I watched The Interrupters this weekend, and I second this review, it’s well worth seeing. The documentary chronicles the front-line agents of the organization CeaseFire, the Violence Interrupters. CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist who formerly worked for the World Health Organization, and he takes very seriously the analogy of the “violence epidemic”. The approach is similar:
- Identify outbreaks (violent incidents)
- Respond at the center with a focus on limiting transmission (discouraging new retaliation by those not already involved)
- Build long-term resilience with vaccinations, sanitation, and so on (change norms)
A more comprehensive approach also fits into this analogy: Infected are quarantined (criminals captured) and treated (rehabilitated) or institutionalized. CeaseFire’s efforts, though, are mostly focused on the above, particularly step two.
On the non-metaphorical health front, similar efforts have been similarly sucessful. An example from The Checklist Manifesto was particularly vivid in my mind while watching the movie, a study in which soap was distributed, along with simple instruction on handwashing methods and habits, to impoverished communities. The results were dramatic. But those results relied on the cooperation of those participating in the program, and it would be a mistake to assume that their behavior was influenced primarily by the mere availability of soap. The instruction was also a factor. But one factor found in follow-up study as to why that program had been more successful than some similar efforts was that the soap used was particularly high quality. Smelled good, felt good on the hands. Washing with it was pleasant.
One question for CeaseFire is not just how best to educate about nonviolence, or how to bring social pressure to bear in favor of nonviolence, but how to make nonviolent conflict resolution “smell good”. (The movie contains some interesting ideas in relation to this question, I think, though it doesn’t address that directly.)
For further reading, see this post on CeaseFire as applied anthropology. Also related to the topic of violence in Chicago and the source of the title of this post, this blog.
ComplexMeme 