Attorneys at the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office (CAO) stumbled on a troubling realization: The majority of those convicted of misdemeanor gun possession are young Black men with no prior record who say they carry “for protection” and who, after their initial run-in with the legal system, seem to lose hope and go down a path of crime and stints in custody.
“Further analysis of the data showed that after being convicted by the CAO for the gross misdemeanor offense, approximately 70 percent of these individuals went on to commit new crimes, many of which were violent felonies,” according to city documents.
The office wanted to divert these young Black men, and anyone else, from having a criminal record and feeling as though their only option — or all they are worth — is a life of crime.
But the attorney’s office didn’t know how to go about that. So the city announced a request for proposals in 2017.
Urban Ventures, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, answered the call and created a program that offers first-time gun possession offenders with no prior record a set of courses for understanding themselves and their choices. Upon graduation, the offender’s record is wiped clean.
This unprecedented approach, called the Pathway Gun Diversion Program, is the first of its kind in the country and has garnered attention from academics and prosecutors in other states. In April, Minneapolis increased funding for the initiative by $480,000 and extended the program through 2025.
How it works
After someone is charged with misdemeanor gun possession — and they have no prior record — they take a diagnostic assessment. They may be eligible to enter the program by pleading guilty in court to the charge and agreeing to a two-year stay of adjudication.
When that probation period is up, the individual enrolls in the Pathway diversion program, which involves nine months of classes. Courses, which are taught by licensed social workers and mental health professionals, are done in three phases, said Pathway program director Priscilla Brown, who created the program and teaches courses.
“Phase one is about healing from the pain,” said Brown.
Brown said the people who come to Pathway — the vast majority of whom are Black men — landed there because of decisions that were influenced by trauma.
“We’re talking about intergenerational trauma,” said Brown. “We’re not just talking about the trauma you have just waking up every day hearing gun violence, whether you’re a part of it or not; just knowing that it’s in your community, in your family. There’s domestic violence and abuse. We’re also talking about the intergenerational trauma going all the way back to slavery that they don’t even know about because they are not even old enough to have the stories told to them.”
The course also addresses trauma from day-to-day racism and inequity, as well as biological trauma like when a child is born from a woman who was physically abused during pregnancy.
“Trauma is an enormous piece and we only hit the surface of it,” said Brown. “For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve thought about it and actually tried to wrap their minds around it.”
A number of participants are often shocked when Brown begins the trauma curriculum.
“They always say, ‘I thought this was a gun program,’” said Brown. “And I always say, ‘What did you think? You were gonna come here and I was gonna teach you how to kill others?’”
The end of phase one is about being able to control emotions and anger and make rational decisions.
Phase two tackles substance abuse, both in discovering the roots behind the substance use and how to overcome the affliction. It’s a new phase that Brown started a couple of years into the program because she felt substance abuse was a large factor in leading to emotionally driven decisions.
The final phase is called the “enrichment phase.”
“There, [participants] are looking at more of living skills and goal-planning, employment interviewing skills,” said Brown. They also discuss basic finances like how to maintain credit.
If they graduate, their records are expunged of the misdemeanor gun possession conviction.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the University of Chicago have begun a study on the Pathway diversion program, Brown said, and some 15 prosecutors have reached out to learn more about Pathway.
“When my boss dropped that contract on my desk and said, ‘Here, this is yours, develop a program,’ I was like, ‘what are you talking about? What?’” said Brown. “I had no idea it was going to grow in the way that it is growing.”
Gun culture and masculinity
The reason many of the Black men in the program are taken aback by the courses in trauma and emotional reasoning — and the reason they started carrying a gun illegally, to begin with — is because Black men have a hard time acknowledging their emotions; let alone working through them, said Brown.
“There is this thought, like, ‘I’m a man, I’m not doing therapy,’” said Brown.
That’s not just a Black man thing — that’s just a general man thing, said Rashmi Seneviratne, executive director of the gun violence prevention organization Protect Minnesota.
“In Minnesota in 2020, 68 percent of firearm deaths were suicides, and the majority of those were rural white men,” Seneviratne said. “It’s this idea of toxic masculinity,” said Seneviratne. “This idea of ‘What does it mean to be a man?’ — that seeps in a lot to the rural suicide rates.”
The toxicity comes with the sense that men are supposed to be “strong, silent types,” said Seneviratne — the type that doesn’t seek help and should never need any.
That’s why young men of all stripes go out and get a gun, legally or otherwise, so they don’t need anyone else’s help if they feel unsafe or challenged, Brown said. Then, these traumatized men have a gun on them at a moment when their emotions get the better of them.
“This is why I love Urban Ventures,” said Seneviratne. “I know their work is pretty specific to their community, but they confront toxic masculinity and talk about this emotional component.”
“By the end, we’ve softened [participants] enough to start thinking about it. It’s my dream to have funding for the people who really want to go into therapy,” said Brown.
