Lower Mainland shootings: pay the criminals as a solution?

Police, community leaders and citizens in the Lower Mainland want a remedy to the recent spate of gun violence that has hit the region.

Could one solution be to give the suspects for those crimes money to stay on the right side of the law?

A community organizer from Richmond, Calif. said such a scheme is what saved his city from gun violence.

In 2007, the city had 47 deaths from gun crime, in addition to 252 injuries — in a city of only 100,000 people.

"Gunfire almost every day. The city was considered to be the sixth most dangerous city in America," said Richmond's neighbourhood safety director DeVone Boggan.

"It was an eerie time. It was frightening for the normal citizen … It wasn't peaceful at all."

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After throwing millions of dollars at crime-fighting initiatives over about 30 years, Boggan said the city admitted things weren't working.

He took the lead on a radical new approach that ultimately cut the gun crime rate by three-quarters and the number of deaths by more than half.

'Phenomenal' success

Boggan says the program started when police officers believed they could trace most of the gun crime to just a few "most lethal" young men. These men were suspects and targets of violence themselves, but couldn't be arrested because of a lack of evidence.

Boggan and other outreach workers found the men — only 28 in all — and got them into a new program called the Peacemaker Fellowship.

The 18-month program involves daily contact, helping participants with life planning, putting them in touch with social services, mentoring, and most controversially, a stipend of up to $1,000 a month for those making progress with positive life goals.

"We definitely had critics who thought, why are we providing these positive investments into this population?" Boggan said. "And the only answer we had was, one, we had to do something differently ... Two, we had to talk about the financial aspects of this. We were spending a lot on the back end. Not just on financial resources, but lives."

Despite concerns, the program went ahead, and Boggan describes its success as "phenomenal."

"The big numbers are these: 94 per cent of these active firearm offenders … are alive since becoming a fellow. 84 per cent of them have not been injured by a firearm. And here's the big number: 80 per cent of them are no longer suspects in a new firearm crime since becoming a fellow. That's huge."

Could it work in B.C.?

Doug Elford has been a community advocate for many years in the Newton area of Surrey, and while he hasn't delved into the details of Richmond's system, he's doubtful it would help here in the Lower Mainland.

He believes the only reason the Richmond program worked was because the organizers were able to locate the people committing the gun crimes.

"A lot of people in this community ... won't admit — or their families won't admit — that they're involved," he said. "They're in a sense of denial."

Elford thinks that a lack of resources would also be a problem for establishing a program like Richmond's.

To hear the full story, click the audio labelled: How one CA city cut down gun crime: paying the criminals