Learning From Young Men with Guns - A Discussion with Howard Henderson

Bobby Doyle 0:02

Welcome to Solving Gun Violence. A weekly student led podcast from the University of Virginia's gun violence solutions project that tackles one of America's most urgent issues preventing gun violence. Each episode will feature experts sharing actionable solutions to improve community safety while upholding individual rights. My name is Bobby Doyle, and I'm your host today. This episode features a conversation with Dr. Howard Henderson. Dr Henderson is the founding director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University, a professor of justice administration and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a leading voice on culturally responsive criminal justice research and predictive bias. He has advised policymakers across the country on how to build more equitable and evidence based systems. We discussed the racial disparities embedded in risk assessments, why data driven solutions often fall short without community input, how interdisciplinary research can reshape our approach to gun violence, and what it takes to design policies that actually work for the people most impacted. If you're interested in practical, evidence based solutions in the future of gun violence prevention, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Bobby Doyle 1:32

Howard, thank you so much for being here.

Howard Henderson 1:35

Bobby, I appreciate the opportunity to be here to have this conversation. Think it's a timely conversation, but also I appreciate the work that you guys are doing at the University of Virginia. Your gun policy work, I think is necessary, and it's important to not only inform people of the extent of the problem, but to also expose them to proven solutions. So I'm looking forward to having this conversation today. Thank you for having me.

Bobby Doyle 2:01

Thank you so much for your comment. Your comments. But we're going to talk about you for a second, and let's talk about one of the projects I saw youhelp work on at your center. Help work on people often talk about getting guns off the streets, and it's a it's idiom we hear a lot in our political discourse. And you actually did a project where you talk to people who had guns on the streets and try to understand them better, just something we don't always do when we have these discussions about getting these guns off the streets. Can you talk a little bit more about what inspired you to do that project and what you found?

Howard Henderson 2:34

Yeah, if I can point to one reason that we felt the need to work on that project was, you know, when you watch the news, the conversation revolves around people pontificating about the pervasiveness of the problem, and they ponder about solutions. But we felt that no one was having the right conversation with individuals who had the greatest likelihood of being a member of this population that we want to better understand. And I said that if we were in business, we would want to talk to the customers, right? Well, in this gun violence conversation, we felt the need to actually have conversations with young men who obviously have the greatest likelihood of being in possession of a gun, but also those that have the greatest likelihood of being victimized in these spaces. So we wanted to understand just how they experienced guns and what they thought about so we can begin to better understand sort of their motivations for doing that.

Bobby Doyle 3:33

Got it and did you see anything really interesting, or something that you didn't see represented very wildly, widely when you talk to these folks.

Howard Henderson 3:44

Yeah,I think when we talked to these young men, we were surprised at the extent to which they understood what was causing them to be involved in these interactions. They were very understanding of the role of personal accountability, which was surprising, right? But they also understood the environmental context and the factors that increase the likelihood that they would be involved in these interactions, and so they gave us a very well rounded understanding of gun possession and what it made what it was like for them to be involved in disagreements that lended itself to culminating with some sort of gun violence.

Bobby Doyle 4:32

Got it interesting. You've written really extensively about the failures, the systematic, in many ways, failures of quote, unquote, race neutral policing or policies when it comes to Criminal Justice, from your researchers, from your experience, or from people you've talked to. How do these sort of biases or failures show up when we think about gun violence policies or gun violence prevention policies?

Howard Henderson 4:57

So when you think about perceptions and biases when it comes to gun violence and gun policies, you have to consider that most of us develop our understanding of the problem after watching the nightly news or reading something in the newspaper. Typically, it's not a personal experience. It's sort of a vicarious I saw this somewhere. Someone told me about this, and it makes nightly news, whether they tell you if it bleeds it leads, right? But that doesn't necessarily equate to reality. Okay, so very early on in this conversation of gun violence, you see the effect of bias, because many of our policies are based on perception, which oftentimes does not align itself with reality, and then we wonder why they're ineffective. Because they're based on some sort of fallacy or illusion of the problem. When you look at the research that we've been able to do, and research that's been supported for years, there are certain factors that increase the likelihood that this will happen, that someone will be shot. One of the most significant predictors is economic inequality, right? We know that. So that means that a solution to the problem is to reduce economic inequality. I mean very simple, right? But oftentimes our conversation revolves around how quick we can arrest someone how much time they can serve in prison. That is a component. But if we're talking prevention, how do we stop the next generation from being involved in these spaces? Then we know there are a host of factors that we'll talk about, not only here, but in my lecture later this afternoon, about what it is that we know about gun violence and how to prevent it.

