In a year of racial reckoning, the question of how to help communities become authentically safe, just and equitable for all their members is at the forefront of our minds. LISC CEO Maurice A. Jones and Safety + Justice VP Mona Mangat describe how we are doubling down on time-tested strategies to support healing safety partnerships between residents and community-serving police, and introduce new intiatives to take that empowering work farther and deeper.
Many centuries and strands of systemic discrimination have led us to the national reckoning we face today. The most recent deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police, the judicial response to those deaths, and the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color have all culminated in a collective outcry, and have elevated an enduring public debate around the role and value of policing: should we “defund the police?” Is “self-policing” the only reasonable scenario in which communities of color can be truly free from state-sanctioned violence?
From the perspective of our experience, this debate sets up a false dichotomy: safety is synonymous with intense police presence; or Black and Brown communities will only ever be victimized by the presence of police. We believe there are other, legitimate pathways that can lead communities to be, and feel, truly safe. We have the evidence from our years of working in communities that this is possible, but we know we have much hard work ahead to make it lasting, and widespread.
For 25 years, LISC has supported local organizations to lead efforts that improve safety and justice in their communities. We have also focused our investments on helping community groups and residents build and repair the determinants of safety—the requisite elements of any vibrant community. These, of course, include healthy, affordable housing, quality educational and recreation opportunities, and access to jobs that provide a living wage and room for advancement.
Just as important on the list of determinants are high-functioning partnerships between community members, community developers and community-serving law enforcement personnel to address local causes of crime and the flaws of the criminal justice system. We believe these relationship are essential to creating genuine safety, and they have proven to help lower crime, bring about deeply healing collaborations, and drive systems change in dozens of places across the country.
Those partnerships, in turn, generate their own programs and strategies, from youth basketball leagues in Chicago and Richmond, VA, to supporting street outreach workers in cities such as Providence, New Haven, Baltimore and San Francisco, to revitalizing crime “hot spots” in virtually every community where we invest.
Still, as part of our path to renewal and community safety, we must continue to hold up a lens to the systemically racist policies and practices that fuel poverty and crime, and that have created a militarized police presence that violates the very definition of safety in our neighborhoods.
To that end, LISC Safety and Justice is refining and scaling the strategies we have long employed, with profound results. And we are launching several new initiatives that leverage our years of safety partnership-building, and the know-how we’ve developed as a result. Each of these initiatives will supply the tools, resources and human capital required to empower communities in their quest for security and wellbeing. Each also taps the experience of the nearly 100 local places where our team has invested and developed trusting connections.
- Community Safety & Justice Alliances. We are scaling, refining and intensifying our long-standing practice of helping residents, community groups and community-minded law enforcement come together to plan and carry out strategies for reducing crime and police intervention, particularly by targeting crime “hotspots.” LISC funding and technical assistance will support these Alliances, which are led by local organizers, with special emphasis on ensuring that community voices are front and center in justice reform efforts. A network of Alliances will encompass our 35 urban markets and extend across our rural communities, as well as to other localities where we have built relationships through our prior work.
- The Justice Solutions Institute is a new initiative that builds on our decades of work offering technical assistance and training to community safety and justice reform practitioners. The Institute will be an online and in-person forum for peer networking and mutual support among those practitioners. It will train participants in crime reduction strategies, and will also provide guidance for spearheading reform efforts in local police departments and judicial systems. An annual conference will bring these practitioners together, along with national advocates and policymakers, to share ideas and solve problems.
- The Vibrant Spaces Fund will be a national grant pool to support community-led repurposing and beautification of vacant and deteriorated properties, which often attract crime and nuisance activity that can lead to over-policing in affected communities. Grants will assist community organizations and their partners to transform these spaces into vital neighborhood assets.
- The Justice Renewal Fellowship will support emerging justice reformers from around the country—along the lines of our Rubinger Fellowship, which provides funds and peer support for community developers to carry out a passion project in their field. The Justice Renewal Fellowship will elevate the work and document the ideas of justice workers, promoting their innovations and making them broadly available to communities across the nation.
We submit that the question we need to ask ourselves is not whether police should continue to exist or not. The question is how do we nurture transformative and highly effective collaborations among communities, local organizations and law enforcement in such a way that we create an environment in which all people can work, play, raise families and live with the birthright of their human dignity honored, and intact. Pursuing the answer to this question is at the heart of our work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maurice A. Jones, President & CEO, LISC
Prior to joining LISC, Maurice was the Secretary of Commerce for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where he managed 13 state agencies focused on the economic needs in his native state. Before that, he was second in command at the U.S. Dept. of HUD, serving as deputy secretary in charge of operations. He has also been Commissioner of Virginia’s Dept. of Social Services and Deputy Chief of Staff to then-Gov. Mark Warner. At the U.S. Treasury Dept. during the Clinton Administration, he managed the CDFI fund. His private sector experience includes top positions at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, a Richmond law firm and a private philanthropy investing in community-based efforts to benefit children in Washington, D.C.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mona Mangat, Vice President, Safety & Justice Initiatives
Mona directs national safety and justice initiatives at LISC, including overseeing efforts in dozens of cities funded through private and government investments. Her experience includes providing technical assistance to community-law enforcement alliances seeking to reduce crime while building the trust and infrastructure that make communities resilient and safe.