Restore funding to CeaseFire Illinois by exempting the program from Executive Order 15-08. #CeaseFireSavesLives
Tell Illinois Governor Rauner that stopping shooting, protecting citizens from violence, and saving lives are absolutely essential services and should not be cut.
On March 4, 2015, the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) issued a suspension notice, effective immediately, suspending all funding for Cure Violence program partner CeaseFire Illinois in accordance with Governor Rauner’s Executive Order 15-08 that requires state agencies to curb “non-essential” state spending.
This $4.525 million ICJIA grant represents approximately 80% of the annual total program budget for CeaseFire Illinois, a program with a history of over 14 years of interrupting violence, changing behavior, and changing community norms in high risk Chicago and Illinois communities. CeaseFire Illinois is also one of the few programs with two separate, independent scientific evaluations proving its effectiveness in reducing violence and was also featured in the 2011 documentary The Interrupters. Since CeaseFire Illinois was founded in Illinois, thousands of lives have been saved, and thousands of acts of violence prevented.
The CeaseFire Illinois program serves 18 communities in Chicago and 6 communities from Rockford to East St. Louis outside of Chicago, mediating almost 700 conflicts in these high-risk communities in just the last year. CeaseFire is partnered with Chicago’s three Level 1 Trauma Centers (Christ Advocate, John Stroger and Northwestern Memorial) and provided over 1,300 individual hospital responses to prevent retaliatory shootings and violence in 2014 alone, 80% of which involved people outside of CeaseFire neighborhoods. CeaseFire Illinois was already on track to surpass 2014 numbers with 543 conflicts mediated since July 1st, the beginning of fiscal year 2015.
CeaseFire has proven extremely cost effective. While saving human lives should be considered “priceless,” the social pricetag of gun violence in Chicago is $2.5 billion PER YEAR, about $2,500 per household (http://crimelab.uchicago.edu/page/report). The State of Illinois cannot afford to interrupt the CeaseFire program. CeaseFire saves lives.
A similar interruption in funding in September 2007, resulted in 529 high-risk participants going without services. Shootings and homicide rates rose in 2008 and 2009 following the cut in program funding with the largest increase being in communities where the CeaseFire Illinois program had to close. Only two districts were able to maintain any reduction in shootings and homicides, and these were sites that had a small amount of private funding. CeaseFire funding was reinstated in December of 2008, but it took much of 2009 to fully restore the program in high-risk communities in Chicago. Shootings and homicides began to decline again in 2010 and have continued to do so.
We need your help in asking Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to personally review Illinois’ CeaseFire program and exempt it from Executive Order 15-08. Saving the lives of youth in high risk communities is an essential function of government. Government has no greater purpose or calling than that of protecting its citizens.
Please also visit CeaseFire Illinois’ Crowdrise fundraising page at https://www.crowdrise.com/wecancureviolence/fundraiser/ceasefireillinois to donate to CeaseFire to help keep youth in high-risk communities safe. CeaseFire needs $1 million to maintain the program through June 30, 2015, the end of the state’s fiscal year. We continue working hard to ensure CeaseFire is fully-funded in next year’s state budget.
#CeaseFireSavesLives
