About the Community Safety Working Group

“Community safety” is a movement- and evidence-informed approach to public safety that prioritizes care, connection, and prevention over punishment, control, and isolation. It asserts that communities, given the proper tools, can keep themselves safe without harmful criminal-legal interventions. And crucially, it recognizes that to truly be safe, we must not only be free of violence in the streets, but free of violence in our homes, free of toxic air and inaccessible healthcare, and free of systemic discrimination in our schools and neighborhoods. Community safety is an acknowledgment that genuine safety comes from holistic investments into people and communities that break, rather than perpetuate, cycles of harm.

• All investments are in programs that evidence suggests will keep individuals, families & communities safe by addressing root causes.

• All investments are in fully non-carceral programs and services. No funding can go to police departments, co-responder models, or entities overseen by carceral actors.

• All investments will shrink the size, scope, and footprint of policing, namely by creating alternative ways that we can manage crises & proactively prevent harm.

• All investments will help to reduce police contact, whether by addressing human needs upfront — thereby preventing potential interactions with police — or replacing police responses with civilian responses.

• All investments reflect the values and priorities of grassroots partners & movement groups — and funding should be structured so that grassroots actors & directly impacted individuals benefit from these dollars.

The Community Safety Working Group is a group of organizations that work collectively to advance our vision of community safety at the federal level. We work directly with lawmakers, grassroots organizations, and other advocates to identify and advance federal investments, legislative proposals, and executive actions that could build genuine safety in our communities—including via a legislative and appropriations agenda that serves as a rallying point for our advocacy efforts throughout the year.

The Community Safety Legislative Agenda is a cross-sectoral letter signed by over 30 organizations dedicated to civil rights, racial justice, public health, youth development, and more. It proposes a set of legislative priorities that lawmakers should embrace to advance community safety across the fields of health and prevention programs, housing and economic security, and youth, families, and community spaces. It uplifts existing legislation, as well as policy solutions that don’t yet have federal bills attached to them.

The Community Safety Appropriations Agenda complements the Legislative agenda by highlighting investments that should be made through the annual budget process, also known as appropriations. We call for increases to long-standing programs like Section 8 Housing vouchers and YouthBuild, as well as exploring big new investments into community health workers, violence intervention, and other community-led supports.