Safety and Justice

Safety is fundamental to the health and vitality of communities. People need to know that their children can walk to school without fear, and that their streets and parks are peaceful places. Safety is also critical to attracting community-minded businesses and keeping residents engaged with their neighborhoods. When communities are safe, local economies can flourish.

By contrast, in places where opportunities are scarce, the likelihood of people getting caught up in a life of crime is much higher. LISC is committed to nurturing community ecosystems that promote the prosperity and dignity of their residents—conditions that keep people from entering the justice system in the first place, and that support those returning from prison to build successful lives.

LISC’s approach to crime reduction focuses on high crime places–neighborhoods and the specific streets or intersections where crime is a serious problem. It brings together partners with different information, perspectives and resources relevant to those problems. In doing so, LISC seeks to reduce crime but also build the trust and infrastructure that make communities resilient and safe.

How we do it

We offer guidance, training and peer networking. In addition to direct training, we share lessons and tools culled from successful community-oriented crime reduction programs across the country.
We help build community-law enforcement partnerships. These include collaborations with prosecutors, sheriffs and judges, in addition to police forces, dedicated to collaborating with residents. We've been doing this since 1994, especially as a technical assistance provider for the Department of Justice Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation program.
We support pre- and re-entry programming and criminal justice reform initiatives. These run the gamut from youth mentoring and violence prevention programming to probation reform to our network of Financial Opportunity Centers, which help formerly incarcerated people stabilize their finances and train for good jobs.
We help communities create and maintain playing fields and courts, redevelop parks and offer quality after-school and summer programs for youth through our sports and recreation programs and our local offices. Because a basic litmus test of the wellbeing of a neighborhood is the wellbeing of its children.