How It Works | Local Initiatives Support Corporation

How BCJI Works

Many communities experience crime problems in only a few locations, such as a set of blocks or perhaps a few discrete intersections. While crime activity may not be widespread, these locations often pose major crime problems for years, resistant to traditional methods of law enforcement or other efforts to interrupt crime patterns.

BCJI provides leaders in those communities the resources to tackle these “hot spots” by: 1) closely examining the varied factors contributing to crime, 2) selecting appropriate response strategies based on evidence of what has worked elsewhere, and 3) tapping the resources of diverse partners as they implement those strategies.

The problems and response strategies vary from place to place, but BCJI efforts everywhere incorporate a set of powerful common themes:

Community Engagement: BCJI requires active roles for residents in identifying problems, selecting strategies, and creating safe and healthy environments. Equity and inclusion are inherent in this theme as both practices and goals.
Data & Research: BCJI engages researchers to help partners collect and analyze data to discover where crime is occurring in their community, select proven solutions to reduce it, and monitor their progress.
Comprehensive Revitalization: BCJI tackles problem properties, unsafe streets and parks, unemployment, transit barriers, and service gaps related to crime, all as part of more holistic community revitalization efforts.
Collaboration & Partnership: BCJI taps the resources of public, nonprofit and community leaders to bring more resources and different approaches to bear on longstanding crime challenges for lasting change. The model calls for cross-sector partners to work together to assess and address the drivers of crime, which is much more effective than a single actor tackling the issue alone.
Sustainability: BCJI builds the skills and knowledge of community partners to enable them to carry on effective problem-solving strategies after the grant term has ended.

This web site is funded in part, through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this web site (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided).