Research Reports

Investing in Governance and Management Can Make Violence Reduction Efforts Successful

Share

In recent years policymakers nationwide have begun committing more public funding to community violence intervention (CVI) in a renewed effort to reduce the toll of gun violence in America’s cities. CVI strategies aim to reduce gun violence by engaging individuals and groups to prevent and disrupt cycles of violence and retaliation, and by establishing relationships between individuals and community assets to deliver services that save lives, address trauma, provide opportunity, and improve the physical, social, and economic conditions that drive violence. CVI strategies complement traditional policing, and tend to rely both on frontline work by a credible and trusted community-based workforce and on aligned work by governmental institutions including mayors’ offices, police departments, prosecutors’ offices, and social service agencies.

Emerging research on CVI strategies is promising, particularly in reducing the risk of involvement in individual violence. However, even among cities that have committed significant funding to evidence-informed CVI work, success in driving down community-level rates of violence remains highly uneven.

In order to explore this apparent contradiction, the Joyce Foundation supported the Crime and Justice Policy Lab (CJP) at the University of Pennsylvania to convene a group of expert practitioners and produce an action research and practice agenda to clarify the challenges and opportunities inherent to implementing, managing and governing CVI work in cities.

To develop their action research agenda, CJP interviewed at least a half-dozen expert practitioners, researchers, and technical assistance providers, and asked them to reflect on the role of implementation, management and governance in sustaining effective CVI strategies. The brief notes that “there is a crucial gap holding back the field of violence reduction: an understanding of not just what programs or strategies to adopt, but how to manage and govern on the city level to reduce serious violence.”

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, the National Network for Safe Communities, the California Partnership for Safe Communities, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, and the University of California at Davis Violence Prevention Research program were among those interviewed and collectively noted significant differences in outcomes across cities implementing CVI work, even when those cities were making significant funding available to frontline organizations and publicly committing to evidence-informed CVI practices.

CJP and the experts interviewed concluded that significant, continued investments in research were providing enormous value to the violence reduction field, but that further public and private investments in the following could help improve crucial and overlooked areas of practice:

  • Research: Support systematic study of how cities structure, govern, and manage violence reduction efforts at present, in order to help policymakers and practitioners understand of what key capacities – besides the presence or absence of funding – facilitate or inhibit effective and sustained CVI work.
  • Technical assistance: Use existing evidence to help cities develop effective strategies to strengthen any such key capacities (e.g. political will, effective management structures, etc.) critical for producing and sustaining violence reduction over time. Technical assistance in the CVI field currently focuses heavily –and understandably – on direct support for frontline organizations in building their capacity and elevating their management, but may be overlooking the role of city leadership.
  • Policy: Engage the field on how to sustain and enhance violence reduction efforts through governance and management.

This action research and practice agenda is timely, as the number of cities committing significant public funding to CVI strategies continues to increase. The U.S. Department of Justice alone has committed $100 million to communities nationwide to reduce community gun violence, with another $100 million to be announced in September 2023. This creates many new and important opportunities for public and private funders alike to support those cities in developing the implementation and management tools to fully leverage those dollars.

About The Joyce Foundation

Joyce is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in evidence-informed public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.

Author

Learn More about Louisa
Portrait of Louisa Aviles

Louisa Aviles

Senior Program Officer

Related Content

In The Media

'The Gun Machine': A podcast about how America was forged by the gun industry

Produced by WBUR and The Trace, the podcast looks into the history of the relationship between the gun industry and the U.S. government. 'The Gun Machine' debuts on Oct. 4, 2023.

Source
WBUR; The Trace

Webinar

New Data from MN on Different Approaches to Public Safety

In recent years, crime and public safety has become a top issue of concern among policy makers, researchers, advocates, and communities. During this briefing, researchers Daniel Gotoff and Brian Nienaber presented data specific to the state of Minnesota.

Research Report

Investing in Governance and Management Can Make Violence Reduction Efforts Successful

An action research and practice agenda to clarify the challenges and opportunities inherent to implementing, managing and governing community violence intervention (CVI) work in cities.

Webinar

Implementing Extreme Risk Protection Orders: Tools for the Field

Lunch & Learn webinar presents a new report that details promising practices for policymakers and practitioners alike in implementing Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) policies more effectively. June 2023

News

Reclaiming Reform: Policing, Public Safety & Public Trust

Joyce and Crain's Business Chicago hosted a public forum to discuss national best practices in police reform and assess how they could be applied to Chicago as the City works to implement it’s consent decree and selects a new leader of CPD.

Webinar

New Responses to Illegal Gun Possession: Prosecutor Led Gun Diversion Program Evaluation Results From Minneapolis, MN and Brooklyn, NY 

During this webinar, researchers from The Marron Institute and the Smart Decarceration Project housed at the University of Chicago present new findings from evaluations of two prosecutor led gun diversion programs

Webinar

Presenting a New Dashboard on Violent Deaths in Michigan

The new tool visualizes information on violent deaths in the state to help communities better develop prevention strategies and policies.

In The Media

Opinion: For those recently released from prison, a job is more than a second chance

Op-ed by Joyce's Quintin Williams. "April is Second Chance Month in Michigan and nationwide. It signifies the importance of jurisdictions reintegrating people with criminal records into community life."

Source
Crain's Detroit Business