 

.151.
.7
,..

‘ .
ﬁrlvﬁ-

13:113.”

saw

u

\mﬁ‘k‘h” em

mug-Jau- at:

ﬁtﬁi‘i

1“

.e

‘
.

“ht-a.

 

 

 

 

THESIS

1003

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

THE INFLUENCE AND IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA
COVERAGE ON PROJECT SAFE NEGHBORHOODS

 

 

 

 

presented by
9:3;
>_ a...) g" NAYATT AYUB
0; c e
(I <6 9
a)...
£9 E C- has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
-—| 2 D of the requirements for the
2 MS. degree in Criminal Justice
ﬂ 92L—

 

Major Professor’s Signature
I
//3<>;/L3 a7 000
/

Date

MS U is an afﬁrmative-action, equal-opportunity employer

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/07 p:/CIRC/DateDue indd-p.1

 

 

 

THE INFLUENCE AND IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA COVERAGE ON PROJECT
SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS
By

Nayatt Ayub

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE
School of Criminal Justice

2008

ABSTRACT

THE INFLUENCE AND IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA COVERAGE ON PROECT
SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS
By

Nayatt Ayub

Project Safe Neighborhoods has been one of the most promising initiatives by the
Department of Justice to combat gun violence, yet research on the implementation of the
initiative and the inﬂuence the media has on it has been limited. This study evaluates
media coverage of the initiative and how it inﬂuences its implementation in the different
U.S. jurisdictions. The evaluation adopted several strategies and methodologies including
content analysis to determine the amount of coverage per jurisdiction, the type of sources
most commonly used, and the type of information covered. Case studies of two
jurisdictions that showed media success was conducted to allow for a more in depth study
of the subject. This study had several important ﬁndings and concluded that there is
minimum coverage of the PSN initiative across the jurisdictions and that most of the
coverage is incident related. Additionally, the study found that those jurisdictions that
received higher coverage were jurisdictions that aggressively actively implemented the

initiative through aggressive prosecutions.

Copyright by
NAYATT AYUB
2008

 

DEDICATION

To my mom and dad for all their love, support, guidance, and most of all for always

believing in me, without them the completion of this work would have not been possible.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the guidance of Dr. Steve Chennak during
this process. I also thank Dr. Edmund McGarrell and Dr. Tim Bynum for their feedback.
The staff at the Criminal Justice Ofﬁce is thanked for all of their assistance.

Finally, I am forever grateful to Doug for his love and patience throughout this process.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................ vii

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION. . . . . . .................................................................................................... 1
The Cost of Gun Violence... ......................................................................................... 2
Media and Criminal Justice. .......................................................................................... 6

CHAPTER II.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM AND LITERATURE REVIEW .......................... 8
Overview of Project Safe Neighborhood ..................................................................... 12
Variation in PSN Success... ........................................................................................ 15
The Importance of Media in Society and the Criminal Justice System ....................... 18
Presentation of Crime and Criminal Justice in the Criminal Justice System ............ 20
The Case of Crime Stoppers ................................................................... 22
Community Policing in the News ............................................................. 23
Constructing Crime News: Explaining Successes and Failures ........................... 24

CHAPTER III.

DATA AND METHODS ............................................................................................... 28
ContentAnalysis................. ................................................................................... 28
Case Studles 34

CHAPTER IV

MEDIA COVERAGE OF PROJECT SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS ........................ 36

Overview of Sample ........................................................................... 37
Amount of Coverage ........................................................................... 38
Type of Coverage .............................................................................. 39
Sources Cited in News Stories ............................................................... 47
Overall Media and Source Impression of PSN ............................................. 50
Media Partners and Strategies ................................................................ 51
CHAPTER V
CASE STUDIES .................................................................................. 60
District of Connecticut ........................................................................ 61
Eastern District of Pennsylvania ............................................................ 69
Comparison of Jurisdictions ................................................................. 78

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS Cont.

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS ......................................... 81
Overview of Findings .......................................................................... 82
Policy Implications ............................................................................. 86
Limitations ....................................................................................... 88
Future Research ................................................................................. 89

APPENDICES .................................................................................... 90
Appendix A ...................................................................................... 91
Appendix B ..................................................................................... 100

REFERENCES ................................................................................... 104

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page
1. Jurisdiction Coverage Areas ................................................................ 91
2. Average Number of Stories (Average Length of Articles) .............................. 92
3. Type of Story (in percentages) .............................................................. 93
4. Discussion of Broad PSN Issues ............................................................ 93
5. Components Discussed ...................................................................... 94
6. Speciﬁc and General Programs (in percentages) ......................................... 94
7. Discussion of PSN ........................................................................... 95
8. Sources Cited in PSN Stories ............................................................... 95
9. Overall and Source Impression of PSN ................................................... 96

10. Overall Results by Media Partner .......................................................... 96

1 1. Overall Results by Media Partner 2 ........................................................ 97

12. Media Campaign Analysis .................................................................. 98 -

13. Results by Mass Media Campaign, Measures, and Funding ........................... 98

14. Results by Mass Media Campaign, Measures, and Funding 2 ......................... 99

viii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

This exploratory study will examine the amount and type of media coverage of
Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN). PSN is a collaborative initiative between state and
local ofﬁcials coordinated by the Department of Justice (USDOJ) and overseen by the
US. Attorneys’ Ofﬁces intended to reduce gun violence in the United States.
Communication is an essential component of PSN, however, some PSN jurisdictions
have been more successful in receiving media attention and coverage than others.
Although communication is a critical component of PSN, there has been no research that
has examined how jurisdictions have attempted to use the news media to accomplish the
goals of the program.

There are two objectives of this study. First, this study will describe how PSN
has been presented in the news. Issues that will be examined include the amount of
coverage received, the type of coverage (positive, negative, solely informational, etc),
and the type of sources cited in PSN articles. Second, this study will explore the
strategies used by successful jurisdictions to achieve signiﬁcantly more coverage about
their PSN initiative. The methodology includes evaluating and analyzing newspaper
articles ﬁ'om different cities, and conducting interviews with members of PSN task forces
in successful “media” jurisdictions to identify the different media strategies utilized. This
approach will also allow identiﬁcation Of potential beneﬁts of media exposure on the
program as well as identify other ways (e.g., other than seeking attention in the news
media) that some PSN jurisdictions have attempted to communicate with the public or
offending population about the goals of the program. One might expect that the most

successﬁil PSN jurisdictions also receive signiﬁcantly more news coverage. In short,

 

there should be a connection between the implementation of the program and media
coverage. This project provides a ﬁrst step in exploring the connection between
implementation and news coverage.
The Costs of Gun Violence

The real cost of gun violence, we have argued, comes from the devastating

emotional costs experienced by relatives and friends of gunshot victims, and the

fear and general reduction in quality of life that the threat of gun violence imposes

on everyone in America, including people who are not victimized.

(Cook & Ludwig, 2000, p.113)

Studying the implementation and success of programs such as PSN is important
since gun crime is very dangerous and quite prevalent in the United States, especially in
urban areas. Although violent crime rates steadily decreased between 1995 and 2004,
they began to again increase in 2005 with gun violence continuing to be a considerable
problem (Bureau of Justice Statistics [BJ S], 2006). Each year, approximately 30,000
people die of injuries caused by ﬁrearms (Miniﬁo, Arias, Kochanek, Murphy, & Smith,
2002)- rates Similar to those of automobile accidents and exceeding the death toll from
AIDS and liver disease (Cook & Ludwig, 2000). Crime reports established that 72.6
percent of homicides in 2005 involved a ﬁrearm (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI],
2006). Gun violence is also widespread among the nation’s youth. It has been estimated
that Since 1979 more youths have died from shootings than military personnel in Vietnam.
(The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, n.d). The rates of gun violence in the United States

are above those of all the other industrialized nations including the United Kingdom and

Japan (Cook & Ludwig, 2000).

 

" Ems-$.31".—

Impact on victims, their families, and the community

It is estimated that each homicide victim is survived by an average of three loved

ones for whom the violent death produces a painful and traumatic grief.

(as cited in Bonderman, 2001, p.3).

The toll gun violence takes on victims and their families is outrageous. Victims
may suffer both physical and psychological damages in addition to lost productivity due
to hospitalization time and court proceedings. If the victim dies, the family faces much
pain, grief, family disruption, and in some instances economic hardship. Gun violence
also affects these families in terms of the future since teenagers are more likely to die
from gun shot wounds than any other cause, and this is especially true for African
Americans (USDOJ, 2001).

Gun violence does not only impact the victim and their families, but also
communities and the nation as a whole, especially in the economic sector. The amount of
resources spent on addressing gun violence is quite high and takes away funds that could
be used to address other social problems- education, poverty, drug abuse, and mental
health (Cook & Ludwig, 2000). In 1990 it was estimated that the nation spent $20.4
billion in medical expenses and lost productivity related to gun violence (Max & Rice,
1993). Cook, Lawrence, Ludwig & Miller (1999) analyzed data from hospitals in New
York, Maryland, and South Carolina and concluded that of all hospitalized gunshot cases
40 to 50 percent were paid for by the government. Their study also looked at lifetime
costs of treating gunshot injuries and estimated it at $2.3 billion from which 8 1.1 billion
was paid by the government (i.e., the taxpayers) (Cook, Lawrence, Ludwig, & Miller,

1999). Overall, the cost of gun violence in the US. has been estimated to be around $100

' billion per year which impacts all Americans, including those who are not victimized
(Cook & Ludwig, 2000).

Gun crime has a deep impact on all communities, especially those with higher
concentrations of minority groups and on the lower socioeconomic bracket (Cook &
Ludwig, 2000). Studies on gun homicide have concluded that Hispanic and African

American males are more likely than White males to be homicide victims involving

 

up
ﬁrearms (seven and 25 times more likely respectively), the same has been concluded for

African American and Hispanic women but at lower rates (Cook & Ludwig, 2000;

Bonderman, 2001). Additionally, the high rates of violence creates psychological trauma

since it increases the level of fear in citizens leading to a decrease in communal life I

because people are not willing to leave their homes and socialize with their neighbors.
This fear also leads to a decrease in tourism (Cook & Ludwig, 2000; USDOJ, 2001 ).
Responding to Gun Violence

The criminal justice system has made several efforts to reduce gun violence,
especially in youth by adopting “get tough” policies such as increased sentencing time
and trying juveniles in adult criminal courts (Feld, 1998), as well as adopting tougher gun
control measures that deal with acquisition, carrying, and use of ﬁrearms. Other
responses by the criminal justice system include programs or strategies that attempt to
deter illegal possession and use of ﬁrearms, interrupt illegal gun markets, and respond to
illegal gun use (Sheppard, 1999). Speciﬁc initiatives include providing a limited number
of licenses to sell ﬁrearms, weapons hotlines, and gun buyback programs. For example,

to interrupt sources of illegal ﬁrearms, the ATF has implemented gun tracing programs

and ballistic identiﬁcation systems, in addition to the inspection of federal ﬁrearm
licensees and educational programs for at—risk youths (OJJDP, n.d.; Sheppard, 1999).
The efforts to address and reduce gun violence are not limited to the criminal
justice system. Schools have tried to minimize gun violence by adopting zero tolerance
policies and increasing security measures through the implementation of ID badges,
security guards, and metal detectors. It is estimated that Chicago Public schools, for
example, spend approximately $41 million a year in security personnel in addition to the l
purchasing and maintenance costs of metal detectors. Furthermore, other preventative

interventions, such as community reconstruction, try to reduce the risk of violence

 

exposure while protecting a community (Howell & Hawkins, 1998).

The medical ﬁeld, being deeply affected by gun violence, has also adopted
hospital based programs to aid victims of gun violence; these programs include
comprehensive counseling, intervention, and treatment in order to minimize the
emotional impact of the wound and prevent future involvement with ﬁrearms
(Bonderman, 2001). Furthermore, some of these programs, such as Caught in the
Crossﬁre (CC) in Oakland, CA, have a hotline that medical staff can call to report intakes
of juveniles with gunshot wounds so that CC intervention specialists can come to assess
the situation and provide support for the victims (Bonderman, 2001).

One comprehensive and recent initiative implemented is PSN. The program will
be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, but it is critical to note that the purpose is
to reduce gun violence. The strategy involves implementing tougher sentences and

prosecution of offenders at the federal level. There are several elements to this initiative,

and communication is a key component. Although very important, there has not been
much research in the area of communication and PSN.
Media and Criminal Justice

Another aspect that makes this study important is the role of the media in the lives
of citizens. The media in the United States may inﬂuence citizens’ perceptions on crime
and crime ﬁghting/prevention methods by police departments since the media are a major
source of information for most people. Often, people are not aware of situations,
programs, and efforts by governmental units until they are exposed to them by the media.

The different entities in the criminal justice system realize that they must rely on the

 

exposure that media is able to provide and thus are more willing to collaborate with the
media, print and television in particular, to gain recognition and support. Although much
attention is given to crime, there has not been much media coverage of criminal justice
programs implemented to address crime. Media coverage of such programs is rare due to
the lack of newsworthy characteristics - as explained by a reporter “death, blood, and
bodies” (Chennak, 1995, p.15). As mentioned before, the purpose of this paper is to
identify effective implementation of PSN in different jurisdictions as it relates to media
coverage; hence, the lack of coverage of programs is important to note to successfully
study this question.

After review of the literature on crime, criminal justice and media coverage, it is
clear that, although much media coverage is given to crime, little is given to programs
and policies developed to prevent and minimize it. Much research has been conducted on
how media portrayal of crime inﬂuences society; however, there is a gap in research

when it comes to understanding how criminal justice initiatives, like Project Safe

Neighborhoods, are presented in the news. Moreover, although there has been
considerable work that examines the types of strategies criminal justice organizations use
to interact with the media, no research has considered such strategies related to
accomplishing the goals of Project Safe Neighborhoods. This study seeks to ﬁll these
research gaps and identify whether or not coverage of such programs and policies-
focusing on Project Safe Neighborhoods- can be linked to success.

The next chapter in this proposal, Chapter 2, states the problem of gun violence
and reviews the literature available on PSN, the role of the media in the construction of
news and how it inﬂuences society, and the amount of coverage given to criminal justice
programs in comparison to that given to crime. Chapter 3 demonstrates the research
context--this chapter includes the research design and methodology that will be used to
determine the relationship between media coverage and program implementation.
Chapter 4 provides a summary of the statistical results for the content analysis and
explanation of the tables. Chapter 5 includes two case studies conducted on jurisdictions
that were considered high coverage in order to gain better understanding of the media
strategies utilized to promote PSN. Finally, Chapter 6 presents the conclusions gathered
form the analysis and mentions the policy implications of this research as well as

limitations and future research.

 

CHAPTER TWO: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM AND LITERATURE
REVIEW
The implementation and study of police programs focused on gun crime is very

important since gun crime is very dangerous and prevalent in the United States. The
common occurrence of violent crime involving ﬁrearms has created a series of programs,
and the most recent national effort is the Project Safe Neighborhood Initiative. It has
been well documented that this program has evolved from other successful initiatives,
such as COMPSTAT in New York, Project Exile in Richmond, Operation Ceaseﬁre in

Boston, and a ten-city program called Strategic Approaches to Community Safety

 

Initiative (SACSI). Before discussing the communication elements of PSN, the programs
that led to it are brieﬂy reviewed below.
COMPSTAT

COMPSTAT (“Compare Statistics”), a crime analysis and managerial
accountability program, was developed in New York City in the early 19903 to address
high crime and disorder rates. Part of the logic behind COMPSTAT comes ﬁ'om Wilson
and Kelling’s (1982) Broken Windows theory of crime which states that insigniﬁcant
offenses and disorder leads to more crime and community breakdowns; thus this program
focuses on maintaining order through aggressive policing. The program required the
police command staff, area commanders, special units and prosecutors to attend regular
meetings to address the crime trends in the different areas. Part of the intention of this
program was to hold the different police managers accountable for the crime rates in their

area (Silverman, 1999; McGarrell, 2005).

Since its implementation in NYC in 1994 the crime rates have dramatically
decreased. Murder rates declined from approximately 1500 in 1994 to 320 in the
beginning of September, 2007; plummeting NYC to 163rd ﬁom 114 on the list of 200
most violent cities in the US. (Silverman, 1999; NYPD CompStat Unit, 2007). Research
also indicates that COMPSTAT has been widely institutionalized across the US. Studies
conducted on the implementation of COMPSTAT determined that large police
departments in the southern and western states were more likely to adopt the program and
that this adoption was strongly linked to the “desire to reduce serious crime and increase
management control over ﬁeld operations” (W eisburd, Mastrofski, Greenspan, & Willis,
2004, p.15). However, it is important to mention that there has been great debate among
researchers in the ﬁeld about whether or not the decline in violent crime can really be
attributed to COMPSTAT since it is difﬁcult to evaluate the individual components of the
program (Rosenfeld, Fomango & Baumer, 2005).

Ceaseﬁre

Operation Ceaseﬁre or the Boston Gun Project was implemented in Boston as a
tactical problem-solving plan focused on youth gun violence, especially youth involved
in gang activity since they were responsible for approximately 60 percent of the crime
(McGarrell, Chennak, Wilson, and Corsaro, 2006; USDOJ, 2001). The project utilized a
deterrence-based model and it involved multiple agencies at both local and federal levels
as well as academics who conducted research on the nature of the violence problem
(McGarrell, 2005). Some of the methods used in ceaseﬁre included crackdowns on
violent groups and meetings with youth involved in community corrections (probation

and parole) to inform them that action for violent crime would be taken. These meetings

were referred to as “offender notiﬁcation meetings” or “Lever-Pulling” meetings
(McGarrell, Chermak, Wilson, and Corsaro, 2006). The program also exposed its
purposes by taking the message directly into the community and ensuring that gang
members understood the repercussions of their involvement in gun crime (USDOJ,
2001)

Research conducted by the Harvard team involved with ceaseﬁre compared the
rates in Boston to those in other US. cities and concluded that the program was linked to
a signiﬁcant reduction in gun violence including youth homicide victimization, gun

assaults, and calls for service for shots ﬁred, with an approximate 68 percent decrease .

 

for youthful offenders on the ﬁrst year and an overall decline of 70 percent (Braga,
Kennedy, Waring, and Piehl, 2001; Rosenfeld, Fomango, and Baumer, 2005; McGarrell,
2005; USDOJ, 2001).

SA CS]

The creation of SACSI by the Department of Justice in the late 19905 was based
on the success of the programs mentioned previously, especially CeaseFire (McGarrell,
Freilich & Chermak, 2007). The initiative was implemented in ten cities across the US.
and involved multiple agencies working together. SACSI utilized strategic problem
solving and tested approaches used in Boston’s ceaseﬁre (Roehl, Rosenbaurn, Costello,
Coldren, Schuck, Kunard, & Forde, 2006). The program also included offender
notiﬁcation meetings and communication efforts like those implemented in Richmond-
billboards, posters, and buses. An important strategy of SACSI was “smart prosecution,”

here prosecutors at both the state and federal levels as well as ATF agents and local

10

police reviewed cases in a systematic way to determine whether federal or local
prosecution for gun crime would be more effective (Roehl et al., 2006; McGarrell, 2005).

