R e s e a r c h P r e v i e w

National Institute of Justice

Jeremy Travis, Director

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

R e s e a r c h i n P r o g r e s s S e m i n a r S e r i e s

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DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

OFF ICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS

BJA NI J OJJDP BJS OVC

The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program:

A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders

Summary of a Presentation by Jeffrey Roth, The Urban Institute

Concern about the proliferation of handguns among young

black men led Judge Willie G. Lipscomb, Jr., of Detroit to

launch a program designed to change attitudes and behavior in the hope of preventing gun violence. In the Handgun Intervention Program (HIP), offenders who had been

arrested for carrying concealed weapons were required, as

a condition of pretrial release, to attend a class in which they

would learn the negative consequences of gun use and be

challenged to take personal responsibility for reducing those

consequences. Begun in 1993, HIP has had upwards of

6,000 participants, more than 90 percent of whom were

African-Americans.

In an NIJ-sponsored study, researchers from The Urban

Institute found that, as a result of HIP, attitudes toward

gun use improved significantly in the short run. However,

many participants questioned whether their behavior would

change because they felt the dangers of the street required

them to carry a gun.

Program elements

The rationale behind HIP is that attitudinal and behavioral

changes might prevent the young men who have been

carrying weapons from carrying them or actually using them.

Thus, the program is designed to underscore the consequences of weapons use. It attempts to awaken the participants to issues of personal choice, individual responsibility,

and the role of nonviolence in African-American history. The

4-hour Saturday classes, which are held in a courtroom,

consist of the following components:

● Slide presentation of gun murder victims, designed to

make the threat real and personal. The message is that

the class participants could also be killed in this way.

● Information packet of facts about handguns and

discussion of handguns.

● Peer presentations by older felons. The participants

hear, from men not much older than themselves, about

the dangers of handgun use, how to avoid violent

situations, and similar topics.

● Socratic dialog led by Judge Lipscomb. Three topics

in particular are presented as subjects for debate or

discussion: the heritage and responsibilities of AfricanAmericans, the responsibility for being a role model for

younger men, and the special burdens of gun violence

on the African-American community.

● Optional vow of nonviolence. On average, 80 to 90

percent of the group agree to take this vow, which

pledges them not to initiate violence.

Measures of change

The evaluation measured changes in seven categories of

gun-related attitudes and knowledge:

● Risks vs. benefits of carrying a handgun: Are people in

dangerous situations safer if they carry a weapon?

● Alleged inevitability of gun violence: Can gun violence

be prevented?

● Ethics of the situation: Is it acceptable, for example, to

seek revenge with a gun?

● Status: Does carrying a gun increase a person’s status

in the community?

● Personal responsibility: Are people accountable for their

own life and for violence in their neighborhood?

● Situational avoidance of violence: How can various

threatening situations be handled without a gun?

● Knowledge: Do participants know such facts as blacks’

high rate of homicide victimization?

November 1998
Findings and opinions in this document do not necessarily reflect

the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

 FS 000231

This document is based on Dr. Jeffrey Roth’s presentation to

researchers and criminal justice practitioners as part of NIJ’s

Research in Progress seminar series. His study was sponsored by NIJ (grant number 95–IJ–CX–0106). Dr. Roth is

Director of Crime Control Policy Studies at The Urban

Institute. A 60-minute VHS videotape of the seminar, The

Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based

Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders, is available for $19

($24 in Canada and other countries). Ask for NCJ 171126.

Use the order form on the next page to obtain this videotape

and any of the other tapes in the series.

Methodology

The sample consisted of 446 people, divided about equally

into a test group that attended the class and a control group

that did not. The mean age of both groups was 26, and both

were the same in employment status and other demographic

characteristics. Both groups were reportedly at high risk for

violence: 75 percent reported that at some point in their lives

they had been shot at; 80 percent said that friends or family

members had been killed by guns.

Attitudes were measured twice for the entire sample. The initial

measurement was taken in lockup just before arraignment. The

second was conducted 12–14 days later just before the second

court appearance. The test group was assigned to attend

HIP on one of the Saturdays between the two appearances.

Researchers were unable to obtain a statistically valid sample

for a third measurement 6 months later.

Early effects of the program

The attitudes of the HIP group improved on nearly all

measures of each of the seven concepts:

Risks vs. benefits: Between the first and second measurements, the HIP group registered increasingly less belief that

possessing a gun put one in control of a threatening situation. An even larger percentage came to feel that carrying a

gun was not worth the risk of arrest.

Inevitability of gun violence: The percentage who believed

the axiom, “Sometimes you just can’t avoid a gun fight,”

decreased between the two measurements.

Ethics: The percentage attending HIP who believed it was

acceptable to use a gun in various circumstances declined,

and the percentage who believed that nonviolence historically has improved black peoples’ lives increased.

