SITE OVERVIEW ♦ MERIDIAN | MISSISSIPPI
Target Area: Meridian’s East End Neighborhood • Population: 3,600
Fiscal Agent: The Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi
Research Partner: Mississippi State University
Crime Concerns: Gang-related violence, aggravated assaults, homicides, burglary, and other violent crimes
BCJI Funding Year: 2015 Planning
Neighborhood Profile
The East End was once a prime neighborhood in Meridian and is considered a historic district for its association with the “Golden Age” of the city’s founding in 1830. Today, however, the poverty rate is 41 percent, compared to the county rate of 23 percent, and the median household income is $24,750, compared to $36,796 statewide. The neighborhood, with seven public housing units, is 94 percent African American and has seen its population decline to 23 percent between 2000 and 2009.
Revitalization efforts in the East End have been undermined by gang-related assaults, drug trafficking, loitering and increased break-ins. The City of Meridian experiences one of the highest rates of property crime in the state, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report Statistics, and Meridian Police Department’s (MPD) 2014 crime data shows the proposed target area has a high density of property crime and 21 percent of the city’s violent crimes. The MPD’s gang task force has identified 11 gangs in the East End Neighborhood, contributing to both local crime offenses and low perceptions of community safety.
Planning Process
The community’s BCJI initiative—the East End Meridian Project for a brighter future, by Helping, giving Opportunity, and creating Pride through Engagement (Project H.O.P.E.)—builds on decades of revitalization work in the community, including a 2012 Choice Neighborhood Initiative planning grant. During the two-year Choice Neighborhood Initiative planning period, East End residents prioritized public safety issues, leading the charge to transform an unoccupied unit in the heart of the community into a new police substation and forming a Neighborhood Watch program.
Over 18 months of BCJI planning, East End partners will work with researchers at Mississippi State University to examine the drivers of crime in the community on a deeper level, emerging with a strategic plan for crime reduction to expand on prior work. Project H.O.P.E. has three overarching objectives, each supported by multiple subgoals:
- Increase Meridian Police Department’s capacity to use data-driven, evidence-based approaches to reduce gang crime and increase community safety.
- Enhance the Boys & Girls Club’s ability to improve educational and job opportunities for East End students.
- Increase collaboration and communication with East End residents to continue to strengthen community buy-in of revitalization strategies and renewed investments and/or resources to the community.
Project H.O.P.E. will also leverage other East End prevention assets, including a new early education initiative with the school district, youth church programs, higher education institutions including Meridian Community College and an MSU Meridian campus, and the Weems Community Mental Health Center. The program will utilize the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Best Practices to Address Community Gang Problems as its anti-gang strategic framework.
Other Key Partners
The Meridian Police Department, the City of Meridian, the Meridian Housing Authority, the Pastors Association, and the Lauderdale Sherriff’s Department
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