Shootings and gun homicides are often the result of split-second decision-making—people react automatically in tense, high-stakes situations, and derail many lives in the process.
“When I speak to people who are incarcerated, I always ask them what they would change if they had the chance to go back,” READI Chicago Senior Director Eddie Bocanegra said. “The number one response I get is the moment that person pulled the trigger.”
That’s what READI Chicago is trying to do—use evidence and data to identify the men most likely to pull the trigger, or to be shot, and provide them with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to slow down their response times.
READI Chicago hires job coaches from the communities they serve to administer CBT to participants. There is a significant gap in access to clinicians and mental health care in Chicago—in the Gold Coast, for example, there are nearly 4.5 clinicians for every thousand people, whereas on the Southwest Side, there are only 0.1 for every thousand people.
“Black men in Chicago don’t get the same opportunities,” said Taj McCord, a READI Chicago job coach for the Greater Englewood community. “We need help and guidance from people who understand where we’ve been, so that we as black men can be looked at differently and create different, safer spaces for ourselves.”
READI Chicago job coaches receive extensive training in the implementation of a unique curriculum that is modeled on research from the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and the South Carolina-based Turning Leaf Project. READI Chicago aims to provide participants with a baseline of 200 hours of CBT over an 18-month period. Components of CBT are embedded in every aspect of READI Chicago, so much so that staff end up incorporating CBT skills and coping mechanisms into their own lives outside of work.
“A lot of times, my CBT group is where participants don’t feel like they need to be a different person,” said Kevin Holifield, a READI Chicago job coach for the Austin and West Garfield Park communities. “They let out exactly how they feel, and that’s the kind of space I try to create for them. I don’t want them to come in and be stuffy and try to impress me with what they think I want to hear. I want them to give me how they feel in the raw.”
Most importantly, participants are beginning to absorb the skills and lessons from the CBT curriculum and apply them in their everyday lives to de-escalate stressful situations and avoid violent confrontations.
“Now, with the things I think and say, first I sit back instead of taking an immediate action,” said Mark, who has been a participant in READI Chicago for several months. “I sit down and think first before I do anything. I’m getting a lot out of CBT. It gives me a chance to interact with people from different gangs or neighborhoods, and it gives us a chance to all come together. That’s a pretty cool thing out here.”
