Research consistently shows that violence disproportionately concentrates among small numbers of individuals, groups, and locations at the highest risk for violence. Before taking action, leaders should perform analyses to identify the people and places driving violence in their jurisdiction.
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 3, since these three are related to one another.
Key Resources
Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative
The Community-Based Violence Intervention 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.
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.
Local Law Enforcement Crime Gun Intelligence Center Integration Initiative
CGIC grants provide funding to local law enforcement to incorporate business practices that allow for them to utilize the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network and eTrace to generate crime gun intelligence. NIBIN automates ballistics evaluations of gun case images and provides actionable investigative leads in a timely manner.
Additional Resources
Grant Funding
Training & Technical Assistance
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 guidance to 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 only 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
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 TTA 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.
Policing the Connected World: Using Social Network Analysis in Police-Community Partnerships
This COPS Office report focuses on the use of Social Network Analysis in police-community partnerships and how this approach can reduce crime while building local trust. As demonstrated through examples in Chicago, Illinois; New Haven, Connecticut; and East Palo Alto and Stockton, California, gathering information from local residents and service providers allows police to gain actionable insights into which individuals and groups are at the greatest risk of engaging in or being victimized by violence. When law enforcement agencies can target their deterrence efforts, they increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations.
Identifying Hot Spots of Juvenile Offending: A Guide for Crime Analysts
This COPS Office guide provides an overview of the procedures developed to identify and map hot spots of youth violence and crime and discusses how this information can inform problem-solving approaches that stress prevention and place-management strategies over enforcement strategies. It is intended as a resource for relatively experienced crime analysts who are familiar with extracting data to conduct hot spot analysis and to enable them to tailor their analyses.
Managing the Group Violence Intervention: Using Shooting Scorecards to Track Group Violence
Group shooting scorecards are a systematic means of identifying the groups that are driving violence to target for focused interventions administered by a partnership of community members, law enforcement, and social service providers. Developed to support focused deterrence strategies, shooting scorecards help ensure that law enforcement agencies focus scarce resources on the groups that consistently generate the most gun violence. This publication provides an overview of shooting scorecards, its links to problem analysis and performance measurement systems in police departments, the importance of data quality, and the key steps in using the scorecards.