Lessons from Effective Offices of Violence Prevention

Violence is highly concentrated in cities. And in recent decades, cities have gained more political and fiscal autonomy from central governments, making local elected officials the main focus of societal demands to prevent and reduce violence. Consequently, many municipalities have created or supported Offices of Violence Prevention (OVPs), albeit with different institutional designs, denominations, resources, and challenges. Hoping to help optimize their functioning, this report reviews components that could make these offices more effective and offers a tradeoff analysis of different decisions involved in designing violence prevention strategies.

This research report applies a broad definition of centralized OVPs, describing them as local-level governmental, civil-society-run, or public-private entities whose central mandate is to prevent differ- ent forms of violence through approaches that do not rely primarily on law enforcement. While these entities may have multiple names and institutional locations, this research looked for entities with suffi- cient institutional strength and resources to advance their own violence prevention agendas, in collabora- tion with community partners.

This research effort also focused on entities with significant civilian leadership. Numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and think tanks have produced comprehensive analyses and assessments of OVPs in US cities.3 This report is particularly indebted to efforts by the Vera Institute of Justice and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform reports on the landscape of OVPs. Building on this research, this report provides an analysis that includes international entities.

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