David Kennedy Visit with NC PSN/Focused Deterrence Sites

David Kennedy, Director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was in North Carolina in April 2013. As part of that visit, he met with representatives of Project Safe Rockingham County (PSRC) to discuss the focused deterrence strategy in general and then specifically how PSRC could continue to apply the strategy to changing needs in their community. On the second day of Kennedy’s visit, he presented to a statewide collective of representatives doing focused deterrence work. The Middle District (MDAT) and Eastern District Advisory Teams (EDAT) combined their quarterly meetings in the Raleigh/Durham area to make this collective meeting possible and also invited representatives from the Western District to attend.

Special thanks to the United States Attorney’s Offices in all three federal districts for helping to make this combined meeting happen– a first ever! Kennedy’s presentation to the group is included at the bottom of this post. Kennedy reviewed the history of focused deterrence beginning with its roots in Boston as applied to gang/group violence and then discussed the necessary components of the strategy and how the strategy has evolved over time to be applied to other violence issues. On the final day of Kennedy’s visit, he spent time with the High Point Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative workgroup. The workgroup updated Kennedy on the latest with the application of focused deterrence to the problem of domestic violence. Thus far, the recidivism rate for notified domestic violence offenders is around 6% across all levels of offenders.

Special thanks to Dr. Terri Shelton at the Office of Research and Economic Development at UNCG for making Kennedy’s visit possible!