Focused Deterrence and Program Fidelity: Evaluating the Impact of Detroit Ceasefire

Abstract Focused deterrence programs, which concentrate community and police resources on small groups of high-risk offenders, have been identified in a number of cities as an effective method to reduce violent crime. In 2013, the city of Detroit began its own “Ceasefire” program in two of its most violent police precincts, which continued through 2019. This study examines the community-level effect of the 2013–2019 Detroit Ceasefire initiative on fatal and non-fatal shooting victimization. We apply a synthetic control design to account for the complex, disaggregated data to identify the effect of Ceasefire above and beyond the substantial decreases in gun violence observed throughout Detroit. We find marginal decreases in victimizations among those aged 15-24 and 25-34 in the year after Ceasefire was re-organized in 2015, but these effects were limited and largely converged to trends observed in the rest of the city. We discuss the results of this evaluation with a focus on the importance of effective implementation as well as the challenges of studying violence prevention strategies under ever evolving conditions.