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Project Safe Neighborhoods, the President's Plan to Reduce Gun Violence
During the previous administration, the issue of gun control became a central theme and an obstacle in most crime-related initiatives. For example, you may remember that the legislation to reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) became mired in the debate over the need for new gun control laws versus enforcing existing laws. The JJDPA has never been reauthorized despite both houses of Congress having reached accord on the primary topic of juvenile crime. Numerous other legislative efforts were likewise stymied over the fear of gun control issues subjugating the primary topic.
During the campaign for the presidency, those supporting gun control tried to use the issue to ignite public concern, as did those opposing capital punishment, without much success. Positions have now moderated and President Bush is ready to pick up the effort to end gun violence.
On May 14 President Bush, along with Attorney General Ashcroft, issued a formal announcement of a strategic partnership to fight gun crime. The president plans to dedicate almost $558.8 million to this effort in the next two fiscal years. NDAA President-elect Kevin Meenan, district attorney in Casper, WY, and NDAA Vice President Lynne Abraham, district attorney for Philadelphia, represented the association at the formal announcement.
The Strategic Partnership
The administration's gun crime initiative is designed to move federal law enforcement efforts beyond the traditional, reactive, short-term approach and to a more durable crime reduction model. The president will charge U.S. attorneys, when selected and confirmed, with the task of working with local law enforcement to develop "strategic partnerships" involving all levels of law enforcement and incorporating community-based organizations.
In planning the partnership effort, DOJ has outlined five core elements to serve as a framework for the overall initiative on reducing violence -- the ultimate goal. It is important to emphasize that the initiative does not specifically endorse any one plan, such as the Richmond-based Project Exile to reduce gun violence but rather seeks to have a number of best practices identified that can be tailored to best meet local needs and expectations.
The core elements are:
- Partnerships. DOJ has highlighted the building of law enforcement partnerships as a critical element upon which the initiative will rise or fall. The new U.S. attorneys will be asked to serve as the catalyst for the formation of cooperative efforts between all components of law enforcement to efficiently and effectively reduce gun violence. The U.S. attorneys will be required to give the Department of Justice reports on the development of the partnerships.
Key to the success of the partnerships will be the working relationships that develop between the U.S. attorney and the local prosecutors within their respective jurisdictions. Obviously if the U.S. attorney assumes an imperial role in the effort, the partnership will fail. The attendance of NDAA officers and the specific identification of the association during the program announcement was a stepping-stone in developing this partnership. In turn, an offer has been extended to DOJ from NDAA to help train the new U.S. attorneys in local law enforcement as part of developing this team relationship.
- Strategic Planning: This core element actually has several components -- intelligence gathering, asset and system analysis and plan development.
Intelligence gathering will encompass techniques such as "hot spot" identification, crime mapping and weapon tracking (the ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative as an example) to get information upon which to base further efforts. This step determines the dimension of the problem for the members of the partnership -- what types of guns are being used, where, for what types of crimes -- and serve as the basis for developing the plan.
Asset and system analysis will identify the strengths and weaknesses of the various systems that comprise the partnership -- which system has laws that are more effective in given situations, what police and laboratory resources are available and what methods of sharing information exist. Identifying these components will help allocate responsibilities in the partnership.
Plan development will then join needs and capabilities to form an agreement between the entities to use their abilities to reduce the use of guns in criminal enterprises.
As part of this plan, the president's budget for fiscal year 2002 includes $9 million annually for the U.S. attorneys to establish Project Sentry, a project that will fund a dedicated juvenile gun prosecutor in each of the 94 U.S. attorneys' offices. Additionally the budget for this fiscal year funds 113 new assistant U.S. attorneys dedicated to prosecuting gun cases.
The request also proposes a new federal-state partnership to create Safe Schools Task Forces to coordinate prosecutorial resources devoted to promoting school safety through appropriate firearms prosecutions. (Project Sentry will be part of this initiative.) Twenty million dollars in existing Department of Justice, state and local safe school grants will fund the state and local partnerships.
The strategy also incorporates the just announced Community Gun Violence Prosecution Program that may be renewed in the next budget cycle.
- Training: Part of the strategy will identify and implement training requirements for law enforcement, not only traditional law enforcement and trial techniques but also innovative outreach programs and community efforts.
APRI has joined in the effort with its new training initiatives in community prosecution and the NDAA fall conference at the National Advocacy Center on the Prosecutor and the Media.
- Outreach: Part of the success with programs developed to date has been the community outreach efforts that help the community buy into the program, increase public awareness of the effort and enhance the deterrent effect of the strategy. This portion of the overall strategy will identify practices that have been shown to work and will share them with participants. Partnerships will be encouraged to build community and corporate ties that facilitate spreading information on the success of the program.
- Accountability: The success of the partnerships has to be documented and the current plan is not to use specific gun prosecutions as the standard but rather to look to overall decreases in violent crime as a more accurate indicator.
There are several impediments to the partnerships at this time. First and foremost is the lack of progress in appointing U.S. attorneys. The best estimate for confirmation is late summer which may cause the momentum for partnership development to lapse. There is also the tendency of some U.S. attorneys to become "kings of the hill" rather than partners. DOJ had shown every indication of trying to head off this problem in its charge to new U.S. attorneys but problems may persist. Lastly is the pending appropriations cycle. While not all the initiatives are dollar-dependent, some of the key elements are and the final budget for DOJ for the next year may shape partnership implementation.
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