Gun Violence on Walkable Routes to and from School: Recommendations for Policy and Practice.

Abstract

Gun-related violence exposure is a significant public health problem for urban youth. Few studies have implemented methods to estimate the spatial influence of activity spaces on gun violence exposure constrained by the physical configuration of walkable street networks. The present research uses computational network and local indicators of spatial autocorrelation methods to explore gun violence exposure along the walkable streets near schools in Compton, California. Findings demonstrated strong evidence that gun violence is clustered at all distances along the pedestrian network and in proximity to Compton Unified School District (K-12) schools, reaching a maximum between 1.2 and 1.8 mi; thereafter the "attractiveness" of schools to gun violence was inhibiting. Almost all schools had at least one shooting within a 5-min walk (i.e., about 400m); 37.8% of schools had an average shooting distance of less than 400m; about 250 incidents occurred within 5min of schools; and about 30 schools had a shooting within a 5-min walking distance. Determining the spatial extent of violence exposure in proximity to key activity spaces for youth, such as schools, has substantial implications for the health and wellbeing ofyouth living in violence-prone areas. The public health and legal implications of this study are discussed in context.