Why Threatening Prison Doesn't Stop Shooters

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"Your name is being spoken at tables you don't know exist."

That line comes from Sasha Cotton. She says it to the young men who show up at GVI call-ins — rooms where mayors, police chiefs, district attorneys, community members, and social service providers deliver a single coordinated message to the people most likely to shoot someone or be shot. She says it because most of them have no idea how closely they're being watched, and because pulling back that curtain is the first step toward an off-ramp.

Sasha Cotton is a the executive director at the National Network for Safer Communities at John Jay College. Her organization trains cities to implement Group Violence Intervention and Focused Deterrence — the evidence-based models that produced a 66% reduction in gang violence in Boston in the mid-nineties, a 62% drop in Philadelphia's homicide rate between 2022 and last year, and over 500 consecutive days without a juvenile homicide in Pine Bluff, Arkansas — a city with fewer than 100,000 people that was experiencing juvenile homicides at Chicago's per capita rate.

This conversation is about how that works. Not the talking points — the mechanics.

What the call-in actually is. A meeting held in a church or auditorium. Individuals on probation or parole, affiliated with groups driving local violence, receive a scripted three-part message: from law enforcement (your behavior has consequences), from social services (you matter and there's a 24-hour line if you need safety), and from community voices (voice of pain, voice of redemption, voice of hope). Dinner is served afterward. Name cards are placed in front of attendees. The goal is not to threaten — it's to inform, and to make clear that the community sees their humanity even as it demands their behavior change.

Why threatening incarceration stopped working. After George Floyd's murder, Sasha and the National Network had to rethink the entire law enforcement piece. Not just because community trust in police had cratered, but because the threat of prison had never been as effective as assumed. A lot of the people in those rooms already expected to go to prison at some point. So the pivot was blunt: I don't want you to die. That reframe — from accountability to survival — changed what the conversation could do.

The honest limits. Sasha does not pretend GVI is a universal solution. She is direct: policing as an institution was not designed to save our kids. Law enforcement co-opting CVI funding, cities implementing GVI without technical support, and credible messengers without the skills or relationships to work alongside law enforcement — these are the ways the model fails and causes real damage. The 40–60% violence reduction outcomes Sasha cites only happen with fidelity, data, and ongoing support.

The part nobody talks about. There is a 25% crossover between people who perpetrate community violence and those who perpetrate intimate partner violence. Sasha has spent a decade in domestic violence work alongside her GVI career, and she's leading a Ford Foundation-funded research project to bridge the two fields. The number one killer of Black women ages 18 to 34 is domestic violence. Those two facts belong in the same conversation as GVI, and in this episode they finally are.

Sasha Cotton is a strategist at the National Network for Safer Communities at John Jay College, where she leads GVI and Focused Deterrence training across the country. She previously directed prevention work at the Minnesota Coalition on Domestic Violence and served as research coordinator at the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community.

Have questions about what you heard? Reach out at incrediblemessenger.com/contact. Interested in having Jonathan speak at your convening or consult with your city? That's the same link.