Research reports on the SACSI initiative provided numerous promising results.
The reports showed that the decline of gun violence in Indianapolis resembled that of
Boston. Additionally, Winston-Salem and Portland experienced reduction in youth gun
violence, recidivism, and drive-by Shootings respectively (Roehl et al., 2006; McGarrell, __
2005). In general, comparisons of crime trends of SACSI sites to equivalent non -SACSI
sites showed that the declines of violent crime were more visible in those Sites

implementing SACSI (Roehl etal., 2006; McGarrell, 2005).

 

As mentioned previously, SACSI utilized several methods used in previous
programs and in a way paved the way for the implementation of PSN.
Project Exile

Project Exile was introduced in Richmond, Virginia as a response to the high
levels of homicide and assault involving ﬁrearms. In the late 19903, it was concluded
that the levels of violence being experienced in Richmond were unacceptable and that
action against violent drug crimes involving ﬁrearms would be taken at the federal level
since harsher penalties would be attained (McGarrell, 2005; Rosenfeld, F omango, and
Baumer, 2005). The main focus of this program was to deter people from carrying and
using ﬁrearms for criminal purposes (Rosenfeld, Fomango, and Baumer, 2005). The
implementation of Project Exile in Richmond led to a decline in the city’s homicide
levels and the removal of large number of violent criminals ﬁ'om the streets (McGarrell,

2005; Rosenfeld, Fomango, and Baumer, 2005; Comey & Miller, 2002).

ll

Participants in the program reported that part of the reason for Exile’s success was
the communication/outreach component. However, there is no research that clariﬁes
whether or not this outreach was a cause of success. The program promoted deterrence
by relying on the use of free media and commercial advertisement (Comey & Miller,
2002). Additionally, citizens who wanted to get involved formed the Citizen Support
Foundation which handled all media contracts and conducted fundraisers. Project Exile
was advertised in billboards, painted buses that operated through the whole city, TV
commercials, and supermarket bags (Comey & Miller, 2002; USDOJ, 2001).
Additionally, the message was delivered through the slogan “an illegal gun gets you ﬁve
years in federal prison” and the community was involved by being encouraged to report
guns to a CrimeStoppers telephone number (Comey & Miller, 2002). The initiative
changed the attitudes of people in the Richmond area and illegal gun possession, once
seen as a minor offense, was seen as a serious offense. Review of cases in Richmond
have shown that offenders steered away from possessing or utilizing ﬁrearms in their
criminal activities because of the ﬁve- year sentence advertised (Comey & Miller, 2002).

The program proved to be very successful the ﬁrst year it was implemented with a
40 percent decrease in homicides and 30 percent drop in armed robberies and ﬁve
hundred convictions, additional research conducted after the ﬁrst year of implementation
also showed Exile to be successful in reducing ﬁrearm violence in Richmond (USDOJ,
2001; Rosenfeld, Fomango & Baumer, 2005).

Overview of Project Safe Neighborhood
Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN) is an initiative to reduce gun violence in the

United States. The billion dollar comprehensive program was created in January of 2001

12

by President George W. Bush in order to address and combat gun violence. PSN,
overseen by the Department of Justice and the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce, combines the
efforts of law enforcement, prosecutors, and community leaders to deter and punish gun
crime at the federal, state and local levels (USDOJ, 2004). That same year, federal funds
were assigned to the initiative in order to employ more prosecutors, provide more training
for people involved in the program, and to support outreach efforts (Zimmerman, 2006).

PSN has ﬁve core elements: partnerships, strategic planning, training, outreach,
and accountability (USDOJ, 2001, 2004; McGarrell, 2005). These elements are brieﬂy
reviewed below.
Partnerships

PSN is a collaborative program. In order for it to succeed multi-agency
cooperation is essential. The multiple agencies involve law enforcement and correctional
agents and prosecutors at the local, state, and federal levels. In addition, the participation
of groups ﬁ'om the private sector is extremely important to the success of the program as
well as a media consultants and research partners (Zimmerman, 2006). Partnerships of
this nature have been effectively adopted by different initiatives such as Community
Policing (CP), where the media plays a very important role.
Strategic Planning

Strategic planning refers to the strategies used to address the crime problems in
the speciﬁc jurisdictions. This planning must be tailored since every jurisdiction faces
different challenges. Part of strategic planning is the decision whether to prosecute under

federal or state law, crime mapping, and utilizing ballistic technology. The approach

13

taken to reduce gun violence will vary across locality, however, the initiative requests
every US. attorney to include three priorities in their plan. These include:

0 Increased prosecution of violent organizations by utilizing conspiracy laws, or 18
U.S.C.§ 924(c) which provides guidelines for the prosecution of armed drug
dealers and carries a mandatory sentence of ﬁve, seven or ten years in prison

0 Increased enforcement of federal laws against illegal gun trafﬁckers and
suppliers

0 Strongly enforce ﬁrearm laws regarding felons and prohibited persons

(Comey & Miller, 2002; Zimmerman, 2006).

Training

The members of the task forces must be properly trained in different areas relating
to illegal guns and gun crime. Training may include ﬁrearm identiﬁcation, safety,
trafﬁcking issues, and the different state and federal laws and statutes. The training is.
conducted on a regional basis and in some instances in a joint environment between the
several agencies involved to promote effective partnerships. As of 2005, an approximate
18,000 people have attended PSN-related training (McDevitt, Decker, Kroovand Hipple,
McGarrell, 2006).
Outreach

The outreach component is extremely important to the success of PSN since it
informs the communities about the initiative and gets them involved. The developers of
PSN understand the importance of communicating the message to potential offenders and
the community; thus, they supported any advancement of prevention and intervention

components (Decker& McDevitt, 2006). The messages conveyed through the media seek

14

to inform the citizens about the program and increase support for more aggressive
prosecution of gun offenders (Zimmerman, 2006).

The use of media is strongly encouraged and to some extent required, in fact, the
initial funding given to each jurisdiction included approximately $ 170, 000 over a two
year period to support the outreach component. The use of this funds and the outreach
conducted were left to the discretion of each jurisdiction (USDOJ, 2004). Although these
funds were given, the outreach campaign may prove to be very expensive and additional
ﬁmds are not readily available, thus the jurisdictions must rely on charity. However, the
US. Attorneys are forbidden from forming any foundations to gain ﬁrnds for the cause.
As a result, other task force members have taken the initiative to create charitable
organizations to ensure ﬁrnding for the outreach component (U SDOJ , 2001, Zimmerman,
2006)

Accountability

Each of the 94 districts must account for their activities. They must provide
reports twice a year that address their activities, crime rates and gun violence. The formal
reports are submitted January 31 and July 31 of every year and must follow a format that
includes the nature of partnerships with the different sectors, how the problem of gun
crime is being addressed, the media component of the strategy and the training conducted
and/or attended (Zimmerman, 2006).

Variation in PSN Success

Although not much research has been conducted on the success and variation of

PSN implementation, those studies that have been conducted are promising. The

commitment to implement federal prosecution has been widely accepted. During FY

15

2005 over 13,000 people were charged with federal gun crimes, making it the highest
number of prosecutions recorded by DOJ. In addition, since PSN was adopted, the
number of federal prosecutions involving ﬁrearm crimes has increased 73 percent
(McDevitt, Decker, Kroovand Hipple& McGarrell, 2006).

Currently, there is not much research available on the success and failures of
PSN, but there have been several case studies on some of the strategies used by PSN that
have shown promising results. For example, studies on gun prosecution case screening
have shown some success in the areas of information sharing, increases in federal
prosecutions, and public safety. The program has also faced many challenges especially
in the area of timing. The case study concluded that in order for case screening to be
truly effective other strategies must be implemented simultaneously (i.e. offender
notiﬁcation and violent offender lists) (Decker& McDevitt, 2006).

The review of offender notiﬁcation meetings, which seek to deter offenders by
sending the message that gun violence will not be accepted, showed some success in
Boston and Indianapolis. In Boston, the meetings led to a signiﬁcant reduction in youth
homicides and assaults. In Indianapolis, the evaluation focused on the offenders and
found that those who had attended the meetings felt that they were more at risk of being
sanctioned and had lower rates of re-offending (McDevitt, Decker, Kroovand Hipple &
McGarrell, 2006). Other case studies that have shown promising results are those
regarding offender lists. These case studies looks at the effectiveness of implementing
chronic violent offenders lists focusing on program WOW in St. Louis, VIPER in
Indianapolis, Impact Players in Boston, and ELIMICON in Georgia (Bynum & Decker,

2006)

16

A recent study by Papachristos, Meares & Fagan (2007) evaluated the impact of
several intervention strategies, including increased federal action for convicts involved
with guns, longer sentences linked with federal prosecution, supply-side ﬁrearm policing
related to higher rates of ﬁrearm seizures, and the advertising of deterrence messages
through offender notiﬁcation meetings. All of these strategies were implemented in
Chicago as part of the PSN initiative. The results ﬁom their study were promising— the
researchers noted a 37 percent decrease in quarterly homicide rates and concluded that
several of the interventions were associated with this decrease, especially those
interventions involving offender notiﬁcation meetings (Papachristos, Meares & Fagan,
2007). Evaluations of intervention strategies such as the offender notiﬁcation meetings
implemented in the City of Lowell, Massachusetts concluded that after the strategy was
implemented the city saw reduction in ﬁrearm violence. However, the researchers cannot
conclude whether or not the results are short or long term (McDevitt, Braga & Cronin,
2007)

Even though the case studies conducted have been promising, much needs to be
done in the area of evaluating the program, its implementation, and successes but this
evaluation may prove difﬁcult since much of the information comes from formal reports
that are slightly skewed (Zimmerman, 2006). Assessments by Ludwig concluded that all
of the districts experienced an increase in cooperation between the different agencies (as
cited in Zimmerman, 2006), however, Zimmerman’s work (2006) calls into question the
assessment by showing that PSN research partners question the validity of such reports.

In terms of implementation, a study by Zimmerman (2006) looked at variation in

program and policy implementations across the nation focusing on PSN. She describes

l7

that, in theory, the implementation of such programs and policies are effective in
reducing risks to the communities but in practice, but that implementation have shown
limited success. Speciﬁcally, adoption of policies and programs has varied widely across
the 94 jurisdictions and the elements that work for one may not work for another. There
are several obstacles that must be taken into account especially in the criminal justice
ﬁeld where many of the agencies are decentralized and autonomous (Zimmerman, 2006).

Zimmerman’s study concluded that implementation of PSN was more likely to
happen in areas that had better information technology infrastructures and had previous
experience with similar programs such as ceaseﬁre and SACSI. The research also found
that some areas the implementation of the program was symbolic in nature and although a
task force was created for formal purposes it did not meet and that all work was done by
the US. Attorney’s office staff (Zimmerman, 2006).

A sigriﬁcant way to monitor implementation trends is to look at news media and
the coverage it gives the policy/program at hand. The type of coverage given heavily
inﬂuences the perception citizens have of criminal justice policies and risk of crime
which is very important since public support is needed to implement any type of crime
control strategy (Zimmerman, 2006). The following section reviews the important role
media has on society as a whole and the criminal justice system.

The Importance of Media in Society and the Criminal Justice System

The media in the United States play a very important role in the every day life of
citizens and their views of the world surrounding them. Daily, we ﬁnd ourselves
surrounded by it. The US. Census Bureau (2007a) reported that in 2002, 99 percent of

US households owned a radio system and 98.2 percent owned a television set, an average

18

of 5.6 radios and 2.4 televisions per household. Although print media circulation has
dropped since the 19703, probably due to the invention of the intemet, as of 2002, 52.2
million households still received daily newspapers (US. Census Bureau, 2007a). Fifty Six
percent of Americans identiﬁed television as being the principal source for news, both
national and international (Lipschultz and Hilt, 2002). On average, Americans spend
1,546 hours watching television and 188 hours reading the newspaper per year (US.
Census Bureau, 2007b).

The extensive reliance on media and the lack of experience the general public has
with crime plays a very important role in the perception of crime and the criminal justice
system as a whole since, for many Americans, media are the main source for crime news.
Crime coverage also inﬂuences people’s perceptions of crime and increases their fear of
it; the relationship between the media and the fear of crime is dependant on the
characteristics of both the message and the audience (Chiricos, Eschholz & Gertz, 1997).
People who have been victims of crime or who share characteristics to those shown as
victims and heavy media consumers are more likely to be afraid (Croteau & Hoynes,
1997). Additionally, the medium in which the news is presented, either newspaper or
television, also inﬂuences fear of crime. Crime stories, especially those in newspapers,
have a stronger inﬂuence on whites, the elderly, and women- all of which are least likely
to be victimized when compared to minority young males (Chiricos, Eschholz & Gertz,
1997)

The limited experiences with crime and the distorted image of crime presented by
media in both ﬁctional and non ﬁctional shows have potential negative effects on law

enforcement and prosecuting agencies. One example is the much discussed “CSI effect.”

19

This phenomenon increases the public’s expectations on crime solving techniques and
makes the public place put more pressure on criminal justice professionals. The
emergence of this effect has affected the outcome of criminal cases throughout the United
States. A 2005 survey given to prosecutors (n=102) in Maricopa County, AZ revealed
that 38 percent of them had cases that resulted in either hung juries or acquittals due to
lack of forensic evidence to compliment sufﬁcient testimony (Thomas, 2006).

These results Show how the amount and type of coverage crime receives has a
deep effect in societal perception since it leads to, what sociologists term, a social
construction of reality (Surette, 1995; Croteau & Hoynes, 1997; Lipschultz & Hilt, 2002).
This occurrence allows people to build an image of the world based on the information
they have gathered form the media, their preexisting understanding of crime, and the
cultural context in which they are in, leading them to behave according to that perception
(Croteau &Hoynes, 1997; Lipschultz & Hilt, 2002; Doyle, 2003).

Presentation of Crime and Criminal Justice in the Media

The media shows most crimes as being violent, when in reality crime statistics
prove the opposite (Sacco, 1995). For instances, studies of media in Louisiana in the late
19703 showed that although robberies and murders comprised 12.4 percent of the city’s
crime they made up about 80 percent of crime in the news (Sheley & Ashkins, 1981). A
large amount of the crimes presented in the news have a high level of violence. Studies of
KABC-TV, Los Angeles, in the early 19903 found that an average of three crime stories
per day were presented and that most crime in the news were sporadic and characterized ‘
by acts of violence. In Los Angeles, violent crime accounted for approximately 30

percent of total amount of crime but represented 78 percent of crime news reported by

20

KABC (Lipschultz & Hilt, 2002). Similar studies have shown that personal, violent
crime, such as rape and murder is overrepresented in the news and covered more often
than burglaries and thefts (Surette, 1998). Although homicide, in comparison to other
crime, is disproportionately covered, less serious crimes are presented when they are
surrounded by special circumstances or when they have the potential to create emotional
responses (Chermak, 1995).

There are several other general ﬁndings about media coverage of crime. First,
studies conducted by Graber concluded that although different media outlets report crime _
in their own way, the attention to individual crime remained constant throughout the
different media studied (as cited in Sacco, 1995). Second, the image we get on offenders
is also distorted by the media. The majority of offenders fall under the youth category,
yet the media presents both the offenders and victims as being older (Sacco, 1995).

Third, the crime stories presented also vary by cities since the crimes experienced by a
city vary according to its size. Fourth, the characteristics of the victim inﬂuence the
newsworthiness of the story. Although murder is generally the crime of choice for media,
if the victim is part of a special population— such as the elderly or children- less serious
crimes (i.e. burglary) may be given more attention (Chermak, 1995). Finally, the
attention given to these special populations may result in media’s false creation of “crime
waves” which in turn may lead to an increase fear of being victimized. F ishman (1978)
analyzed crime waves related to attacks on elderly people and found that, although the
reporting on these types of crimes had increased, the attacks on the elderly did not. This
study found that, as a result of the extensive coverage, more resources were given to

police departments and tougher policies were implemented to ﬁght crime against the

21

elderly. These results expose the important effects news media has on society (Surette,
1998; Doyle, 2003).

Most research conducted in the area of criminal justice and the media focus on the
images of crime instead of the image of the criminal justice system and the programs
utilized to prevent or react to crime. Programs and police initiatives do not receive much
coverage due to their lack of immediacy and “human drama” contained in crime stories
and, in some instances, the failure of police departments to take full advantage of the
accessibility to media outlets in addition to budget constraints. Furthermore, stories
exploring and evaluating programs are far more difﬁcult to produce than those involving
criminal events since they require more work on the part of the reporter (Chermak &
Weiss, 2003). However, there are some exceptions discussed below.

The Case of Crime Stoppers

Crime stoppers began in 1976 as an effort to assist law enforcement ofﬁcials in
solving crime. The program requires a partnership between the community, law
enforcement, and the media. Law enforcement selects a story that becomes the “crime of
the week”, the stories are chosen based on the emotional power they have and the
potential to incite moral outrage. Studies have shown that most stories - 81 percent-
selected for the crime stoppers program contained violence (Snider, 1990). The stories
are then produced and publicized by the media (newspapers, radio, and television). As
part of the program, consumers are encouraged to call a “hot line” with any information
regarding the crime, the caller is assigned a number to provide anonymity, and if the
information leads to solving the crime the caller receives a reward. The provision of

anonymity and the reward are components of the program that promote community

22

involvement while combating three issues- fear of reprisal, apathy, and unwillingness of
getting involved- often faced by law enforcement during an investigation (Crime
Stoppers USA, 2000). The involvement of the general public is extremely signiﬁcant
since a large percentage of arrests can be credited to citizen initiated contact instead of
police (Rosenbaum, Lurigio & Lavrakas, 1989).

Since its creation, crime stoppers has gone international and there are over one
thousand programs in areas of North America, Western Europe, Australia, Africa, and the
Caribbean. As of 2007, the program has aided in the clearance of 1,081,337 cases and has
led to 670,572 arrests (Crime Stoppers Intemational, 2007).

Rosenbaum and colleagues (1989) was funded by the National Institute of Justice
and evaluated the program at the national level. The study had several important
ﬁndings: 1). The program is more effective in areas with a medium size population and
low crime rates; 2). Contrary to popular belief, the study found that the reward size did
not inﬂuence the participation of informants and their satisfaction with the program; and
3). Regarding media relations, the researchers found that those communities which
received special coverage or had a more cooperative relation with the media had a higher
success rate than those that did not (Rosenbaum, Lurigio & Lavrakas, 1989).
Community Policing in the News

Community policing is a good example of a program that has received media
coverage. Although the coverage of the program is not as frequent as that of crime stories
in the newspapers , when it is presented it receives more space — 519 words vs. 193 on
average- and the stories are generally favorable (Chermak & Weiss, 2006). However,

receiving the necessary attention to promote such programs proves difﬁcult for police

23

departments since the programs do not contain the characteristics that are needed to make
headlines. Additionally, the public information ofﬁcers (PIOs), who are often in charge
of communicating with the media, spend most of their time- an approximate 44 percent-
dealing with inquiries about crime in comparison to the time spent advertising police
initiatives (15 percent) (Chermak & Weiss, 2006).

