PITTSFIELD — An infectious disease.

That's how Ben Snyder, a sociology professor at Williams College, described the pattern of gun violence in communities — erupting in hot spots, spreading through social networks and, without intervention, triggering new "cases" in cycles of retaliation.

Alongside practitioner and filmmaker Jenny Herzog, Snyder told the Pittsfield Public Health and Safety Committee in March that the city cannot rely primarily on traditional law enforcement to stop the spread. Instead, they argued, Pittsfield needs a coordinated, concentrated, public health-based response modeled on strategies that have dramatically reduced shootings in cities like Baltimore, Boston and Chicago.

“When there's a shooting or a homicide, it triggers a transformation in the entire social network. It sets off, then more violence starts to spread through the entire neighborhood,” Snyder said. “We should be looking at the entire chain of transmission between incidents and much like an epidemiologist would, can we figure out how to interrupt the transmission?”

Ben Snyder, a sociology professor at Williams College pictured here in 2024, told the Pittsfield Public Health and Safety Committee that gun violence tends to be "sticky," clustering in specific social networks and locations rather than spreading evenly across a community, a pattern he said Pittsfield should map through a formal "problem analysis."

That interruption, the presenters said, starts with prevention: tackling the root causes of gun violence before the next shot is fired.

Over the last decade, Pittsfield has recorded an average homicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000 people — more than double the Massachusetts state average, according to police data.

“People probably don’t think of Pittsfield or Berkshire County as a place with much violence, and it’s not,” Herzog said. “But given the population, there’s more than you may think.”

And that violence is likely concentrated, the presenters said, both in who's involved and where it happens.

Drawing on research from Boston, Oakland and other cities, and the concept of "crime concentration" developed by violence scholar Thomas Abt, the presenters said gun violence tends to cluster tightly around a small number of people and places.

“Abt talks about how violence is 'sticky,'” Snyder said. “It tends to glue itself to particular social networks in very particular spaces in the urban environment.”

The numbers bear that out. In Boston, less than 2 percent of the youth population was involved in 74 percent of the city's shootings, and just 5 percent of street corners accounted for the bulk of that activity. In Oakland, Calif., researchers identified only 400 individuals in a city of 440,000 who were at the highest risk of being involved in shootings.

Over the last decade, Pittsfield has recorded an average homicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000 people — more than double the Massachusetts state average, according to police data.

“So the individuals who are most likely to shoot or be shot tend to actually be a relatively small number of individuals focused in a few places, and intervention should be focused accordingly, not spread out to anyone in the community with risk factors,” Herzog said.

Meanwhile, Herzog said taking a broad, non-targeted response can come at a high cost, pointing to data showing Berkshire County spends roughly $90,000 a year to incarcerate a single person — more than a year’s tuition at Williams College.

The presenters said the first step for Pittsfield should be a "problem analysis" that uses police and public health data to identify the individuals most likely to shoot or be shot and to map the locations where serious violence is most likely to occur.

“I bet you could ask any police officer, social service provider, who are the 20 people that keep you up at night right now? And they probably could tell you,” Snyder said. “Where are the two or three streets or blocks where you know you're worried about? And I bet they could tell you.”

The best practice, Herzog said, is to then focus intervention specifically on those highest-risk individuals.

A core element of focused intervention is what Herzog called "relentless outreach," a concept she learned while working at Roca, a nonprofit in Boston.

Instead of waiting for young people to seek help, outreach workers continuously try to engage with them: going to where they hang out, knocking on doors, calling and texting friends or family members.

“Doing what it takes to show that you're really serious about building that relationship and forming that bond,” Herzog said.

She acknowledged that the young people most in need of support often push back, at least at first.

Local artist and activist Jenny Herzog, pictured in 2024. Herzog, who worked with the Boston-based nonprofit Roca, said the young people most at risk of gun violence often resist help at first because they've been "disappointed time after time" by systems that failed them, making persistent, relationship-driven outreach essential.

“Oftentimes, this is an individual who has been system-involved for several years, who has interfaced with lots of different agencies, social workers … and they've been disappointed time after time after time, and they've been re-traumatized,” Herzog said.

Relying on voluntary engagement alone, she said, means “the highest-risk individuals often fall through the cracks.”

Who reaches out to at-risk youth is just as important as how, the presenters said.

Snyder said that role should be filled by "credible messengers," individuals who were once incarcerated or involved in street life but have since turned their lives around and can connect with young people in ways traditional providers and police often cannot.

For the model to work, Herzog stressed, they must operate independently of police, as their effectiveness depends on community trust.

“So if there is a shooting, they often go to the neighborhood, have a march, put out anti-gun violence messaging,” Herzog said.

But credible messengers cannot be the only response after a shooting, the presenters said. There also needs to be a "neighborhood trauma response team," which Herzog defined as people who arrive in the aftermath to promote healing and share mental health resources.

"These are offered to the victim, the victim's family, also the perpetrator … anyone who might have been on the street at the time," Herzog said.

The final component the presenters outlined is a hospital-based violence intervention program.

At Boston Medical Center, anyone admitted for a shooting or stabbing is automatically connected to a Violence Intervention Advocate.

“So while the doctor treats the physical wound, this violence intervention advocate deals with these mental and emotional trauma,” Herzog said, and then follows up after discharge to support ongoing medical and mental health care.

A study by the Boston University School of Public Health found that consistent engagement with the program reduced the likelihood of being re-injured or committing violence by 50 percent within two to three years of discharge.

Berkshire Medical Center currently has no such program. Patients receive instructions for follow-up care, but there is no dedicated advocate to support continued engagement. Herzog said she met with the hospital's trauma team and found them receptive to the idea — the position simply doesn't exist there yet, and the team hadn't been aware of the approach.

Herzog read an account from a Pittsfield youth who was shot in the leg at 18, briefly treated at the hospital and sent home with little follow-up — an experience he initially brushed off as “no big deal,” even a “badge of approval,” before later recognizing how it normalized violence.

“That could be a really crucial intervention point,” she said. “If you’re able to reach that individual at the age of 18 and provide effective intervention, you could be preventing a shooting or a homicide that would take place years down the line.”

To illustrate what a full public health "ecosystem" can achieve, Snyder pointed to Baltimore, a city long known for high violent crime rates.

After years of aggressive policing, Baltimore created the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which concentrated resources in identified hot spot neighborhoods through a combination of relentless outreach, hospital-based violence intervention, school-based conflict mediation, environmental improvements and focused policing used as a last resort rather than the primary tool.

Since implementing the program in 2020, homicides have dropped by roughly 40 percent and non-fatal shootings by about 43 percent, according to the mayor's office.

Remarkably, Snyder said, the city did not increase the number of arrests to achieve those results.

“[For] the first time in the history of the city, they are not trying to arrest and incarcerate their way out of the violence problem,” he said. “They have taken a different tactic, and it appears at this point to be more sustainable.”

Several local leaders at the meeting, including city councilors and public health officials, responded positively to creating a public health ecosystem in Pittsfield but acknowledged that making the vision real will take time, coordination and political will.

Director of Public Health Andy Cambi said many of the core concepts already "live within public health," including the city's co-responders program, and that his department is open to taking on a larger coordinating role. He cautioned, however, that it will require new investment and capacity building.

“There’s a lot of energy. It just needs some direction and a body to lead the charge,” Herzog said.