Newark is leading the way in public safety reform with data-informed community engagement

Following the death of George Floyd, protests erupted across the United States demanding more social justice, the end of systemic racism, and police reform. These large-scale demonstrations have prompted a national movement seeking extensive changes to the role of law enforcement in public safety. Calls to defund the police have gained traction in some cities as a push to implement or enhance alternative resources directed at community safety and wellness. This requires coordination that capitalizes on the various strengths of multiple local stakeholders.
 
Community policing efforts of the past relied heavily on enforcement-centric responses to crime problems, resulting in an unbalanced relationship between police and members of the communities they serve. Added to this was an asymmetric sharing of information, including data and analytics; police usually controlled the message and the data that informed it. As a result, traditional community policing strategies have missed an opportunity to incorporate local partners to share the burden of crime prevention and public safety in ways that create shared investments in both the problem definitions and intervention strategies.
 
Local community groups in the City of Newark, NJ have engaged a different approach that levels the playing field and brings together multiple stakeholders, including police, to co-produce public safety. The co-production framework of the Newark Public Safety Collaborative (NPSC) enables cooperation to identify problems, contextualize them at local levels, develop tailored place-based solutions, and mobilize existing resources in the most optimal ways. Whereas violence prevention efforts were once left to police who were expected to step-up law enforcement, other city agencies and community leaders are now focusing their resources and expertise on the people and places in need of them most. Their collective efforts strengthen communities by addressing underlying issues. While their initiatives may appear separate from one another, they combine to co-produce a deliberate and impactful response to crime problems throughout the city. Shared data analytics, with spatial diagnosis using Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM), is the common denominator that informs each of their plans and actions. The result is a comprehensive, sustainable, transparent, measured, and effective crime prevention strategy for the City of Newark. Law enforcement is just one part of the effort.
 
To illustrate this with a recent example, the Newark Community Street Team (NCST) mobilized outreach workers to provide safe passage to schools in high-risk areas for violent crime located near seven schools in the West and South Wards of Newark. Social workers and residents from the Urban League of Essex County and the Fairmount Heights Neighborhood Association simultaneously enacted business checks at a select number of liquor stores that were identified through RTM, and validated by residents, as being associated with varying types of deviant behavior. To help coordinate these efforts, the NPSC offered analyses that engaged these and other local organizations and city agencies.
 
In this process, the NPSC serves as a neutral convener by disseminating actionable data analyses in multiple formats plus structured meetings where discussants craft effective and socially just solutions to pressing problems. NPSC’s roundtable discussions offer a unique platform for community groups, police, and other agencies to become equally data-informed and engaged in developing a shared and sustainable public safety agenda that meets community expectations. These elements come together to create a stronger relationship among community partners that fosters co-production and collective efficacy.
 
This evolution from previous public safety approaches empowers community groups to address elements of social justice and economic inequality and find ways to address public safety issues by other means than police enforcement. Through data-informed community engagement (DICE), local agencies maximize existing resources while adding accountability and transparency to public safety strategies. These partnerships act as the backbone of a comprehensive public safety strategy that (1) mobilizes community resources to places that need them the most, (2) co-produces public safety by pooling together resources and expertise, and (3) defines risk narratives to address crime problems. DICE can be replicated and adopted in other jurisdictions, too, to build strong community partnerships that yield effective problem-solving and crime prevention. 

For more information, access the free PDF download from the Rutgers Center on Public Security on Operation Safe Surroundings, available at https://www.rutgerscps.org/opss-book.html.

To learn more about NPSC's program go to www.publicsafetycollaborative.org