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.
Shock was the word an area youth outreach activist used to describe the reaction of two dozen men who were “invited” to a call-in as part of the “Don’t Shoot” campaign.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and David Fein, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, said Project Longevity has begun in New Haven (an effort to reduce gun violence by directly engaging violent groups with warning and offers of assistance to change) and will be expanded to Bridgeport and Hartford. Hailed as successful in other cities such as Chicago and Cincinnati, the program may be implemented statewide, a first for the program, officials said. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said by implementing the program statewide it could serve as a national model.
The National Network for Safe Communities’ group violence intervention strategy (GVI) received high profile federal endorsement when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder traveled to New Haven to launch Connecticut’s Project Longevity—a groundbreaking statewide implementation aimed at making GVI “how we do business every single day,” according to Governor Dan Malloy.
In its first six years, an innovative alcohol monitoring program called the South Dakota 24/7 Sobriety Project, imposed on thousands of high-risk alcohol-involved offenders, helps reduce DUI arrests, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
What if we’ve been looking in the wrong places all along? The Windy City is turning its focus away from “bad neighborhoods” and toward the individuals and gangs responsible for most of the violence, writes David Kennedy.
A new RAND Corporation report outlines the illicit drug landscape in the United States, providing insights about how some of the challenges might be addressed and highlighting other problems that need further study.
After experiencing challenges with traditional law enforcement approaches, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, Austin Police Department and the community plan to implement DMI to save the neighborhood on 12th and Chicon. Former High Point Police Chief James Fealy discusses how he learned that traditional enforcement actions do nothing to stop the open-air drug markets during his 30 years at Austin Police Department before moving to High Point, North Carolina in 2002 to take over as chief of police.
National Network Director David Kennedy explains how combining clear community standards with a powerful deterrence message has helped cities around the nation overpower crime with miniminal use of incarceration.
“What turns out to be true no matter where you go,” he said, “is the violence is always driven by a very small population of very distinct offenders… In those groups you find guys who have astronomically high rates of criminal offending and really extreme criminal records.”
Malloy said the state will spend at least $500,000 to implement in Hartford and Bridgeport a program known as “Focused Deterrence,” which would concentrate on individuals who have been arrested before and who police believe are responsible for most of the gun violence.
Odd alliances across the political spectrum are changing the way we think about crime, incarceration and their damaging effects on communities.
Focusing on drug markets rather than users means less crime
National Network's David Kennedy, NAACP director Ben Chavis, and Russell Simmons, chairman of Rush Communications and globalgrind.com, joins MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan in Austin, Texas to talk about the failed war on drugs and how the underlying problems of the Texas prison system.
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High Point police captain Larry Casterline discuss the successes of the Group Violence Intervention and underlying methods for potential success in Wilmington and how Wilmington can adapt the High Point model to lower violent crime and repeat offenders in the city. “There are alternatives to arrest that you can use to reduce violent crime and it works,” he said.
Elected officials across the nation from both political parties have begun to examine ways to replace a tough corrections policy with a smart one. This article tracks the theories and successful approaches that are at the core of the new thinking, including the National Network’s violence reduction strategies.
Sarah Schweig interviews sociologist Andrew Papachristos about his studies on urban neighborhoods, social networks, street gangs, violent crime, and gun violence at an executive session in Washington, D.C. centered around a conversation about improving public health approaches to public safety.
Lt. Daniel E. Gannon is a 25 year veteran of the Providence Police Department in Rhode Island. A year after the implementation of the Drug Market Initiative, calls for police services decreased by 58 percent, reported drug crime decreased by 70 percent, and drug calls to police decreased by 81 percent. Lt. Gannon maintained strong community relations and helped lead a follow-up initiative in 2009.
