Without careful planning, coordinated anti-violence efforts are difficult to sustain. With goals established and key people and places identified, stakeholders should develop practical and actionable plans outlining commitments, focusing resources, and solidifying partnerships.
DOJ has training and technical assistance resources to help local jurisdictions set goals, perform analyses, and develop plans for reducing crime and violence. Flexible grant funding can support these activities as well. Helpful reports, publications, and other materials are also provided. Key resources are identified below, followed by links to additional resources. These same resources are also listed for Actions 1 and 2, since these three are related to one another.
Key Resources
Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative
The Community-Based Violence Intervention (CVI) and Prevention Initiative provides funding to support evidence-based violence intervention and prevention programs. The CVIPI webpage provides access to a variety of resources for planning, implementing, supporting, and assessing community-based violence intervention and prevention efforts. CVIPI funding can support goal-setting, analysis, and planning activities.
Community Violence Intervention Implementation Checklist
Developed with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Community Violence Intervention Implementation Checklist captures background information about CVI efforts, CVI guiding principles, and details on the following specific steps to take when implementing CVI programs.
Bureau of Justice Assistance National Training and Technical Assistance Center
The BJA National Training and Technical Assistance Center connects justice agencies with national experts to help reduce violent and drug-related crime. A specific Violence Reduction Response Center connects localities with resources to help address the work of identifying where and among whom violence is concentrating. Jurisdictions interested in implementing strategies outlined in the Roadmap may also contact NTTAC to request TTA from the Police Executive Research Forum. In collaboration with BJA and a cadre of subject matter experts, PERF will coordinate no-cost TTA services designed to enhance jurisdictions’ capacity to reduce community gun violence and promote community trust.
Project Safe Neighborhoods is spearheaded by each U.S. Attorney’s Office, bringing together federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement officials, community leaders and other stakeholders to identify their most pressing violent crime problems and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. The PSN website includes training resources for all localities working to reduce violence, including a gun violence resource hub. Localities should connect with their United States Attorney’s Office to better understand these resources.
National Public Safety Partnership
The National Public Safety Partnership is a network of communities who are committed to implementing evidence-informed approaches to reducing violence and enhancing public safety. It is a DOJ-wide program that connects communities with peers and experts to receive coordinated training and technical assistance. There are many resources available to all jurisdictions – including virtual training academies and published materials - through the Clearinghouse, including numerous resources supporting the identification of individuals and locations most at-risk of violence.
Group Violence Intervention: An Implementation Guide
The Group Violence Intervention reduces violent crime by joining together community members with law enforcement and social service providers to deliver an anti-violence message to groups driving violence. This guide offers comprehensive tools to practitioners—be they community members, law enforcement, or government officials—who seek to introduce proven strategies to their communities, build a partnership of stakeholders, turn strategies into action plans, and sustain their results. The guide presents the important elements of a strategy and recommends a general path along which communities should proceed.
Additional Resources
Grant Funding
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program
The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program is a formula award administered to each state and territory, based on their population and violent crime. The award is divided between the state (60%) and direct to local (40%) units of government. JAG funding is administered by a state agency. JAG funds are extremely flexible in ways they can support violent crime reduction and can be used for planning and evaluation activities, and community engagement. Localities should contact their State Administering Agency or the National Criminal Justice Association.
Rural and Small Department Violent Crime Reduction Program
This funding seeks to support small and rural agencies in their efforts to combat violent crime. This program will provide funding to small and rural agencies and to prosecutors who are interested in implementing or improving the capacity of their organization around one or more critical elements found in the Violent Crime Reductions Operations Guide or the Prosecutors’ Guide to Reducing Violence and Building Safer Communities.
Training & Technical Assistance
Law Enforcement-Mental Health Learning Sites
Helps public safety personnel implement effective responses to people with mental health needs, including those police and other Council of State Governments Justice Center stakeholders frequently interact with.
Project Safe Neighborhoods Training and Technical Assistance Program
BJA, in partnership with Michigan State University, the CNA Institute for Public Research, and the National Center for Victims of Crime, provides training and technical assistance in the implementation of Project Safe Neighborhoods.
OJJDP National Training and Technical Assistance Center
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention provides TTA resources to address the needs of juvenile justice practitioners and support state and local efforts to build capacity and expand the use of evidence-based practices.
The National Gang Center contains numerous resources to support communities that are working to prevent and reduce violence. The NGC provides both direct engagement and produced guidance assist localities where those people and places most at-risk of experiencing violence are involved in group-related violence.
