- Agenda
- Reimagine Public Safety Act
- What Do We Know about Firearms Violence Prevention?
- Interventions
- Local Advisory Council Breakout Sessions
Agenda
- Welcome
- Roll Call
- Public Comment
- Overview of Office of Firearm Violence Prevention (OFVP)
- Overview of LACs and Requirements
- Overview of Meeting and Training Requirements
- Presentation from UIC on Violence Prevention
- Break Out Sessions by Municipality
- Format for Meetings 2 and 3 and Recommendations for Convening
- Adjourn
Reimagine Public Safety Act
MISSION/VISON
Every community, every neighborhood, every home is free from violence.
STRATEGY
To integrate, coordinate, and leverage violence prevention activities across agencies.
Violence Prevention Approach
- Youth Development, Intervention and Diversion
- Trauma Informed Mental Health and Substance Use Services
- Equity and Racial Justice
- Interagency and Community Based Collaboration
Reimagine Public Safety Act
RPSA created the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention (OFVP), led by IDHS' Assistant Secretary for Violence Prevention Chris Patterson.
The OFVP will:
- Collaborate with ICJIA, IDPH, HFS, DCFS, DCEO, IDOC, hospitals and health care providers to reduce gun violence.
- Remain informed regarding the latest in firearm violence prevention in consultation with a Firearm Violence Research Group.
- Establish 15 Local Advisory Councils (non-Chicago service areas) and 22 Qualified Lead Violence Prevention Conveners (in the City of Chicago).
- Provide technical assistance in the areas of evidence-based violence prevention programming and capacity development, including GATA participation and compliance.
Reimagine Public Safety Act
$250 million - 3 years
- $50 million in FY22 (January-June 2022)
- 100 million in FY23 (July 2022- June 2023)*
- 100 million in FY24 (July 2023-June 2024)*
*Requires new appropriations from the ILGA
37+ Impacted Communities
- 22 Chicago communities
- 15 Outside of Chicago communities
Timeline Highlights:
- December - Feb 2022: Release NOFOs for Training, Tech. Assistance + Support and RPSA Lead Violence Prevention Community Conveners (Chicago), Violence Prevention Services (Chicago), Youth Development Services (Statewide), and High-Risk Youth Intervention Services (Chicago)
- March 2022: Form Local Advisory Councils in 15 non-Chicago areas
- April 2022: Greater Illinois funding recommendations from LACs.
- April 2022: Initial NOFO awards issued.
Identified Municipalities
The Firearm Violence Research Group determined the eligible municipalities from across Illinois that rate the highest in firearms victimization. The eligible municipalities across Greater Illinois include:
- Aurora (12.7/115)
- Belleville Cluster (Includes Belleville, East St. Louis, and Cahokia Heights) (48.1/102)
- Berwyn-Cicero Cluster (32.8/94)
- Calumet City Cluster (Includes Calumet City, Harvey, Dolton, Riverdale, South Holland, Markham, Lansing) (74.4/134)
- Chicago Heights Cluster (Includes Chicago Heights, Park Forest, and Sauk Village) (70.6/97)
- Danville (94.5/138)
- Decatur (57.9/204)
- Joliet (26.2/197)
- Kankakee (125.6/151)
- Maywood-Bellwood Cluster (119.9/141)
- Peoria (61.9/350)
- Rockford (55.6/413)
- Springfield (33.6/192)
- Urbana-Champaign Cluster (25.6/49)
- Waukegan-North Chicago Cluster (25.1/112)
Violence Prevention Approach
- Violence prevention services, including street-based violence interruption work, emotional or trauma related therapy, housing, employment, job training/placement, family engagement, and wrap-around support services.
- Youth development programs, including after school and summer programming to increase school attendance and school performance, reduce criminal justice system involvement, and build social-emotional intelligence.
- High-risk youth intervention programs proven to reduce involvement in the criminal or juvenile justice system, referrals of teens into therapeutic programs that address trauma recovery and other mental health services.
- Technical Assistance & Training grants to train and assist RPSA funded organizations to design and implement evidenced-based and evidenced-informed programming/services and build the capacity of organizations.
- Violence Prevention Conveners grants to organizations that will be responsible for convening communities and coordinating RPSA activities.
Local Advisory Councils - Membership
The Reimagine Public Safety Act requires the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention to convene local advisory councils (LAC) in each of the RPSA designated service areas each council to be comprised of a minimum of 5 members appointed by the Assistant Secretary, Office of Firearm Violence Prevention.
