Central Park/Ybor Choice Neighborhood BCJI Enhancement

The goal of Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) Program is to improve community safety by designing and implementing effective, comprehensive approaches to addressing crime within a targeted neighborhood as part of a broader strategy to advance neighborhood revitalization through cross-sector community-based partnerships. Research suggests that crime clustered in small areas, or "crime hot spots," accounts for a disproportionate amount of crime and disorder in many communities. In times of limited resources, local and tribal leaders need tools and information about crime trends in their jurisdiction and assistance in assessing, planning, and implementing the most effective use of criminal justice resources to address these issues. They also need a core foundation of resources and tools to support data-driven strategy development, community-driven capacity building for collaborative problem solving, and assistance to identify and implement evidence-based and innovative strategies to target these drivers of crime. A multi-faceted approach like BCJI targets crime in the locations where most crime is occurring. This approach can have the biggest impact while also building the capacity of the community to deter future crime.

This program is a part of the Administration's larger Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI) that supports local and tribal communities in developing place-based strategies to change neighborhoods of distress into neighborhoods of opportunity. Recognizing that interconnected solutions are needed in order to resolve the interconnected problems existing in distressed communities, the BCJI Program is designed to provide neighborhoods with coordinated federal support in the implementation of comprehensive place-based strategies to effectively reduce and prevent crime by connecting this support to broader comprehensive neighborhood revitalization efforts. The FY 2013 program will focus on funding efforts in two major categories: (1) planning and implementation and (2) enhancement.

Category 2 (Enhancement): Applicants will plan to augment an established partnership and collaboration to address a chronic crime issue(s) within the target neighborhood. The established partnership or collaboration can have either a crime or neighborhood revitalization focus. The crime issue must produce a significant proportion of crime or type of crime within the larger community or jurisdiction. The established partnership will strengthen its coalition by adding other essential partners, such as the local law enforcement agency, other criminal justice partners, the research partner, and revitalization partners. The established partnership will also build resident and community support for and involvement in the development and implementation of the BCJI strategy. This new cross-sector partnership will then designate a fiscal agent and develop a BCJI strategy to comprehensively address crime in targeted hot spots. The BCJI strategy will consist of place-based, community-oriented crime strategies and will include the BCJI program elements as outlined in this solicitation. To successfully develop and implement the BCJI strategy, the cross-sector partnership will work with public and private agencies, organizations (including philanthropic organizations), and individuals to integrate funding streams and high-quality programs into the BCJI strategy, and also leverage resources needed to support the financial sustainability of that strategy. To achieve the core goal of BCJI, Category 2 requires implementation of the BCJI strategy in collaboration with an existing neighborhood revitalization plan.

CA/NCF