The Everett Freeman Initiative

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 1 (Planning and Implementation): Applicants will plan and implement a BCJI strategy that builds partnerships and collaborations in an effort to address a chronic crime issue(s) within the target neighborhood. This category includes applicants who may already have some anti-crime initiatives in place. Applicants with existing anti-crime initiatives will use those initiatives as a platform to plan and implement a BCJI strategy that builds partnerships and collaborations in effort to address a chronic crime issue within the target neighborhood. The crime issue must represent a significant proportion of crime or type of crime within the larger community or jurisdiction. Spearheaded by the fiscal agent, this BCJI strategy should be designed by a cross-sector partnership to include community stakeholders, law enforcement, and local research partner. This cross-sector partnership will complete an integrated planning phase to analyze the crime issue using data and will develop a coordinated response that includes both place-based and community-oriented strategies to address the crime issue. To successfully develop and implement the BCJI strategy, the cross-sector partnership will need to work with public and private agencies, organizations (including philanthropic organizations), and individuals to gather and leverage resources needed to support the financial sustainability of the plan. To achieve the core goal of BCJI, the cross-sector partnership is encouraged to consider how the BCJI strategy, once implemented, might serve as the platform to a future neighborhood revitalization plan.

CA/NCF