ABOUT THE COLLECTIVE
We are a collective of experts in building neighborhood leadership to advance safety -- the groups on the ground that do the work day in and day out to mediate conflict, get people in crisis into supportive services and put youth on a path away from violence and to stability. We represent and support the dozens of small, nonprofit, community-led grassroots organizations that, for decades, have been helping to forge peace, with little support or official recognition from policymakers, elected officials or funding agencies. Investing in the community-based public safety leaders is the key difference-maker in stopping violence, ending mass incarceration and setting the nation on a transformational course toward a shared safety model rooted in systems of care, healing and community self-determination.
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The Collective’s members are the premier national experts in the field. We have convened to preserve the integrity of the model and highlight Black and Brown practitioners' proven practices. The Collective will help CBPS rapidly build the infrastructure, capacity and support needed to scale with public funding.
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The dual emergencies of 2020 -- a global pandemic and a national reckoning on racism in the justice system -- have brought about acute crises in our hardest hit communities, while also spurring a sudden acceptance among many public officials of the need for transformative change. In cities across the United States, homicide and violence rates have increased, in some instances to levels not seen in decades. At the same time, frontline critical assistance service providers, such as neighborhood violence prevention programs and street interventionists, are either operating with limited capacity or have closed. This threatens to destabilize violence prevention resources in neighborhoods across our country.
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The national debate on the direction of criminal justice and public safety policy is now at a tipping point. Suddenly, new federal investments into cities, counties and states grappling with COVID and its related impacts are being offered at a scale completely unimaginable a mere two years ago. The American Recovery Plan is offering billions of discretionary dollars to alleviate the public health crisis and the American Jobs Plan has proposed another five billion dollars for violence prevention in light of the correlation between public health and public safety.
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For the first time in history, a growing consensus on the need for a new approach to safety, combined with a major injection of public money, has the potential to create a permanent seat for Community Based Public Safety practices at the public safety table.
