The “Cure Violence” programs seek to apply public health methodologies and strategies used in the containment and reversal of epidemics to act preventively in situations of violence by detecting and interrupting conflicts and incidents.
In a sense, these programs interpret violence, especially as it relates to armed conflicts and homicides among violent groups, as an “epidemic“. This is due to the fact that this type of violence usually has the three characteristic factors of contagious diseases: agglomeration (occurs in specific places and at specific times), self-replication (seems to multiply “autonomously“, if not interrupted: one violent incident leads to another and so on), and the presence of epidemic waves (concentration, in a reduced period of time, of a considerable number of incidents and victimizations).
Based on this specific understanding of this social phenomenon, this type of intervention is based on the concept that the “epidemic of violence“ should be effectively treated “as a disease“. In other words, interventions are conceived that seek to mobilize public health methods to combat violent crime through concerted efforts aimed at stopping its “contagion“ and thus at “curing violence“. This expression even gives its name to the program, which was originally adopted in Chicago in the 2000s (“Cure Violence“) and has become the main reference in the field. More recently, it also became the name of a non-governmental organization (Cure Violence Global™) that is dedicated to adapting and replicating the violence interruption methodology in cities located in the US and other countries.
In summary, therefore, Cure Violence programs constitute a community modality that is carried out by community members who have the capacity to dialogue with those groups and are trained to act directly as conflict brokers between different violent groups, and also usually develop preventive activities focused on young people. In this case, activities usually include interventions to identify and change the thinking and behavior of individuals at the most risk of becoming perpetrators (i.e., those most likely to engage in violence), and are aimed at bringing about changes in the collective norms that sustain and perpetuate the use of violence.