Jamar Johnson, 30, from Fresno, received a 10-year prison sentence for illegally possessing ammunition. This sentence was issued by U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston, following Johnson’s history of firearms offenses, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. Jamar was a Repeat Firearms Offender.
The case details paint a troubling picture of repeat behavior. On December 8, 2019, Johnson perpetrated a shooting at a Fresno ARCO gas station. After driving his Mercedes into the station and discharging a firearm towards another vehicle, Johnson hastily left behind not just .45 caliber shell casings, but also his cellphone, linking him to the scene. Facing his third firearms-related conviction, each involving gunfire discharge, the judge imposed a long sentence upon Johnson, who violated his federal supervised release in just 71 days, which he had previously been entrusted with.
Johnson has a troubled history of violations. While still under scrutiny for a federal firearm conviction, he continued to show a disregard for the law. Prosecutor Kimberly A. Sanchez highlighted his “continued risky behavior” as a key reason for his sentencing, showing that the justice system takes community safety seriously, as reported by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.
The legal outcome is supported by Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a collaborative initiative involving law enforcement and community partners aimed at reducing violent crime and gun violence. On May 26, 2021, the Justice Department introduced a new strategy for PSN, which focuses on building trust, supporting violence prevention organizations, strategic enforcement, and measuring results.
Launched in 2001, the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program is a nationwide initiative that brings together federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, community leaders, and other stakeholders to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in a community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. PSN is coordinated by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in the 94 federal judicial districts throughout the 50 states and U.S. territories. PSN is customized to account for local violent crime problems and resources. Across all districts, PSN follows four key design elements of successful violent crime reduction initiatives: community engagement, prevention and intervention, focused and strategic enforcement, and accountability.
A major goal of PSN is to incorporate research and data analysis, and lessons learned from other violent crime reduction initiatives, to inform its decision-making on the most effective violence reduction strategies.
On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN so that it is built on newly articulated core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results of our efforts. And the Department expressly underscores that the fundamental goal of this work is to reduce violent crime in the places we call home, not to increase the number of arrests or prosecutions as if they were ends in themselves.
Psy.Org examined PSN and had this to report
PSN programs typically target violent crime problems related to guns, gangs, and drugs through interagency collaboration, data-driven interventions, and federal prosecution and incarceration for relevant state offenses. Although studies have examined individual PSN projects, none has considered the collective body of literature on the program.
In this work, researchers searched the literature, focusing on empirical studies and program evaluations in English that were published through March 2021. Twenty-one studies met their criteria for inclusion, but their search produced an insufficient number of rigorous, comparable empirical designs to make it a meta-analysis. While they could not draw definitive conclusions about the overall effectiveness of PSN programs, the researchers say they found enough studies to identify patterns, make inferences, and identify gaps for future evaluators to consider. PSN had a statistically significant, intended impact on 50% of the outcomes evaluated. A further 42% of effects were in the desired direction but did not reach statistical significance, and 8 percent of outcomes seemed to have been influenced in an undesired direction by PSN interventions.
The authors characterized the current body of literature as it relates to both the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of PSN as favorable. PSN reduces crime, at least in the short term, although many of the effects are small and may not last over time.
In particular, focused deterrence strategies, such as the “pulling levers” method used by PSN programs, appear to be a favored approach, especially since a small percentage of individuals are responsible for a disproportionately high number of offenses. (Rather than broadly increasing the scale and scope of the criminal justice system, agencies can “pull” specific “levers” relating to the crime problem they wish to reduce.)
PSN working groups that avoid personnel turnover, maintain consistent communication through regular meetings, exhibit strong leadership and buy-in from all involved parties, and quickly agree on priorities for the PSN program have a greater likelihood of achieving desirable goals than do sites with constant turnover of leadership; irregular meeting schedules; and a lack of shared vision and cohesion among federal, state, and local agencies, research partners, and the community.
The researchers also noted geographical gaps in the studies reviewed, which means that after two decades of programming, many U.S. high-population centers (e.g., those in Texas, New York, California, and Washington) have not had a publicly accessible empirical evaluation of PSN. Thus, the results of PSN evaluations in just a few locations cannot be generalized to determine the effectiveness of the whole body of nationwide programs.
“While PSN interventions across the country draw from a consistent set of theoretical, legal, and normative frameworks, the strategy for addressing violent crime in each district are adapted to fit the local needs and unique context of each PSN target site,” notes Christi L. Gullion, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at Arlington, who coauthored the study. “If more sites were empirically reviewed, it would likely improve our discipline’s ability to confidently generalize and characterize the value of Project Safe Neighborhoods and help us understand more fully which lessons should be learned and applied in policymaking.”