Status: The proportion who believed guns improved one’s

standing decreased.

Personal Responsibility: Reactions were mixed, depending on the particular subissue, although for the most part the

shift in attitudes was positive.

Situational avoidance: Among HIP attendees, there was

a shift toward the beliefs that if you need a gun for some

activity, you are better off staying home and that if you need

a gun to fit in with your friends, it might be better to make

different friends.

Knowledge: For HIP attendees, there were large increases

in the percentages who correctly answered three questions

about gun homicide risks.

In the short term (first two stages of testing), attitudes

toward the negative consequences of gun violence improved

significantly. Long-term results were available only for

defendants diverted from adjudication—a small, nonrepresentative subsample. No statistically valid conclusions could

be reached about the third stage of testing 6 months after

the class.

Attitudinal vs. behavioral change

Preliminary analyses indicate that despite HIP’s positive

effects on attitudes, effects on behavior were small at best.

This is not surprising in view of the outcome of focus groups

held among the participants immediately after the class to

obtain feedback about the program. A few participants felt

the program was a useless exercise. Others reported that

they were very optimistic about the program’s effectiveness,

although the researchers felt these individuals may not have

fully understood Detroit street life and may have been

expressing hopes, not beliefs.

The vast majority of focus group participants, about 80

percent, although skeptical about the program, nevertheless

felt they had benefited from it and might think differently as

a result. But they did not anticipate changes in behavior,

because they felt that carrying a gun was still necessary

since the streets were dangerous.

The findings suggest that the Handgun Intervention Program

changes attitudes but that it may be difficult to maintain the

attitude changes over the long run and convert them into

behavioral changes. If fear of the streets expressed by

focus group participants is any indication, conditions in the

community militate against substantive behavioral change,

even if favorable attitudes do not dissipate over the long

term. To better understand these conditions and their

relationship to attitudes and behavior, the researchers are

studying patterns of recidivism (for example, the percentage

of people rearrested on gun charges), as well as individual

and neighborhood characteristics, to uncover their

connections. This phase of the study is nearing completion.
The Latest Criminal Justice

Videotape Series from NIJ:

Research in Progress Seminars

Learn about the latest developments in criminal justice research from prominent criminal justice experts.

Each 60-minute tape presents a well-known scholar discussing his or her current studies and how

they relate to existing criminal justice research and includes the lecturer’s responses to audience questions.

In addition to The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders, reported

on in this Research Preview, the other tapes available in VHS format are:

NCJ 152235—Alfred Blumstein, Ph.D.,

Professor, Carnegie Mellon University:

Youth Violence, Guns, and Illicit Drug Markets.

NCJ 152236—Peter W. Greenwood,

Ph.D., Director, Criminal Justice

Research Program, The RAND Corporation: Three Strikes, You’re Out: Benefits and

Costs of California’s New MandatorySentencing Law.

NCJ 152237—Christian Pfeiffer, Ph.D.,

Director, Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen: Sentencing Policy and

Crime Rates in Reunified Germany.

NCJ 152238—Arthur L. Kellermann,

M.D., M.P.H., Director, Center for Injury

Control, and Associate Professor, Emory

University: Understanding and Preventing

Violence: A Public Health Perspective.

NCJ 152692—James Inciardi, Ph.D.,

Director, Drug and Alcohol Center,

University of Delaware: A Corrections-Based

Continuum of Effective Drug Abuse Treatment.

NCJ 153271—Marvin Wolfgang, Ph.D.,

Director, Legal Studies and Criminology,

University of Pennsylvania: Crime in a Birth

Cohort: A Replication in the People’s Republic of

China.

NCJ 153272—Cathy Spatz Widom,

Ph.D., Professor, State University of New

York–Albany: The Cycle of Violence Revisited Six

Years Later.

NCJ 153273—Wesley Skogan, Ph.D.,

Professor, Northwestern University:

Community Policing in Chicago: Fact or Fiction?

NCJ 153730—Lawrence W. Sherman,

Ph.D., Professor, University of Maryland:

Reducing Gun Violence: Community Policing

Against Gun Crime.

NCJ 153850—Scott H. Decker, Ph.D.,

Professor, University of Missouri–St. Louis,

and Susan Pennell, San Diego Association of

Governments: Monitoring the Illegal Firearms

Market.

NCJ 154277—Terrie Moffitt, Ph.D.,

Professor, University of Wisconsin: Partner

Violence Among Young Adults.

NCJ 156923—Orlando Rodriguez, Ph.D.,

Director, Hispanic Research Center,

Fordham University: The New Immigrant

Hispanic Populations: Implications for Crime and

Delinquency in the Next Decade.

NCJ 156924—Robert Sampson, Ph.D.,

Professor, University of Chicago: Communities and Crime: A Study in Chicago.

