The National Network's approach has attracted significant media attention over twenty years. This page features the most recent coverage of our work and a searchable archive of media about the National Network's projects around the nation and abroad.
The National Network convenes regular conferences, working sessions and webinars to discuss and promote developments in its core areas of operation, showcase innovations, and set research and development priorities.
"People in these neighborhoods don't like chaos and destruction," said Kennedy, who has been advising Baltimore on its Operation Ceasefire strategy. "It's being driven by a small, number of people."
“Operation Ceasefire is working,” said NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis. The program, which started in December, reaches out to gangbangers and potential recruits, offers them social services, and tries to persuade them to refrain from violence that can get them killed.
Op-ed by David Kennedy on Jill Leovy's Ghettoside.
David Kennedy spoke on this panel, entitled Mass Incarceration in America: Assessing the Costs & Human Impacts, at the historic Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice Reform in March.For more information, visit http://www.bipartisansummit.org/.
NY1’s Dean Meminger looks at recent spikes in New York City violence and how the NYPD hopes to battle back.
NY1 News Criminal Justice Reporter Dean Meminger sits down with NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing Susan Herman to discuss her role and the department's "NYC Ceasefire" initiative.
For the transition from prison to life outside to be successful, it needs to be gradual. If someone needed to be locked up yesterday, he shouldn't be completely at liberty today. And he shouldn't be asked to go from utter dependency to total self-sufficiency in one flying leap. He needs both more control and more support. Neither alone is likely to do the job.
"Prison is horrible for the prisoner and expensive for the state," write Mark A.R. Kleiman, Angela Hawken and Ross Halperin over at Vox. It doesn't have to be. Kleiman, Hawken and Halperin study criminal justice policy, and they've recently proposed an innovative solution to help cut America's incarcerated population, and ensure that those who are released don't come back. It's called "graduated re-entry." The idea is to let convicts out of prison early -- real early. Three-years-into-a-ten-year-sentence-early.
As part of the Department of Justice’s ongoing commitment to strengthening the relationship between the criminal justice system and the communities it serves and protects, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Birmingham, AL; Fort Worth, TX; Gary, IN; Minneapolis, MN; Pittsburgh, PA; and Stockton, CA to be the first six cities to host pilot sites for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. As part of a larger effort, each pilot site will assess the police-community relationship and develop a detailed site-specific plan that will enhance procedural justice, reduce bias, and support reconciliation in communities where trust has been harmed. We're enormously excited to begin this work.
National Network partner Risco Mention-Lewis, Deputy Police Commissioner of Suffolk County and founder of the Council of Thought and Action (COTA), talks to News 12 Long Island about a variety of innovative police outreach and training measures to strengthen relationships with minority communities in her jurisdiction.
St. Louis city leaders have been traveling around the country to find effective violence reduction strategies to help curb its’ increasing homicide rate. Today, St. Louis law enforcement and community members visited Kansas City to learn from the National Network's Group Violence Intervention strategy and other tools the city has employed to successfully reduce its' homicide rate. Kansas City No Violence Alliance held a call-in mid-February, where speakers included Kansas City Mayor Sly James, Kansas City Missouri Police Department Darryl Forte', U.S. Attorney Tammy Dickinson and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
In two years of partnership with the National Network, the Don’t Shoot Peoria initiative has brought an overall drop in violent crime. In February, Peoria held its’ sixth call-in meeting delivering a community anti-violence message. Since Peoria’s first call-in, over 200 offenders have reached out for services. Community services coordinator Krista Coleman says up to 35 of the offenders have stayed engaged and connected to the resources provided, helping to support and sustain life off the streets.
David Kennedy spoke on the opening panel at the 10th Annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation at John Jay College of Criminal Justice: “Race, Justice and Community: Can We All Get Along?” In front of an audience that included the recipients of the Guggenheim fellowships, Kennedy discussed his research surrounding these complex issues and ways to move forward, including the core ideas of the DOJ National Initiative: procedural justice, implicit bias, and racial reconciliation.
This article discusses how Chicago Police Department is using Yale University Professor Andrew Papachristos' social network analysis to build a list of the people at highest risk of becoming a shooting victim or shooting somebody else. Using this list, beat officers pay special attention to those at risk, and commanders communicate with them directly using custom notifications.
Rachel Lu highlights Hawaii HOPE strategy, the initial implementation of the swift, certain, and fair approach by Judge Steven Alm, which has significantly reduced re-offending and prison time among low-level drug offenders by subjecting them to randomized drug testing and immediately issuing short jail sentences to non-compliant offenders.
Since the implementation of Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s NOLA FOR LIFE initiative, New Orleans’ murder rate has dramatically declined for three years in a row, bringing the number of murders down to levels not seen since the 1970s. With National Network’s assistance, an effective partnership of law enforcement, community members, and social service providers engage with active group members at “call-in” meetings to communicate an anti-violence message and an offer of help.
National Network Director David M Kennedy sat down with Alec Baldwin on WNYC Radio's Here's The Thing to discuss how the Group Violence Intervention works, and how it was first developed in Boston as "Operation Ceasefire."
John Jay College of Criminal Justice President Jeremy Travis spoke with Brian Lehrer of WNYC Radio about the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice and the broader context of present police-community relations in America.
St. Louis Public Radio discusses this month's recent announcement of the National Initiative to Build Community Trust and Justice with John Jay president Jeremy Travis and the Office of Justice Programs' senior policy advisor Ed Chung.
Vox discusses the Justice Department's new initiative to strengthen the relationships between communities and the criminal justice system, which National Network for Safe Communities will lead. This article does a great job of breaking down the main ideas behind the initiative: enhancing procedural justice, reducing implicit bias, and promoting racial reconciliation between police and the communities they serve.
In the wake of the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, the Justice Department is launching a $5 million initiative to foster better relationships between communities and their police departments. Gwen Ifill talks to Tracie Keesee of the Center for Policing Equity and Ronald Hampton of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.
High Point Chief of Police Marty Sumner recently spoke to the COPS Office Dispatch about the city's initiative that places accountability squarely on domestic violence offenders, which is having a striking impact. Using the National Network’s approach, the strategy emphasizes deterrence, early intervention, and offender accountability, and since its implementation in 2009, High Point has experienced significant reductions in DV-related homicides, recidivism, and arrests.