Each council must include at least:
- 1 Rep. of a nonelected official in local government; (e.g., Park District Director, Library Staff, Police/Fire Chief)
- 1 Rep. of an elected official - local or state level; (e.g., Mayor, City Council, County Board, State's Attorney, School Board ILGA)
- 1 Rep. with public health experience in gun violence prevention or youth development; and
- 2 residents of the subsection of the area with the most concentrated firearm violence incidents.
If you have anyone you would like to recommend for a council, please email the name and contact information for that person to DHS.ViolencePreventionServices@illinois.gov.
Local Advisory Councils - Recommendations
IDHS will provide data to each local council on:
- The characteristics of firearm violence per municipality.
- Physical and demographic characteristics for each municipality; and
- Evidence on how to address the social determinants of health in the designated area.
Each local council will make recommendations to the OFVP on how to allocate violence prevention resources based on information provided by the OFVP.
OFVP will consider the recommendations and determine how to distribute funds through grants to community-based organizations and local governments
Recommendations to OFVP due by April 29, 2022.
NOTE: LACs grant recommendations are advisory and will not influence grantmaking to individual organizations.
Local Advisory Councils - Goals
Immediate Goals (to be accomplished by April 29, 2022)
- Convene local advisory council twice between March 18 and April 15.
- Among council members, designate a point of contact for the OFVP.
- Conduct data review/asset mapping of designated area.
- Develop recommendations to be forwarded to OFVP for funding allocation determination.
- Forward list of recommendations to the OFVP.
Long Term Goals (on going)
- Convene quarterly.
- Help build integrated community support systems and increase capacity of local service providers to maximize impact of services.
- Create/strengthen partnerships among community stakeholders and residents.
- Help facilitate data sharing across community stakeholders regarding firearm trends.
- Share community firearm violence/ service trends and progress to OFVP.
Local Advisory Councils - Commitment
Commitment of the Local Advisory Council
- Be an active participant in meetings and LAC activities.
- Complete immediate term goals by April 29, 2022.
- Ensure input is consistently gathered and included in recommendations to the OFVP.
- Report LAC activities to the OFVP on a quarterly basis.
Commitment of DHS to Local Advisory Council Members
- Provide initial and ongoing staff support to ensure LAC meeting success, including guidance on meeting agendas, technical support, development of supporting materials.
- Provide initial comprehensive community data overview to guide immediate recommendations.
- Provide additional data as needed to continuously inform LAC work.
- Report back relevant information regarding progress of State initiatives.
- Provide training, technical assistance, and administrative support related to LAC membership and participation requirements.
LAC Timeline
- March 11: OFVP confirms all appointments
- March 15: Orientation/First LAC Meetings @ 2pm
- April 14: LAC Meeting #2 @ 11am
- April 26: LAC Meeting #3 @ 11am
- Fri., April 29: LACs submit written recommendations to OFVP
For LAC questions please contact: DHS.ViolencePreventionServices@illinois.gov
For more information on OFVP, RPSA and our LACs: https://www.dhs.state.il.us/OFVP
Overview of Meeting and Training Requirements
What is the Open Meetings Act (OMA)? https://foiapac.ilag.gov/viewpdf.aspx?P=~/content/pdf/FAQ_OMA_Government.pdf
What are the Requirements of OMA?
- Majority of quorum and attendance
- Public notice and public comment
- Meeting recordings and minutes
- Training for employees, officers, and members
What other compliance requirements should I be aware of?
- Ethics Training
- Harassment and Discrimination Prevention Training
- Security Awareness Training
- Conflict of Interest
What Do We Know about Firearms Violence Prevention?
Facts - National Firearms Violence Data
Rates of Firearm Homicides by State, per 100,000 population, 2018
States and districts with Highest Average rate of Non-domestic Firearm Violence per 100,000 population (March-July 2020)
| State |
Injuries |
| 1 District of Columbia |
10.2 |
| 2 Illinois |
3.7 |
| 3 Louisiana |
3.2 |
| 4 Missouri |
2.6 |
| 5 Delaware |
2.3 |
Facts - Illinois RPSA Areas Combined Firearms Victimization Rate (Death and Injury, Excluding Self-Inflicted) in RPSA Non-Chicago Areas*
- Aurora (12.7/115)
- Belleville Cluster (Includes Belleville, East St. Louis, and Cahokia Heights) (48.1/102)
- Berwyn-Cicero Cluster (32.8/94)
- Calumet City Cluster (Includes Calumet City, Harvey, Dolton, Riverdale, South Holland, Markham, Lansing) (74.4/134)
- Chicago Heights Cluster (Includes Chicago Heights, Park Forest, and Sauk Village) (70.6/97)
- Danville (94.5/138)
- Decatur (57.9/204)
- Joliet (26.2/197)
- Kankakee (125.6/151)
- Maywood-Bellwood Cluster (119.9/141)
- Peoria (61.9/350)
- Rockford (55.6/413)
- Springfield (33.6/192)
- Urbana-Champaign Cluster (25.6/49)
- Waukegan-North Chicago Cluster (25.1/112)
Reimagining Public Safety
Current models have not responded appropriately to the root causes of violence.
