The Safe-Passage Program
A Dynamic Data-Informed Model for Safe Passage Corridors to Schools in the South and West Wards of Newark – NCST utilizes NPSC’s risk terrain maps to optimally deploy social workers and other resources around school areas in the South and West Wards of Newark that need their services most.
The Newark Community Street Team (NCST) agreed to dynamically deploy its outreach workers and ‘Safe Passage Program’ to the highest-risk places around four South and West Wards schools to help ensure students get to and from school safely.
“NCST provides Safe Passage at schools with hot spots of violence surrounding select contracted schools. Outreach Workers are deployed in terms at key exit and entry points of the school, bus stops, stores and intersections where youth congregate in and around the school. Safe Passage allows Outreach Workers to develop relationships with the youth and their parents, intervene in and mediate potential conflicts, and ensure that students arrive to and from school in a safe and timely manner.” Based on NPSC's analysis, a dynamic model for these routes that adapts to changes in the criminogenic environment surrounding these facilities have been proposed. See below.
The Safe passage maps below show the current Safe passage routes as well as the proposed routes for four schools in Newark; North Star Clinton Hill, Kipp Academy, Brick Achieve, and University. The current routes were selected after careful consideration by the Safe Passage team members. In order to supplement the anecdotal evidence used for route selection, the NPSC conducted risk terrain analyses for each school to provide further evidence based on data. Based on updated crime and risk factor data, the map below identifies the areas with risky environments and high levels of violence. Based on these results, it is recommended that the safe passage routes be extended, as seen in purple.
North Star Clinton Hill, located at 600 Clinton Ave, serves children from grades 5 to 8.
Kipp Academy, located at 129 Littleton Ave, serves children from grades 9 to 12.
Brick Achieve School, located at 534 Clinton Ave, serves children from grades K‐3 and 5‐6.
University High School, School, located at 55 Clinton Pl serves children from grades 7 to 12.