led to crime and, on the other, by mobilizing the community and providing social services.”9 Other models explored by authorities have used a public health aspect to gun violence as opposed to the traditional criminal justice approach. For example, the Cure Violence (“CV”) model was developed by physician Gary Slutkin at the University of Illinois at Chicago and it “relies on three key elements to stop the transmission of violent behavior: interrupting transmission directly, identifying and changing the thinking of potential transmitters (i.e., those at highest risk of perpetrating violence), and changing group norms regarding violence.”10 Interruption means such things as the prevention of retaliatory shootings and mediating ongoing conflicts. “Identifying those at high risk includes a structured- enrollment criteria relied on … to recruit high-risk youth and young adults and to engage with them to change their behaviors.”11 And, “[c]hanging group norms

9 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (“UNODC”), Global Study on Homicide, p. 29 (Vienna, 2019). 10 Jeffrey A. Butts, Caterina Gouvis Roman, Lindsay Bostwick, and Jeremy R. Porter, Cure Violence: A Public

Health Model to Reduce Gun Violence, Annu. Rev. Public Health 2015 (available at: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122509).

11 Id.

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involves public education efforts and events designed to convey the message to the community that violence is harmful to everyone, that it is unacceptable behavior, and that it can be stopped.” Several studies throughout the country—including Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn—have implemented the CV model and evaluated the program’s outcomes. The results were mixed regarding its overall success. “Each evaluation revealed at least some evidence in support of the approach at the level of jurisdictions or communities, but none of the studies could clearly disentangle the results from national and regional trends in violent crime.” “According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s CrimeSolutions.gov database—the public health approach of CV currently merits the label ‘promising’ rather than ‘effective.’”12 With that said, there were a number

• bstacles noted that affected these programs, such as: a high turnover rate,

inconsistent funding, and the inability to fully staff the programs. It is because of, rather despite, these obstacles that we make mention of the CV model. If we are to be completely honest with each other today, we must recognize that the Virgin Islands has a history of creating certain boards, commissions, and other bodies only to have them underfunded, understaffed, and otherwise, ineffectual. It must be remembered that a project of this magnitude will not produce immediate results. It

12 Id.

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will require a long-term commitment, with consistent funding, and, perhaps, most important, a clear vision with attainable and quantifiable goals and objectives. Without developing a concrete plan, backed by statistical analysis, it will be difficult to ascertain what types of gun violence should be targeted in the territory, and whether the Office’s efforts have had any impact. In short, I would urge that specific language calling on research academics be included in the staffing of the Office, and that numerous timetables be codified in which the Office is to operate. For example, it may take six months to one year for the researchers and other team members to compile statistics and other relevant data relating to gun violence within the territory; it then may take a further six months to develop a comprehensive initiative to enact based upon that research and data; and finally, there should be a timeframe in which a method may be applied to accurately and objectively assess the initiative’s success or failure. This concludes my formal testimony. I would like to thank Senator Myron Jackson and the members of this Committee for inviting me to present testimony on Bill No. 33-0126. Because I was given short notice of this hearing today, I was able to only carve out a short period of time to attend, and I only have a limited amount

• f time to answer questions.