Event: What Works in Reducing Community Violence: An Evidence-Informed Approach

Speaker: Thomas Abt, Senior Research Fellow & Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard University & Instituto Igarapé. Chair: Dr Kieran Mitton, CSDRG, War Studies, King's College London. Thomas Abt discussed his recent report, "What Works in Reducing Community Violence: A Meta-Review and Field Study for the Northern Triangle." The report was commissioned by USAID and examines 43 reviews covering over 1,400 individual studies in order to offer recommendations on the most effective strategies to reduce community violence in Central America and beyond. Speaker Profile Thomas Abt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Igarapé Institutee who has held senior positions in the Obama and Cuomo administrations, where he worked to improve public safety and reduce crime. Both in the United States and globally, Thomas teaches, studies, and writes on the use of evidence-informed approaches to reducing gun, gang, and youth violence, among other topics. He also serves as an Advisory Board Member to the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge. Before joining Harvard, Thomas served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety to Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, where he oversaw all criminal justice and homeland security agencies, including the Divisions of Corrections and Community Supervision, Criminal Justice Services, Homeland Security and Emergency Services, and the State Police. During his tenure, Thomas led the development of New York’s GIVE (Gun-Involved Violence Elimination) Initiative, which employs evidence-informed, data-driven approaches to reduce violence. He also established the Research Roundtable on Criminal Justice, a statewide criminal justice community connecting research with policy. Before his work in New York, Thomas served as Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the US Department of Justice, where he worked with the nation’s principal criminal justice grant-making and research agencies to integrate evidence, policy, and practice. He played a lead role in establishing the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention, a network of federal agencies and local communities working together to reduce youth and gang violence. Thomas was also founding member of the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, a place-based development effort that was recognized by HKS as one of the Top 25 Innovations in Government for 2013. This event was arranged in partnership with the King's Brazil Institute and Instituto Igarapé, Rio de Janeiro. The 'Approaches to Understanding Violence Seminar Series' is a programme of multidisciplinary lectures and events on the subject of violence, part of a CSDRG project led by Dr Kieran Mitton. Find out more here: www.kcl.ac.uk/csd Thomas Abt's full report can be downloaded here: https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/USAID-2016-What-Works-in-Reducing-Community-Violence-Final-Report.pdf