Tucson police have compiled a list of 50 people frequently cited for trespassing, loitering, solicitation and standing in street medians, and starting this past July, officers, city court workers and health and wellness staff have begun contacting two people from that list every week. The goal is to steer them away from repeat offenses using a strategy first built to stop gang murders in 1990s Boston, not manage encampments and addiction on the streets of a modern Southwestern city.
The pilot, which is expected to run about six months, is Tucson’s attempt to adapt what’s known as focused deterrence — sometimes called the “Boston Miracle” approach — to quality-of-life misdemeanors, according to reporting by KNSI, which credited the story to Geoff Hing of the Marshall Project. Tucson Police Chief Monica Prieto has said future consequences for people who don’t change course could include encouraging city court not to dismiss charges or ordering substance-use treatment. The list currently covers downtown Tucson and areas north and west of downtown, and the pilot could expand to other parts of the city, per the same account.
How Boston’s Model Is Supposed to Work
Focused deterrence identifies a group of people most associated with a specific type of crime and combines the certainty of criminal justice consequences with offers of support to change behavior. In the original Boston program, launched in 1996 to curb youth gang violence, police arrested people driving intergang conflict, flooded areas experiencing that violence, and made unexpected home visits alongside probation officers who met directly with gang members, while social service workers offered services and jobs. The National League of Cities has tied that program to a 63% reduction in monthly youth homicides and a 32% drop in shots-fired calls for service in Boston between 1996 and 2000.
Ben Struhl, executive director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Marshall Project that the fundamentals of focused deterrence could theoretically apply to a broad range of problems, per the KNSI report. But he also cautioned that there is little evidence supporting its use for quality-of-life misdemeanors specifically, and he said a city cannot claim to provide services without actually following through. Cities using the strategy, he said, should focus on problems the community defines as most urgent, provide certainty that services will be available, and pursue reduced crime, reduced exposure to the justice system, and improved city-resident relationships.
Why Homelessness Complicates the Formula
The tension at the center of Tucson’s pilot is that quality-of-life misdemeanors are often difficult to avoid for people living on the streets, and focused deterrence may struggle to shape the decisions of someone with opioid use disorder who is mainly focused on avoiding painful withdrawal. Unlike gang violence, which involves discrete, identifiable actors, homelessness-related offenses are driven heavily by addiction, mental illness and a lack of shelter — factors the Boston model wasn’t originally designed to address, according to the same reporting…