Since I co-founded the Jackson Free Press as a different kind of newsroom for Mississippi in 2002 and later the Mississippi Youth Media Project, the newsrooms I direct have rejected sensational, episodic, bleeds-it-leads crime coverage, instead committing to deep solutions reporting on evidence-based violence prevention.
My own intense study and training in anti-violence journalism, including at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York multiple times, have taught me that abdicating the job to police to prevent violence will never make a community safer. It is about what the people come together to do long before a person pulls a trigger or commits another act of violence. It’s about reversing cycles, so a promising young person now isn’t in prison, or dead, in a decade. It is about the village creating opportunities and treating mental illness instead of exacerbating it and ensuring children aren’t going hungry. It’s about having trusted messengers influencing young people. It’s about ensuring that a child isn’t growing up soaking up lead poisoning. It’s about tearing down abandoned hours that breed crime. And much more.
Actual violence prevention is harder work than demanding a police officer on every corner, as people hide inside their homes in fear because it takes us all to make it work. The good news, though, is that we can decide to play a role if we find the will and have good information and tools—as you’ll see, there are many entry points to choose from.
At the Jackson Free Press, starting nine years ago, our full reporting team committed to what we called the “Preventing Violence” reporting project to look deeply at how the community could join together to stop cycles of violence. At the Mississippi Free Press, we’ve continued the work, but more sporadically as we’ve adjusted our approach to covering an entire state and building local bureaus since 2020. But I’ve been building toward relaunching our #PreventingViolence reporting campaign statewide, combined with solutions circles and work and insight by the teenagers of the Mississippi Youth Media Project, who have taught us a lot about youth crime over the years if we’ll listen, watch and read their journalism.
In fact, YMP teenagers launched a series of youth crime forums across Jackson that we rebranded as solutions circles as a core reporting and connection strategy when we launched the MFP in March 2020. Yes, Jackson teenagers created the circles!
Today was my chosen day to go public with the return of “Preventing Violence.” I couldn’t have known that Mississippi would face a horrifying amount of gun violence over the weekend in five counties, but here we are. Please know that participants choose crime prevention as one of the discussion tops of nearly every solutions circle we do, and next week’s Greenwood circle will be no different. If you’re in the Delta, we urge you to join the conversation on Oct. 21 with neighbors about shared solutions. We’ll be there to listen, learn and report what you need.
Meantime, the following is a sampling of award-winning JFP, Youth Media Project and Mississippi Free Press anti-violence pieces on the updated Preventing Violence microsite. Please visit the site; there is much more information there. We will soon be adding resource listings for existing anti-violence resources and events across the state, so please email chris@mississippifreepress.org with that information.
Some of the evidence we’ve reported about policing tactics since 2002—such as tougher gang laws, “scared straight” programs and youth curfews, or even the race and ethnicity span of many Mississippi gangs, and which the state has prosecuted—may surprise you.
And please let us know anti-violence ideas the following stories inspire:
“‘He Was a Good Son’: COVID-19 Amplified Jackson Violence, Inequities for Black Families” (MFP, 2022)
“Not Another Child: Mother Turns Grief Into Solutions for Gun Violence, Grieving Families” (MFP, 2022)
“Never Back Down: Mississippi Escalates War on Gangs” (JFP, 2018)
“Only Black People Prosecuted Under Mississippi Gang Law Since 2010” (JFP, 2018)
“Digging Deeper: Confronting Youth Crime’s Causes and Solutions” (YMP, 2017)
“Reforming Criminal Justice: Is Mississippi Making Progress?” (JFP, 2017)
“Digging Deeper: Confronting Youth Crime’s Causes and Solutions” (YMP documentary, 2017)
“Murder in the City: Deep Causes, Harmful Biases, Unexpected Solutions to Gun Violence” (JFP, 2017)
“A Hunger to Live: The Struggle to Interrupt the Cycle of Violence” (JFP 2016)
“Ceasefire in the City? How Police Can (and Cannot) Deter Gunfire” (JFP, 2016)
“‘Not a Dungeon’: The Evolving Approach to Juvenile Detention” (JFP, 2016)
“Junior Jail: Surviving Mississippi’s Juvenile Justice System” (JFP, 2016)
“Chronically Absent: Is Quality Education in Juvenile Detention Possible in Mississippi?” (JFP, 2016)
“Beyond Detention: Exploring Smarter, Cheaper Alternatives to Locking Kids Up” (JFP, 2016)
All JFP stories are now part of the MFP website at mississippifreepress.org. Read our Preventing Violence archive at mfp.ms/violence and see all YMP stories at jxnpulse.com.
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/archives/preventing-violence/.
To support our journalism, including our growing preventing-violence journalism work, give now at mfp.ms/donate. You can support the Mississippi Youth Media Project directly at mfp.ms/
