Community Safety Resource Library
Explore Safety Solutions That Work.
Browse our resource library for policy guides, issue briefs, and other resources that can help to inform effective policymaking and advocacy on community safety.
Posted September 10, 2024
Posted September 10, 2024
Posted May 29. 2024
Posted March 20, 2023
This guide explains how state and local lawmakers can use the American Rescue Plan Act to fund community safety programs.
Posted March 20, 2023
This guide explains how state and local lawmakers can use the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to fund community safety projects.
Posted March 20, 2023
This issue brief presents policy recommendations on how evidence-based investments can best keep youth and communities safe.
Posted March 20, 2023
This issue brief presents a survey of the evidence supporting preventative, holistic approaches to safety.
Posted March 20, 2023
This co-authored guide explains how local lawmakers can begin implementing community safety programs and policies.
Posted March 20, 2023
This co-authored guide explains explains how state lawmakers can begin implementing community safety programs and policies.
Posted March 20, 2023
This brief, “A new community safety blueprint: How the federal government can address violence and harm through a public health approach,” is designed to help federal lawmakers develop a multi-disciplinary, evidence-based policy agenda that prioritizes upstream interventions to advance community safety.
Published by Brookings
Posted March 20, 2023
This memo briefly explains why crime rates are a poor way to evaluate safety, then makes a case for developing a new metric that more holistically and comprehensively assesses how safe a community is—a project that will require not only identifying data sources, but also interrogating conceptually what “safety” should include. The memo closes by sketching a proposed framework that could guide a project of metric development.
Posted March 20, 2023
This toolkit provides a roadmap to building civilian crisis response systems, drawing on interviews conducted with advocates, practitioners, and researchers, as well as a review of program materials. It aims to answer the question: what does an antiracist and equitable crisis response program look like?
Posted March 20, 2023
This fact sheet discusses how biased enforcement of traffic laws by police drives racial disparities in the criminal legal system and why first responders dedicated to traffic and
road safety can better serve communities by resolving traffic safety issues
without the potential for punitive law enforcement action.
Posted March 20, 2023
This fact sheet discusses the need for civilian crisis response for individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis. It highlights successful programs and practices across the country.
Posted March 20, 2023
This report analyses 911 data to demonstrate that a significant share of 911 calls could be responded to by civilian crisis responders.
Posted March 20, 2023
This report analyses 911 call data to show that only a small percent of calls are for situations involving a violent crime, revealing the need for a variety of timely responses that unarmed civilian responders may be better equipped to deliver than police. It also finds that “criminal” 911 calls involve underlying substance use or mental health issues, homelessness, poverty, or other well being concerns that police are ill-equipped to handle.
Posted March 20, 2023
Community safety is about advancing safety goals not by addressing symptoms or intervening far too late, but through evidence-based investments that prevent violence and harm upfront. This framework builds on what these “social determinants of safety” are—and how addressing them can make all of our communities truly safe.
Posted April 28, 2023
Local, state, and federal governments in the United States should move beyond superficial changes and fundamentally rethink public safety by reducing the scope of policing, investing in community services, and ensuring abusive officers are held accountable.