Bobby Doyle 6:54

I hear a lot of people come in and talk about how economic opportunity is a one of the core ways that you could really address violence. But for many people, that feels like a really daunting intervention is that the main way that you see at us getting at this problem. Are there other interventions you really see as being powerful and impacting the issue of gun violence in many of these communities?

Howard Henderson 7:19

No, there are a host of ways. Yeah, right, I think, and I think we can agree on some of those, obviously, opportunities matter. Some of the young men who we interviewed across the country said, Hey, we don't have anything to do, right? We don't have any money to buy anything. We haven't been taught how to handle disagreements. We live in a community where there is constant despair, there is no upward social mobility. So I think around those factors that I just mentioned are opportunities for us to begin to implement policies to address those now, on the flip side, you look at gun related suicide, for example, many of the motivations for the gun related suicide align with just what I just mentioned for gun related homicide, right? It just happens to be a different population that is involved in that space. So I think that the more that we understand trauma in these communities, the more effective we can be. Now I'm not saying this to say that there does not need to be a punishment component of this, right? Because I think oftentimes people take one side of the other. I think it has to be sort of a rational, common sense approach that you take to solving these problems. And all of the young men that we talked to, they all said that they began this lifestyle very early. It was a relative or a close friend who provided them access to a gun wasn't a stranger, someone they didn't know, right? Which I don't know if that fact is commonly understood, right, but I also know that there is a need for gun safety education. Yeah, right. All of us, regardless of if we're gun toting members or not of the NRA, we need to know how to manage it and deal with it, just in case we encounter that. So gun safety is a huge problem that we need to address in this country. Ultimately, I think that the solutions are going to have to come from our understanding of people who live in these spaces,

Bobby Doyle 9:42

Which is why the projects like you did are so important and helpful. I'm glad you bring up suicide, especially going back to your point about narratives and what we actually see and hear and are taught about what gun violence looks like, you rarely see information other than maybe a celebrity when it comes to the. Gun violence related to suicide in the news, despite that, the majority of deaths to gun violence are from suicides, and it just really warps our perception of the problem when you don't see it in front of you all the time, even if a lot of people have experienced it in some way, shape or form, right? We're talking about some proactive ways that, like really can work, you know, like economic opportunities, ways to deal with anger, ways to make sure you have something to do during the summer, especially as a young person. There are also many examples throughout the gun violence prevention exercise that have not worked many, many things that we've tried that maybe have not been as successful as we wanted them to be. I know that you're someone who is a rigorous researcher, and part of that is sometimes figuring out something doesn't work. Is there any examples or things that come to mind that you or other people have really good theory around you? Really were hopeful that it would be a great intervention, and it didn't quite pan out. So I think it'd be helpful for people to have an example of that too.

Howard Henderson 11:02

Let me give an example that I think people would be better able to grapple with. Okay, the assumption is that the tougher a state is on crime, the more they are able to prevent people from doing it again, right? But the research shows us the opposite, that oftentimes, the tougher, the more draconian a state is on crime, the more crime you see, right? That creates this, this illusion, right? But we also know that the more a state is able to focus on a particular type of crime, the more effective they are able to address that particular type of crime, right? Because crime isn't or crime does not operate in a vacuum, and there are different motivations for crime that you know, you and I may commit a crime, the same crime, but for two totally different reasons, right? But the way in which our system operates, it treats us both as if we had the same motivation for that crime. So we're going to have to begin to individualize our responses to people. Now, does that take more time? Yes. Does that require more expertise? Yes, but if we actually want to truly address it, we have to begin to individualize systematic responses to behavior.

Bobby Doyle 12:44

That's great. Thank you. We talked a little bit earlier about how it's great to do preventative work when it comes to gun violence, right? Like we don't want to ideally help treat things once violence has happened, we'd like prevent violence altogether, although there are a lot of important interventions that can happen. Interventions that can happen to prevent future violence, even after violence has happened, one tool that law enforcement and others turn to a lot is predictive policing, or predictive analysis, to try to understand where crime might happen and to try to intervene early. I know you've looked into this quite a bit. I would love to hear your thoughts on, if that how effective you see that where we are at with that sort of approach, the strengths and weaknesses, and where you think its role is in kind of preventing gun violence. I'm sure you can do that for like 30 minutes.

