Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) in Rochester, NY

• NCJ Number: 220488
• Author(s): John M. Klofas Ph.D.; Christopher Delaney; Tisha Smith M.A.
• Date Published: January 2005
• Length: 153 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2001-IJ-CX-K009
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description

Annotation

This report describes the development, implementation, and results of Rochester's (New York) Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI), a federally led coordinated effort to reduce and prevent firearm and firearm-related violent crime.

Abstract

Evaluation of the overall SACSI strategy, which focused on homicide as the crime problem to be addressed, shows promising results, with significant declines in homicides over the past 12 months, particularly among the target population of young Black males. Process evaluation shows that the strategies have involved significant involvement in collaborative problem solving and many instances of change in agency activity and system improvements. The violence prevention interventions are being institutionalized through training in the key criminal justice agencies involved in SACSI. Researchers continue to have a significant role in these efforts. The process used in Rochester is the model used for problem analysis in national training for Project Safe Neighborhoods. It is also being used in New York State as a model for enhancing local analytical capacity and implementing intervention for reducing violence. An extensive and multifaceted study of homicide in Rochester was undertaken by the SACSI research team under the direction of the leadership group. Analyses showed that homicide victimization and offending was concentrated geographically in a small section of the city, where homicide rates for young Black men were nearly 70 times those in the Nation as a whole. A complex of strategies that involves nearly all aspects of the criminal justice system evolved and has been in place for over a year. Strategies include changes in prosecution practice, group-focused intelligence gathering, targeted law enforcement efforts, delivery of a deterrence message and service alternatives through offender call-ins, intensive supervision of designated probationers, and saturated patrol practices. 20 references