The Smart Policing Initiative generally is available to program grantees, but there are publicly available resources on the website. These resources include implementation guides, toolkits, survey guides, community engagement strategies, and problem-oriented policing tactics.
Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative
The Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative provides funding and assistance to rural law enforcement agencies seeking to reduce violent crime. Many of the resources are for grantees, but publicly available resources include a clearing house of guides, reports, podcasts and webinars from researchers, partner agencies, and innovators on addressing drivers of violence across different types of communities.
Guides, Reports and Webinars
BJA Violent Crime Reduction Summit Resource Center
Resources from the BJA Violent Crime Reduction Summit designed to offer insights and tools to jurisdictions in addressing violent crime that impacts their communities.
Project Safe Neighborhoods Blueprint for Success (PDF, 4.3 MB)
This BJA resource provides background information about the DOJ initiative Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), how to build a strong PSN initiative, including the use of data and evidence, key design elements, and training and technical assistance services available. This report also identifies and describes the implementation of the various PSN features linked to its effective performance.
Paving the Way for Project Safe Neighborhoods: SACSI in 10 US Cities (PDF, 353 KB)
The Department of Justice launched the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) to test data-driven intervention strategies for targeted homicide, youth violence, firearm violence in 9 cities and rape and sexual assault in 1 city. The study found that the SACSI approach, when implemented effectively, is associated with reductions in targeted violent crimes, sometimes by as much as 50 percent. This report highlights the key elements that led to success of SACSI, such as leadership provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the integration of research into planning and intervention strategies, collaborative strategic planning, and implementation of various intervention strategies.
Violent Crime Reduction Operations Guide (PDF, 5.2 MB)
This BJA-sponsored, practitioner-focused guide outlines actions and activities that have contributed to successful crime-fighting strategies throughout the country. This guide complements existing conversations and offers a unique “for the field, by the field” perspective that combines best practices and research to assist law enforcement executives in assessing capacity and strategic planning.
Crime Solutions Program Profile: Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS)
This is a community-based program that brings police, local government agencies, and the community together to prioritize problems and prevention efforts in Chicago, Ill. The goal is to solve neighborhood crime problems, rather than react to only to their symptomatic consequences. The program is rated Promising. Police beats or geographical units that implemented the program experienced a statistically significant reduction in crime and calls to 911, compared with police beats that did not. This program profile details the description, methodology, and evaluation outcomes.
Crime Solutions Program Profile: Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative (CAGI)
A crime-focused initiative, designed to address gang-related gun homicides in selected cities. The Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative (CAGI) was implemented in 12 select cities in response to increasing gang prevalence across the country. The main purpose of the CAGI was to prevent and reduce gang-related crime. The initiative involved a comprehensive model of suppression (enforcement), prevention, and reentry. The program is rated Promising; there was a significant reduction in gun homicides related to gang crime in cities that implemented the initiative.
Bringing a Folding Chair: Planning for Community Violence Intervention and Prevention
During this webinar, a diverse group of multi-disciplinary leaders in the community-based violence intervention space spoke about the importance of cross-sector collaborations between trusted partners.
Meaningful Strategic Planning that Produces Results
In this webinar experts in strategic planning share experiences on how to get started and how to navigate challenging strategic planning issues. The session also includes considerations for multi-disciplinary partner engagement, strategic plan elements, ways to measure impact, and DOJ training and technical assistance opportunities.
The Prosecutors' Guide for Reducing Violence and Building Safer Communities
Informed by a roundtable of experienced prosecutors from around the country, this guide provides a systematic way for prosecutors’ offices to evaluate their practices with respect to the key elements of a successful violent crime reduction strategy. This guide is intended to enable the executives responsible for operating a prosecutor’s office to identify policies and practices that can be readily implemented, as well as those that represent actionable goals to work toward. It suggests practices that are customizable and scalable, from foundational to enhanced, depending on an office’s available resources and experiences, as well as jurisdiction-specific needs and challenges.
Project Safe Neighborhoods Webinar on Building and Enhancing PSN Partnerships and Strategies
This recorded webinar reviews strategies PSN programs have used for building partnerships, including approaches to planning, communication, information sharing, accountability and sustainability.
This guide provides information for prosecutors, law enforcement, and community partners to develop and sustain effective responses to violent crime. The guide provides insights on identifying stakeholders, establishing metrics, and utilizing training and technical assistance resources.
Violent Crime Reduction Operations Guide
This guide, developed under the leadership of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, provides an action plan for police leaders on how to focus their leadership on community engagement, partnerships, accountability, resources and sustainability, training and tactics, analytics and intelligence, and technology, to comprehensively work to reduce violence.