My new book on Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime says yes and uses evidence to argue how to do it. 

We have the knowledge to dramatically reduce violent crime but do not use it.  We know how to  persuade the public and politicians to make a major shift from over reliance on an often flawed system of criminal justice and incarceration to smart and sustained investment in "upstream" solutions often in disadvantaged communities.  We can avoid thousands of lives lost, hundreds of thousands of rapes, devastating trauma to victims and taxes wasted on what does  not work.

Upstream means tackling the risk factors before crime happens.  ACEs provide important knowledge about risk factors leading to a greater likelihood of violent crime and so a prevention instead of a reaction framework to stop violent crime.  Longitudinal developmental studies support the same conclusions and  risk factors.  Jane Stevens recent blog on motive for mass shootings raised these issues in relation to both mass shootings and street violence. She mentioned some projects that have demonstrated how  tackling the risk factors can reduce violent crime.

My book presents a much larger group of effective prevention solutions drawing systematically on academic and public health sources. It is based in a careful analysis of the science available from many academic sources as well as websites like "crimesolutions.gov" of the US Department of Justice and "violence-info" from the World Health Organization. These show a number of  upstream actions that have dramatically reduced violent crime in both small clinical trials and a few large scale correlational studies — many 50% or better than our criminal justice system. It explains these effective but little used solutions, so that politicians and their voting public can understand them.  It shows the proof and cost effectiveness of programs, including Cure Violence, Becoming a Man, Hospital Interventions, family support, life skills training in schools and proactive policing, many of which are trauma-sensitive.

Despite the strength of this knowledge, the US uses none of these proven actions sufficiently to reduce state wide, city wide or national rates of violent crime — neither mass killings nor street homicides. The US in comparison per capita to other G7 countries has not only dramatically more mass killings (most of which are executed with semi-automatic or automatic guns capable of killing multiple victims), but also has dramatically more homicides (most of which are executed with illicit handguns). The vast majority of homicides in a year in the US are the latter. The US spends dramatically more on police and particularly incarceration than any other G7 country.

The main objective of the book is not just to present upstream solutions that are the effective and cost effective way to prevent crime, but to make the giant step towards getting these effective solutions used on a sufficient scale to save massive numbers of lives, avoid widespread trauma and protect women and children. Incidentally, it is prevention that will reduce mass incarceration most successfully, not tinkering with criminal justice.  All this will also save taxes.

So it looks at what different levels of government have attempted to reduce violent crime. It assesses their likelihood for success using seven essentials agreed internationally to be necessary to achieve dramatic reductions in violent crime. It shows how some cities have planned their ways to reduce street violence significantly and importantly why those cities succeeded when so many have not. It includes pathfinder cities from outside the USA such as Glasgow in Scotland, which achieved a 50% reduction within three years and has sustained the decline over much longer. The Glasgow model is spreading and recently adopted by the Mayor of London, UK.

It looks at how to get political buy-in — the theme of my extensive career. It demonstrates the cost-benefit of tackling risk factors upstream, including parenting and so ACEs. It also shows that the upstream actions are affordable and more popular than politicians understand. It highlights the importance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 16, where the US is committed to investments now to achieve dramatic reductions in violent crime by 2030. It identifies advocacy groups who can put pressure on politicians to act. One reviewer says it "makes a great conversation piece with practical proposals as we move into the 2020 election".  You can learn more and order a copy at  http://irvinwaller.org/