After a Violent Year, a Search for Answers
March 19, 2021
When 2020 began, Julius Thibodeaux was feeling good about the trajectory of violent crime in Sacramento, California.
For the past two years, his nonprofit group Advance Peace had been organizing interventions with young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods and trying to steer them away from violence. They held career mentorship programs for young people from rival communities, bringing them together in a neutral setting to get to know their potential antagonists. It felt like progress: There hadn’t been any juvenile homicides in Sacramento for the previous two years. Though the city’s homicide rate remained higher than the state or the nation, it had fallen since the Great Recession.
