Conan Harris nods vigorously when asked if he can give any examples of StreetSafe Boston success stories.“There’s a bunch of them,” says Mr Harris, of the young gangsters he has seen turn their life around thanks to the scheme.Mr Harris, StreetSafe’s street worker manager, cites the case of a gang leader whose father was recently shot by rivals who mistakenly believed they were aiming at him.“Usually, he’d make one phone call and his guys would be on it. [Instead] he called me at 6.30 in the morning. I said ‘are you okay? I’m going to come get you’.“He was like ‘I’m going to work’. Then he checked in with his guys and he didn’t even tell them [about his father]. He stayed true to what we were trying to do.”StreetSafe’s aim is to affect precisely this kind of change in attitude in the young men who drive the city’s gang violence problem and, in doing so, reduce the number of people who get hurt.Boston, a city with a population of more than 600,000, has about 160 gangs, according to StreetSafe’s executive director Ed Powell.The 60 most violent groups are known as “division one” gangs and StreetSafe works with 20 of those in five areas of the Massachusetts capital. In 2011, there were 82 shootings involving those 20 groups, including two fatalities.Mr Powell says the gangs can have anywhere between five to 100 members or associates and “the size doesn’t dictate the dangerousness of the group”.He, Mr Harris and Tara Small, StreetSafe’s director of operations, have been on the Island with four colleagues this week, training about 30 local volunteers who want to become “street workers” here.The idea is to mirror the Boston scheme in Bermuda, using people from within neighbourhoods affected by gun violence to directly seek out those responsible for it and help them change their lives.Ms Small says the precise impact of StreetSafe Boston, which is entering its fourth year, is currently being measured by two Harvard researchers but, anecdotally at least, it appears to be working.Shootings are down in the Massachusetts city — and so are arrests. According to Mr Powell, Boston Police Department has recognised it can’t “arrest its way out” of the gang problem.He praises Bermuda’s leaders for reaching the same conclusion and opting to try another approach — a StreetSafe scheme for the Island.“I applaud the Government and the police and the community for being courageous and understanding,” says Mr Powell. “This is very hard work, when you decide to work with the drivers of violence.“It takes time, it takes patience, it takes commitment and resources. There is a price for peace.”The StreetSafe team arrived here last Friday and the very next day, Joshua Robinson, 31, was shot dead at Jason’s barber shop on North Shore Road, in Pembroke.Mr Harris says: “I was here and actually went to the scene and went to the hospital with [government consultant] Dale Jackson. He took me around and gave me some insight.“Everywhere I went, I was talking to locals about it and everyone was familiar with what happened. They [Bermuda and Boston] definitely have some similarities. I think it’s almost a perfect fit with the way that we do business.”Mr Powell adds: “The interesting thing about Boston is that, while it’s a big city, the violence is concentrated in a very small part of the city.“In some parts of Boston, you have street gangs warring with other street gangs that are literally a street apart.”Mr Robinson’s murder came after five months without a fatal shooting and marks Bermuda’s second gun killing of the year. During the first half of last year, there were five gun murders.Mr Powell says: “You’ll find in a lot of cities that you’ll have lulls in violence, when people go away or leave the area or whatever.“Where you get lulled to sleep is where you don’t address those conditions that lead to the violence in the first place.”StreetSafe’s method for reducing violence is to send uniformed street workers into areas they are familiar with, to form relationships with gangsters and help them choose a crime-free life.Some of the street workers, like Mr Harris, have a criminal past themselves — but it must be long behind them and they must demonstrate that they’ve changed.Mr Harris explains he was imprisoned for ten years for drug trafficking and it was while in jail he recognised he could make a difference in neighbourhoods like the one he grew up in.“I was just talking to a group of young people that were on lock-up and they flocked around me. I realised I had a gift. I didn’t realise at that time that this was my purpose [but] as you grow up you realise that you can change some people’s lives directly by working with them.”Since arriving here, he has already sought to help alleged gang member Gariko Benjamin, who was cleared of charges that he fired a gun by a Supreme Court jury last week.Mr Harris met the 20-year-old’s family in church and then spoke directly with Mr Benjamin — an action Ms Small describes as “typical” of her co-worker.Back in the Massachusetts capital, StreetSafe has a close working relationship with Boston Police Department, which provides information on high-ranking gangsters or “impact players” but expects nothing back in terms of intelligence.Mr Powell describes it as a “one way flow of information” with detectives understanding that StreetSafe personnel can’t tell them anything to assist with their policing.“We focus on the perpetrators and victims among our groups,” he explains. “We want to decrease the amount of times our groups shoot and the amount of times they get harmed.“Our people go out to find these young people and create relationships with them. At the end of the day, as Conan likes to say, they get a chance to choose, to partake in some positive activities.“That’s a situation that takes time. It takes a lot of time to get to that place.”Useful website: www.tbf.org/Content.aspx?ID=9398.