Implementing Outreach-Based Community Violence Intervention Programs
By Shani Buggs, Mia Dawson & Asia Ivey
Community violence, or interpersonal violence between non-intimate partners that occurs in public places, is rooted in poverty and trauma, which, particularly in the United States, are undergirded by racial capitalism and white supremacy. Community-based outreach has been well documented as an integral strategy for reaching historically marginalized and disenfranchised populations in multiple fields. Community-based violence intervention (CVI) approaches that utilize outreach workers—professionals who identify and engage youth and adults who have a high risk of violence involvement—have the potential to quell violence in cities around the country. Indeed, the Biden-Harris Administration has not only highlighted CVI as an important element of community safety, but it has also committed federal dollars to CVI programs.
This amplification of CVI as a promising violence-reduction approach has also led to greater scrutiny of the various challenges these initiatives face in their implementation and operation, capacity, staffing needs, and the contexts for which they are employed. Without a more precise grasp of the elements that make these approaches effective and the challenges that must be mitigated for successful implementation and operation, outreach-based violence intervention programs, regardless of the intent or passion of the staff, may fail to achieve their goal of significantly reducing violence in their communities. However, if properly funded, supported, implemented, and evaluated, CVI has the potential to expand the paradigm of community safety without furthering over-reliance on law enforcement and the criminal legal system. This report seeks to fill gaps in our understanding of how best to implement, support, and sustain outreachbased CVI efforts by synthesizing existing literature and drawing on interviews with over a dozen CVI program leaders with deep expertise in the field.
Outreach-Based CVI Program Models and Their Needs
The majority of outreach-based CVI programs today are individualized interventions that operate as independent community-based organizations. They require identifying individuals who are most likely to engage in violence, through community contacts, law enforcement, research, or voluntary participation, and then getting proximate to these individuals, building relationships and relentlessly pursuing connection in order to link them to resources, such as case management, therapy, professional development, or substance abuse treatment that will allow them to make different choices.
Some of these organizations use the health care system, rather than the community, as an entry point to locate those who are most affected by violence and who may be caught in violent cycles. (continued)
New York: LISC 2022. 66p.