The Melissa Institute delivers the Year 1 Evaluation Report for the Peace & Prosperity Plan of Miami-Dade County

The Melissa Institute delivers the Year 1 Evaluation Report for the Peace & Prosperity Plan of Miami-Dade County

Read the full evaluation report along with Mayor Danielle Levine Cava’s memo here

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In June 2021, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s Administration launched the Peace & Prosperity Plan (the “Plan”), an anti-gun violence and prosperity initiative developed in response to Resolution No. R-238-21 and unanimously approved in Resolution No. R-577-21 by the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners. The Plan was developed with input by Commissioners, staff, local community leaders, and national experts. The Plan leverages evidence-based and best practice-driven programs to address known causes of gun violence and poverty. It does so through a strategic prevention, intervention, and reentry approach that looks at the whole child, family, and community, with a focus on the neighborhoods most affected, and addresses the social and economic disparities at the root of gun violence.^[1]

The Year 1 Peace & Prosperity Plan included an independent evaluation of (1) reduction in gun homicides^[2] (2) reductions in shootings, and (3) recidivism rates among participants of the Plan’s various programs. The Plan recognizes that evaluations of programmatic efforts and public policies are essential not only to determine their effectiveness with the desired outcome (i.e., reduction in homicides), but also for identifying if they do not work. Accordingly, the Plan is to be reviewed annually and modified based on total allocated funding, community needs, and impact.

The Year 1 evaluation was financially supported by FTX Philanthropy, Inc. (“FTX Foundation”). The agreement between the FTX Foundation and The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention & Treatment (“TMI”) to conduct an independent Year 1 evaluation of Miami-Dade County’s Peace & Prosperity Plan was executed on July 20, 2022.

This report includes analysis for the Year 1 evaluation of the Plan. It is important to note that the Plan years are aligned with Miami-Dade County’s fiscal years (October 1 to September 30), not calendar years. For that reason, the Year 1 evaluation is limited to interventions that took place during fiscal year 2020-2021 (June 8, 2021 to September 30, 2021) and the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021-22 (October 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021), a timeframe that was extended to ensure that data for additional months could be incorporated into the evaluation.

Accordingly, the Year 1 evaluation covers three principal programmatic strategies that were in place from the outset of the passage of the Plan on June 8, 2021 through December 31, 2021. This initial data set creates an important first look at the initial roll-out of key aspects of the Plan and supplemental initiative(s). Lessons learned from the initial roll out of the Plan through the end of 2021 will help the County moving forward with both its programming and evaluation processes.

KEY FINDINGS

The Year 1 implementation of the Peace & Prosperity Plan was associated with observed reductions in both shootings and homicides. Specifically, both Operation Summer Heat and Operation Community Shield showed significant effects on shootings, indicating that the start of the operations was associated with a decline in shootings—a 41.76% decrease in the number of shootings in Unincorporated Miami-Dade County during the 30 weeks following the roll-out of Operation Summer Heat compared to the 30 weeks prior to the start of the initiative. The number of homicides across Miami-Dade County, including municipalities, from June 2021 through December 2021 was lower than the previous five months of 2021 as well as the same monthly time period in the year 2020. Moreover, the start of Operation

Summer Heat was associated with a significant decrease in homicides in the seven-month follow-up period.

The fact that both shootings and homicides declined soon after various components of the Plan were put into effect is convincing that the implementation of the Plan was associated with the observed reductions, although from an analytical perspective we are prevented from stating that the implementation of the Plan caused the observed reductions.

Concerning the impact of Fit2Lead, the data showed that program participants reported a high level of satisfaction with the internship experience and the quality of the program. Specifically, participants reported the internship experience to be relevant to their career goals and to have had a positive supervisory experience, while expressing the desire to return to the program the following summer. Among the various parts of the Fit2Lead program, respondents indicated that “working with children” was their favorite part of their job, followed by getting “experience for resume” and “working with children their age.”

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^[1]Peace & Prosperity Plan available at https://www.miamidade.gov/global/government/mayor/peace-and-prosperity/home.pag. ^[2]Homicides as referenced throughout this document are gunshot wound related homicides, not homicides in general and homicides countywide including municipalities.