Justice and public safety strategies to strengthen communities

How do justice issues impact neighborhoods?

Safe neighborhoods increase rates of economic mobility. ¹

There is a causal relationship between a neighborhood’s level of violent crime and rates of upward economic mobility.

Growing up without being exposed to violence strengthens healthy child development and academic progress. ²

Experiencing violence has strong negative effects on children, heightening their stress levels, lowering academic achievement, impairing cognitive development, and reducing high school graduation rates.

Safe neighborhoods have stronger local economies and schools. ³

Neighborhoods with high levels of violence attract less investment, see fewer new business openings, offering fewer jobs, and have more trouble attracting good teaching talent at neighborhood schools.

Safe communities improve neighborhood social networks. ⁴

In violent neighborhoods, individuals (and particularly young men) are forced to navigate strategically through public spaces, shifting their schedules, their networks, and their routines in an effort to minimize the threat of victimization. This limits individuals’ capacity to engage with public life, their communities, and their schools.

Mass incarceration reduces the number of two-parent households in a community. ⁵

Neighborhoods with higher rates of fathers at home tend to produce better economic mobility outcomes for lower-income Black boys.

Concentrated poverty is linked to low high school graduation rates

High school students who lived in high-poverty neighborhoods as adolescents are more likely to drop out than those who lived in low-poverty neighborhoods.