Howard Henderson 13:35

Yeah, that's, that's a political hot potato. But yeah, let me, let me try to unpack some of that. Yeah, in this country, there are certain individual freedoms that we that we possess, and there are certain liberties that we express, that we often take for granted, right one of those being able to go to and fro as you see fit, without unnecessary infringement upon your liberties and freedoms with many of the predictive models that are there, the research shows us clearly that many of The systematic responses are violating those key principles that we live by in this country. But on the flip side, if you are a victim or an increased likelihood of being a victim, then you tend to want to limit people's ability to express those freedoms for the trade off of being safe and secure, right? I think that it's a daily struggle to maintain those freedoms in the face of safety and security. I think that it must be a continual conversation about it. Do I think that all of the predictive approaches are bad, no, but also don't agree that they're perfect. And I think there's a happy medium there that would ensure that we have a continuous conversation and a continuous evaluation of their impact. Okay, there are cases where people's lives have been saved because of some of these predictive tools and models that are out there, and then there are situations where someone's liberties were clearly infringed upon because of these predictive tools that many police departments are using, it's a case by case basis, but I think the conversation must continually be had, and so we have a tendency to want to put something in place and let it ride, but we need to be able to evaluate these approaches in real time. Hopefully that answers your question as best I can.

Bobby Doyle 16:02

That's a great answer. It's not a simple question. Like I said, we can do a whole hour long discussion just about that. We can kind of shift more towards broad solutions. Again, I'm curious. There are, like, we've talked about a kind of panoply of options and approaches to preventing gun violence, but there's also a lot we don't know. And only recently has there been federal and other funding that's really been flowing towards gun violence specifically as an issue, even though it is such a huge driver of fatalities of Americans. I'm curious if you have a place you would love to know more about a intervention, a approach, a piece of the gun violence prevention matrix that you think deserves to be understood better.

Howard Henderson 16:48

Yes, so I'll use it's no better time than to use Virginia as an example. I think a lot of times when I spent when you and I reached out with each other last semester, I think is when we started communicating about me being here and having a conversation with you guys. And again, I think that you guys have been able to do something that many states should be able to follow, right because I think your gun violence solutions project is necessary and necessary to have it at a university, a state university, because I think the greatest minds are in these places, particularly given people's experiences. But let me say this. I think if the data will show you that Virginia in 2021 began to really push the needle forward in this space and address gun violence through legislative action, which begins it's like the toughest thing to do right is to take a highly emotional issue and actually get legislation passed, because people are basing the way they feel off of emotions, but I think that many of your community based initiatives in the state, many of your legislative actions or universal background checks, those risk protection orders that you Have, but also those investments in violence intervention programs have all contributed to significant improvements in your state. When you look at the most recent data available, and the CDC was putting out this data on a regular basis, I'm not sure if it's even there anymore, given the recent purging of data, but before that data was purged, we were able to grab some of that down. And you know, Virginia ranked 22nd lowest gun death rate among states in 2023 that's pretty good, relatively speaking, right? Because obviously there are people who should not have been killed, but you know, you do what you can. I think all of those, particularly that ranking I just mentioned, is a testament to the impact of evidence based policies and collaborative efforts. I mean, look at this podcast. You're creating an opportunity for people to be engaged in a conversation who may not physically be able to be here with us, right? And that's going to be there for the end of time, as long as digital information is available. I think the progress essentially reminds us that the change is possible. And I really appreciate your question, because we tend to want to focus on the negative, right? And I think you have to end all conversations, or in certain all conversations, some positives, because I think the universe needs that energy to say there are some wins that, that that are in that space. Yeah, right. So the gun violence space is a difficult space to be in. So it's so, I mean, it's, it's so emotional, right? Criminal justice is one of those places where emotions dictates policy more than science, and so that's this constant battle between the two.

Bobby Doyle 20:18

I am so glad you called out all this, like evidence based work that's happening and how important that is, but also the challenges of doing that. And maybe you've touched on this enough already, but I know you have had different roles where you've been advising on policy are kind of focused more in the policy making space, and there are a lot of challenges, as you've said, Where emotion and a lot of other stakeholders may weigh as much as the evidence, what sort of strategies are. How have you found yourself to be successful in the spaces to make sure things you think actually have a positive impact make their way into legislation?

