Community-Based Public Safety Solutions Clearinghouse

This clearinghouse provides resources, publications, websites, and other helpful materials that can offer a wealth of information, knowledge, and support on community-based public safety solutions.

Resources, Articles, Publications

Scaling Safety Report

Alliance for Safety and Justice

The report’s primary goal is to start talking about what kinds of investments are needed to equip communities with the capacity to prevent crime and violence and intervene in the cycle of crime. Specifically, this report estimates what cities/counties need to invest in community-based public safety programs.

Read the full report here.

Blueprint for Shared Safety

Alliance for Safety and Justice

Shared Safety envisions a world in which everyone can attain safety, and everyone takes responsibility for fostering it. Shared Safety is the pioneering work of diverse stakeholders who are rethinking how to understand, invest in, evaluate and achieve community safety.

Learn more about Shared Safety here.

Webinar, Podcasts, and other Videos

Bringing a Folding Chair: Planning for Community Violence Intervention and Prevention

Office of Justice Program’s (OJP) Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI),

In this webinar, you will hear from a diverse group of multi-disciplinary leaders in the CVI space about the importance of cross-sector collaborations between trusted partners. These partnerships play an essential role in planning for and building out complementary intervention and prevention efforts that focuses on high-risk individuals and places and the root causes of violence, such as inadequate housing, employment, education, mental and physical health care, and other factors that influence the quality of life. The webinar will also introduce the BJA CVI Checklist, and tools communities can use to plan and implement CVI strategies.

Listen to the full webinar here.

Websites, Partners, Coalitions

The National Coalition for Shared Safety (NCSS)

The NCSS represents leading organizations that are advancing community safety solutions and joining together to promote the most effective strategies to achieve public safety for all. It includes critical assistance providers supporting crime survivors and people living with past convictions, as well as public health providers and business leaders. The organizations in the coalition specialize in trauma recovery, health, mental health, violence prevention, and reentry support.

Learn more about NCSS here.

Members of the coalition include:

Alliance for Safety and Justice

American Public Health Association

A New Way of Life Reentry Project/SAFE Housing Network

Center for Employment Opportunities

Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice

Cure Violence Global

Dave’s Killer Bread Foundation

Doctors for America

Futures Without Violence (watch video)

The Health Alliance for Violence Intervention

National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers (watch video)

National Center for Victims of Crime

The Professional Community Intervention Training Institute

Responsible Business Initiative for Justice

Urban Peace Institute

Share Your Stories

Are you interested in submitting materials to be housed on the Scaling Safety Clearinghouse page? If so, fill out the information below.

Facts, Statistics, Research

Denver

Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program

Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program deploys Emergency Response Teams that include Emergency Medical Technicians and Behavioral Health Clinicians to engage individuals experiencing mental health issues, poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse crises.

The Program reported that:

STAR has responded to 2,294 calls for service that would have otherwise been dispatched to police

STAR has never called for police backup due to a safety issue

Click here to learn more about the Denver STAR Program

Newark

Newark Community Street Teams (NCST)

Started in 2014 by community members, Newark Community Street Team (NCST) was formalized by Mayor Ras J. Baraka’s Newark’s community-based violence reduction strategy. NCST works with 14-to-30-year olds who are vulnerable and at risk of violence through a number of programs that have a common thread: outreach from someone able to build strong, stable, and trusting relationships with vulnerable people who need support to be safe, thrive, and heal.

A University of California in Los Angeles evaluation of NCST found that one year after the program’s launch in 2015, there was an 11 percent reduction in homicides.

Click here to find out more about the Newark Community Street Team

Los Angeles

A New Way of Life (ANWOL)

A New Way Of Life (ANWOL) was founded by Susan Burton in Los Angeles in 1998 to address these reentry challenges based partly on her own experiences as a formerly incarcerated person. ANWOL provides safe, clean, and long-term community-oriented living environments to formerly incarcerated women for as long as needed, and when they are ready, staff assist them in searching for permanent housing.

None of the women served by ANWOL were reincarcerated in 2020. One hundred percent of residents complied with community supervision conditions, and more than 90 percent maintained sobriety and developed or progressed towards self-identified goals.

Click here to find out more about A New Way of Life

Trauma Recovery Centers

The first trauma recovery center was developed as a pilot program at the University of California, San Francisco, at San Francisco General Hospital in 2001. Now, trauma recovery centers are spreading across the country. This breakthrough and evidence-based model is helping the hardest-to-reach survivors of violent crime heal and recover from the effects of trauma.

Trauma recovery centers offer trauma-informed clinical case management; evidence-based individual, group and family psychotherapy; crisis intervention; medication management; legal advocacy, and assistance in filing police reports and accessing victim compensation funds, and are offered at no cost to the patient.

Click here to learn more about Trauma Recovery Centers

Legal Aid Services

Legal Aid Centers Across the country typically provide free civil legal services to low-income and otherwise eligible residents.

Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada is a nonprofit law firm dedicated to providing direct legal representation, counsel, advice, and community legal education to those who can’t afford an attorney. They have various programs to help victims of domestic violence and crime, victims of consumer fraud, and children in the foster care system.

Click here to learn more about Leagal Aid Center of Southern Nevada

Building Opportunities For Success Survey

Alliance for Safety and Justice (ASJ) recently surveyed organizations across the nation that provide crisis support in vulnerable communities to learn more about their recent experience of helping people respond to COVID.

This summary of the survey’s results is offered to help us better understand what people on the frontlines are experiencing and needing in these early days of America’s COVID-19 epidemic.

The surveys have drawn more than 150 responses to date from California, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Click here to read the full survey