Studies by Chennak & Weiss (2006) looked at the content of community policing
stories and concluded that out of all the stories, only 65 percent of them mentioned the
goal of community policing and that the history and philosophy of community policing
were seldom discussed. This led them to conclude that the stories regarding community
policing, and police programs in general, were very limited in context and only
mentioned community policing as an overall strategy instead of breaking it up into its
components.

Part of the reason the police initiatives do not get as much media coverage is due
to the difﬁculty in creating such stories since they require more resources including
community members and a signiﬁcant amount of time. Furthermore, the media feels that
they are not kept informed about these initiatives by police departments (Chermak &
Weiss, 2006).

Constructing Crime News: Explaining Successes and Failures

The presentation of crime in the news also tends to be distorted since story selection
is left up to the discretion of the reporters and based on a set of organizational values
which include, but are not limited to, ethnocentrism, responsible capitalism, national

leadership, and individualism (Lipschultz & Hilt, 2007). Scholars have identiﬁed the

24

process that is used to create the social construction of crime which then leads to crime
news. They identify 3 stages:

1. Crime is selected from a pool of various social issues such as poverty and

education. It is then identiﬁed as a problem requiring policy considerations.

2. The crime problem is then narrowed down to include street crime

3. Crime is then deﬁned as a criminal justice problem (Welch, Fenwick, & Roberts,

1998)

Although crime is an important topic, not all crimes are presented in the news. In fact,
the vast majority of crimes are never presented at all. Previous research indicates that
several characteristics increase the likelihood that a crime event will be presented:
seriousness of the offense, the characteristics of the victims and offenders, the beliefs of
the reporter, the uniqueness of the crime, and its prominence (Chermak, 1995).

The main source for news crime stories are state managers (political leaders and law
enforcement personnel), and these stories are not objective since state managers often
attempt to present a particularly ideological deﬁnition of crime; thus they are able to sort
what deﬁnitions of crime are presented to the general public demonstrating some threats
but not others (Welch, Fenwick, & Roberts, 1998) consequently, manipulating the
public’s perception of crime in their communities.

The relationship between the media and the criminal justice system sources is
symbiotic. The media needs the police for stories- an approximate 73 percent of
information gathered by media is given out by law enforcement personnel (Chermak &
Weiss, 2006). On the other hand, the police rely on the media for publicity, identiﬁcation

of community problems, and communication of police efforts and initiatives such as

25

community policing and PSN. Additionally, the police use the media to encourage citizen
participation in corrrmunity programs (Chermak & Weiss, 2006).

The police departments understand the importance of media relations and have
introduced Public information Ofﬁcers (PIO) (also referred to as Press Ofﬁcers in the
UK) to their staff. This officer may be a sworn ofﬁcer or a civilian who is responsible of
preserving the department’s image and providing the media with information (Chermak
& Weiss, 2006; Mawby, 2002). Failure to cooperate with the media may prove
detrimental to police departments since the media will resort to other sources that may
express different points of view than those held by the departments and as a result
damage departmental image and manipulate public opinion (Ericson, Baranek & Chan,
1989). Police departments also recognize the importance of collaborating with the media
since, that way, they can control what is published or presented (Chermak, 1995).

The use and availability of sources vary within the criminal justice system. Police
are open to media relations and have added public relation specialist to their staff.
Sources on courts and corrections, however, are more difﬁcult to access- corrections
being the most difﬁcult- and the relationships that exist between reporters and these
sources are distant in comparison to the police (Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1989). It will
thus be interesting to examine whether PSN has impacted the role of prosecutors in local
news creation.

As part of this study, I seek to identify those sources that are more commonly cited in
PSN stories (i.e. police ofﬁcials, personnel from the US Attorney Ofﬁce, regular
citizens, etc.) and the type of information they provide such as solely informational or

promotional. Establishing good relations with sources is extremely important for the

26

news media since they control the information available and citing sources in the articles
provides more credibility, especially when the source is an authority in the subject
(Chermak, 1995). At the same time, sources should also seek to create good relations

with the media in order to promote speciﬁc initiatives like PSN.

 

27

CHAPTER THREE: DATA AND METHODS
The primary focus of this study is to identify the representation of PSN in the news
media and to conduct a preliminary exploration of the different strategies utilized by
speciﬁc jurisdictions to achieve media success.
In order to investigate this question a bilateral approach will be used. First, a

content analysis of print news media will be conducted to examine the amount and type

 

F
of coverage given to PSN. Second, two case studies from successful districts will be I
conducted to identify what media strategies aided in the success of achieving media
coverage of PSN in those areas.
Content Analysis f

To examine the information on PSN available to the public, content analysis of
print media was selected as a main method for this study for several reasons. First, it aids
in the lessening of the entire content of a communication to a set of categories that
symbolize the characteristics of the investigatory interest (Singleton & Straits, 2005).
Second, it provides the opportunity to conduct the study in both a qualitative and
quantitative manner (Content analysis, n.d.; Qualitative social science, n.d.). Third,
utilizing this method also provides the researcher with an opportunity to codify and
record the variables in a code book that will ensure intercoder reliability in case of
replications (Qualitative social science, n.d.). The use of content analysis is widespread in
the ﬁelds of criminal justice and media studies. Several successful studies (Sheley &
Ashkins, 1981, Chennak, 1995; Chennak, 1997; Chermak & Weiss, 2006) have used this

methodology to explore various types of research questions.

28

Content data for this analysis were gathered from a pool of newspaper articles
(n=689) from the different states in which the PSN initiative has been implemented, the
Washington DC area, and Guam. The newspaper articles were collected during the time
period ﬁ'om 2001 to 2005 from several sources including, but not limited to weekly
searches in the Lexis-Nexis database, articles from USDOJ ofﬁces, articles ﬁ'om the PSN
ofﬁce, and press releases from the various US attorney ofﬁces. These data were gathered
by researchers at American University as part of their role in coordinating PSN technical
assistance for the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The media data were provided to the
Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice research team due to its role as a
national PSN research partner for the Department of Justice.

This data set was supplemented by conducting a Lexis-Nexis search of all PSN
stories in newspapers published between the years 2006 and 2007, with set word
restrictions including searches of the terms “Project Safe Neighborhoods,” “US
Attorney,” and “gun violence” within the stories. Stories were searched within the entire
publications since crime stories are not limited to one section of the publication
(Chermak, 1995). It is important to note that the articles were collected from two
different processes and that the sample of articles collected from 2001-2005 include more
sources than the supplementary sample collected ﬁom 2006-2007. After the collection of
the 2006-2007 articles a total sample of 1271 articles was composed. Out of this sample
381 articles were evaluated. A secondary analysis was conducted by time period to
determine whether there were signiﬁcant differences between the samples. The results

concluded that although there would be a slight difference in how the jurisdictions were

29

categorized, there were no signiﬁcant differences in the variables evaluated. The results
of this analysis, due to its insigniﬁcant results, are not presented in this paper.

Due to time constraints and the small number of researchers for this project, a
sampling procedure was used for the analysis of newspaper articles. Although the
sampling strategy selected depended on the number of articles distributed across PSN
jurisdictions, a reasonable procedure was the following: Articles were separated into
three strata including low coverage jurisdictions, medium coverage jurisdictions, and
high coverage jurisdictions. A random sample of articles was taken from each stratum.
This method ensured that those jurisdictions with the least coverage will be properly
represented in the sample population (Singleton & Straits, 2005).

The articles were separated by state and PSN jurisdiction, and then identiﬁed as a
high, medium, or low coverage jurisdiction depending on the number of articles within
them. Jurisdictions with more than 31 articles were placed in the high coverage area,
those with a range of 17 to 30 were placed in the medium, and those with no articles to a
maximum of 16 fell under the low category. Population for all the jurisdictions were also
collected to see if there was a correlation between the number of people the jurisdiction
had and the articles produced by that jurisdiction, hence to see if the population affected
the jurisdiction’s category. The results of this showed that there is no correlation between
the two and those articles with the highest coverage were not necessarily the ones with
the most people. The articles were then coded using a codebook provided in Appendix B.
Several variables were emphasized in the codebook and divided into different categories.
The ﬁrst category is assessment, divided into subcategories following the categorization

scheme provided by Chermak (1995). The assessment variable separates them into

30

99 ‘6

“incident stories , policy or program stories”, “legislative action,” and “implementation
of initiatives,”, and “statistical stories”. Additionally, “promotional stories” and “other
stories” are included in the coding scheme. Media partners and overall satisfaction with
them by the US. attorneys were also evaluated, as well as if media partners played an
important role in how the jurisdictions were categorized.

One of the main purposes of this study is to evaluate the amount and type of
coverage PSN receives. In order to do so, the evaluation of the articles included the type
of PSN preventative programs covered in the news, such as gun buy back programs and
after school activities for at risk youths and those programs that are strategically designed
to reduce gun violence such as notiﬁcation and lever-pulling strategies. These variables
were ﬁrst coded as string variables in order to capture the best information available and
then recoded into numeric variables for easier analysis. Additionally, the type of gun
violence discussions will also be evaluated to determine what characteristics make the
news —offender characteristics, speciﬁc cases, and responses by the criminal justice
system among others. Offender characteristics include demographics and previous
convictions, speciﬁc cases refer to those cases that are used in the articles since they
possess some sort of sensationalized characteristic such as the involvement of a
prominent ﬁgure, crimes that are extremely violent and gruesome, or crimes that were in
concurrence with other crimes, especially drug offenses and gang involvement. The
response by the criminal justice system refers to any action taken by law enforcement
ofﬁcers, such as arrests or raids, and court actions such as the type of prosecution and

sentence imposed.

31

Another set of variables are strategy focus, and are divided into the subcategories
including “Prosecutorial,” “Law Enforcement,” “Corrections,” “Communication,” and
“General Gun Strategy.” Many strategies, especially those that fall under the PSN
umbrella, have multiple agencies involved and thus it may be difﬁcult to code into a
single category. Here, I will ﬁrst try to code what is emphasized primarily in the stories
(Strategy Focus] ), and then also code other aspects of the strategy (Strategy Focus2;
Strategy F ocus3).

In addition several variables related to the sources cited in PSN stories were
created. First, the total number of sources will be determined. Second, the “type of
source” will include the organization represented by the individual cited in a news story.
Both official (police chief, US. Attorney, state attorney, etc.) and unofﬁcial people
(victims, citizens) will be noted. Third, their position in the organization, when
applicable and available, will be coded. For example, whether a police source is the chief
executive officer, a detective, or a line ofﬁcer will be noted. Fourth, I will code whether
the source is used to discuss a speciﬁc PSN program, a successful PSN investigation, an
element of the PSN strategy, gun violence concerns in general, or some other topic.
Finally, an attempt to capture an evaluative aspect of their statement by noting whether
what they said was factual, explanatory, evaluative, recommendatory, predicting, or
reacting to PSN will be made. These codes were borrowed from Chermak (1995).

In the case of media coverage, whether or not the several components of PSN are
mentioned in the articles and determine which of the components receives more coverage
was explored. Furthermore, the media related variables also looked at whether or not the

articles discuss the goals, philosophy, funding, and history of PSN.

32

The role of the media was explored by coding how crime is presented and the type of
mention PSN receives and whether it is favorable or not. By favorable it is meant that
PSN is being portrayed as a positive program that is indeed attempting to reduce gun
violence. Not favorable, on the other hand, will include the articles that criticize the
initiative and the way it is being implemented. The neutral category includes those
articles that fail to provide any opinion on the initiative and are solely informational.
Variables that evaluate the discussion of gun violence and whether it is increasing or
decreasing according to the media, and whether there is a mention of how PSN may aid
in crime reduction were included in order to determine the portrayal of the program by
the media.

A small analysis was also conducted to see if the implementation of a media
partner and the type of partner affected the type of coverage received by the jurisdictions
and if the type of media partner had any inﬂuence in how the jurisdictions were
categorized. Additionally a dataset that contained information on mass media campaigns
per jurisdiction was also evaluated to supplement the ﬁndings of the content analysis
done on the articles. This dataset were collected by the MSU’s School of Criminal Justice
PSN research team.

In addition to the variables mentioned above, coding of all articles will include the
state, year of publication, U.S. jurisdictions, and length of the article.
Analysis

These data were input into two SPSS data ﬁles for analysis (a general ﬁle that

includes information on most PSN related information and a source data ﬁle). Both data

33

sets were cleaned and prepared for analysis. The analysis of data that was performed for
this study was very basic and consisted of mostly descriptive statistics and frequencies.
Case Studies

Once the content analysis was completed, case studies of two jurisdictions that
demonstrated media success were conducted in order to better understand issues related
to media coverage of PSN. For purposes of this study, media success refers to the amount
of coverage by print media received by the different jurisdictions. Whereas the purpose of
the content analysis is to estimate the amount and determine the type of coverage PSN
receives, the case studies will expose in detail the type of media strategies being used in
jurisdictions with signiﬁcant amounts of media coverage. Although it would have been
beneﬁcial to randomly select jurisdictions, or conduct case studies ﬁom jurisdictions with
different amounts of coverage, such an approach was beyond the scope of the current
project. A focus on two jurisdictions will provide depth of understanding regarding the
successful strategies used to promote PSN in the media.

The jurisdiction selection for this portion of the study was based on the
information gathered during the content analysis stage. This was done by categorizing the
media coverage in the different areas into low, medium, and high. Two jurisdictions were
chosen from the high coverage category. All media articles related to these jurisdictions
were a source of information to formulate the case study. Lexis-Nexis searches which
attempt to capture other sources of information about the US attomey’s office in that
jurisdiction gave additional contextual information. Other open source documents were
examined, including websites, congressional hearings, and other relevant legislative

initiatives. Finally, convenience interviews with members of the PSN task forces in the

34

selected jurisdictions were conducted to complement the content analysis and case study.
The interviews were conducted by telephone and via e-mail

Case studies were selected since, as mentioned above, they provide a more in
depth approach to studying issues like media coverage and PSN. Additionally, case
studies examine the phenomenon in a real- life context (Yin, 1981). Several case studies
have been conducted on the subject of PSN and some of its strategies (Bynum & Decker,
2006; McDevitt & Decker, 2006; Decker & McDevitt, 2006) which have been very
enlightening; however, not many have been done in the area of media and outreach. It is
the purpose of this exploratory research to supplement existing case studies and provide
new areas for future study when we study initiatives like PSN.

Another aspect of case studies that makes it an attractive research method is the
fact that they allow for the use of both qualitative and quantitative data that can be
gathered from various sources such as ﬁeld work and archival records (Yin, 1981). For
this particular project, case studies are an attractive method since they allow the
researcher to collect the greatest amount of information in a limited amount of time and
provide an in depth analysis of the topic studied.

Recogrrizable traits of the interviewees will not be presented in the report in order
to guarantee conﬁdentiality.

On the other had, the researcher is fully aware of some of the limitations that case
studies have, especially when it comes to generalizing ﬁndings and conclusions to other
areas that were not included in the study; Studies by Duncombe and Straussman (1994)
show that solely relying on case studies may lead to inaccurate results since they may not

include comparisons between jurisdictions and lack control groups. In some instances,

35

but not applicable to this particular project, case studies may not be cost effective, could
be time consuming , and may breach the privacy of individuals and organizations studied

(Stake, 1985).

36

CHAPTER FOUR:
MEDIA COVERAGE OF PROJECT SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS
Overview of Sample

There were 1,271 articles published about Project Safe Neighborhoods between
2001 and 2007. It is interesting that 54 percent of the stories were published between
2006 and 2007, but many focused on brief stories on prosecutorial action for a speciﬁc
case. Most of these stories made mention of prosecuting at the federal level under the
PSN guidelines instead of focusing on implementation of the initiative. The parameters
of the sample are discussed below, but it is important to note that there is a general lack
of coverage of Project Safe Neighborhoods in the news. The fact that only 1271 articles
were collected over a period of six years (2190 days) across all PSN jurisdictions, and
that most of these articles were short press releases that only mentioned PSN in a cursory
manner, highlights the minimum coverage of this initiative. Also consider that for a
majority of jurisdictions, less than six articles were written about PSN during this time
frame. This ﬁnding, however, conﬁrms existing research that news media coverage
focuses on crime incidents and do not give much space to initiatives like PSN.

The articles that were published were divided into three jurisdiction categories—
high, medium, and low coverage. Those jurisdictions included in the high coverage
category had more than 31 articles; the medium was made up by jurisdictions that had
anywhere between 17 to 30 articles and the low category consisted of jurisdictions that
had up to 16 articles. Table 1 presents the districts selected for each area of coverage.
Approximately 30 percent of articles were chosen for detailed content coding for each

category, and thus the content analysis focuses on 381 articles. As one can observe from

37

Table 1, the vast majority of jurisdictions were considered low coverage jurisdictions.
Moreover, there were twenty jurisdictions that did not receive any news coverage for its
PSN initiative. Conversely, only six jurisdictions were considered high jurisdictions, with
the number of articles published in these jurisdictions ranging from 32 to 294. There were
eleven jurisdictions that were considered medium jurisdictions with the number of
articles published in these jurisdictions ranging from 17 to 31. The low jurisdictions had
articles published ranging ﬁ'om 0 to 16. Secondary analysis showed that the type of
media partner the jurisdiction had did not inﬂuence the categorization since there was no
consistency in the type of media partner.
Amount of coverage

It is not surprising considering the sampling strategy that the amount of coverage
given to PSN varied signiﬁcantly when comparing the three categories. Table 2 presents
the rate of articles and average number of words per article. The articles evaluated
averaged 499.51 words in length; there was not much variation in the number of words
between the high and low coverage jurisdictions in that both of these jurisdictions
averaged less that 500 words per article (496.79 for the high and 467.18 for the low)
however, the articles in the medium coverage jurisdiction were longer than those in the
previously mentioned jurisdictions with an average of 561.22 words, which is interesting
since this area had signiﬁcantly fewer articles than the other two jurisdictions.

Although there was not much difference in the average size of articles published
in the different coverage areas, there were signiﬁcant variations in the total number of

articles. The rate of the articles did Show variation across jurisdictions--high coverage

38

jurisdictions had an average of 31 stories compared to 6.27 in the medium and 1.8 in the
low.

In general, the jurisdictions that received higher coverage are jurisdictions that are
actively implementing the initiative by enforcing federal prosecution on gun cases. The
typical story in each jurisdiction was approximately 272 words (mode) and was of an
informational nature and included information on particular incidents and the
prosecutorial action that would be taken.. For the medium and low coverage jurisdictions,
the typical stories were in reference to project ChildSafe and informing the communities
where free gun locks were being distributed. However, there were some jurisdictions that
had very long stories; these long stories included transcripts of speeches by government
ofﬁcials and articles that listed upcoming prosecutorial actions. As part of the
methodology, one article that had over 11,000 words was excluded from the sample to
reduce the presence of outliers that may skew the results.

Type of Coverage

Table 3 presents the results for two related variables. First, it presents the
assessment results. This variable attempts to capture the general focus of the story related
to PSN. This variable was duplicated from the Chermak and Weiss (2006) study.
Second, the strategy variable was originally crafted to capture the stage of the criminal
justice process that was emphasized in the story. However, since it was often difﬁcult to
determine a speciﬁc stage, several additional items had to be added to the coding scheme.

The assessment results reveal that there is very little general coverage of the PSN
initiative and its goals. Instead, PSN jurisdictions attempt to promote the initiative

through speciﬁc criminal incidents. Nearly 62 percent of the stories in the sample were

39

classiﬁed as incident stories. That is, if an arrest is made, or a conviction occurs, these
results are used as an opportunity to also discuss the effort as resulting from the
collaboration of partners involved in the PSN initiative. For example, the District of
Connecticut issues a press release for every gun related offense that is indicted and
prosecuted at the federal level, such press releases include the description of the offense
and the offender and how the prosecutions were possible due to the work of task forces
that involve members of both state and federal agencies. In addition, these press releases
inform and educate the public on what the PSN initiative entails and promote the
measures taken to accomplish the goal of reducing gun violence. It is important to note
that the focus of these stories is on describing the who, what, and when of the incident,
and that the PSN initiative tends to be emphasized as an afterthought.

Approximately 19 percent of the stories discussed the implementation of the
initiative and another 8 percent discussed the creation of the program. As mentioned in
previous sections of this study and other studies conducted in the ﬁeld (Chermak &
Weiss, 2006), rarely are creation and implementation stories presented in the news.
There are two reasons for this lack of coverage: ﬁrst, they are much harder and time-
consuming to create, and second, news organizations do not deem them to be highly
newsworthy. In general, news media recognize that they are promotional stories, and are
only willing to provide occasional coverage to such initiatives. Thus, it is not surprising
that most stories evaluated in the sample referred to particular incidents. Such incidents
are much more consistent with the typical expectations of newsworthiness: high proﬁle
gun arrests or convictions, usually of a signiﬁcant offender. The emphasis of these

stories is on describing the signiﬁcance of the crimes committed by the offender, but it

40

also appears that these articles are a good way for prosecutors to promote PSN in the high
coverage jurisdictions.

Other results for this variable include evaluation (5.5 percent), informational (2.1
percent) and those that refer to award ceremonies (1.3 percent). Stories regarding
legislative action and promotional attempts were rarely presented in the news, only
making up for .5 percent and .8 percent of the total number of stories.

Columns 2-4 present the assessment results for the high, medium, and low
categories. The results show news media in the high coverage jurisdictions, presented in
column 2 of the table, focused primarily on incident stories. Nearly 90 percent of the
high jurisdiction stories were incident stories. It is interesting to see how these
jurisdictions focused on crime incidents and presented them to the public as crime
ﬁghting victories in order to promote the initiative. Many of the incident stories in this
category are based on press releases from the US. Attorneys’ Ofﬁce in which the
incident, prosecutorial action, the efforts of the crime ﬁghting units in that jurisdiction,
are described in detail. Other incident related stories included stories based on press
results that included comments by the US. Attorney promoting the partnerships involved
in the initiative that resulted in an arrest or conviction, and how the collaboration is
critical in the ﬁght against gun violence.

The other category of the assessment variable that showed great variation across
the jurisdictions was the implementation of initiative. Interestingly, the high coverage
jurisdiction only made mention of such implementation in 2.7 percent of the stories
compared to 38.9 percent in the low and 29 percent in the medium coverage categories.

From these results, it can be concluded that those jurisdictions in the high coverage area

41

became high coverage due to successful prosecutions and arrests, but the medium and
low coverage jurisdictions focused more speciﬁcally on promoting the initiative. For
example, articles in the low coverage jurisdiction, presented in column 4, were more
likely to inform the public about PSN programs, such as Project ChildSafe, than those in
the other jurisdictions. These stories tend to describe the program and make mention of
the program being part of PSN, however, other aspects of the PSN initiatives were not
given very much attention.

Table 3 also includes the results for the strategy variable. Since the PSN initiative
is driven by offices of the US Attorney, it is not surprising that there is an emphasis on
the prosecutorial stage of the criminal justice process. All coverage areas do not
emphasize this stage. For example, over 87 percent of the high incident coverage stories,
but only 36 percent of the medium and 24 percent of the low emphasized the prosecution
stage. The high coverage jurisdictions emphasized prosecutorial actions, especially in
relation to a speciﬁc incident, whereas the majority of stories from the low coverage
jurisdictions, and to a lesser extent in the medium coverage jurisdictions, referred to a
general gun strategies being implemented in the area. Stories regarding general gun
strategies represented the second highest category making up for 23.9 percent of the
stories; these types of stories include information on particular programs being
implemented in the different jurisdictions and the ways they are being implemented.

Although law enforcement stories were the next highest category, surprisingly
they were not as represented as expected and made up only 5 percent of the sample
(similar to the other story categories). Stories mentioning the allocation of ﬁmds were

also evaluated and constitute 3.9 percent of the stories closely followed by stories

42

covering information and conferences at 3.4 percent. The last category of PSN story
evaluated was that referring to awards given out by the DOJ to the different jurisdiction
for their efforts and implementation of the initiative. This category makes up 1.8 percent
of the sample.

Table 4 presents the results for the analysis on the variables that discuss whether
or not the media articles included information on the goals, history and philosophy of
PSN. The majority of the articles, 76.7 percent, made at least some reference to the goals
of PSN, and as anticipated, the goals of PSN were much more likely to be provided in
stories from the high category compared to the medium and low jurisdictions. The typical
goal that is emphasized in these stories was that the effort focuses on reducing gun crime,
and in general, there was not much more speciﬁc information related to goals provided.
A more general discussion of the philosophy of PSN as well as the history of the
initiative were much less likely to be presented in the news. The philosophy and history
were only mentioned in 36.7 percent and 16 percent of the stories and these results are
fairly consistent across the high, medium, and low categories. It is relatively
straightforward to discuss the goals, but much more difﬁcult, and requires more space, to
attempt to develop an understanding of the philosophy of initiative and its history.

Also in Table 4 are the results of the variable regarding the discussion of
community group involvement. This is an important variable because collaborations with
community groups are such an important part of the initiative. The involvement of
community groups was mentioned in 33.1 percent of the stories, but the stories presented
in the high coverage jurisdictions made signiﬁcantly more mention of these groups (53.8

percent of the stories) than the medium and low jurisdictions. In most stories, it should be

43

noted, that a reporter would simply name a group but provide little detail about their role
in the implementation of the initiative.

Table 5 examines the presentation of the speciﬁc components of PSN. Overall,
some component was mentioned in 71.4 percent of the stories with the main emphasis
being on partnerships (43.5 percent), followed by strategic planning (12 percent), and
outreach (7.1 percent). Training was mentioned in less than 1 percent of all stories.
These components were discussed in several ways. In some articles, a component was
mentioned as part of larger discussion of a speciﬁc strategy occurring in that jurisdiction.
For example, the mention of partnerships usually included a description of the agencies
that are working together to target a speciﬁc offender or reduce gun violence by actively
conducting neighborhood sweeps (i.e. collaboration between ATF and a local police
department). Education is another component that had several strategies mentioned such
as school and after school programs and youth camps. When discussing the components,
some of the articles mentioned how the components were implemented and the success
rate of some of them. For example, one of the articles evaluated referred to an after
school basketball clinic that included high proﬁle ﬁgures from the community, such as
coaches and players, and highlighted their goal to keep children occupied during the after
school hours while educating the kids on gun violence and the penalties under federal law
and to deter these kids from committing ﬁrearm offenses.

In general, several of the components are mentioned similarly across the high,
medium, and low jurisdictions. It is interesting, however, that components are
signiﬁcantly less likely to be presented in the medium and low jurisdictions compared to

the high jurisdictions. Moreover, the articles presented in the high jurisdiction were

much more likely to mention several components in a story as well as discuss the various
partners involved in the initiative.

Table 6 provides the results for speciﬁc and general programs related to the PSN
initiative. These programs were infrequently presented in the news. Only 28.3 percent
and 22.3 percent respectively mentioned a speciﬁc or general type of program. Project
ChildSafe, a program that focuses on distributing free gun locks to prevent accidental
shootings, was the program that was most frequently presented in the news. Nearly 39
percent of the stories that mentioned a speciﬁc program highlight ChildSafe. Project
Exile was mentioned in nearly 17 percent of the program stories and general gun efforts,
which refer to the implementation of non speciﬁc programs and policies, such as
increasing patrol in an area, also accounted for 17 percent of the total. Project Ceaseﬁre
was mentioned in about 13 percent of the stories. Education programs and anti-gang
initiatives were mentioned less frequently in the news.

When examining the more general categories related to programs, violent
offender teams were most frequently presented in the news accounting for over 35
percent of the stories. Typically, these stories discussed how groups composed of
members from different local and federal agencies were working together to track down
violent offenders and aggressively investigate crimes. Task force efforts were noted in
over 30 percent of the general gun program stories. General gun stories accounted for 14
percent and anti-gang unit stories accounted for 6 percent of the total.

There is a heavy emphasis on the violent offender teams in the high jurisdiction
stories. Over 50 percent of the high jurisdiction stories discussed the efforts and

successes of these teams. Many of the results are fairly consistent across the low and

45

medium jurisdictions for the speciﬁc programs, whereas the high jurisdictions focus more
on general gun strategies. This is somewhat surprising because the results in Table 3
indicated that only a few stories mentioned general gun strategies in the high coverage
areas. This difference in results here can be attributed to the fact that the speciﬁc
programs mentioned in the high coverage areas did not ﬁt into any of the other categories
for this particular variable, and so had to be categorized as a general gun initiative.

Table 7 shows the results of variables related to indicators related to the
evaluation of various outcomes related to PSN, such as the decrease of gun violence,
crime, and speciﬁc case victories. Again, it is not surprising that a large percent of the
stories mentioned speciﬁc cases. Only four percent of the stories mentioned if gangs
were involved and 23 percent of the stories mentioned if drugs were speciﬁcally
involved. However, stories rarely emphasized the impact on gun violence, responses to
crime, and reductions of crime. Only 12.9 percent of the stories mentioned reductions in
gun violence, 17.6 percent of the stories emphasize reductions in crime, and 15.5 percent
discuss responses to crimes. The results of this particular analysis show little variation
across the jurisdictions with the exception of the high category making signiﬁcantly less
mention of the discussion about gun violence, only 3.8 percent of stories, and more
discussion of speciﬁc cases. In fact, 88.7 percent of the stories in the high coverage
jurisdiction mentioned speciﬁc cases. These results may be attributed to the fact that most
of the stories in the high coverage area, as mentioned in previous sections, were press
releases by the US attorney’s ofﬁce informing the public about their action. These cases,
however, are not apparently used to highlight how the PSN initiative might be impacting

the gun violence or crime in that jurisdiction.

46

Sources Cited in News Stories

An important area that was examined for this study was the sources included in
PSN stories. The mean number of sources cited in these stories was 6.24. For the
purposes of this study both direct (people) and indirect (documents, websites, etc) sources
were coded. Any factual piece of information that was speciﬁcally attributed to a direct
or indirect source was coded.

Table 8 presents the results for the speciﬁc sources cited in PSN stories. The
result of the content analysis indicated that US. Attorneys and those working for the US.
Attorney’s Office played a very important role as information providers for the media.
The overall results presented in column 1 Show that prosecutors accounted for 43.3
percent of the sources cited. In addition to US. Attorneys and members of their ofﬁce,
this category includes releases by the US. Department of Justice as well as state
attorneys; however, most of the sources were in fact the US. Attorney in charge of an
ofﬁce. Most previous research highlights the importance of police sources within crime
stories, but it is clear that this initiative has provided opportunities for prosecutors to
develop their relationship with reporters and achieve coverage for this initiative. These
results are also not surprising since it is the attorney’s office that is responsible for the
implementation of the initiative. The ﬁndings were consistent across the jurisdictions
with all of them showing prosecutors as the largest group of sources.

Law enforcement sources were the second highest cited group—this category
includes chiefs of police and sheriffs, PIOs, federal agents, and other police sources. It is
important to note that when all law enforcement sources are combined, they account for

about 25 percent of sources cited, which is a signiﬁcant amount. Police Chiefs and

47

Sheriffs accounted for 7 percent of the sources citied in PSN stories. The results across
coverage jurisdictions were very consistent when comparing the medium and high
coverage jurisdictions. On the other hand, the low coverage jurisdiction shows a slight
increase in the times that police sources are cited. The types of stories in which they are
cited vary somewhat, but they were often cited in stories regarding Project Childsafe and
the distribution of gun locks. The number of P103 cited was small, cited in only 3.3
percent of the stories. This ﬁnding is surprising as previous research has concluded that
most police departments’ primary communication with news reporters is through public
information ofﬁcers (Chermak and Weiss 2006). The medium and low jurisdictions
were very consistent in the use of P103, citing them in approximately 7 percent of the
stories, but they were cited in less than one percent of the stories in the high jurisdictions.
This variation may be attributed to the fact that high coverage jurisdictions covered more
prosecutorial actions than actual program implementation and speciﬁc program stories.
Other police sources were also cited, including detectives and patrol ofﬁcers.
These sources were cited as 6.4 percent of the total number of sources cited, and there
was little variation between the high and medium coverage jurisdictions, but the low
coverage jurisdictions cited these sources more often. Just like PIOS, this variation may
be attributed to the fact that low coverage jurisdictions focused more on implementation
of the initiative and general programs and these type of police sources might have been
easier to access by the media during promotional events. Federal ofﬁcers accounted for a
similar percentage of the sources (compared to other police sources) cited. Overall, they
accounted for 7.5 percent of the sources cited. This is actually larger than one would

have anticipated because federal law enforcement officials are rarely presented in local

48

news stories (Chermak 1995). The results were consistent across jurisdictions. Federal
ofﬁcers make up an important part of the implementation of PSN since they are part of
highly involved organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the ofﬁce of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
(ATF), therefore this explains why they are cited more often than some other sources.

The overall results for police sources were of much interest since they differ
somewhat from what other research in the ﬁeld has found. In studies evaluated for the
literature review (Chermak, 1995; Chennak & Weiss, 2006) the results were always
consistent in that police sources made up the largest percentage of sources utilized by the
media, accounting for between 60 and 80 percent of the information provided in most
crime stories. It is clear that although police sources are not ignored, they play a
secondary role in these stories compared to the use of prosecutorial sources.

Table 8 also indicates that sources other than law enforcement and prosecutors
were cited in the stories, including indirect sources. When examining these other sources,
politicians were the most prevalent with them being cited in 6.7 percent of the stories.
There were some inconsistencies across the jurisdictions, and surprisingly, those articles
from the medium coverage jurisdiction cited politicians in 11.7 percent of the cases.
Considering the amount of coverage in the high coverage jurisdictions, it is somewhat
surprising that politicians were not cited as much as the other jurisdictions because it was
expected that politicians would take advantage of the extensive media coverage.
Unexpectedly, community members were only mentioned in 3.2 percent of the overall
cases, and that the high coverage jurisdictions, which mentioned community groups the

most, had the least amount of community members cited as news sources. This could be

49

credited to the fact that the majority of articles from the high coverage jurisdictions were
based on ofﬁcial documents released by the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce, or were incident
speciﬁc articles and the fact that community partnerships were only mentioned in a
perfunctory way.

The results for documents and general offices and departments were not very
high, which was expected. Out of these, documents were cited the most and made for 8.9
percent of the overall articles. However, there was a great deal of variation across the
jurisdictions and, as expected, only the high coverage jurisdictions presented these
sources.
Overall Media and Source impression of PSN

Table 9 presents the results related to the media and sources impressions of PSN.
The results show that both the media’s overall perspective and the sources view of PSN
was overwhelmingly neutral. In this case, stories were categorized as neutral when the
story made neither positive or negative comments about the initiative and focused solely
on providing factual information. For purposes of the content analysis, the variable had a
very restrictive deﬁnition and only those articles that made a dramatic comment, either
positive or negative, were coded other than neutral. Although it can be argued that solely
promotional stories and discussion of speciﬁc PSN programs can be considered positive
there was resistance in coding them in this way for this variable because this was an
attempt to capture more evaluative-related comments about the initiative, which ended up
appearing rarely in the news.

Out of all 381 articles only 10.5 percent were favorable and 1.8 percent were

critical of the initiative. The results were consistent across all jurisdictions with all of

50

them showing high numbers in the neutral category. Those in the low category, however,
had a slight increase in the not favorable category, with 3.2 percent showing a negative
impression and the medium coverage jurisdictions had a signiﬁcantly higher percentage
of stories, 20.3 percent, showing favorable media impressions.

The results for the individual source analysis also showed a higher percentage of
neutral responses in comparison to favorable and not favorable responses. However, 20.7
percent of them did show favorable impressions of the initiative and it is not surprising
that prosecutors were the most likely source to provide a favorable impression of the
initiative. The results for this analysis were also consistent across jurisdictions. Very few
of the sources, 2.6 percent, had given a negative comment. Those sources pertaining to
the articles in the medium coverage category presented higher percentages in both the
favorable and not favorable categories compared to those results in the high and low
categories. In these jurisdictions, 33 percent of sources showed to have a favorable
impression and 4.9 percents showed a negative impression of the initiative in contrast to
14 percent and 29.3 percent of favorable impressions and 1.5 percent and 3.9 percent of
not favorable responses in the high and low jurisdictions.
Media Partners and Strategies

As part of the outreach component of PSN, the jurisdictions would develop
partnerships with institutions that would be responsible for leading outreach efforts.
There were few restrictions on who could be a media partner, and thus jurisdictions used
a wide variety of partners. For example, 33.3 percent used some sort of community
group as a media partner, 24.6 percent used criminal justice organizations not including

police departments, 10.1 percent used universities, 11.6 percent used politicians’ ofﬁces,

51

14.5 percent used crime stoppers or some sort of program ofﬁce, and police departments
accounted for 5.8 percent of the media partners used. Fortunately, these data were
provided and it presented an opportunity to examine whether the type of media partner
inﬂuenced the coverage of PSN in the news media. It was expected to see dramatic
differences across media partners, however, the data shows that such differences did not
exist and thus can be concluded that media partners, in general, play an insigniﬁcant role
in publicizing the initiative through the print media and that their main focus is to
produce different types of media coverage. These results probably reﬂect that the
primary role of media partners was working on other types of outreach, perhaps speciﬁc
advertising campaigns like billboards, but perhaps not focusing on using the news media
as an opportunity to promote the initiative.

Tables 10 and 11 present the results of the analysis regarding media partners for
the jurisdictions. Table 10 provides information about the size of the article, as well as
the assessment and strategy variables by media partner. Table 11 provides information
about whether speciﬁc aspects of PSN were presented in the news. The results presented
in these tables Show the overall results. The average number of words of the articles was
fairly consistent across the media partners at approximately 468 words, but jurisdictions
that used other cj organizations or political ofﬁcials as media partners resulted in
somewhat larger articles, with an average of 580 words.

Although overall the results are pretty similar by media partner, there are a couple
of important differences that need to be discussed. First, the results for the police
departments as media partners were very interesting. This type of partner was used

mostly in the low coverage jurisdictions and the focus of the stories was on promoting

52

speciﬁc programs (41.2 percent). As mentioned previously, the articles for these
jurisdictions presented news and information about Project Childsafe and the distribution
of gun locks. Additionally, these partners had no promotional stories and focused on
general gun strategies (52 percent) and made little mention of law enforcement strategies
(5.9 percent).

Second, other C] organizations did focus on incident related stories in at least
45.5 percent of the cases and made little mention of programs. They also focused on
prosecutorial strategies in 40.9 percent of the stories. Community groups, universities,
and politician’s ofﬁces also mentioned incident related stories in over 50 percent of the
cases. Of these stories, over half focused on prosecutorial action.

The overall results for universities were somewhat surprising, since they were
higher than the results of the other media partners in several of the variables evaluated.
These media partners were more predominant in the high coverage jurisdictions, which
may explain the high numbers, and 84 percent of their stories were incident related
stories with an equal 84 percent focusing on prosecutorial actions, such as indictments
and sentencing. However, there is no evidence that this particular media partners was
actively involved in promoting the initiative in the news and the results could be
attributed to the fact that the higher coverage jurisdictions, which had more articles, were
covered by these types of media partners.

Table 11 includes the variables regarding impressions of PSN, goals, philosophy,
history and components, it also looks at those variables that determine whether or not

there is a mention of decrease in gun violence, the efforts in responding to crime by the

53

CJ system, whether or not the initiative can reduce crime, and if there is a mention of
funding.

The variable that showed the least variation across all media partners was that
evaluating the media’s overall impression of PSN. Over 70 percent of articles evaluated
in each media partner showed the overall impression of PSN to be neutral. However,
police departments and program offices had a somewhat higher percentage of not
favorable articles in comparison to the other media partners, both at 5.9 percent.
Similarly, over half of the articles across all media partners made no mention of PSN
history and philosophy, yet out of all of the media partners, community groups made
mention of history in 25.4 percent of the stories and mentioned philosophy in 46.6
percent of these stories. Both of these numbers were higher than any of the other media
partners. The reason behind this could be that these types of media partners seek to
inform the community about the initiative in a way that the general public can
understand. Additionally, they may focus on the philosophy and history to explain to the
community why the initiatives are important and what the beneﬁts of it could be.

Over 70 percent of the articles, by media partner, made no mention on how the
initiative has impacted the crime rates in the jurisdictions, other CJ organizations made
more mention of this in their stories than the other partners but it was only mentioned in
27.3 percent of the stories. Furthermore over half of the stories across the media partners
did not discuss how the criminal justice system is responding to crime, how the initiative
may reduce crime, and ﬁrnding for the initiative. Police departments were more likely to

mention these responses to crime (29.4 percent) and funding (35.3 percent) than the other

54

media partners, however, program offices were more likely to mention how PSN reduces
crime making a mention of it in 35.3 percent of the cases.

University media partners made mention of PSN goals and components in an
overwhelming majority of the stories, 92.4 percent and 91.6 percent respectively. Yet
they only mentioned history in ﬁve percent of the cases and philosophy in less than half
of the cases. These media partners were the least likely to mention rates of gun violence,
responses to crime, how the initiative may reduce crime, and funding. It is important to
mention, once again, that the majority of articles evaluated for this media partner were
ﬁ'om high coverage jurisdictions and thus the results may be skewed since there were
more articles evaluated in these strata than the other two coverage areas.

A second dataset, provided by the MSU research team, was evaluated to
determine whether or not the jurisdictions across the US. had implemented some sort of
media campaign. These data were combined with the content analysis data to explore
additional media variables and the possible impact on the presentation of PSN in the
news.

Table 12 presents the results of this analysis. The overall results for this analysis
showed that 97.3 percent of the articles came from jurisdictions that had some sort of
mass media campaign in place to promote PSN, the majority of these media campaigns
involved the use of billboards and advertisement for the initiative and target current and
potential offenders. The results for the different coverage areas are very consistent, the
results for the high coverage jurisdiction show that all of the articles came from a

jurisdiction that has implemented a mass media campaign, and on the medium and low

55

only 10.1 percent and 2.6 percent of the articles respectively came ﬁom jurisdictions that
did not have a media campaign in action.

Although the results for media campaigns are very promising, only 53.9 percent
of the sample is measuring the impact of such campaigns on their implementation of PSN
in any way, such as examining the number of public service announcements and
conducting interviews to measure the public awareness of the program. For example, as
of the time the data were collected, 38.9 percent of the jurisdictions have not been able to
determine whether, or not the impact has been positive and 59.7 percent have seen
positive results. Some of the results being measured include the increase awareness of
federal prosecution by criminals and community awareness that gun crimes will be
prosecuted at federal levels. These results were also very consistent across the
jurisdictions, with all of them seeing positive results in over 50 percent of the cases.

The implementation of media campaigns in the jurisdictions has been possible
due to the partnership with the media partners--these partnerships have been ﬁrnded by
the PSN task forces in 90.8 percent of the cases, in the other cases, it is assumed that
funding for those partnerships and media campaigns were gathered through fundraisers,
taken ﬁom the initial budget, and a partner might have volunteered their time. In some
instances the research partners and other organizations involved with the PSN
jurisdictions have attempted fundraising activities, such as asking for donations and
organizing golf scrambles. The results for this particular variable were also very
consistent across the jurisdictions. Over 85 percent of the articles evaluated for all three

areas showed that the PSN task force was responsible for funding the media campaigns.

56

As part of the analysis, the differences between those areas which had
implemented mass media campaigns, had measured the results, and funded the campaign
through a task force was evaluated. In order to do so the same variables used for tables 10
and 11 were used. Tables 13 and 14 show the results for the variables and how they vary
depending on whether or not there was a campaign in place, it was measured, and was
funded by the task force. The analysis was conducted by selecting cases by the ‘yes’ and
‘no’ answers of the three questions mentioned above and running the frequencies for the
variables mentioned above.

Out of all of the articles sampled 51.5 percent of them were from a high coverage
jurisdiction in comparison to 17.2 in the medium and 31.1 percent in the low. These
results show that all of the articles representing the high coverage jurisdictions came from
an area that had a mass media campaign in place, however, less than half of them were
measuring the impact of such campaign. For the medium and low coverage jurisdictions
less than 30 percent were measuring such impacts. In terms of funding, those in the high
coverage jurisdiction were the most likely to be funded by a task force in comparison to
only 18.1 percent in the medium and 30.3 percent in the low.

For all three questions the results were fairly consistent in terms of the type of
story presented. Over 60 percent of the stories presented referred to incident related
stories, followed by the implementation of the initiative in over 16 percent of the cases.
Interestingly, program related stories were more common in those jurisdictions that did
not have a media campaign in place, were not measuring the impact, or where funding

was not provided by a task force.

57

Consistent with all the previous results of this chapter, the PSN related stories
most presented were those of a prosecutorial nature, presented in over 50 percent of the
cases, followed by those referring to general gun strategies. General gun strategy stories
were also mentioned the most, over 25 percent of the cases, in those areas that did not
have mass media campaigns, were not measuring the impact, or had a task force funding
the campaigns.

The analysis showed there was little variation across all three questions when it
came to the media’s overall impression of PSN. Over 80 percent of articles evaluated in
each question showed the overall impression of PSN to be neutral. However, jurisdictions
that had a mass media campaign in place showed a higher percentage of favorable articles
in comparison to the other two questions evaluated. Similarly, over half of the articles
across all questions made no mention of PSN history and philosophy, yet out of all of the
responses, those areas in which a task force did not fund a media campaign made mention
of history in 23.5 percent of the stories and mentioned philosophy in 44.1 percent of these
stories. Both of these numbers were higher than any of the other questions evaluated. The
reason behind this could be that these jurisdictions that do not ﬁmd a media partner seek
to inform the community about the initiative as a way to raise funds for the outreach
component of the initiative. However, this is only an assumption and cannot be proven
that this is the reason for the higher representation.

Over 85 percent of the articles made no mention on how the initiative has
impacted the crime rates in the jurisdictions, areas not measuring the impact of the media
campaign made more mention of this in their stories than the other areas but it was only

mentioned in 15.8 percent of the stories. Furthermore over 80 percent of the stories

58

across the questions evaluated did not discuss how the criminal justice system is
responding to crime and how the initiative may reduce crime. Those areas that funded the
media campaign were more likely to mention the response to crime (16.6 percent) and
those areas that were not measuring the campaign made more mention of crime reduction
(21.1 percent).

Funding was mentioned the most in those jurisdictions that did not have a media
campaign, were not measuring impacts, and did not have a task force funding the
campaign; however it was only mentioned in less than 21 percent of the case. Most of the
articles made no mention of funding. These results were very consistent across the coding

areas.

59

CHAPTER FIVE: CASE STUDIES

As part of this study, two jurisdictions from the high coverage strata were selected
as case studies. The purpose of conducting the case studies was to determine and
evaluate the type of successful media strategies being used by such jurisdictions to
achieve coverage. Among all US. jurisdictions, Connecticut and Massachusetts had the
highest number of articles published dming the study period, but the dominant type of
article in both of these jurisdictions were announcements and press releases informing the
public about prosecutorial actions in speciﬁc cases instead of coverage of PSN. Since the
type of coverage was quite similar in these two jurisdictions, only one was selected for
analysis (Connecticut) since, in addition to press releases it showed more variety of
coverage from print media. In addition, a second case study was conducted (Eastern
Pennsylvania) because in addition to press releases, this ofﬁce demonstrated a consistent
ability to achieve news coverage with lengthier and more detailed articles about the
initiative. The selection of cases studies in these two jurisdictions is valuable for another
reason. Connecticut has a clearly established relationship with a media partner, and
Eastern Pennsylvania did not use one. It is interesting that Eastern Pennsylvania received
substantial coverage of its initiative without having a media partner.

The methodology for the case studies was as follows. First, all publications
related to the activities of the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce in these two jurisdictions were
gathered and evaluated. Second, the entire sample of newspaper articles in each
jurisdiction was read and analyzed. Third, other open source materials, such as websites
and google searches related to the activities of the ofﬁce were conducted. Finally,

interviews were conducted with key informants in each ofﬁce. Although several attempts

60

were made to contact people the response was not as high as expected, but their names
and positions will remain anonymous in order to protect their privacy.
District of Connecticut

PSN in the District of Connecticut began on January of 2002--the initiative was
implemented in ﬁve major cities (Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and 9
Stamford). Since the program began, the jurisdiction has seen signiﬁcant increases in
federal prosecutions of gun offenses and reduction of gun crime--the District of
Connecticut has recovered over 4,500 illegal guns and has charged 14,279 gun related
offenses in state courts, as well as 302 indictments in federal court (DOJ, 2007). The
city of Waterbury, in particular, has had several operations involving joint task forces
that have received media attention; the police chief of that city has embraced PSN and
has done a good job in the partnership with the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce. The Waterbury
police department alone experienced a 132 percent increase in the recuperation of
ﬁrearms between 2002 and 2006 (DOJ, 2007). Many of the prosecutions that have taken
place in this jurisdiction as part as PSN have also been related to disrupting drug
possession and distribution networks.
Programs and Strategies

The district of Connecticut, under the direction and leadership of the US.
Attorney’s Ofﬁce (current US. Attorney Kevin J. O’Connor) has been very successful in
creating partnerships among agencies, implementing the initiative and educating the
community about the initiative. This jurisdiction has allocated PSN funds to provide
overtime pay and equipment for the major police departments in the largest

municipalities that make up the district in order to support investigation of ﬁrearm

61

violations. Additionally, the initiative supports programs in the community to assist
individuals that have been released ﬁom prison and at-risk youths by providing
education, job training, substance abuse and family counseling as well as spiritual
guidance (DOJ, 2007). The implementation of offender notiﬁcation meetings have also
proven to be a successful strategy for the district; approximately 8,000 felons that were
convicted of violent offenses have attended the meetings which are a mandatory
condition of probation or parole (DOJ, 2007.). The USAO of the district has created
videos both in English and Spanish that are shown to offenders before they are released
from custody, the videos provide information about PSN and the consequences individual
would face if they are involved in a crime involving the use of a ﬁrearm. It does not
appear that the media partner was involved in any way in producing these videos (DOJ,
n.d.)

As part of PSN, the district has also implemented an initiative targeting youth.
This initiative, called Project Sentry, educates at-risk youth by presenting information in
schools, youth camps and churches, among other venues and by involving the community
as well as organizing lectures by ex-offenders and gang members who have been victims
of gun violence. A major component of this program is the creation of mock trials at
juvenile detention facilities in order to educate and sensitize the offenders to the
perspectives of those victimized. Furthermore, these mock trials are used as an
opportunity to discuss future goals, particularly career goals, once an offender is released
(DOJ, 2007 ; DOJ, n.d.). In addition, the jurisdiction has been promoting the program by
sponsoring contests and activities in conjunction with the media; some of these include

auditions for American Idol- co-sponsored by the local Fox afﬁliate, rap and poetry

62

contests co-sponsored by local radio stations and bands (Jagged Edge and WZMX-HOT
93.7), and a “pennies for peace” campaign (DOJ, 2007). These campaigns were made
poSsible by the involvement of the media partner since this agency was responsible for
handling community outreach and sponsorships.
Media Partners

Since 2002, this district has partnered with a speciﬁc media partner called The
Justice Education Center which provides educational materials about the judicial system
for high school teachers. This center is part of the Connecticut Consortium for Law and
Citizen Education Ins., however, much information on the center and its involvement
with PSN could not be found and attempts to contact members of the center failed. In
addition, the USAO has attempted to partner with speciﬁc media organizations, including
the local FOX afﬁliate and Connecticut Radio Network, to handle media distribution.
Both organizations have donated air time, more than doubling the initial amount of time
initially used by PSN, to programs and advertisements that promote the initiative (DOJ,
2007). Programs such as “America’s Most Wanted” have included Connecticut’s most
wanted, which features fugitives that have committed violent crimes involving a ﬁrearm,
in their segments. According to reports by the Department of Justice (2007; n.d.) these
segments have resulted in the capture of four of the nine fugitives presented in the
2005/2006 season and 50 percent of all of those presented since the show started.
Media Relations

All media relations in the District of Connecticut, including those related to PSN,
are handled by a public information ofﬁcer and in recent years most of the information

has been communicated though an aggressive press release policy to inform the media

63

and the community about the efforts being taken by the ofﬁce to reduce gun violence.
After any case is selected for federal prosecution, a press statement is released to inform
the public about all actions taken in a gun case (indictment, pleas, sentencing, etc.)
These statements also include the characteristics of the offender, the crime committed,
and the assistant US. Attorney in charge of prosecution. Each press release includes at
least a cursory statement that the action was taken as part of PSN, thus promoting the
initiative and informing the public what it entails and where more information can be
obtained. For example, in a press release that covered a plea agreement by one of
Connecticut’s largest gun dealers, the following statement was provided about PSN:
The Project Safe Neighborhoods Initiative is aimed at reducing gun violence,
deterring illegal possession of guns, and improving the safety of residents in
Connecticut’s cities. Participants in the initiative include community members
and organizations as well as federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
The articles published in newspapers usually made some mention of the initiative but the
coverage was only cursory. For example, an article published in the New Britain Herald
about the sentence received by a felon in possession made a small note on how the
prosecution of this case was part of PSN and how this initiative “seeks to reduce gun
violence to deter the illegal possession of ﬁrearms and improve the safety of residents
statewide” (Clair, 2003).
In these press releases, the US. Attorneys’ Ofﬁce has tried to utilize common
language to increase awareness of federal penalties among offenders and the community
and to increase interest in these stories. This district has been very successful in utilizing

speciﬁc incidents as promotional tools since they gather information on high proﬁle cases

and disperse the information throughout the community that as part of PSN the slightest

64

ﬁrearm offense will not be tolerated. Many of these cases involve felons in possession
and some cases dealing with the possession of ammunition only, however, it sends the
message that something as small as possessing ammo could land a person in federal
prison. Interviewees referred to this aggressive press release policy as the “drum beat”
to get media attention and believe that if there is an increase in media coverage it is
because of this policy and the fact that PSN is more established in the jurisdiction now
than it was when it was ﬁrst implemented.

Since the implementation in 2002 and up to 2005, however, the majority of
articles evaluated for this jurisdiction were from news media organizations and not press
releases. Nevertheless, some of these articles mention elements of a case and sentencing
and mentions PSN very brieﬂy. It is assumed that the coverage by newspapers in the ﬁrst
few years studied were a result of the initiative being so new in the jurisdictions, but
clearly their media policy became signiﬁcantly more aggressive after 2005. Most of the
articles presented factual information and some gave praise to the initiative and informed
the community of the efforts and how they were working. This coverage (2002-2005), in
contrast to the coverage received in 2006-2007, allows for the assumption that the efforts
to communicate and reach out to the media were more prevalent in the ﬁrst year of the
initiative since it was in the early years that newspaper articles were released as opposed
to only press releases put out by the USAO. Additionally, it can be assumed that the
news about PSN just “got old” and therefore the media lost interest since there were no
efforts by the USAO to publicize the initiative in a way that renewed interest.

The coverage on programs, strategies, and community outreach were not

extensive. Out of all of the articles only one of them made mention of the outreach efforts

65

by the USAO and mentioned the partnership with the minor league baseball team.
Although the media partner played a great role in implementing the community outreach
programs it appears that they did not spend the time or made the effort to promote the
initiative to the print news media.

Outreach

Community outreach is the responsibility of the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce and all
partners involved in PSN, and really the only role that the media partner in this district
has played in the initiative. The type of community outreach they do varies, but as
mentioned before, sponsorship of contests and community activities were a way for the
community to become aware of the initiative. In addition, the previously mentioned
meetings are a component of outreach since they involve community groups that are
willing to help out recently released offenders. Clearly, there seems to be a detachment
between the USAO and the media partner since it is apparent that the US. Attorney seeks
the news coverage by utilizing speciﬁc incidents, but do not pay as much attention to
programs in the community. On the other hand, the media partner does outreach
activities, but does not work to get coverage about it.

The US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce has done some speciﬁc outreach activities, including
developing media campaigns targeting individuals, referred to as “straw purchasers,”
who buy weapons for those who are not supposed to have them- particularly convicted
felons. The campaign utilized radio advertisement and billboards throughout busy
avenues in the city of Stamford transmitting the message of “Don’t Lie for the Other
Guy” (DOJ, 2007). It is one interviewee’s belief that these individuals are responsible for

making legal guns illegal and contribute to the rates of gun violence and thus should face

66

consequences for their actions. For these reasons, the source believes that media
campaigns targeting these individuals are extremely important since it is his belief that
citizens do not really comprehend the idea behind the laws preventing convicted felons
from carrying ﬁrearms. This particular campaign informs the citizens that lying on
ﬁrearm applications is a federal offense that is punishable up to ten years in prison.
Additionally, the advertisement encourages gun owners to report missing or stolen
ﬁrearms as soon as they become aware that they are missing (DOJ, n.d).
Impression and Evaluation of Media Relations

Although some of the campaigns executed showed some success in getting the
community informed and involved, the media coverage of the speciﬁc campaigns was not
overwhelming which is surprising for a jurisdiction ﬁ'om the high coverage strata. Since
the implementation of the initiative until now, the efforts to put more of these campaigns
into action have diminished and the media partner is far less aggressive to promote the
initiative through outreach. One of the interviewees revealed that the efforts by the
media partner to develop such campaigns have decreased. The source was not sure as to
what the reasons for the diminished media partner’s efforts were and is unaware whether
or not it could be attributed to funding. Regardless of whether funding has been depleted
or not, some of the opinions gathered were that since the implementation of the initiative
it has been difﬁcult to see the outcomes of all the funding that went into the media
partner. The impression gathered from the interviews was that there was little satisfaction
with the performance of the media partner. Interviewees also highlighted that it would be
nice to have an advertisement agencies as media partners, since it is believed that more

outreach could get accomplished with this type of partner.

67

In addition, members of this jurisdiction expressed frustration towards the media
due to the type of stories that the agencies ﬁnd newsworthy. Information about inner city
individuals committing crime with ﬁrearms does not catch the attention of the media
since it is already expected to happen and it is believed that citizens do not really care
about these types of news stories since they lack the “WOW” factor. Sources also
believed that this lack of newsworthiness could also in part be attributed to a race and
ethnic bias when it comes to the presentation of news and that most media agencies give
more attention to white collar crime in well-to-do areas than gun crimes committed by
minorities in inner cities since this is more common and not as surprising to the
constituents.

The source also mentioned that the reception by the media varies depending on
the media format. Electronic media, for example, does not cover PSN stories as much as
paper media. However, he did not provide an explanation as to why this may be the case.
It could be assumed, however, that electronic media is harder to contact and there may be
some difﬁculty in obtaining radio and television airtime without paying for it.

Eﬂects of Media Coverage on PSN Implementation

Interviewees for this district said that they were not aware of how the media
coverage has affected the implementation of the initiative and that they really are not
reacting to the effects. One of the sources stated “ we are doing what we are doing and
not really reacting to the effects” which gave the impression that the district is not very
concerned with the results that media coverage may have on the implementation of the
initiative and is not as willing to spend the time and make the effort to reach out to the

media to improve coverage. Although the sources mentioned that the jurisdiction is

68

constantly looking for ways to improve communication, they ﬁnd it frustrating to ﬁnd
one strategy that truly works. One of the sources also believed that the media’s view of
the USAO is that they are not concerned with community outreach since that is more of a
social service than a law enforcement activity, which is the main concern of the ofﬁce.
Eastern District of Pennsylvania 1

The Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which includes Philadelphia, is one of the
largest districts in the United States. This jurisdiction faces a serious gun, drug, and
violent crime problem which is exacerbated by its closeness to New York City (Price-
McGinnis & Switala, n.d.). PSN was implemented in 2002 as an expansion of the already
in place Project Cease Fire. The main focus for this jurisdiction has been to target violent
gangs and drug trafﬁckers. As part of the program, the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce has
established joint task forces that include members from both federal and state agencies.
The idea behind these task forces is that cooperation between the sectors will help
decrease the rates of ﬁrearms related violence. The task force for Lancaster County, for
example, has been very successful in implementing the initiative. This area’s task force
has been responsible for the indictment of the “Fifty Million Soldiers” gang which was
responsible for the crack cocaine market in the city of Lancaster and its surroundings.
The intelligence sharing between the different agencies in the task force made the
indictments possible. Additionally, the efforts of this task force have led to charging of 74
individuals for federal offenses. Thanks to the aggressive implementation of the initiative
in the area there has been an 88 percent decrease in homicides and an approximate 40
percent decline in armed robberies (DOJ, n.d.). The success of this task force been used

as a model for other cities in the jurisdiction.

69

Programs and Strategies

This jurisdiction has focused on prosecution under federal ﬁrearm laws, but has
attempted to enhance the effectiveness by targeting speciﬁc types of offenders. For
example, the jurisdiction has implemented a State Alternative Program (SAP) that
provides defendants an opportunity to plead guilty in state courts to higher sentences than
those required in state guidelines but lower than those carried out in the federal system—
thus the offender essentially gets to choose between the stiff federal sentence or a
signiﬁcant state sentence. One of the beneﬁts for this program is that it allows the federal
government to focus on the most violent offenders and save the resources for those cases
(Settani, Richmond, Cheney & Grossman, 2005).

The jurisdiction has also taken advantage of new technology and implemented a
district- wide mapping and analysis program (PSN MAP) that helps the nine county task
forces in the district gather, store, and share information about ﬁrearm violence. The
main idea behind the program is crime analysis and it allows the USAO to collect PSN
data and evaluate the criminal patterns across the jurisdiction (Price-McGinnis & Switala,
n.d.). The strategy is that the results of any crime analysis that becomes the basis of
strategic response. The program also facilitates cooperation among the different task
forces and law enforcement agencies in the jurisdiction as well as those in the
neighboring areas.

This particular program has received much of the media coverage since it is such
an innovative strategy (Settani, Richmond, Cheney & Grossman, 2005). However, most
of this coverage is published in topic speciﬁc publications instead of newspapers. Articles

about PSN MAP have been published in Directions magazine, Federal GIS Connections,

70

and in Geo Decision’s publications which is the company manufacturing PSN MAP. The
articles also discuss how the program operates instead of mentioning speciﬁc cases that it
has helped solve.

The Eastern district of Pennsylvania places great importance on cooperation and
has several prosecution-based programs that utilize task forces that target gun offenses
and straw purchasers. Similar to Connecticut, the Eastern district of Pennsylvania has
also implemented Project Sentry to educate youth and deal with juvenile offenders that
violate federal gun laws (Settani, Richmond, Cheney & Grossman, 2005).

In 2006, the Eastern district of Pennsylvania implemented the 222 corridor anti-
gang initiative which targets gang violence and drug and ﬁrearm trafﬁcking along
Pennsylvania’s route 222 and interstate-78 and covers seven cities of the Eastern district,
including Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, York, and Harrisburg. This
initiative was implemented in response to several issues. First, drug and violent activity
is signiﬁcant along this corridor. Second, because of gun laws in Pennsylvania, the area
has become popular for straw purchasers who then take the weapons back to neighboring
states such as New York and New Jersey who sell them to be used in crimes.
Representatives from the Easton ofﬁce were contacted for interviews to see what media
strategies are used to promote the program.

This 222 corridor initiative is the primary program operating out of the US
Attorney’s Ofﬁce, and this particular initiative still falls under the umbrella of PSN and
utilizes the components of PSN, especially outreach and partnerships between the USAO
and local and federal agencies as well as members from the USAO from different

jurisdictions. In terms of outreach, the 222 corridor initiative involves representatives

71

from the faith community, non-proﬁts, education, concerned citizens, businesses,
government, social services and community organizations as well as government
agencies in their task forces (Miller, 2007). The initiative also includes a reentry program
that focuses on inmates released ﬁom the prisons in the focus areas (About the 222
Corridor Anti-Gang Initiative, 2007). The results of the interviews showed that although
the 222 Conidor initiatives is part of PSN it really has not focused on PSN as a whole but
on the work done on the individual sites and the USAO. According to sources, PSN did
not provide advice on how to promote the initiative or what messages were to be
conveyed, thus PSN is not being recognized as part of this program. One of the key
contacts mentioned that this lack of PSN coverage could be improved if PSN were to
create communication templates that include how to craft key messages, develop talking
points, and strategies and tactics as well as appointing a media liaison. within the
jurisdiction.

The 222 corridor pro gram has received excellent press coverage which has
focused on the efforts to reduce gang related criminal activity especially in the Lancaster
area since the district attorney and the police chief for that area are very supportive of
PSN and praise the partnership with the USAO as well as their efforts. The idea is to
educate the media and in turn educate the community, some of the coverage has included
press releases by the Department of Justice and the different task forces involved in the
program and focus on sentences given to offenders. Coverage that has been considered
good is that focusing on redemption. According to sources, PSN and the 222 corridor are
redemptive works with an altruistic core, everyone has a story and the more successful it

is the more people want to be a part of it. Reporters like to report these types of stories

72

because they feel like they are a part of it. Thus one of the strategies is utilizing
individuals that have turned their life around as part of PSN or the 222 and tell their story
to the community.

Members in charge of the 222 corridor program had worked to identify key
journalists in order to brainstorm ideas that could become stories about the program. An
interactive website has also been created and it includes a news module and pressroom.
Media Partner

Contrary to the district Of Connecticut, and most other jurisdictions, this district
does not have a media partner and all media relations and efforts are done in house and
there is not one particular person in charge. Even though the ofﬁce has a media contact
that handles most media issues, the PSN coordinator and other assistant US attorneys’
(AUSA), as well as state attorneys, are also involved in providing information to the
media. In the case of the 222 Conidor, a media consultant working pro bono is often
relied on for information and direction. One strategy to emphasize the importance of
PSN is to have individual press conferences with each AUSA in charge of the different
counties as well as state attorneys. Strategies have also included the promotion of key
messages through the media to raise media interest as well as community interest. One of
the interviewees stated that the primary message was designed to shift from a historical
focus of prevention from a law enforcement response to one of community response. This
message, according to the source, were crafted around strategies that were based on a
public health and safety model instead of solely relying on law enforcement, and these
strategies have been used to promote the 222 Corridor initiative and have gotten the

attention of the media organizations as well as educators, agencies, and stakeholders.

73

Other strategies to generate publicity include releasing information about the
convictions and sentences of ﬁrearm cases prosecuted at the federal level to media
personnel who then write the story of the case and include a small paragraph describing
the initiative, its philosophy, and goals. In a story released in the Lancaster New Era, the
writer describes PSN as a:

. . .cooperative effort between federal and local ofﬁcials that allows serious cases

involving violent offenders to be prosecuted in federal court where prison
sentences are typically longer than in county court. The goal is to deter violent
criminals by obtaining longer sentences in prisons farther from home (Kelley,
2005)

The US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce also relies on it partnership with the states attorneys
office and other agencies, particularly the ATF, to promote the initiative and inform the
community about developments in federal cases. In every press release informing about a
particular indictment or sentence there is a standard paragraph that addresses and explains
PSN, its goals, and its components.

Media Relations

While the Eastern district of Pennsylvania does have a public information ofﬁce,
most of the information about PSN focuses on information given out by prosecutors in
the cases and those directly connected with PSN such as coordinators. According to
sources, the media relations between the USAO of the district and the media
organizations in the area are very good. Both the media and the members of the USAO
do not hesitate in contacting the other party when information needs to be gathered or
dispersed. The relationship between the media and the program coordinators has to be

one of trust, if the media trusts their sources they will be more likely to publish their

work.

74

Outreach

As part of a community outreach campaign the US. Attorney’s Ofﬁce of this
district has established community-based programs, including communication efforts by
assistant US. Attorneys and state attorneys. These attorneys inform and educate inmates,
youth offenders, and students about federal ﬁrearm laws and sentences in order to deter
them from committing such offences. Additionally, the district has produced videotapes
that portray the consequences of gun violence and they show them to current offenders
and those individuals at risk. These videos have also been aired on cable television to
capture the attention of constituents and have been shown in community meetings and
educational settings. Furthermore, public service announcements and ﬂyers have been
disseminated to inform the community about the PSN initiative and the action that the
USAO is taking to implement it. These PSA’s also educate the community about federal
ﬁrearm laws.
Impression and evaluation of media relations

Sources for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania are very satisﬁed with the
relationship they have with the media. They believe that the media organizations in the
area have been very receptive to publicizing the initiative and will present information
about PSN whenever a ﬁrearm incident is presented in the news. For example, when
there is a ﬁrearm related offense presented in the news, a reporter will also discuss
whether the offense is taken to the federal level as part of PSN, provide background
information on the program, and how the penalties differ from the state level. The article
may also include information on previous cases that have been successfully prosecuted

under the initiative. The interviewees were also satisﬁed that the types of articles being

75

published about the initiative because they tended to be lengthy and covered not only
PSN but other federal efforts and that the coverage has remained consistent throughout
the whole time PSN has been in place.

Given the high crime rates in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, the media
are very receptive to any positive news regarding violent crime that they can deliver to
the constituents. A particular example that was given to demonstrate the satisfaction with
the media was when a candidate in a mayoral election mentioned that there was a federal
initiative to combat gun crime but that it was not being used. Shortly after that statement,
the newspapers published a story explaining PSN, the efforts by the different agencies in
the partnership, and some of the results it has yielded.

Members of the jurisdiction attribute the media success to good relations with the
media and good public relations staff that are aggressive in contacting the media
organizations whenever necessary. Additionally, the way the information is packaged has
played a big role since it needs to be viewed as newsworthy, in order to do so, the
jurisdiction does not talk about PSN as a new program but focuses on the impact that it
has had in the jurisdiction in relation to crime and deterrent effect the initiative has had.
For instance, press conferences or other media activities will be set up to discuss how the
implementation of the program has helped decrease the rates of gang, drug, and ﬁrearm
offenses in the area.

Eﬁfects of Media Coverage on PSN Implementation

Although the members of this USAO cannot pinpoint a particular way that the

coverage has affected the implementation of the initiative, or a case that publicized the

initiative, they stated that the media has been very helpﬁrl in the efforts to inform the

76

community about it. One of the interviewees stated that when PSN is mentioned most of
the residents in the area are aware of it and know what it entails. Additionally,
interviewees stated that they cannot recall any instances when the USAO was criticized
over the implementation of the initiative and that all media coverage has been positive.

However, there is criticism by the media when there is no public response to
negative incidents. One of the interviewees recalls a newspaper in Easton criticizing the
lack of information provided by the USAO after a triple homicide. Although members of
the USAO met with public ofﬁcials and members of local law enforcement to discuss the
homicides the meeting was never publicized and thus the media was kept in the dark.

In the case of the 222 Corridor, media coverage has had a large and positive effect
on the implementation of the program. According to interviewees

media coverage has led to the agencies and the public understanding the need for

this issue to be addressed as a community and in the context of prevention and

intervention. In addition, the steady stream of requests for information, training

and workshops continues to ﬂow ﬁ'om our region and other parts of the state and

country as well.
Future of Media Relations in the Area

Although the USAO in this district has been less involved with outreach over
time, it has attempted to reach out to the media in major cases in order to publicize its
efforts. Sources believe that if there were more funds for the outreach components and, if
more people could be hired, there could be much more done to promote the initiative.
Currently, PSN coordinators are working on a newsletter on the subject of PSN and it

will include information about the initiative and what it has been done in the jurisdiction.

The hope of this office is to be able to make this newsletter public.

77

The belief in this USAO is that continuing the good communication with the
media and the aggressive efforts of the law enforcement partners in all nine counties that
make up the jurisdiction will continue to produce newsworthy material that can be
transmitted to the community. The idea behind it is that people in the community will say
“gee that’s great” instead of being surprised when a ﬁrearm case goes to federal
prosecution.

Comparison of Jurisdictions

Both of the jurisdictions in this chapter provide a good example of USAO’s
utilizing incidents as a way to promote the initiative. These jurisdictions also show
strategies, although very different in each jurisdiction, that have been successful in
involving the media in informing the community about the efforts being made by the
federal government to reduce gun violence in their areas. The jurisdictions selected for
this case study are very different from each other since they vary greatly in size,
demographics, and crime rates. Although it is difﬁcult to compare a city like Philadelphia
in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is one of the largest metropolitan areas in
the nation to the cities in the district of Connecticut, the comparison provides a good
way of evaluating how strategies, both similar and different, affect the implementation of
a nationwide initiative.

Based on these case studies, there appears to be several common sense strategies
that have been effective to achieve newspaper coverage about a PSN initiative. First,
aggressive press release policies have been put into place to inform the media and the
community of the efforts of the USAO to prosecute individuals at the federal level.

Second, good communication and building relationships with the media is crucial to the

78

dissemination of information. It is important to remember that most crime news is
produced about the police stages of the criminal justice process, and reporters have
strong, continuing relationships with police officials and some prosecutors, but rarely do
local reporters have consistent contact with federal ofﬁcials, especially representatives
from the US Attorney’s Ofﬁce. Thus, a key element of a successful strategy is taking the
time to meet with reporters to build that trust as well as educate about the initiative. For
example, although both jurisdictions have been successful at achieving coverage, the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania had more consistent and direct connections with media
personnel, which perhaps explain why the coverage was more informative about PSN.
Third, the length of the initiative has also impacted coverage, as it is no longer a
new initiative, and thus jurisdictions have had to wOrk to be creative to continue to get
coverage. The difference in media coverage received by each of the jurisdictions could
be a result of the efforts of such jurisdictions to continue to achieve coverage. It seems
that Connecticut was heavily involved in promoting the initiative when it was ﬁrst
implemented and then moved to solely press releases that provided information about
cases, however, they are not really informing the community of newer and improved
components and programs within the initiative. On the other hand, the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania takes advantage of any opportunity to promote the new efforts and the
results that the implementation has yielded. In other words, the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania tries to maintain constant coverage to remind the citizens of the initiative.
When comparing the two jurisdictions, it is apparent that the involvement of a
media partner does, in fact, help with the outreach component of PSN but does not really

inﬂuence the coverage of PSN in the media. The jurisdiction with the media partner had

79

more activities to involve community members instead of just dealing with media
personnel. Such activities not only make the community aware but it sparks interest of
the initiative to its members and provides them with the opportunity of ﬁrst hand
involvement.

The implementation of PSN in both of the jurisdictions has shown to be
successful and has resulted in the decline of ﬁrearm and violent offenses. Members of
both jurisdictions have received awards by the Department of Justice and the Attorney
General commending them in their efforts to implement the initiative. Both jurisdictions
demonstrated an ability to get news coverage of the initiative overall, but the results of
the case studies also reveal that news coverage is not a high priority even for these high

producing jurisdictions.

80

CHAPTER 6:
CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The purpose of this study was to explore the amount and type of coverage
received by Project Safe Neighborhoods. There were two objectives to this study: ﬁrst,
to describe how PSN is presented in the news; and second, to explore the strategies used
by successﬁrl jurisdictions to achieve signiﬁcantly more coverage about their PSN
initiative. This study used two methodologies to achieve these objectives. First, a
content analysis of newspaper articles was conducted to evaluate the type of information
about PSN that was presented in the news and the sources used. Second, a case study of
two jurisdictions that achieved signiﬁcant coverage was conducted to evaluate the media
strategies used by these jurisdictions.

This study is important since it is an exploratory study of an area of research that
has been very limited. Although much has been done in the area of media and crime not
much has been done to study the coverage that government initiatives receive and there
has been no research that examines how jurisdictions attempt to use the news media to
accomplish the goals of the initiative. Irnportantly, there has yet to be a research study
that has examined news media issues as they pertain to Project Safe Neighborhoods.
Although communication to the offending population and the general public are
important elements of this initiative, there is a limited understanding of whether
jurisdictions have been able to receive news coverage of this initiative.

The ﬁnal chapter of this thesis provides a brief overview of the ﬁndings,
discusses the policy implications of the study, and highlights the limitations of the study

and future directions.

81

Overview of the Findings

The ﬁndings of the content analysis suggest that there has been minimal coverage
of the initiative across the jurisdictions in the print media and that the media favors
stories related to speciﬁc incidents rather than those focusing on PSN in general.
Considering the general expectations regarding what is newsworthy, it was not surprising
to see that the majority of the stories were incidents and of a prosecutorial nature,
particularly in the high coverage jurisdictions. News organizations, in general, rarely
present long descriptive stories because of the amount of time it takes to produce such
stories and readers generally prefer information about serious incidents. When program
elements of PSN were discussed, these newspaper stories focused on the implementation
of task forces and violent impact teams than any other aspects of the initiative such as
goals, history, or philosophy.

The content analysis was also conducted in terms of coverage jurisdiction (high,
medium, low) and media partners. The results showed that those jurisdictions receiving
higher coverage were actively implementing the initiative though aggressive
prosecutorial actions. For example, the District of Connecticut issued press releases every
time that an offender was prosecuted, indicted, or charged and the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania contacted the media whenever a high proﬁle case was brought to the
federal system. The interesting ﬁnding is that although the volume of coverage varied
substantially, the type of coverage, including the elements emphasized and discussed,
was not very different. In all coverage areas, the results showed that there was not much
coverage of PSN, its goals, and its components, instead, the articles focused on speciﬁc

incidents. The low and medium coverage areas, however, showed greater coverage of the

82

implementation of programs and the initiative as a whole instead of incidents in
comparison to the high coverage areas. The most popular program mentioned was
ChildSafe which distributes free locks for guns and gun cabinets to prevent accidental
shooting.

There were some signiﬁcant differences across the jurisdictions in terms of PSN
component coverage. Although the overall results were consistent and showed that
partnerships were mentioned more than any of the other components, the high coverage
jurisdictions mentioned the other components at higher rates than the other two coverage
areas.

In terms of programs implemented, the results for discussing violent crime
impact teams and other task forces were prevalent in the high coverage jurisdictions.
Interestingly, these jurisdictions also paid more attention to general gun strategies than
speciﬁc programs mentioned in the medium and low coverage areas. However, it is
important to mention that the reason for such ﬁndings could be that the high coverage
areas discussed programs that did not ﬁt into any other category and thus had to be placed
as general strategies.

The results for sources utilized was surprising since police sources, although they
represented about 25 percent of the sources cited, were not the main source of
information. This is of interest since other studies in the area have shown that police are
usually the source of choice for crime related news articles. Many media studies highlight
the important of examining the types of sources presented in the news. The assumption is
that acting as a source provides an opportunity to inﬂuence how key stakeholders and the

public think about a variety of issues, including crime. There were ﬁve interesting

83

ﬁndings regarding the presentation of sources in the news. First, prosecutors ﬁom the
USAO, instead of police ofﬁcials, were the most commonly cited sources. Second,
medium and low coverage jurisdictions were more likely to use public information
ofﬁcers as sources compared to high coverage areas. Third, low coverage areas were
more likely to use law enforcement personnel, both local and federal, as sources. Fourth,
the use of politicians as sources was very low across the jurisdictions, which was
surprising especially for the high coverage areas. It was expected that these individuals
would take advantage of the extensive media coverage to promote the initiative and their
efforts. Fifth, high coverage areas were more likely to utilize indirect sources, such as
documents, than the other two coverage areas.

Results about the impression of the initiative both overall and by sources were
overwhelmingly neutral; meaning that there were few instances when a source stated
something negative about the initiative or something blatantly positive.

The results for media partners showed little variation about the type of
information provided and the amount of coverage received. The majority of jurisdictions
had some sort of community group as a media partner; however for the high coverage
jurisdictions universities or educational centers were more prevalent. It was interesting
that those jurisdiction that had a CJ organization or a politician’s ofﬁce as a media
partner had lengthier articles. Overall results, however, showed that there was little
variation in the variables evaluated specially when evaluating PSN impression. The
results suggest that the type of media partners play an insigniﬁcant role in publicizing the
initiative in the news and that perhaps the main role of the media partner was to

implement community outreach programs, however, based on the information it was

84

 

difficult to determine exactly how much the media partner was involved in such outreach
efforts.

The implementation of media campaigns was also evaluated. The results showed
that the majority of jurisdictions had some sort of media campaign in place; a low
percentage of them were actually measuring the results of such campaigns. The results of
the variables evaluated, however were fairly consistent across the coverage areas. Most
of the stories presented referred to incidents. Yet, jurisdictions that did not have a media
campaign in place, were not measuring the impact, or where funding was not provided by
a task force made had more stories regarding program implementation.

The results for the case studies suggested that those jurisdictions that received
high coverage had either aggressive press release policies in place or were very
aggressive at contacting the media. The interviews suggested than in order for the
initiative to receive good coverage the USAO and its partners had to make the efforts of
involving the media instead of the media seeking the information. This means that on top
of all of the responsibilities that the assistant US. Attorneys have they need to be active
and remember to contact the media anytime that a newsworthy case comes up or anytime
that a new program is implemented.

It was in fact surprising that so few jurisdictions aggressively pursued media
coverage. There are several potential reasons for why there was such little coverage.
First, US. Attorneys may not want to play the role of media liaison since, as stated in
one of the interviews, this task may be seen as more of a social service task. Second,
federal agencies are less likely to establish relationships with the local media and

particular reporters than their local counterparts. Third, there seems to be a lack of

85

communication between the USAO and the media partner. For example, when discussing
the media partner efforts in the District of Connecticut it was clear that the members of
the USAO had no ideas about what the media partner was doing, if anything, and they
were unsure as to why the participation of the media partner had diminished. Finally, the
news media are simply not interested in stories that lack the newsworthy characteristics
that catch the people’s attention such as violent crime or sensationalized stories.
Although the cases related to PSN involve ﬁrearms, they often lack the sensationalized
element of violence and thus do not receive media attention.

It is important to emphasize that the focus of this study was on news coverage,
print media in particular, and that other methods of communicating the initiative such as
billboards and community outreach projects were not evaluated. Additionally, the fact
that not every jurisdiction refers to the initiative as PSN should be taken into
consideration since it may have affected the data collection for the content analysis.
Policy Implications

This research increases the understanding of the relationship between
jurisdictions, media coverage and the implementation of government initiatives, in
particular Project Safe Neighborhoods. This research also increases awareness of the
diﬁerent types of media strategies used by the different U.S. jurisdictions when trying to
promote the initiative, particularly for those jurisdictions that were considered high in
coverage. The results highlight some important policy issues and areas of research that
need further study.

First, the US. Jurisdictions and media partners need to develop and apply more

diverse media strategies to promote the initiative and increase public awareness and

86

involvement. The strategies should be created in conjunction with several media
agencies. One of the case studies demonstrates that the USAO office in the District of
Connecticut had not only media partners generally, but worked speciﬁcally with
television media outlets to promote the initiative and solve cases. The focus should be on
providing more timely information to the public through the media. In turn, if the media
feels that they have a stake in the initiative; news organizations would be more likely to
consider PSN related news more newsworthy than before.

Second, interjurisdictional meetings should be held in order for the different
jurisdictions to be able to share the media strategies that have been working for them. The
initiative is a nationwide effort, and thus it would be very beneﬁcial if there was
communication among the jurisdictions especially in terms of promoting the initiative.
The interviews showed that members of the different jurisdictions were curious as to
what other jurisdictions were doing in terms of media relations and coverage, and thought
that discussing these issues with others would improve the quality of media coverage
about this initiative.

Third, the focus of study was only on news coverage and not other elements of
outreach. It is important to remember that news coverage is only one of the elements of
outreach and therefore conclusions about all outreach cannot be made based on these
results. However, it can be argued that news coverage is of great importance and that it is
underutilized in the efforts to promote the initiative. The involvement of media can be
seen as free advertisement for the initiative and that would be beneﬁcial since the
jurisdictions face tight budgets for the implementation and outreach efforts. The

jurisdictions need to work at developing relationships with the media organizations in

87

 

order to effectively promote the initiative and its goals. The activities in the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania and the implementation of Connecticut’s Most Wanted seem like
good practices that could be implemented across the jurisdictions to achieve greater
coverage.

Fourth, better coordination is needed between the various PSN partners. It seems
that, although some of the partners mention the initiative in interviews and press
conferences, they are not actively seeking to get media coverage and the responsibility is
primarily the duty of US. Attorneys. Since the USAO, as part of the PSN initiative,
already has a working relationship with local agencies, like local police departments and
probation, it would make sense to seek help and advise, especially for a police
department’s P10, and involve them in the promotion of the initiative.

Limitations

It is important to note that there are several weaknesses to this study. First, it was
difﬁcult to interview individuals about the initiative for the case studies. One concern
was simply locating and getting responses back from key informants, but another issue
was that there was only a limited amount of time available for me to pursue these
interviews. Thus, the number of people contacted for interviews was very small and were
limited to members of the USAO. In order to gather better information it would be good
to conduct interviews with people from the media partners and members of the media
organizations to gather their view of the type of coverage and why the coverage is being
accomplished or not as well as their role in promoting the initiative. Although the
contacts I made were extremely helpful and were certainly the key informants in each

jurisdiction, it would have been valuable to interview more sources. Second, in many

88

l_. x

 

ways this is an exploratory study since none like it on this issue has yet to be completed.
Although the comparisons across jurisdiction were interesting and valuable, there clearly
seems to be something else going on in terms of achieving quality newspaper coverage.
That is, it is clear that just getting a lot of stories written about the initiative may or may
not result in the public, and perhaps, offenders being aware of the initiative. Third, the
statistical analysis utilized was very basic. Fourth, a better study of full outreach efforts
should be conducted instead of solely focusing on media organizations. This should
include studying other efforts done by the USAO to promote and communicate
information about the initiative.
Future Research

It is the hope that this research will act as a stepping stone for further research in
the area since research in this topic may inﬂuence the ways that government initiatives
are implemented and the type of relations that those in charge of the initiatives will have
with the media. Additionally, it would be of great interest to see what aspects of the
initiatives receive coverage and whether or not that coverage affects the program in the

different areas.

89

Appendices

9O

APPENDIX A

 

 

Tables
Table l. Jurisdictions in Coverage Areas
High Coverage Medium Coverage Low Coverﬁage
District of Connecticut Central District of California Middle District of Alabama
Middle District of Florida Eastern District of California Northern District of Alabama
District of Massachusetts District of Columbia Southern District of Alabama
District of New Hampshire Northern District of Illinois District of Alaska
Eastern District of Pennsylvania Eastern District of Louisiana District of Arizona
Southern District of Texas Western District of Louisiana Eastern District of Arkansas

Eastern District of Michigan
Western District of Missouri
District of Rhode Island
District of South Carolina
District of Utah

Northern District of California
Southern District of California
District of Colorado

District of Delaware

Northern District of Florida
Southern District of Florida

Middle District of Georgia
Southern District of Georgia
Northern District of Georgia
District of Guam

District of Hawaii

District of Idaho

Southern District of Illinois
Central District of Illinois
Northern District of Indiana
Southern District of Indiana
Northern District of Iowa
Southern District of Iowa
District of Kansas

Eastern District of Kentucky
Western District of Kentucky
Middle District of Louisiana
District of Maine

District of Maryland
Western District of Michigan
District of Minnesota
Northern District Mississippi
Southern District Mississippi
Eastern District of Missouri
District of Montana

District of Nebraska

District of Nevada

 

91

 

Table l. Cont.

 

District of New Jersey

District of New Mexico

Eastern District of New York
Western District of New York
Northern District of New York
Southern District of New York
Eastern District of North Carolina
Middle District of North Carolina

Western District of North
Carolina
North Dakota

Northern District of Ohio
Southern District of Ohio
Eastern District of Oklahoma
Western District of Oklahoma
Northern District of Oklahoma
District of Oregon

Middle District of Pennsylvania
Western District of Pennsylvania
Eastern District of Tennessee
Western District of Tennessee
Middle District of Tennessee
Eastern District of Texas
Northern District of Texas
Western District of Texas
Eastern District of Virginia
Western District of Virginia
Eastern District of Washington
Western District of Washington
Southern District of West
Virginia

Eastern District of Wisconsin
Western District of Wisconsin
District of Wyoming

 

Table 2. Average Number of PSN Stories (Average Length of Articles)

 

 

Jurisdiction Number of Stories
High 31.0 (496.79)
Medium 6.27 (561.22)
Low 1.8 (467.18)

All 5.29 (499.51)

 

92

 

Table 3. Type of Story (in percentages)

 

 

 

 

 

All High Medium Low
Assessment
Incident 61.9 89.8 40.6 32.5
Program 8.4 2.2 13.0 15.1
legislative 0.5 0.0 0.0 1.6
Action
Implementation 19.4 2.7 29.0 38.9
of initiative
Promotional 0.8 0.0 1 .4 1 .6
Informational 2.1 1.6 1.4 3.2
Award 1.3 0.5 1.4 2.4
Other 5.5 3.2 13.0 4.8
Strategy
Prosecutorial 57.0 87.1 36.2 23.8
Law 5.0 3.8 5.8 6.3
Enforcement
General GS 23.9 3.2 33.3 49.2
Allocation of 3.9 1.1 5.8 7.1
funds
Award 1.8 0.5 4.3 2.4
Informational/ 3 .4 1.6 5.8 4.8
Conference
Other 5.0 2.7 8.6 6.3
Table 4. Discussion of Broad PSN Issues
All High Medium Low
Goals
Yes 76.7 91.9 65.7 60.3
No 23.3 8.1 34.3 39.7
Overall Philosophy
Yes 36.9 44.6 45.7 20.6
No 63.1 55.4 54.3 79.4
History
Yes 16.0 15.6 24.3 11.9
No 84.0 84.4 75.7 88.1
Components
Yes 71.2 89.2 60.0 50.8
No 28.8 10.8 40.0 49.2
Community Group
Involvement
Yes 33.0 53.8 17.1 11.1
No 67.0 46.2 82.9 88.9

 

93

Table 5. Components Discussed

 

 

All Highi Medium Low
Partnership 43.6 57.5 37.7 26.2
Strategic Planning 12.1 16.1 14.5 4.8
Training 0.8 0.5 2.9 0.0
Outreach 7.1 0.5 7.1 16.7
None 28.3 10.8 37.7 48.4
Various 8.4 14.5 0.0 4.0

 

Table 6. Specific and General Programs (in percentages)

 

 

All High Medium Low
Speciﬁc Programs
Exile 16.7 6.7 16.0 19.0
Antigang 2.8 0.0 4.0 2.9
Ceaseﬁre 13 20 28 5.9
General Gun 16.7 33.3 4.0 17.6
Strategy
ChildSafe 38.9 20 44 41.2
Education 6.5 0.0 0.0 10.3
Other 5.6 20 4.0 2.9
General
Programs
Antigang Unit 5.9 2.0 0.0 16.7
Task Forces 30.6 31.4 30 29.2
General Gun 14.1 7.8 30 20.8
Strategy
Violent 35.3 51.0 0.0 16.7
Offenders
Team
Other 14.1 7.8 40 16.7

 

94

Table 7. Discussion of PSN

 

 

 

 

 

All Egh Medium Low

Gun Violence

Yes 12.9 3.8 21.7 21.4

No 87.1 96.2 78.3 78.6
Mentions Cases

Yes 63.3 88.7 46.4 34.9

No 36.7 11.3 53.6 65.1
Drug Case

Yes 23.1 26.9 21.7 18.3

No 76.9 73.1 78.3 81.7
Gang Case

Yes 4.2 2.7 4.3 6.3

No 95.8 97.3 95.7 93.7
Response to Crime

Yes 15.5 10.2 11.6 25.4

No 84.5 89.8 88.4 74.6
Reduction of
Crime

Yes 17.6 9.1 21.7 27.8

No 82.4 90.9 78.3 72.2
Table 8. Sources Cited in PSN Stories

All High Medium Low

Chief/ Sheriff 7.0 6.1 6.8 9.0
P10 3.3 0.8 6.8 6.9
Federal Officers 7.5 8 8.7 6.0
Other Police 6.4 4.8 5.8 9.9
Sources
Prosecutors 43 .3 5 1 .5 40.8 27.9
Scholars 1.8 0.6 2.9 3.9
Politicians 6.7 4.2 11.7 9.4
Community group 3.2 1.1 4.9 6.9
member
General 2.7 4.2 1.9 0.0
officers/agencies
Documents 8.9 15.1 0.0 0.0
Other 9.1 3.6 9.7 20.2

 

95

 

Table 9. Overall and Source Impressions of PSN

 

 

 

 

 

All High Medium Low
Overall PSN
Impression
Favorable 10.5 5.4 20.3 12.7
Not Favorable 1.5 0.5 2.9 3.2
Neutral 87.7 94.1 76.8 84.1
Source
Impression
Favorable 20.8 14 33.0 29.2
Not Favorable 2.6 1.5 4.9 3.9
Neutral 76.7 84.5 62.1 67.0
Table 10. Overall Results by Media Partners
Police Other CJ Community Universities Politicians Program
Department Organizations Groups Ofﬁce Office
Jurisdiction
Coverage
High 0.0 21.2 51.7 83.2 46.2 0.0
Medium 41.2 47.0 17.8 4.2 0.0 14.7
Low 58.8 31.8 30.5 12.6 53.8 85.3
Average Size 453.65 590.48 493.88 456.46 575.77 464.90
Assessment
Incident 29.4 45.5 63.6 84.0 69.2 23.5
Program 41.2 6.1 10.2 2.5 11.5 8.8
Legislative 0.0 1.5 0.0 0.0 3 .8 0.0
Action
Implementation 11.8 31.8 12.7 11.8 11.5 52.9
of initiative
Promotional 0.0 1.5 0.8 0.0 0.0 2.9
Informational 5.9 0.0 4.2 0.8 0.0 2.9
Award 5.9 1.5 0.8 0.0 3.8 2.9
Other 5.9 12.1 7.6 0.8 0.0 5.9
Strategy
Prosecutorial 23.5 40.9 55.9 84.0 53.8 17.6
Law 5.9 9.1 5.9 0.0 7.7 8.8
Enforcement
General GS 52.9 31.8 21.2 11.8 19.2 47.1
Allocation of 0.0 1.5 4.2 2.5 3.8 14.7
funds
Award 5.9 3.0 1.7 0.0 3.8 2.9
Informational/ 0.0 7.6 3.4 0.8 7.7 2.9
Conference
Other 11.8 6.1 7.6 0.8 3.8 5.9

 

96

Table 11 Overall results by Media Partner 2

 

 

Police Other CJ Community Universities Politicians Program
Department Organizations Groups Ofﬁce Ofﬁce
Overall PSN
Impression
Favorable 23.5 18.2 11.0 4.2 0.0 17.6
Not Favorable 5.9 3.0 1.7 0.0 0.0 5.9
Neutral 70.6 78.8 87.3 95.8 100.0 76.5
Goals
Yes 52.9 66.7 73.7 92.4 84.6 55.9
No 47.1 33.3 26.3 7.6 15.4 44.1
Overall
Philosophy
Yes 41.2 28.8 46.6 37.8 30.8 17.6
No 58.8 71.2 53.4 62.2 69.2 82.4
History
Yes 5.9 18.2 25.4 5.0 15.4 23.5
No 94.1 81.8 74.6 95.0 84.6 76.5
Components
Yes 35.3 62.1 68.6 91.6 69.2 50.0
No 64.7 37.9 31.4 8.4 30.8 50.0
Gun Violence
Yes 29.4 27.3 11.9 2.5 3.8 23.5
No 70.6 72.7 88.1 97.5 96.2 76.5
Response to
Crime
Yes 29.4 13.6 16.9 9.2 19.2 26.5
No 70.6 86.4 83.1 90.8 80.8 73.5
Reduction of
Crime
'Yes 29.4 22.7 20.3 6.7 11.5 35.3
No 70.6 77.3 79.7 93.3 88.5 64.7
Funding
Yes 35.3 34.8 16.9 9.2 34.6 44.1
No 64.7 65.2 83.1 90.8 65.4 55.9

 

97

 

Table 12. Media Campaign Analysis

 

 

 

 

 

All Hiﬂ Medium Low
Mass Media
Campaig
Yes 97.3 100.0 89.9 97.4
No 2.7 0.0 10.1 2.6
Measure of Impact
Yes 53.9 53.2 63.8 49.1
No 46.1 46.8 36.2 50.9
Positive Results
Yes 59.7 60.2 67.7 54.2
No 1.4 0.0 0.0 4.7
CND 38.9 39.8 32.3 41.1
Task Force
ﬁrnding campaign
Yes 90.8 93.5 88.4 87.9
No 9.2 6.5 11.6 12.1
Table 13. Results by Mass Media Campaign, Measures, and Funding
Mass Media Campaign Measure Campaign Task Force Funds
E M XE; M ____.Y68 M
ﬂ=361) (N=10) (N=200) (N=171) (N=337) (N=34)
Jurisdiction Coverage
High 51.5 0.0 49.5 50.9 51.6 35.3
Medium 17.2 70.0 22.0 14.6 18.1 23.5
Low 31.3 30.0 28.5 34.5 30.3 41.2
Assessment
Incident 64.0 20.0 71.0 53.2 63.8 52.9
Program 7.5 20.0 5.0 11.1 7.4 11.8
Legislative 0.6 0.0 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.0
Action
Implementation 18.3 50.0 16.0 22.8 18.1 29.4
of initiative
Promotional 0.3 10.0 0.0 1.2 0.3 2.9
Informational 2.2 0.0 1.5 2.9 2.4 0.0
Award 1.4 0.0 0.5 2.3 1.5 0.0
Other 5.8 0.0 5.5 5.8 5.9 2.9
Strategy
Prosecutorial 59.0 10.0 67.0 46.8 59.1 44.1
Law 4.4 20.0 3.0 7.0 4.2 11.8
Enforcement
General OS 23.0 30.0 18.5 28.7 21.7 38.2
Allocation of 3.3 30.0 3.0 5.3 4.2 2.9
funds
Award 1.9 0.0 1.5 2.3 2.1 0.0
Inforrnational/ 3.6 0.0 4.0 2.9 3.9 0.0
Conference
Other 4.7 10.0 3.0 7.0 5.0 2.9

98

 

Table 14. Results by Mass Media Campaign, Measures, and Funding 2

 

 

Mass Media Campaign Measure Campaign Task Force Funds
Yes N_o Yes IE Yes No
(N=361) (N=10) (N=200) (N=1 71) (N=337) (N=34)
Overall PSN Impression
Favorable 11.1 0.0 8.5 13.5 11.0 8.8
Not Favorable 1.7 10.0 0.0 4.1 1.2 8.8
Neutral 87.3 90.0 91.5 82.5 87.8 82.4
Goals
Yes 78.7 40.0 82.0 72.5 78.0 73.5
No 21.3 60.0 18.0 27.5 22.0 26.5
Overall Philosophy
Yes 37.7 40.0 35.0 40.9 37.1 44.1
No 62.3 60.0 65.0 59.1 62.9 55.9
History
Yes 15.8 10.0 8.5 24.0 14.8 23.5
No 84.2 90.0 91.5 76.0 85.2 76.5
Components
Yes 72.9 50.0 80.5 62.6 73.3 61.8
No 27.1 50.0 19.5 37.4 26.7 38.2
Gun Violence
Yes 12.7 30.0 11.0 15.8 13.4 11.8
No 87.3 70.0 89.0 84.2 86.6 88.2
Response to Crime
Yes 16.1 10.0 16.0 15.8 16.6 8.8
No 83.9 90.0 84.0 84.2 83.4 91.2
Reduction of Crime .
Yes 18.0 10.0 15.0 21.1 18.4 11.8
No 82.0 90.0 85.0 78.9 81.6 88.2
Funding
Yes 20.8 50.0 20.5 22.8 20.8 29.4
No 79.2 50.0 79.5 77.2 79.2 70.6

 

99

 

APPENDIX B

Content Codebook

 

Variable Name Variable description Coding Scheme
Case Number Case number #
Article Article Number #
State State of origin 1-50= alphabetical order.
51= DC; 52= Guam
hmlow Jurisdiction Coverage 1= High
2: Medium
3= Low
Jurisdiction U.S Jurisdiction String
Massmedia mass media campaign in place? String
Measure is campaign being measured? String
TFfund task force funding campaign String
Year Year of publication 1= 2001-2003
2= 2004-2005
3= 2006-2007
Size # of Words #
assessment Type of article 1= Incident related

2= program/policy
3=Legislative action
4=implernentation of
initiative

5= Statistical

6= Promotional

7= other

8= Informational

9: Award

100

 

strategy

prevpro g

Reducpro g

prosec

sentence

Sources

numsourc
numpol
nurnusat

numstat

Type of PSN Story

Preventive Program

Reduction Program

type of prosecution

sentence imposed

SOUTCCS

# of sources cited
# of Police sources cited
# of US attorney sources cited

# State attorney sources cited

101

1= prosecutorial

2=law enforcement

3= communication

4= general gun strategy
5= corrections

6= allocation of funds
7= Award

8= info/conference

9= editorial

lO= Other

String

String

1 =none
2= state
3= federal

String

1=chief/ Sheriff

2=other CJ personnel

3: P10

4: Federal Agents

5= Prosecutor

6= Scholar

7= Politician

8: Community gp
Member

9=Omm

10= No Source

11: US Department

12= General ofﬁcials/

authorities
13= Documents

#

#

 

numcorr
nurnclergy
numcommgp
nurncit
nurnoth

whatsay

Overpsnfavor

goals
psnphil

psnhist

psncomp

comp

psngps

gvcase

# Correction sources cited
# Clergy sources cited

# of com. Grp sources cited
# of citizen sources cited

# of other sources cited

Type of info provided

media impression of PS

Discuss PSN goals
Discuss PSN philosophy

Discuss PSN history

Discuss PSN components

Which Component is discussed

Disc.involvement of com. gps
discuss gun violence(inc/dec)

Speciﬁc cases mentioned

102

#

#

1 =factual/ informational
2= explanatory

3= evaluation

4= recommendation

5= prediction

6: reactions

1 =favorable
2= not favorable
3= neutral

1=yes; 2=no
1=yes; 2=no

1=yes; 2=no

1= yes; 2= no

1= Partnership
2= Strategic
Planning

3= Training

4= outreach

5= accountability
6= none

7= Various

1=yes; 2=no
1=yes; 2=no

1 =yes; 2=no

 

Drug
Gang
gvresearch
gvr esp
offender
excon
crime
Fund

Mediapart

Prevpro g1

Redupro g1

Drug cases
Gang involvement
Studies mentioned
how is C] going to respond
mentions offender/ characteristics of
was the offender previously convicted
mentions how PSN can reduce Crime
mentions ﬁrnding for PSN

Media Partner

prevention pro gram numeric

Reduction Program Numeric

103

1 =yes; 2=no
1= yes; 2=no
1=yes; 2=no
1=yes; 2=no
1 =yes; 2=no
1 =yes; 2=no
l =yes; 2=no
1 =yes; 2=no

1= Police Dept.

2= Other CJ Org

3= Comm. Gp.

4= University

5: Politicians
Ofﬁce

6= Crime
Stoppers/
program

1= Exile

2= Antigang

3= Ceaseﬁre

4: general
Prevention
Strat.

5= Childsafe

6= education

7= other

99= Missing

1: Antigang

2: Task Force

3= general
reduction strat.

4= VCIT

5= Other

99= Missing

References

About the 222 Corridor Anti-Gang Initiative. (2007). Retrieved December 1, 2007 from
http://www.222antigang.org/ about the222/tabid/1 12/default.aspx.

B] S (2006). Nonfatalﬁrearm-related violent crimes, [993-2005. Retrieved May 21, 2007
ﬁ'om http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/ﬁrearmnonfataltab.htm

Bonderrnan, J. (2001 July). Working with victims of gun violence. OVC Bulletin. US.
Department of Justice. Washington, DC.

Braga, A.A., Kennedy, D.M., Waring, E.J., & Piehl, A.M.(2001). Problem-oriented
policing, deterrence, and youth violence: an evaluation of Boston’s operation
Ceaseﬁre. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38(3), 195-225

Bynum, T. & Decker, S.H. (with Klofas, J ., Kroovand Hipple, N., McGarrell, E.F. &
McDevitt, J.) (2006). Chronic violent oﬂenders lists: case study 4. US.
Department of Justice. Washington, DC.

Chermak, SM. (1995). Victims in the news. Boulder: West View Press

Chermak, SM. (1997 December). The presentation of drugs in the news media. Justice
Quarterly 14(4), 687-718.

Chermak, S.M. & Weiss, A. (2003 July). Marketing community policing in the news: a
missed opportunity? US. Department of Justice. Washington, DC.

Chennak, S.M. & Weiss, A. (2006 June). Community policing in the news media. Police
Quarterly 9(2), 135-160

Chiricos, T., Eschholz, S., & Gertz, M.(1997 Aug.) Crime, news and fear of crime:
toward an identiﬁcation of audience effects. Social Problems, 44(3), 342-357.

Clair, M.(2003, July 17). Man sentenced to 10 years in jail. New Britain Herald.

Comey, J. & Miller, S. (2002 January). Project Exile. United States Attorney’s Bulletin,
50(1), 11-15

Content Analysis. (n.d.). Retreived July 6, 2007 ﬁ'om
http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~pa1mquis/courses/content.html

Cook P.J. & Ludwig, J. (2000). Gun Violence: the real costs. New York: Oxford
University Press

104

 

Cook P.J., Lawrence, B.A., Ludwig, J., & Miller, T.R.(1999 August). The medical costs
of gunshot injuries in the United States. Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), 282(5), 447—454

Crime Stoppers International.(2007). The ofﬁcial crime stoppers international website.
Retrieved May 7, 2007 from http://www.c-s-i.org

Crime Stoppers USA. (2000). Retrieved May 7, 2007 from
http://www.crimestopusa.com/csinfo.htm

Croteau, D. & Hoynes, W. (1997). Media/Society: industries, images and audiences.
Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press

Decker, S.H. & McDevitt, J. (with McGarrell, E.F., Bynum, T., Klofas, J. & Kroovand
Hipple, N.) (2006). Gun prosecution case screening: case study I . US.
Department of Justice. Washington, DC.

Doyle, A.(2003) Arresting Images: crime and policing in front of the television camera.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Ducombe,W.D. & Straussman, J .D.(1994). Judicial intervention and local spending: the
case of local jails. Policy Studies Journal, 22(4), 604-616

Ericson, R.V., Baranek, P.M. & Chan, J BL. (1989). Negotiating Control: a study of
news sources. Toronto: University of Toronto Press

FBI.(2006 September). Expanded homicide data. Crime in the US. 2005. Retrieved May
21, 2007 from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/OScius/

F eld, B.C. (1998).Juvenile and criminal justice systems’ responses to youth violence. In
M. Tonry & M.H. Moore (Eds), Youth Violence (pp.189-262). Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

Fishman, M. (1978). Crime waves as ideology. In G.W. Potter, & V.E. Kappeler (Eds),
Constructing Crime (pp. 53-72). Prospect Heights, 111: Waveland Press.

Howell, J .C. & Hawkins JD. (1998). Prevention of youth violence. In
M. Tonry & M.H. Moore (Eds.), Youth Violence (pp.263-316). Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

Kelley, J .(2005, September 20). Man pleads guilty to city gun violation. Lancaster New
Era, p.Bl

105

Lipschultz, J.H. & Hilt, M.L.(2002). Crime and local television news. Mahwah, NJ:
LawrenceAssociates

Mawby, RC. (2002). Policing images. Portland: Willan Publishing.

Max, W. & Rice, DP. (1993). Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of ﬁrearm
injuries. Health Aﬂairs, 12(4), 171-185.

McDEvitt, J ., Braga, A.A., Cronin, S., (with McGarrell, E.F. & Bynum, T.).(2007).
Lowell, District of Massachusetts: case study 6. US. Department of Justice.
Washington, DC.

McDevitt, J ., Decker, S.H., Kroovand Hipple, N., McGarrell, E.F.,(with Klofas, J. &
Bynum, T.) (2006). Offender notiﬁcation meetings: case study 2. US.
Department of Justice. Washington, DC.

McGarrell, ER (2005). Working Paper: Strategic problem solving and Project Safe
Neighborhoods. Retrieved April 4m, 2007 from
http://www.cj.msu.edu/~outreach/psn/strategic _prob1em_solving _psn_wp1%SBI
%5D.pdf

McGarrell, E.F., Chermak, S.M., Wilson, J .M., & Corsaro, N. (2006 June). Reducing
Homicide through a “Lever-Pulling’ Strategy”. Justice Quarterly, 23(2), 214-
231.

McGarrell, E.F., Freilich, J .D. & Chermak, S.M.(2007). Intelligence-led policing as a
framework for responding to terrorism. Journal of Contemporary Criminal
Justice, 23(2), 142-158.

Miller, T. (2007). Fact Sheet: Route 222 corridor gang prevention task force. Retrieved
November 19, 2007 from http://www.222antigang.org

Miniﬁo, A.M., Arias, E., Kochanek, K.D., Murphy, S.L., & Smith, BL. (2002). Deaths:
ﬁnal data for 2000. National Vital Statistics Reports 5 0(1 5). Hyattsville,
Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved April 15, 2007 from
http://www.wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/populations/bridge-
race/nationalvitalstatisticsreportsvolSOnumber1 5 .pdf

NYPD CompStat Unit.(2007). Report covering the week of 08/27/1007 through
09/02/2007. CompStat, 14(3 5).

OJJDP.(n.d.). Promising Strategies to reduce gun violence. Washington, DC: Ofﬁce of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Ofﬁce of Justice Programs, US.
Department of Justice.

106

 

Papachristos, A.V., Meares, T.L., & Fagan, J. (2007). Attention Felons: Evaluating
project safe neighborhoods in Chicago. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 4(2).

Price-McGinnis, A.K. & Switala, KJ. (2004). PSN Mapping and Analysis Project
(PSNMAP). Retrieved November 20, 2007 from
http://www.gis.esri.com/library/userconf/procO4/docs/pap1 3 59.pdf

Qualitative social science research methodology. (n.d.). Retrieved July 6, 2007 ﬁ'om
http://www.faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/308/3081ect09.htm

Roehl, J ., Rosenbaum, D.P., Costello, S.K., Coldren, J .R., Schuck, A.M., Kunard, L.,
F orde, D. (2006). Strategic approaches to community safety initiative (SACSI) in
10 US. cities: the building blocks for project safe neighborhoods ( DOJ
Document No.212866). US. Department of Justice.

Rosenbaum, D.P., Lurigio, A.J., & Lavrakas, P.J.(1989 July). Enhancing citizen
participation and solving serious crime: a national evaluation of crime stOppers
programs. Crime & Delinquency 35(3), 401-420.

Rosenfeld, R., Fomango,R.,& Baumer, E. (2005). Did Ceaseﬁre, COMPSTAT, and Exile
reduce homicide? Criminology & Public Policy, 4(3), Social Science Module.

Sacco, V.F. (1995 May). Media constructions of crime. Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science, 539, 141 -1 54

Settani, S. Richmond, T.S., Cheney, R.A., & Grossman, M.(2005). Using public health
data to inform a gun crime enforcement initiative (PSN). Firearm and Injury
Center at Penn [FICAP]

Sheley, J .F. & Ashkins, C.D.(1981 winter). Crime, crime news, and crime views. The
Public Opinion Quarterly, 45(4), 492-506

Sheppard, D. (1999). Strategies to reduce gun violence. OJJDP Fact Sheet, 93.
Washington, DC.

Silverman, EB. (1999). NYPD battles crime. Boston: NorthEastern University Press.

Singleton, R.A., jr. & Straits, BC. (2005). Approaches to social research (4th Ed). New
York: Oxford University Press.

Snider, L. (1990). [Review of the book Crime Stoppers: a study in the organization of
community policing]. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 15(2), 222-224.

Stake, RE. (1985). Research, policy, & practice. World Yearbook of Education (pp.277-
285). New York: Nichols Publishing Company.

107

Surette, R. (1995). A serendipitous ﬁnding of news media history effect. In G.W. Potter,
& V.E. Kappeler (Eds), Constructing Crime (pp. 265-274). Prospect Heights, 111:
Waveland Press.

Surette, R. (1998). Media, crime, and criminal justice: images and realities (2"d Ed).
Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.(n.d) Fact Sheet: Gun Violence. Retrieved April 15,
2007 from http://www.csgv.org/document.cfm?documentID=203

Thomas, AP. (2006 February). The CSI effect: fact or ﬁction? Yale Law Review Pocket,
115 (70) retrieved May 30, 2007 from
http://www.thepocketpart.org/2006/02/thomas/html

US. Census Bureau.(2007a). Utilization of Selected Media: 1970—2005. The
Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, DC: USGPO

US. Census Bureau. (2007b). Media usage and consumer spending: 1999 to 2009.
The Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, DC: USGPO

USDOJ (n.d.). PSN in Practice 11. Retrieved November 20, 2007 from
http://www.psn.gov/pubs/pdf/PSN_InPracticeII.pdf

USDOJ (2001) Project Safe Neighborhoods: Toolkit. Washington, DC: US. Department
of Justice.

USDOJ. (2004 J une). Project Safe Neighborhoods: America’s network against gun
violence. Program Brief. Washington, DC: US. Department of Justice

USDOJ. (2007). Project Safe Neighborhoods- Five Years Later. Retrieved November 20,
2007 from
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/newsletters/psn%205%20years%201ater.pdf

Weisburd, D., Matrofski, S.D., Greenspan, R. & Willis, J .(2004 April). The growth of
CompStat in American policing. Police Foundation Reports. Washington, DC

Welch, M., Fenwick, M., & Roberts, M. (1998). State managers, intellectuals, and the
media. In G.W. Potter, & V.E. Kappeler (Eds), Constructing Crime (pp. 87-110).
Prospect Heights, 111: Waveland Press

Wilson, J .Q. & Kelling, G.L. (1982 March). Broken Windows. The Atlantic Monthly.

Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly,
26(1), 58-65.

108

 

Zimmerman, C. (2006). Federal incentives to address gun violence: a model of success
and Failure (Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University, 2006)

109

 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

llllllllllljllﬂllllllllljlllllllﬂlllllllll