June 2018  |  The Crime Report  

On May 21, the White House issued a statement that repeatedly used the word “animals” to describe people involved in the MS-13 gang. Two days later, at a public forum on Long Island, this language was repeated and reinforced.

MS-13 (the initials for Mara Salvatrucha) originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s through a complex interplay of people fleeing El Salvador’s civil war, Mexican gangs in southern California, and US immigration policy.

Tags: NNSC International

April 2018  |  The United States Studies Centre  

PODCAST: Following the recent March for Our Lives, gun violence is front and centre in America’s law and order debate. Join us at our upcoming event in collaboration with the National Network for Safe Communities looking at how cities implement strategies to reduce violence, improve public safety and minimise arrest and incarceration. Can certain interventions improve relationships between law enforcement and the communities it serves?

Tags: NNSC International

April 2018  |  Daily Freeman  

The National Network for Safe Communities’ Intimate Partner Violence Intervention (IPVI) was introduced during a press conference Tuesday afternoon at City Hall. Ulster County District Attorney Holley Carnright, flanked by cardboard silhouettes representing 11 local women killed by their partners, said the initiative uses statistical analysis and data from different agencies to identify people who might commit intimate partner violence.

“Once we’ve identified a person who we think is going to commit domestic violence again, we have personal contact with them,” Carnright said. “In addition to the personal contact we have with the offender or potential offender, we have a parallel process where we engage the victims. We do what we’ve been doing for a while. We try to educate the victims, make sure they understand about services that are available to them.”

Tags: Kingston Intimate Partner Violence Intervention

April 2018  |  USA TODAY  

One local police department has spent the past six years pioneering a strategy that can help identify domestic violence abusers. High Point, N.C., had a problem. From 2004 to 2008, one-third of the city’s murders were related to intimate partner violence, well above both the state and national averages, according to former police chief Jim Fealy. So in 2009, the police department, in partnership with the National Network for Safe Communities, began to take action. Its approach tracks alleged abusers and intervenes accordingly depending upon the severity of the violence. From 2012, when the strategy was implemented, to 2014, there was just one intimate partner violence homicide in the city, compared with 17 from 2004 to 2011. Calls to police in High Point to report intimate partner violence declined by 20%, as did arrests, and the percentage of victims who were injured also dropped from 2012 to 2014.

Tags: High Point Intimate Partner Violence Intervention

April 2018  |  New York Times  

In this opinion piece for the New York Times, Tina Rosenberg highlights the NNSC's group violence prevention work across jurisdictions. 

In Pittsburgh, homicides hit a 12-year low in 2017; the mayor credited Ceasefire. Detroit’s homicide rate hit a 50-year low in 2017. Its police chief, James Craig, said in an interview that the city had started Ceasefire in two high-crime precincts in 2015 and has gradually expanded it. “I wasn’t much of a believer when I first got to Detroit,” he said. “But what we have in place now is probably one of the better-working Ceasefire models. It has had a profound impact on sustaining violent crime reduction.”

In Newburgh, statistics in a voluminous New York State report show shootings are way down (See pdf, page 1202) — from 55 victims in 2015 to 17 last year. Violent crime, especially firearm crime, has plummeted. In 2012, the year Oakland began its current version of Ceasefire, it was the third-most dangerous American city, with 126 murders. Last year it had 74. In 2017, Oakland had 277 nonfatal shootings — down from 557 in 2012.

Tags: DetroitNewburghOaklandPittsburgh Group Violence Intervention Custom NotificationsSupport and Outreach

March 2018  |  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  

Through Tuesday afternoon, the city had seen 14 non-fatal shootings in 2018, Cmdr. Joseph said, compared to 31 through the same period last year — a 55 percent decrease.

He attributes the decline to the bureau’s Group Violence Intervention [GVI], a strategy that aims to reduce gang-related gun violence by targeting the city’s most violent gang members while also offering social services and support to those who agree to stop shooting.

Tags: Pittsburgh National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice Group Violence Intervention Support and Outreach