Another of Brown’s goals is to create a program that finds young people before they reach for a gun, a prevention program that addresses trauma and emotional maturity before they are booked with a crime.
You can be charged with a gross misdemeanor in Minnesota if you carry a handgun in a public place without a permit, whether it’s on or near your body or in a motor vehicle, snowmobile or boat. But with the recent SCOTUS decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the Court established an individual’s right to carry handguns in public for self-defense.
This ruling could conceivably lead to a finding that the Minnesota law is unconstitutional. Heck, I’ve always argued that requiring me to pay my county sheriff $100 to renew my permit is a violation of my 2nd amendment rights, so the whole permit thing is on shaky ground regardless.
A more effective strategy to curb gun violence is to enforce the laws we have now on illegal possession by a felon and commission of a crime with a gun, and to sentence such people with a mandatory 10 year prison sentence. Those who would oppose this approach are not serious about eliminating gun violence.
Oh, I suppose that state laws requiring a gun permit are still sound, but anything is possible with the disastrous “gun rights” revolution that the illegitimate Repub Supreme Court is fanning and enabling.
And of course every lib’rul should support a mandatory 10 year prison sentence for violation of any criminal gun law. Anyone who would oppose this approach is not serious about eliminating gun violence, as you say!
That’s because the only real answer to the scourge of too many guns everywhere is an actual war on guns, just like the “war on drugs” of the 90s. But that is a future only a much better citizenry than we have could imagine.
Are there any statistics on the success rate of this program? If it works that’s great. I wish someone in the Republican Party ( anybody, even just a voter) could tell me why they are so entrenched in the right to own a gun. Maybe hunting rifles, but that’s it.
I think having mentors is also huge, someone weekly who checks in and assists the young person in completing their education, starting to work on their goals. Sometimes calling it a life coach is more acceptable and weaving in some support groups/individual sessions. Before the naysayers say this program is soft on crime–it requires a diagnostic assessment and other criteria to see if the person is a good fit. That need to feel some sort of power and identification is huge. Urban Ventures does great work in the community and kudos to them for putting this program together and working with others to make it happen.
Seems like the right idea and a good direction in which to go. Are there no statistics available on the success of the program …. I believe it started in 2017 and it is a 2 year program. Successes …. or not?
Again, it is not legal gun purchases and licensed gun owners we are talking about here. We are discussing why young men are illegally buying and carrying guns. There is not an epidemic of legal gun owners committing gun violence. If there are laws on the books to punish illegal gun carriers, enforce them, that is why they are laws! All of the new laws and complaining hasn’t changed a thing in Chicago, the city gets shot up nightly. Law enforcement is a deterrent, we should try it!
And it was “legal” gun purchases and “legal” gun owners that shot up Highland park, and Uvalde! Your theory needs lots of work!
Dennis, under 2% of murders are committed by legal gun owners. 3% of all murders are done with rifles (assault weapons are considered rifles). The issue is illegal hand guns being used by unlicensed people. The problem the Lefties have is they will not go after 97% of the problem by getting illegal hand guns off the street, they would rather ignorantly complain about “weapons of war”.
A lengthy response did not survive moderation and I won’t replicate it.
Suffice it to say that these stats you throw out are largely nonsense, simply because we do not compile such data on a national level because the conservative movement opposes it. They don’t want actual data on the effects of our crazed gun culture.
So all this “2% and 3%” stuff is educated guessing at best. For example, how are we to “know” murders by “type” of gun owner when a huge number of them go unsolved?
And who cares what percent of the total gun murders are by assault weapons, anyway? The recent mass murders by assault rifle are what we are focusing on now, and it’s not some great policy error to do so. We dont have to solve every aspect of America’s gun mayhem crisis all at once.
Finally, since the illegitimate Repub Supreme Court majority has erroneously manufactured a constitutional “right” to own (and now carry in public) a handgun for “self defense” purposes, assault weapons may be about the only type of weapon that Congress can even regulate any more. So seeking to divert attention to deaths by handguns (that can’t be regulated) borders on bad faith. And in any event, the conservative movement has no interest in doing anything with handguns, either.
Joe, 100% of folks are searched before getting on an airplane, looking for your so called 2-3%, where ever that came from!
And how do folks get further upstream on these dysfunctional families? Like you said its inter-generational, get at the folks before they get at the kids, or are we stuck in a permanent cycle, seems that way. To another point, seems we have a couple consistent not so young men posters that evidently fit in to the: That’s why young men of all stripes go out and get a gun, legally or otherwise, so they don’t need anyone else’s help if they feel unsafe or challenged”
Recidivism rates? The program has been around long enough to have some numbers. We should not have to ask for the numbers. They should be included in the story. Bad reporting. “Minneapolis INCREASED funding by $480,000 in April” to what level?
Mr. Gustavo, in my mind you should be doing more investigation than just printing a PR handout. I have like most of your reporting, but this is not up to standards.