Ceasefire Campaign
 CeaseFire Logan Square
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CeaseFire Logan Square and Humboldt ParkALSO has operated the CeaseFire model in Logan Square in some capacity since 2000, with full implementation of all components starting in 2002. Since then, shootings in Logan Square have dramatically decreased – from an average of fifty shootings and eight killings a year to now less than fifteen shootings and 3 to 5 killings per year - which is attributable in large part to mediations facilitated between and among gangs by ALSO’s CeaseFire staff. ALSO expanded its CeaseFire efforts to include the Humboldt Park community in early 2007. Since that time, the CeaseFire Logan Square and Humboldt Park team has been successful in building relationships with high risk individuals and mediating conflicts throughout the neighborhoods. The Chicago Project designed and tested CeaseFire, a new intervention that approaches violence in a fundamentally different way than other violence reduction efforts. This strategy to reduce violence has been scientifically proven through and external evaluation conducted by Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). CeaseFire works with community-based organizations and focuses on street-level outreach, conflict mediation, and the changing of community norms to reduce violence, particularly shootings. CeaseFire relies on highly trained outreach workers and violence interrupters, faith leaders, and other community leaders to intervene in conflicts, or potential conflicts, and promote alternatives to violence. CeaseFire also involves cooperation with law enforcement and it depends heavily on a strong public education campaign to instill in people the message that shootings and violence are not acceptable. Finally, it calls for the strengthening of communities so they have the capacity to exercise informal social control and to mobilize forces -- from businesses to faith leaders, residents and others -- so they all work in concert to reverse the epidemic of violence that has been with us for too long. These activities are organized into CeaseFire’s Five Core Components, which address both the community and those individuals who are most at risk of involvement in a shooting or killing:
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