Cure the Streets is a pilot public safety program launched by OAG aimed at reducing gun violence. It operates in discrete high violence neighborhoods using a data-driven, public-health approach to gun violence by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted, treated, and stopped from spreading. Research and data show that empowering communities to interrupt violence, intervening with those most likely to commit or be victims of violence, and changing norms around violence can have long-lasting impacts. That’s why OAG launched Cure the Streets in several targeted neighborhoods that have historically experienced some of the highest rates of gun violence. OAG staff manage grants to organizations that administer the program and monitor data regarding its efficacy.

Cure the Streets is based on the Cure Violence Global model, which employs local, credible individuals who have deep ties to the neighborhood in which they work. Here how’s the program works:

• Outreach workers and violence interrupters de-escalate conflicts, attempt to resolve them through mediation, and avert potentially fatal shootings.
• They work to develop relationships with residents who are at high risk of being involved in gun violence so they can detect and mediate conflicts, prevent shootings, and improve public safety.
• After mediating a conflict, the violence interrupters remain engaged with the participants, in part to ensure the mediation results in a lasting peace, and to help connect the person with services and to help them live non-violent lives.

Cure the Streets is designed to address certain types of gun crimes, those that result from reciprocal violence. It is not intended to address, for example, intimate partner violence or violence related to random crime.