Maxine Bryant, Ph.D., a lecturer in Armstrong State University’s Department of Criminal Justice, Social and Political Science, was recently named the project manager for the city of Savannah’s new gun violence reduction initiative, End Gun Violence: Step Forward.
In her role, Bryant will be charged with overseeing the project’s successful implementation and with developing collaboration between the city’s social service agencies, residents of Savannah, the faith community and the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department (SCMPD).
“This is a wonderful opportunity that will allow me to make a meaningful impact by aiding in the reduction of gun violence and violent crime in Savannah,” says Bryant. “My hope is to collaborate with Armstrong’s Department of Criminal Justice to assist with analyzing the data collected by SCMPD.”
End Gun Violence: Step Forward is an initiative that targets the most violent groups and gang members in the Savannah community by encouraging them to lay down their weapons and seek counseling, job training and other services provided by local organizations.
This approach is based on the Ceasefire model developed by the National Network for Safe Communities under the direction of criminologist David Kennedy and president of John Jay College in New York, Jeremy Travis. In July, Bryant traveled to New York with 20 Savannah community and criminal justice partners to meet with Kennedy.
To date, more than 60 cities across the U.S. have successfully implemented similar violence reduction initiatives.
Bryant has extensive experience in criminal justice, corrections and offender restoration programs. In May 2015, she organized and held a conference at Armstrong that encouraged newly released prisoners to re-engage with the community through work, education and the use of local re-entry focused service providers.
For more information about the End Gun Violence: Step Forward initiative, visit www.scmpd.org/endgunviolence.
This article appears in Jan 6-12, 2016.
It is sad to see that the city has employed more Liberal Politically Correct misguided solution to the crime problem in Savannah. When I see that the solution they come up with is to ask and encourage the most violent gangs and people to just lay down their weapons, I see that the people involved in this thinking have no idea what the problem is and even worse no idea how to fix the problem. Everyone in the city knows what the problem is and they know the people who are causing the problem. The people causing the problem have no morals nor do they have or care about you or your life. The way to solve the problem is through stricter law enforcement. You have to enforce the laws on even the petty crimes. And when you find someone with an illegal gun you have to send them to prison. Not ask them not to do it anymore.
D’accord, Mr. Quinn. This seems to be a big, squishy, stinking pile of liberal touchy-feely.
The belly-crawling snakes running city hall spent $270,000 property tax money last year on “advice” from an even-more-extreme coven of New York liberals who told them to coddle the local thugs and give them a darn good talking-to, by golly.
Now this woman tells us she will get right to work (at a nice, fancy salary, too, I’ll bet) “analyzing” data. Typical liberal, do-gooder doublespeak. She also wants to let violent criminals, fresh out of the pen, sign up for classes and sit next to your college-age daughter, and I suppose she plans to give them their talking-to while they walk with her on the quad as she goes to pick up her check(s).
Obviously, Armstrong’s “Department of Criminal Justice” is just another pack of fast-talking windbags and flim-flam operators. To think that anything this gal or anyone like her would say to a street thug here would make him lay down his weapons is laughable.
This whole story is a sham. The way to solve this problem is to sentence these brutal criminals to very long prison terms and make them serve every minute, not slap them on the wrist and let them go, as occurs now. Then no liberals will be needed to wail about “data analysis,” and people can rest assured that the punks won’t be back on the streets again any time soon. Is it too late to ask those Yankees for our $270,000 back?