The chosen city is: Tulsa, Oklahoma
Write number 4 from the breakdown.
Written reports should be 12-15 pages long, double-spaced, Times New Roman font. You
should include a cover page, as well as a reference list for all citations used in-text. Citation
style in-text and in the reference list should be American Psychological Association (APA) style.
The cover page and references do not count towards the page requirement for the report.
Please do not pad the report with unnecessary spacing to increase your page count – I will
reduce your grade for trying to mess with formatting too much. You should have between 10
and 20 unique cited sources for the final report. You may use the course books as references in
the project.
To be successful, you must draw on a variety of sources to inform your reporting including:
academic/scholarly papers, news reporting, and other media pertinent to your city. Your final
report should provide an overview of the problem of urban gun violence in your chosen city.
That is, it should present the problem of gun violence first, discussing statistical trends and
descriptions of gun violence in the city, as well as present some history of the city and its
relationship to violence. This history will likely draw, at least in part, on issues of segregation
and discrimination particularly against Black communities. Tables and charts are encouraged to
describe the initial problem in a clear, visual way. This is your chance to set the stage and create
a portrait of the city. From there, groups should move to a description of some of the major
causes of violence in the city including discussions of drugs, gangs, and guns (as well as any
other issues specific to the city). Individual stories of gun violence in the city can be very
powerful and help to demonstrate the problem in a particular place.
After describing violence in your chosen city, you must then turn to a discussion of what is
currently being done to address the problem. Please discuss criminal justice approaches
(police/correctional) as well as non-criminal justice initiatives currently used to deal with gun
violence (public health, medical, non-profit, community-based, etc.). Be sure to discuss how
well these different approaches are working based on any evaluations, research, or reports you
are able to uncover.
Finally, you must propose a ten-year plan to reduce gun violence in your city. The proposal
should be creative and draw on strategies outlined in our class and in your book, Bleeding Out.
Think of this proposal as something you might pitch to city leaders to reduce violence but also
save money over the course of those ten years. The proposals can include elements of criminal
justice, public health, and community-based approaches to violence prevention as you see fit.
The suggested page breakdown of the report is as follows, although it is entirely up to you:
1. Overview of gun violence in the city (general statistics, trends over time) (1-2 pages)
2. History of the city’s neighborhoods and areas of violence (1-2 page)
3. Major causes of gun violence in the city: Drugs, gangs, and guns (2-3 pages)
4. Criminal justice approach to gun violence in the city (police) (2-3 pages)
5. Non-CJ gun violence prevention programs in the city (2-3 pages)
6. Proposal for 10-year reduction in gun violence in the cities (3-4 pages)
