What this document is
Blocking the Transmission of Violence is a feature by journalist Alex Kotlowitz, published in The New York Times Magazine on May 4, 2008. It profiles CeaseFire, a Chicago violence-prevention program founded by Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who had previously worked on infectious-disease control, including cholera and AIDS, before turning his attention to urban gun violence.
The article lays out Slutkin's central premise: that violence spreads through a community the way an infectious disease spreads, and that the same public-health tools used against disease, detecting outbreaks early, interrupting transmission at the source, and treating the highest-risk cases, can be applied to stop shootings before they happen. CeaseFire put this into practice by hiring violence interrupters, often former gang members, specifically for their credibility on the street, sending them to mediate active conflicts before they escalated into retaliation.
An early evaluation cited in the piece found violence fell 16 to 27 percent more in neighborhoods where CeaseFire operated than in comparable neighborhoods without the program. The article helped popularize the violence-as-contagion framing later associated with the broader Cure Violence movement, and it inspired the 2011 documentary The Interrupters, which Kotlowitz co-produced.
Where to find it
Available from The New York Times Magazine.