As cities across the country are seeking out innovative strategies to collaboratively build community safety and well-being, Offices of Violence Prevention are emerging as a fresh approach to this work in the United States. Violence Reduction Units in the United Kingdom and Departments of Community Safety and Well-being in Canada are also adopting a similar approach. The shifting national awareness of how community safety is built and sustained means looking beyond traditional enforcement strategies towards a prevention-focused public health perspective. While the benefits of safe and connected communities are typically agreed upon, the how of the work is oftentimes where paths diverge. To Offices of Violence Prevention and these other non-enforcement organizations, building safe and connected communities means considering moving beyond reacting to destabilizing incidents of violence towards proactively building strong communities and safer settings. This means addressing root causes of violence while fostering deep and authentic relationships and outreach strategies with community members. Offices of Violence Prevention are uniquely positioned to do this work, and harnessing available data to identify place-based opportunities for engagement is a powerful tool in a growing community safety toolbox.
Here's how we do it in Green Bay.
Introduction
The City of Green Bay, an economic and cultural hub of Northeast Wisconsin, is experiencing a revitalization in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic development continues, Green Bay will soon be hosting the NFL draft, and community members largely feel safe in their daily lives (Wello Well-Being Survey, https://wello.org/measure/, 2023). Green Bay is a city with a population of just over 107,000 people, and is within hours of Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Paul/Minneapolis.
Similar to other mid- to large-size cities across the United States, Green Bay saw an increase in gun violence during the initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic (Green Bay Police Department data, 2020 to 2024) which led to the city applying for an innovative grant which would establish a local Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) to shift that trend towards better community safety and well-being. The grant application, spearheaded by the Mayor’s Office and the Green Bay Police Department, was successful. With funding from the Medical College of Wisconsin, the OVP was established in fall of 2023. The OVP was created with the mission of fostering safe and resilient neighborhoods where all residents can thrive and promoting evidence-based solutions to reduce violence and interrupt cycles of retaliation. In collaboration with residents, community organizations, and various city departments, the OVP builds up the collective power of the community to disrupt the root causes of violence by creating a culture of mentorship and well-being.
The OVP’s vision for Green Bay is for all community members to feel safe and free from the impacts of violence, with opportunities to co-create solutions and connect with others. There is an explicit recognition of the root causes of violence in the OVP’s work. In alignment with the Medical College of Wisconsin’s goals for violence prevention, the work of the OVP is grounded in a public health approach. Simply put, the goal of the OVP is to help build a safe and connected community alongside institutions, community organizations, and the community members who are most impacted by violence in Green Bay. This approach is an alternative to enforcing our way out of systemic inequities in resource allocation and the resulting disparate outcomes.
The Green Bay OVP has identified multiple focus areas for prioritization during the first 3 years. The first priority is to align with Community Violence Intervention frameworks, with a particular focus on the reduction of gun violence in Green Bay. The second priority is to build a sustainable and data-driven OVP that supports sustained community improvements. With a data-focused mindset, the Simsi RTMDx platform gives the Green Bay OVP another robust tool in the community change toolbox. Using existing data sets, the OVP can run a series of diagnostic analyses in Simsi’s software which generates detailed maps of community conditions and areas of opportunity without requiring specialized GIS knowledge of its users. This drives OVP actions and translates into the intentional allocation of resources through data-informed investment, engagement with community members in areas of opportunity, and focused discussions with City leadership in decision-making spaces.
Strong partnership with the Green Bay Police Department and the OVP’s headquarters being housed within the Department of Community and Economic Development allows for robust data analysis using Simsi’s RTMDx platform and existing resources. OVP staff are able to generate regular reports that can be shared with City leadership, from the Mayor’s Office to department heads to those making strategic decisions about project budgeting and physical environment investments. The resulting maps create a visual story of opportunity in Green Bay, allowing decision makers to use innovative approaches to resource allocation. This includes staff time, dollars, and intentionality around partnership development. This deeper engagement with the data through analytics allows for real, transformational community safety strategies. As an example, the City of Green Bay has convened a Risk Terrain Modeling Advisory Group which will meet several times throughout the year to review trends, highlight opportunities for operationalizing findings, and more. The support for this work comes from the Mayor’s Office and is an essential building block in data sharing across departments.
It’s important to note that Risk Terrain Modeling can’t remove the human factor in decision-making. Mapping results should still be reviewed with a critical eye, based on an informed perspective from street-level engagement. Knowing the community, the people that comprise it, and local contexts is critical in analyzing results. However, a combination of traditional data collection and diagnostic analytics reporting can add a layer of nuance and detail that creates opportunities for real increases in community safety.
Strategies around community safety must be bigger than policing strategies. If a community wants to uncover the root causes of violence and meaningfully shift community conditions, more stakeholders need to be actively involved in the identification and addressing of community violence areas of concern. Meaningful community change centers the voices of individuals with lived experience and integrates the community partners and community institutions who are mission aligned for a collaborative approach to building safe communities. There will always be a role for policing, but how much more powerful can communities be if we can first focus on preventing crime and building social connections and stability across all neighborhoods?
So, what does it look like when a community makes the decision to integrate Risk Terrain Modeling into their decision-making and operational procedures? The Green Bay OVP started small. When Violence Interrupters were hired to get out into the community and engage with individuals who were linked with violence or in the social circles of those who were, OVP staff compared their community knowledge and suggestions for where to engage with the risk terrain maps that highlighted potential areas for engagement.
Closing thoughts...
As the OVP has grown, team members have been knocking on neighbors’ doors to spread awareness of the OVP’s work and to build relationships with additional community members. The results of the Risk Terrain Modeling analyses help prioritize limited staff time in neighborhoods where additional opportunities were identified. Once again, the results were coupled with the team members’ lived experiences, and actionable maps were created to provide the team with a starting point for each day of knocking on doors. To build on this approach, communities could consider creating maps based on city council districts, school districts, business districts and more. Finding champions to support deeper community engagement becomes easier when you can clearly make the case that the opportunities exist.
Another practical suggestion that results from Risk Terrain Modeling can be the prioritization of physical mailings or social media outreach to proactively engage with community members in areas of highest opportunity. Instead of blanketing an entire community with messaging, dig deeper to understand where the message will land most firmly, and then tailor the message to the priority populations in the identified area. Are materials created in a culturally inclusive way that actually resonates with those you are trying to reach? Is it in a language that they will understand? Is it attentive to the voices and feedback you’ve already solicited? A more nuanced analysis of the opportunities identified within the mapping results provides a powerful opportunity to meet community members where they are and shift towards shared community goals.
The power in Simsi’s RTMDx analytics platform lies in the possibilities: possibilities for engagement, possibilities for investment, possibilities for prevention of crime and unwanted outcomes, and possibilities to maximize existing local resources. While enforcement is a necessary community safety tool, building community safety and connection through meaningful community engagement is both cost-effective and powerful. The work begins when we recognize the power behind building authentic relationships. The key place to start is where the data point us .