ABOUT
The National Network for Safe Communities' 2017 National Conference brought together over 300 important stakeholders to discuss advances in addressing serious violence, building trust and legitimacy, and engaging communities in support of public safety. In a critical moment for the United States' renewed civil rights movement, we wanted to honor a range of voices—police, community activists, service providers, prosecutors, policymakers and others— and not shy away from difficult and painful realities. This event provided a forum for frank conversations, facilitated peer learning and information exchange, and fostered greater mutual understanding. The full agenda and videos of all sessions are available below.
Special thanks to
Agenda
Day One
Welcome & Introduction
Description: To kick off our third national conference, outgoing President of John Jay College Jeremy Travis offered introductory remarks and a message of confidence.
Speakers:
Keynote Remarks
Description: To open NNSC's third national conference, our Director invited two law enforcement executives to share their thoughts and experiences on the overarching themes of the conference: race, history, and policing.
Speakers:
Panel Discussion: Police, Community, History, and Truth-telling
Description: This plenary session (titled "Police, Community, History, and Truth-telling") focuses on the need for law enforcement and the communities they serve to acknowledge the past and settle on a shared narrative in order to move forward and make positive change.
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Panel Discussion: New Science and Research in Violence
Description: Recent research on the dynamics of community violence has helped to inform interventions and enhance their effectiveness. This panel looks at new findings on: how violence concentrates among certain places and networks of people; what makes interventions effective at preventing violence; and how practitioners can make their efforts more timely and responsive.
Introduction:
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Panel Discussion: Effective Violence Prevention: Progress and Practice in Non-US Contexts
Description: There is growing interest in the NNSC’s violence prevention framework in international circles. This panel discusses applications and challenges in contexts as diverse as Sweden, Honduras, Bermuda, El Salvador, and Mexico, while also exploring how government officials and communities are organizing to address those challenges.
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Panel Discussion: Innovations in Support and Outreach
Description: Traditional social service frameworks are often ineffective with those who are at high risk for violent victimization and offending. As this panel illustrates, a new support and outreach approach, organized around truly meeting the high-risk “where they are”, is showing considerable promise.
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Panel Discussion: The Power of Legitimacy in Public Safety
Description: This panel explores the power of legitimacy across public safety contexts: the nuances of community perceptions of law and enforcement; how negative experiences with police can lead young men to gun carrying; how police organizations’ own legitimacy matters to the rank-and-file; and how cities can emb strategies that maximize legitimacy and rule of law.
Introduction:
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Panel Discussion: Reimagining the Role of the Prosecutor in the Community
Description: The Institute for Innovation in Prosecution hosts a facilitated dialogue on the need for prosecutorial reform, the efforts already progressing across the country, and the ways in which prosecutors can provide leadership in the criminal justice reform effort—all of which can help achieve public safety while also addressing racial disparity in outcomes, improving legitimacy and accountability, and reducing mass incarceration.
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Panel Discussion: Sustaining Success: New Thinking on Management and Accountability
Description: Sustainability is central to effective violence prevention. Drawing from on-the-ground experience, panelists discuss how specific tools, structures, and processes can be used to promote focus, follow-through, and accountability.
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Day 2
Welcome & "A Prayer for Our Sons"
Description: Following an introduction by Daryl Atkinson, Co-Director of Forward Justice, poet and storyteller Mama Nia Wilson shares a spoken word piece about her experience as a black mother, which has been "equal parts joy and the greatest fear of my life."
Introduction:
Daryl Atkinson, Civil and Human Rights Attorney; Co-Director, Forward Justice, Durham, North Carolina
Performer:
Nia Wilson, Executive Director, SpiritHouse Cultural Arts and
Community Organization, Durham, North Carolina
Panel Discussion: Community Voices: Speaking, Hearing, Responding
Description: This discussion explores the roles that community members—including faith leaders, survivors of crime, returning citizens, and people involved in the criminal justice system—can and should play in the movement for reform.
Panel Discussion: Reading the Streets: Shooting Reviews
Description: New techniques are producing more timely, detailed, and useful insight into violence dynamics. The panel describes how these advances are informing law enforcement and community violence interventions; improving information sharing across agencies and with community partners; supporting the institutionalization of new practices; and increasing accountability.
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Panel Discussion: Police-Community Reconciliation: Framework and Practice
Description: For many, the sight of a police uniform evokes a feeling of safety and protection; for others, it triggers anxiety or mistrust. To change this dynamic, police agencies nationwide are striving to rebuild confidence with the communities that trust law enforcement the least. This panel highlights NNSC’s reconciliation framework that is being used by police and community members as part of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust & Justice, while also demonstrating that an honest acknowledgment of past harms does not undermine the difficult work police officers undertake, as they protect and serve.
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Panel Discussion: Victim Safety and Offender Accountability: The Intimate Partner Violence Intervention
Description: The Intimate Partner Violence Intervention (IPVI) aims to improve the safety of the most vulnerable victims of intimate partner violence (IPV); remove the burden of preventing IPV from victims; intervene early in the repeat victimization process; make it clear even to low-level offenders that IPV will not be tolerated; and take special action to deter and, if necessary, incapacitate the most dangerous offenders. The panel focuses on how IPVI is informed by and observes both historical perspectives and current best practices of victim advocacy; empowers victims; and builds effective relationships between law enforcement, victim advocates, and social service providers.
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Panel Discussion: New Methods of Community Engagement in Public Safety
Description: Communities already do most of the work of violence prevention themselves. Community norms, community standards, community processes, and what academics call “informal social control” and “collective efficacy” are in the forefront of producing public safety, with “formal social control”—the police and the
law—playing a backup role. Both communities and the police want public safety to be as vested in the community as possible. This panel explores new directions for powerful, near-term violence prevention grounded in community and community capacities.
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Panel Discussion: Reducing Harm: Shifting Police Culture and Practice
Description: Police departments across the country are taking steps to transform their organizational cultures and institutionalize new practices in order to build trust, demonstrate transparency, and reduce the harm of traditional policing practices in the communities they serve. These agencies are instituting new training programs, implementing changes in policy and organizational structure, and adjusting operational and tactical approaches to serious crime and violence. This panel highlights the work of five departments - Birmingham (AL), Camden (NJ), Minneapolis (MN), Pittsburgh (PA), and Stockton (CA).
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Panel Discussion: Understanding and Addressing Harmful Criminal Justice Practices
Description: There is increasing agreement that many traditional criminal justice practices cause harm to individuals, families, and communities. Actors across the criminal justice system exercise enormous discretion: discretion that can be used to halt harmful practices quickly and effectively. Panelists offer direction for more and broader action, while outlining concrete action to reduce harm through policing, setting bail, imposing fines and fees, and using community corrections, while offering direction for more and broader action.
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Closing Remarks
