• 1 ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY’S MORAL VOICE
    Members of the High Point Community Against Violence tell drug dealers at a call-in that they are loved
    but that their conduct will not be tolerated.
  • 2 STARTING A MOVEMENT
    Co-Chair Jeremy Travis and other National Network principals at the opening of the First Annual Conference
    in New York in December 2009.
  • 3 TRUTH TELLING AND RACIAL RECONCILIATION
    Providence Police in dialogue with local youth to address misconceptions, build mutual respect, and gain a better understanding of one another's challenges.
  • 4 WALKING SIDE BY SIDE
    Overcoming the tension between law enforcement and minority communities is one of the key issues the
    National Network’s crime prevention strategies address.
    Photo: Eliza Domingo, City of Providence / Office of the Mayor
  • 5 REACHING OUT
    In many National Network jurisdictions, street outreach teams engage directly with offenders to prevent violence and challenge the code of the street.
  • 6 PROMOTING INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL
    The judgment of peers, family members and communities that crime is wrong has been shown to have
    greater impact on behavior than the threat of formal sanctions.

The National Network for Safe Communities is an alliance of cities dedicated to advancing proven strategies to combat violent crime, reduce incarceration and rebuild relations between law enforcement and distressed communities.

JURISDICTION MAP

Arizona California Florida Illinois Maryland Massachusetts Nebraska New York North Carolina Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Texas Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin New Jersey
Select a state above to see where the National Network's crime prevention strategies are currently implemented.

BEYOND STOP-AND-FRISK

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, in an op-ed for The Nation, and Professor James Forman Jr. of Yale Law School, in a New York Times op-ed, are adding their voices to the ever-growing concern over the New York Police Department's damaging stop-and-frisk policy and recommend the National Network’s group violence reduction and drug market intervention strategies as "the most promising and thoroughly researched" approaches to addressing crime and overincarceration in minority communities. 

RETHINKING THE DRUG WAR

America's current drug policies do far more harm than they need and far less good than they might, writes Dr. Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, in The Wall Street Journal. Policymakers should not consider drug legalization as the alternative but instead turn to proven approaches like the National Network's drug market intervention and violence reduction strategies to make communities safer and reduce the number of Americans put behind bars for drug offenses. 

A SHIFT IN FOCUS ON HOW TO SOLVE AMERICA'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE CRISIS


As odd alliances across the political spectrum are changing the way we think about crime and incarceration and their damaging effects on minority communities, there is also growing support for the National Network for Safe Communities' efforts to find ways of healing relationships between young black men, their communities and the law enforcement agencies that serve them. [more]

Highlights

RESEARCH ALERT: CAMPBELL SYSTEMATIC REVIEW STRONGLY SUPPORTS EFFICACY OF NATIONAL NETWORK STRATEGIES 
A Campbell Collaboration Systematic Review, the gold standard in evaluating social science interventions, has found “strong empirical evidence” for the effectiveness of the National Network's group violence reduction and drug market intervention strategies.  The Effects of “Pulling Levers” Focused Deterrence Strategies on Crime (Braga & Weisburd, 2011) confirms what the research record and field experience have long suggested:  that a crime prevention approach that combines deterrence with elements that encourage offenders away from crime, strengthen a community’s collective efficacy, and enhance police legitimacy can create “noteworthy crime reductions.”  more

DON'T SHOOT: ONE MAN, A STREET FELLOWSHIP, AND THE END OF VIOLENCE IN INNER-CITY AMERICA


Read an excerpt of the new book by National Network Co-Chair David Kennedy or click on the cover image above for further information.