How exactly do you truly alter a criminal's demeanor when it comes to acts of violence? Does jail time truly work, or do we try to personally modify their behavior, instead of locking them up. Criminal Justice professor, and author of "Don't Shoot, One Man, A Street Fellowship, And The End of Violence in Inner-City America" believes in the second method. Kennedy has spent the last twenty years trying to stop inner-city violence, and his methods are much different from many others. He started his renegade against crime starting back in 1985, right around the time that the crack cocaine epidemic began. He noted that the use of cocaine at this period increased the risk of crimes and the danger to societies around these areas.
Since then he has been in communication with not just cops and prosecutors, but also with criminals in themselves as well as victims of the crimes also. He meets with these individuals, because in his mind he wants to change the way society today analyzes crimes, and how to rightfully punish the perpetrators. He does this by the focal point of each issue, and why some people or areas are more likely to experience criminal activities. His strategy, in fact, cut homicide rates in the city of Boston up to as much as 66 percent. This very program, now nicknamed "The Boston Miracle" due to the astonishing drop-off rates, has been adopted by over 70 different major cities in the United States today. Kennedy has also developed techniques that have eliminated many drug markets across the country.
The Three Community Perspectives/Explanatory Factors.
Kennedy explicitly describes how crime is precisely viewed into three separate community perspectives. The first being law enforcement, and how from their opinion in certain neighborhoods, specifically ones that are filled with poor minorities, the communities with open air drug markets are utterly corrupt, and that there is no heart left, or that there is no community left.