Howard Henderson 20:56

That's a that's a interesting one, and I think that's a good question. I think for me, it's thinking about the problem that people are grappling with in real time, which is sometimes difficult for academics to do, because we tend to be delayed in our response to issues, but we're constantly listening to the voices of the people, either locally or nationally, trying to understand what people are grappling with, but also identifying the voices that are asking the questions and making sure that those voices get the solutions that we're aware of. So we do a lot of white papers, we write a lot of op eds. We send a lot of information to policy makers, who we hear in real time are grappling with something. So we'll read an article, and you'll have a legislator asking a question or espousing some untruth or truth, and we share with that individual person facts that we know, and we're not trying to sway them one way or the other. We're just trying to say we saw you grappling with this issue, gun violence, solutions to gun violence, and we just wanted to share with you what we know about it, and we want to share resources, but we also are very strategic in finding examples of locales that have implemented These policies and found success. I think that matters, right? It's one thing to say that, you know, I ran a regression model and this beta coefficient and significant level was at the point, oh, one level. It's another to say, Hey, I was in Charlottesville, and I had a chance to run the data for the police chief and I found this program to be affected. That's the difference, right? Because people who are on the ground want to hear tangible examples. They don't want to hear about a significance level at the point on one level, they don't want to hear about a beta coefficient. So it's knowing your audience and knowing how to get your audience what they need to make a difference and change and actually save lives,

Bobby Doyle 23:05

Yeah, which it's easy to lose sight of that sometimes, when you're having these, like a 40,000 foot view discussions,

Howard Henderson 23:14

yeah, it is because everyone's looking for sound bites and everyone's looking for an outcome that doesn't necessarily affect the community, but it may increase that University's bottom line or that faculty member's bottom line. That can't be the goal. The goal has to be to save a life today.

Bobby Doyle 23:39

working with an academic institution, we've talked about this, solutions rely on policy. That's a really important part of making sure communities are safer. The evidence to inform that policy is also very important. But institutions like universities are not always built to collaborate with communities or be responsive, as you've said before, to all the community needs. A lot of universities are working really hard on this, including the University of Virginia, but I'm curious how you have tried to build that into the projects you're doing, because it takes work, and I think everyone's still trying tolearn how to do it.

Howard Henderson 24:12

In terms of being effective, or what angle?

Bobby Doyle 24:15

In terms of making sure the work you're doing actually meets a need that people are expressing

Howard Henderson 24:23

Now that can get you in trouble sometimes, right, because you end up in a political space almost immediately. And politics, by nature, is adversarial, so you have to be conscious of the end user of your work to make sure that you're not being seen as taking a side beyond that of solutions to the problem, right? Yeah. So you have to be keenly. Aware of political cycles. Are we in election season? Are we not? Are we in a red or blue space? So you know how the material that you're putting forth is going to be utilized and perceived, but that's not what we typically get trained to do right? We're trained to do the research and put it out. We're not trained to be aware of the ecosystem that your work is going to exist in when it's released. Yeah, and that's very important, because that is going to dictate how your work is being used and by who and for what reason.

Bobby Doyle 25:43

Okay, final question, and this is our big question, what is the solution to the gun violence epidemic in the United States look like to you?

Howard Henderson 25:55

You know, this is what it looks like now. How we achieve it is another conversation. What it looks like to me is a period of time where we don't see people being shot and or killed for unnecessary reasons. Okay, outside of war, right? Which, obviously people are going to die in those places. But I think that, you know, we've had so much trauma that our society almost doesn't understand peace, and I think that we have so many interpersonal conflicts for a host of reasons that we have to find a way to get to a space where we can agree to disagree. And if it were my call and I had a magic wand, it's okay, this day will be the day, and this is what it'll look like it'll be a day or a period of time when no one was shot. And that's a lofty goal, I know, but we have to believe it. I don't think. I often wonder if, if we think that way, if we think that we're ever going to, like have a space where there's zero shootings, but if you don't believe it, you can't really achieve it. And so it's reconstructing the way in which we think about gun violence and the way in which we deal with it. But I think that we have to begin in that headspace, because I think that dictates our solutions.

Bobby Doyle 27:46

Solutions are possible. Well put

Howard Henderson 27:48

Yes.

Bobby Doyle 27:49

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Dr Henderson, Is there anywhere people can find you or anywhere you would like to see people find more information?

Howard Henderson 27:57

Feel free to follow us on all social media outlets. CJ research Tsu again. CJ research tsu, we have blue sky, we have Twitter, we have Instagram, we have Facebook, tick tock. We kind of delve into all of it, but you can also visit our website. Tsu.edu, forward slash CJR, TSU.edu, forward slash CJR, or you can also visit T issue.edu, forward slash justice research, but if you Google Center for Justice Research, Texas Southern will pop up again. Thank you so much for the great work that you all are doing, and this podcast will live in infamy. And I want to say thank you so much for not only inviting me here, but for the mission that you all are seeking. Because I think we need more folks in your space to begin to share solutions to the problem. And I appreciate thank you so much.

Bobby Doyle 29:00

Well, I appreciate you. Appreciate your work. We'll make sure all those links are in the show notes. People can just click on them and find them really easily. And any more information people want about the work here at UVA, they can go to the gun violence solutions Project website. We will see you next week.