Mona Mangat
Op-Ed: What It Will Take to Temper the Gun Violence That’s Tearing Our Communities Apart
In an opinion piece for Philanthropy News Digest, Mona Mangat, LISC’s vice president for Safety and Justice, and Dr. Shani Buggs, a an assistant professor with the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, a national expert on gun violence and a LISC partner, describe the efficacy of community violence intervention strategies and the acute need for more support for these proven solutions. “When we put our trust in community members, when we choose to listen rather than dictate and when we have people in power who understand and fund community-based work, we will begin to see progress,” they write.
Community Violence Intervention Finally Takes Center Stage
For three days in February, community violence intervention practitioners, leaders at the highest levels of the Department of Justice, funders, researchers and intermediaries like LISC met in St. Louis to celebrate and advance community-based safety work. LISC’s vice president for Safety & Justice, Mona Mangat, describes how revelatory it felt to be there and see this historic perspective shift in action.
Making Peace at School: Diversion Programs Can Help Stop Youth Violence Before It Starts
In an op-ed for The 74, LISC vice president of Safety & Justice Mona Mangat describes how school-based violence prevention programs, like those LISC is helping pilot with funding from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, are having a profound effect on the lives of students. These high-touch efforts that involve mentoring and other services, with the right funding and community support, can help sow the seeds of success and belonging, and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline in too many underinvested school districts.
Care First, Jails Last
Los Angeles County has selected LISC to implement key parts of an extraordinary initiative to provide alternatives to incarceration. The $61 million, two-year pilot is working to divert people from jail and instead offer services to help overcome housing instability and mental health and substance abuse challenges. It will also provide a model for how to turn the page on mass incarceration.
LISC’s Safety & Justice Work, a Year After George Floyd
In an in depth Q&A with Shelterforce, Mona Mangat, LISC’s vice president of safety and justice initiatives, discusses why safety and justice work is crucial for the community development field, what it can look like on the ground, and the challenges of working toward authentic criminal justice reform.
Neighborhoods, Vacant Buildings, and a Pathway Out of Crime
In an opinion piece for Shelterforce, Helene Caloir, director of LISC’s New York State Housing Stabilizing Fund, and Mona Mangat, head of Safety & Justice programming, make the case for yoking vacant building remediation with community safety partnerships to reduce crime and increase resident empowerment. They point to LISC-supported programs in Flint, MI and Binghamton, NY where this very work brought about greater quality of life and lowered crime rates in targeted areas. Now, they argue, this approach is needed more than ever.
In Pursuit of Safety, Justice and Racial Equity
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.
Reclaiming Charm City
A powerful new documentary offers an unvarnished portrait of residents and police in Baltimore working to stem violence in their beloved city. LISC is a proud national partner of the PBS film, helping to spark attention to its life-and-death message: through collaboration between neighbors and law enforcement, and imperative investment in underserved communities, we can make communities safer and better. It’s the very work LISC supports across the country.
“Safety Is Connected to Everything We Do”: A Q&A with Mona Mangat
Mona Mangat has been a core member of LISC’s community safety team for more than a decade and was recently named National Director for Safety and Justice. She now leads our work to support community-law enforcement partnerships in neighborhoods across the country and spearheads LISC’s increased focus on “pre-entry” and “re-entry” programming: that is, strategies to help prevent vulnerable residents from getting caught up in the justice system in the first place, and to support formerly incarcerated people as they rejoin their communities and the workforce.
Community Partnerships Fight the Opioid Epidemic Where It Lives
A recent flurry of media coverage has shone a spotlight on the decline in opioid overdose deaths in Dayton, Ohio, a city that has been at the epicenter of the crisis. In an article for Next City, Mona Mangat, national director of LISC's Safety & Justice programs, and Matthew Perkins, a senior program officer and criminologist, parse the crucial ways a DOJ grant and technical assistance from LISC helped the community of East Dayton tackle opioid-driven crime and disorder—a local approach hundreds of communities can learn from.