NCJ 156925—John Monahan, Ph.D.,

Professor, University of Virginia: Mental

Illness and Violent Crime.

NCJ 157643—Benjamin E. Saunders,

Ph.D., and Dean G. Kilpatrick, Ph.D.,

Medical University of South Carolina:

Prevalence and Consequences of Child

Victimization: Preliminary Results From the

National Survey of Adolescents.

NCJ 159739—Joel H. Garner, Ph.D.,

Research Director, Joint Centers for

Justice Studies: Use of Force By and Against

the Police.

NCJ 159740—Kim English, Research

Director, Colorado Division of Criminal

Justice: Managing Adult Sex Offenders in

Community Settings: A Containment

Approach.

NCJ 160765—Michael Tonry, Ph.D.,

Professor, University of Minnesota:

Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration.

NCJ 160766—David M. Kennedy,

Ph.D., Professor, Harvard University:

Juvenile Gun Violence and Gun Markets in

Boston.

NCJ 161259—Robert Crutchfield,

Ph.D., Professor, University of

Washington: Labor Markets, Employment,

and Crime.

(continued on back)

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NCJ 161836—Geoff Alpert, Ph.D.,

Professor, University of South Carolina:

Police in Pursuit: Policy and Practice.

NCJ 163056—Dan Brookoff, M.D., Ph.D.,

Associate Director, Medical Education,

Memphis Methodist Hospital: Drug Use and

Domestic Violence.

NCJ 163057—Marcia Chaiken, Ph.D.,

Research Director of LINC, Alexandria, VA:

Youth Afterschool Programs and the Role of Law

Enforcement.

NCJ 163058—Eric Wish, Ph.D., Director,

Center for Substance Abuse Research,

University of Maryland, Dependence and Drug

Treatment Needs Among Adult Arrestees.

NCJ 163059—Jeffrey Fagan, Ph.D.,

Professor, Columbia University, Adolescent

Violence: A View From the Street.

NCJ 163921—Patricia Tjaden, Ph.D., Senior

Researcher, Center for Policy Research: The

Crime of Stalking: How Big Is the Problem?

NCJ 164262—Andrew Golub, Ph.D.,

Principal Research Associate, National

Development and Research Institutes,

Inc.: Crack’s Decline: Some Surprises Across

U.S. Cities.

NCJ 164725—Ronald Huff, Ph.D.,

Professor, Ohio State University: Criminal

Behavior of Gang Members.

NCJ 164726—James Austin, Ph.D.,

Executive Vice-President, National

Council on Crime and Delinquency:

Sentencing Guidelines: A State Perspective.

NCJ 165585—Garen Wintemute, M.D.,

Director, Violence Prevention Research

Program, University of California–Davis:

Predicting Criminal Behavior Among Authorized

Purchasers of Handguns.

NCJ 167027—Lorraine Green Mazerolle,

Ph.D., Director, Center for Criminal

Justice Research, University of Cincinnati:

Using Gunshot Detection Technology in HighCrime Areas.

NCJ 167028—Stephen Mastrofski,

Ph.D.; Roger B. Parks, Ph.D.; Albert J.

Reiss, Jr., Ph.D.; Robert E. Worden,

Ph.D.: Community Policing in Action: Lessons

From an Observational Study.

NCJ 167029—Christian Pfeiffer, Ph.D.,

Director, Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen: Trends in Juvenile

Violence in European Countries.

NCJ 167882—Dennis Kenney, Ph.D.,

Research Director, Police Executive

Research Forum: Crime in the Schools: A

Problem-Solving Approach.

NCJ 168626—Pamela Lattimore, Ph.D.,

and Kevin Jack Riley, Ph.D., National

Institute of Justice: Homicide in Eight Cities:

Trends, Contexts, and Responses.

NCJ 169597—Adele Harrell, Ph.D.;

Urban Institute: Drug Courts and the Role of

Graduated Sanctions.

NCJ 170033—David Altschuler, Ph.D.,

Johns Hopkins University: Reintegrating

Juvenile Offenders Into the Community:

OJJDP’s Intensive Community-Based Aftercare

Demonstration Program.

NCJ 170603—Felton Earls, M.D.,

Harvard School of Public Health: Linking

Community Factors and Individual Development: Progress in the Project on Human

Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.

NCJ 171156—Todd Clear, Ph.D., Florida

State University, and Dina Rose, Ph.D.,

State University of New York: When

Neighbors Go to Jail: Impact on Attitudes About

Formal and Informal Social Control.

NCJ 172853—Alfred Blumstein, Ph.D.,

Carnegie Mellon University, and Allen

Beck, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics:

The Growth of Incarceration in the U.S.: Where

Are All the Prisoners Coming From?