After the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA) started a project to promote equity in criminal justice.
Equity, as defined by the NCJA, means ensuring fair treatment and opportunities, especially for historically underfunded communities. It's about correcting imbalances, not just dividing funds equally.
The group, which represents states and localities, formed a committee that includes representatives from government agencies and community partners to encourage more community involvement on how public money is spent on public safety.
The committee released a report titled "Meaningful Community Engagement in Public Safety Funding." The report's main focus is to guide and promote equitable distribution of federal anticrime grants to states, which amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
It emphasizes the importance of involving communities most affected by violence in the planning of funding states and local governments according to Allison Badger, Director of the NCJA Center for Justice Planning.
Badger said the most effective way to allocate funding is "through using community partners that are in those communities most impacted.”
The report suggests promoting and funding collaborations between state agencies and community-based organizations to ensure that violence prevention strategies are comprehensive and inclusive.
A state can require localities to spend money on a specific problem, while local groups may argue funds should be spent on a different issue, Badger said. This reflects a possible disparity between state mandates and local needs.
Critics of federal anticrime spending say local officials don't always understand the real needs. The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program addresses this by requiring states to engage local stakeholders through strategic plans such as surveys, focus groups and town hall types of engagements.
While not perfect, this process helps ensure funds are better aligned with local issues. However, federal grants make up less than 1% of total criminal justice spending, highlighting the need for careful planning and community input.
Discussing what engaging with different communities looks like, Demaxia Wray, program manager at the NCJA center, said that defining key terms like "communities" is challenging because each one is unique.
She emphasized that the guidance provided in the report needs to be customized "to the needs of individual communities, their organizations, and their CEOs."
The report stressed the importance of providing flexible funding that can be adjusted to meet the specific needs and contexts of different communities, rather than imposing rigid requirements.
Badger emphasized the importance of acknowledging grassroots organizations, which have long been addressing violence without financial support, in light of the recent increase in funding for community violence intervention (CVI).
“We have to, as government funders, think differently about our approach to these dollars than we do with our standard crime prevention dollars,” Badger said.
The committee plans to explore further how financial rules, such as grant regulations, audit requirements, and procurement policies, can be updated to better support equitable funding distribution to community partners.
Badger said that funding often has various components that make it difficult for smaller grassroots organizations to compete for funds or manage them.
“Those kinds of rules that are either legislated or just in policy manuals can often be the biggest barriers to getting the funding out the door,” Badger said.
Rodney Collins, retired chief deputy of the Mecklenburg County, N.C., Sheriff's Office, and a member of the committee responsible for the report, described his agency's process of changing its policy on traffic stops.
This was done based on “community input and feedback and how the community felt like they were being targeted".
The committee found this example valuable, as it demonstrated how meaningful community engagement and incorporating local residents' perspectives can lead to meaningful policy changes.
A key focus of the report was on changing the common government approach to funding, moving away from a "check the box" mentality and towards building genuine, trusting relationships with community-based organizations.
Badger said that the report is just the first step in the committee's ongoing process.
The group plans to offer training based on the report, which will help evaluate its effectiveness more thoroughly. The goal of the report is to introduce new ideas and approaches to both government agencies and community partners.
“We're hoping to take this from a document into an action plan for states in the next year through training,” Badger said.
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