The pandemic did not interrupt LA’s violence interrupters
Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research
ISSN: 1759-6599
Article publication date: 20 December 2022
Issue publication date: 17 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on crime has been highly variable. One possible source of variation runs indirectly through the impact that the pandemic had on groups tasked with preventing and responding to crime. Here, this paper aims to examine the impact of the pandemic on the activities undertaken by front-line workers in the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use both autoregressive integrated moving average modeling and a regression-based event study design to identify changes in GRYD Community Intervention Worker proactive peacemaking and violence interruption activities induced by the onset of the City of Los Angeles “safter-at-home” lockdown.
Findings
Analyses show that the proactive peacemaking and violence interruption activities either remained stable or increased with the onset of the lockdown.
Originality/value
While the City of Los Angeles exempted GRYD’s Community Intervention Workers from lockdown restrictions, there was no guarantee that proactive peacemaking and violence interruption activities would continue unchanged. The authors conclude that these vital functions were indeed resilient in the face of major disruptions to daily life presented by the pandemic. However, the causal connection between stability in Community Intervention Worker activities and gang-related crime remains to be evaluated.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This impetus for this work was a project conducted for the 2021 UCLA CAM Summer REU. Permission to use the data contained herein was provided by the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of GRYD. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this study, however, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the GRYD Office. This research was funded by the City of Los Angeles contract number C-132202 (“GRYD Research and Evaluation”).
Disclosure statement: PJB serves on the Board of Directors at Geolitica.
Citation
Ren, J., Santoso, K., Hyde, D., Bertozzi, A.L. and Brantingham, P.J. (2023), "The pandemic did not interrupt LA’s violence interrupters", Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 312-327. https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-10-2022-0745
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited