Effective Focused Deterrence: Systemizing Custom 

Notifications

Voiceover

00:00

This is The Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics 

facing our nation.

Vonda Matthews

00:08

Hello, my name is Vonda Matthews for the Department of Justice COPS Office. I’d like to welcome you 

and introduce you to Major Larry Casterline of the High Point Police Department. We’re going to discuss 

their latest developments on how they’re improving the safety of his community. Let me just say that 

the High Point Police Department has been working closely with David Kennedy and the National 

Network for Safe Communities. I know he’s talked and we have some publications on these subjects but 

I want you, if you can tell a little bit for our audience, who may not be familiar, can you tell us how the 

partnership started and how it has evolved?

Major Larry Casterline

00:39

Sure, how you doing, Vonda? We were introduced to David Kennedy in 1997 and, subsequently, began 

implementation of what we refer to as “Focused Deterrence Strategies” or “Focused Deterrence 

Policing.” Some folks know it as notifications or call-ins and we started with chronic offenders back in 

97. And, really, this was just an adaptation of what was being applied in Boston, Massachusetts back in 

the late 80s, early 90s. They were essentially using it for gang homicide, a youth gang homicide problem 

that they were dealing with. We continuously built community support and participation as we were 

recognizing significant reductions in violence and a large portion of the violent individuals that we were 

having direct dialogue with, putting on notice or notifying, were clearly making rational decisions to stop 

acting violently. Because of this success, David encouraged us to apply a very similar notification to 

street-level dealers so that we could impact the violence surrounding open-air drug markets, and in High 

Point we refer to this as “drug market intervention.” It became very apparent to us that direct 

communication with our most prolific offenders using specific messaging accompanied with swift and 

certain sanctioning was really having more effect, more of an impact on violence reduction, than 

arresting them was.

We then applied the strategy to gangs to reduce robbery, and we used it on juveniles returning from 

training or reform schools (called different things depending on where you’re from). In law 

enforcement, we all recognize that juveniles have a very high recidivism rate returning from reform 

school. What we discovered is that, between the times we were spending identifying violent individuals 

and scheduling these notifications with them, that there were other things occurring in the community. 

There were disputes and beefs between individuals, groups, and gangs, and these would sometimes 

erupt into violence. We decided to take this notification method that we were using directly to 
individuals who were “hot,” or engaged in back-and-forth beefs, and we simply evaluated the situations 

we were dealing with, determined who key impact players are and what their legal exposures were at 

the time, and we crafted very specific deterrence messages for them. And we would simply take the 

message with the community, the community’s moral voice, to their home, neighborhood, street, or 

anywhere we could contact them.

Matthews

03:11

What exactly is a custom notification?

Casterline

03:15

It’s really not completely different than what we were doing when we were scheduling notifications, but 

a custom notification is really direct communication with impact players by law enforcement and 

community together, notifying the impact player of his or her circumstances and exposures if involved in 

further acts of violence. So, we’re really bringing home to them, “you know, look, you’re exposed and 

this is what’s going to happen to you and we’re focused on you now.”

Matthews

03:45

And what kind of results have you seen from that effort?

Casterline

03:48

Really a multitude of things. We were able to directly communicate with individuals that were driving 

violence, that typically can’t be reached during these group call-ins because they’re not on probation or 

parole, so we could get them in the street. It helped us sustain the impact of the community moral voice 

message in between our notifications, which . . . we know that the community’s moral voice message is 

very important here. It provided us a more nimble communication tool than group call-ins to quell these 

beefs that we spoke of, to prevent retaliations and calm hot spots. It allowed for us to provide a tailored 

message to individual impact players and their circumstances and exposures; and overall it just equaled 

a reduction in retaliation and back-and-forth violence.

Matthews

04:35

Why do you think it’s been so effective?

Casterline

04:38

Going back to the beginning, I mean, we’ve really learned through 17 years of experience of 

implementing National Network strategies that offenders are far more rational than we first believed. 

That’s why this stuff works; we’ve been treating them like they’re not rational for so many years. We’ve 

also figured out that offenders can’t be deterred by what they don’t know. We need to provide them 
this critical information. We know that it works because the community’s moral voice is one of the most 

powerful deterrents (which is more of an informal than a formal sanction). And to conclude it, we kind 

of bring all of what we know that is highly effective directly to an individual’s living room. So, literally 

within hours of knowing that something’s occurring or that somebody’s hot, we can sit with them faceto-face and get the same impact by this custom notification that we’ve gotten in our more scheduled 

type of notifications.

Matthews

05:33

It sounds like it’s very, kind of, resource intensive. Do you think this is a sustainable effort?

Casterline

05:39

I do; and I think the overall piece here for people to understand, and this is the most important piece 

that people have to wrap their head around, is that there’s really a small number of people that drive 

most of the significant violence. So, when it comes to considering whether it’s sustainable or not, we 

have to remember that there’s just a small number of folks that are, that are this violent. I think police 

and community have the ability to identify impact players on a daily, weekly basis—it’s not difficult—

and determine what types of exposures these individuals have by looking at their records. Custom 

notifications are simply conversations with key individuals about specific rules regarding violence, what 

will be tolerated, and what to expect if the rules aren’t followed. And it’s accompanied with this very 

important community moral voice and I really feel like it’s a matter of people wrapping their heads 

around the idea of deterrence as an effective law enforcement tool. We recognize we’re not going to 

arrest our way out of this and what we have found in High Point is that we can really impact violence 

and impact violent players without using arrest as a main tool. So, we’re really arresting fewer people 

and having a greater impact.

Matthews

06:59

And your violence rates have gone down significantly at the same time.

Casterline 

07:02

Yes, significantly.

Matthews

07:03

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Casterline

07:05

I think at this point in time, there’s a multitude of effective focused deterrence models and strategies 

being used across the country. David Kennedy and John Jay College’s National Network for Safe 
Communities have the staff, the information, the data to really help launch any other jurisdiction or any 

community who’s interested in having a serious impact on violence using focused deterrence and it 

just—really, people need to act. It’s time to act.

Matthews

07:38

That’s very helpful. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Casterline

07:40 

Oh, happy to do it.

Voiceover: The Beat Exit

07:43

The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice, COPS Office. The COPS Office 

helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing 

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Voiceover: Disclaimer

07:59

The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 

position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, 

products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department 

of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.