HOW DO YOU FRIGHTEN CRIMINALS WHO DON’T SCARE EASILY?
The Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative of the US Department of Justice sought to leverage a provision of the crime bill to reduce gun crime. The provision automatically added five years to any sentence given to someone convicted of a crime while using a gun. To publicize this effort the DOJ authorized the 94 US Attorneys offices around the nation to engage local agencies to create campaigns to get the message out about the five year sentence extension.
Selected by the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, I set out with a criminologist to undertake qualitative and quantitative research to understand how these felons viewed the threat of an automatic five extra years.
We learned that the five extra years was actually an inducement to use a gun during a criminal act. Because for these people, that meant they had five more years of “three hots and a cot.” Five more years of air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter. And they would spend this time with friends.
With this insight and the knowledge that convicts hated the idea of being separated from family and friends, we developed a campaign that stressed the remoteness of the prisons where they would be sent. Unpleasant places where family and friends would have difficulty visiting.
All of the other 93 agencies created campaigns centered around variations on the theme “Do the crime, do the time.” Our campaign was the only local campaign that was shared with the President in an Oval Office presentation. It was also picked up and implemented by the US Attorney for the Central District of California.
The campaign included transit on specific bus routes, a guerrilla poster postings in targeted neighborhoods and materials for schools, hospitals, police stations and civic centers.
Most important, in the year following the launch of the campaign, gun crime in the Eastern District of Missouri fell 22 percent.