With more than a dozen awards for his efforts to reduce the crime rate at underprivileged locations and eighty plus scholarly journal articles, fifty book chapters, and dozens of commentaries, editorials, and monographs to his name, Anthony Braga is an enthusiast of reducing violence in communities. Professor and Director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice of the Northeastern University, Braga has worked with the U.S. Police force for over twenty years now.
Braga along with two of his colleagues pioneered the Operation Ceasefire mission which focused on stopping violence while at the same time providing with job training and other social services. It created a massive impact by reducing the homicide rate amongst youngsters by 63 percentage in Boston between the years 1996 and 1998. He played an active role in many community policing initiatives one of them being the Safe Street Teams program in 2007 that led to a reduction of crime rates in targeted localities by seven percentage.
Braga had always wanted to be a police officer but as he progressed through his academic career, he realised that his heart was more set at working with criminal justice, social service and other community-based organisations to understand and address complex social issues. Crime problems we have today, he believes, has multiple causes and to understand them efficiently one needs an interdisciplinary approach. This interdisciplinarity is what Northeastern University provided for him. Looking forward to working with faculty members from various colleges within the University, Braga talks about how excited he is to find excellent faculty, students and partnerships with criminal justice agencies that will give him the opportunity to develop his goals.
With a doctorate from Rutgers University and Master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University, Braga’s dreams can be fulfilled with only the right support, which the University provides him with. The Wrong Hands: Denying Criminal Access to Firearms Through Market Intervention released in 2017 is his fourth book to be published.
N Malavika Mohan