- As the wealthiest nation in the world, the US ranks #30 in the world for highest firearm violence rates.
- The US has far more violent crime than peer nations; US firearm violence rate is more than 8 times the rate in Canada, for example.
- Illinois is #1 among states with highest firearm violence in the US.
- The US holds over 20% of the world's incarcerated people while representing only 4% of the overall global population, causing massive public health harms.
We must find the balance between what works with our current systems and new evidence based public health approaches that are holistic, intuitive and intentional in addressing the core root causes of violence in our communities.
The Public Health Model of Public Safety
A public health approach to public safety emphasizes social support and case management as a way to assess problems and protect the public, in contrast to the traditional criminal justice approach.
A public health approach to violence prevention recognizes that:
- Violence is not just a matter of interpersonal violence or crime; it must also account for structural violence (e.g., poverty, unaffordable housing, unemployment, police violence, barriers to healthcare access, etc.).
- Effective violence prevention requires prioritizing supportive investments in the communities suffering from greatest rates of insecurity and violence.
- Public safety requires "intensive care"--not more police and punishment--for our most vulnerable communities.
Community and Systemic Factors
- Effects of systemic racism over time
- Concentrated poverty
- Cycle of violence
- High levels of firearm violence in a community
Other Factors That May Contribute
Research shows mental health is a contributing factor, particularly for young people with at least one psychiatric disorder or mental illness
- Childhood trauma
- Exposure to community or domestic violence, or being a victim of or witness to abuse (e.g. domestic, sexual, mental).
- Violence prevention programs need to address trauma specifically.
- Substance Abuse
- Alcohol use in particular and easy access to alcohol is highly associated with firearm victimization or perpetration
- Contact with the criminal justice system
- Particularly before age 13
- Repeated contact increases risk
- Easy access to a firearm
- Particularly for those who may also have a mental health issue or engage in high-risk behavior
Community Effects of High Levels of Firearm Violence
"Violence in the community can prevent children from feeling safe in their own schools and neighborhoods…They may come to believe that violence is "normal," that violence is 'here to stay,' and that relationships are too fragile to trust because one never knows when violence will take the life of a friend or loved one. They may turn to gangs or criminal activities to prevent others from viewing them as weak and to counteract feelings of despair and powerlessness, perpetuating the cycle of violence and increasing their risk of incarceration."
- Excerpt from Defending Childhood, Report of the Attorney General's Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, 2012.
Interventions
Removing Stigma and Empowering Communities
The Reimagine Public Safety model moves away from policy approaches that stigmatize poor, Black, and Hispanic communities.
Instead, it looks for opportunities to empower communities by promoting:
- Economic security
- Housing stability
- Improvements to physical environment
- Community violence prevention
- Education and youth opportunities
- Job training and employment opportunities
- Healthcare access, including mental health and addiction treatment
- Increasing economic equality
Economic inequality predicts homicide rates "better than any other variable." Data from 39 countries shows that even small decreases in inequality would reduce homicides by 20 percent and cause a 23 percent long-term reduction in robberies.
In Addition to Curbing Violence, Public Safety Efforts Should
- Reduce homelessness, poverty, unemployment, hospitalization, and overdose rates
- Reduce domestic violence and child abuse rates
- Increase educational attainment rates
- Improve health (diabetes, heart disease, and cancer rates, HIV rates)
- Increase life expectancy
- Increase the number of residents that feel safe in their communities.
White House Strategy to Prevent Gun Crime and Ensure Public Safety Investments in Community Violence Interventions
Recommends investments in evidence-based strategies:
- Improvements to the physical environment
- Reducing substance abuse
- Increasing financial stability and mobility
- Engage and support youth
- Group violence intervention strategies
- Relationship-based street outreach
- Hospital based violence interventions
Common Program Interventions
Comprehensive, or "wrap-around" set of services
- An initial assessment
- Cognitive/behavioral interventions
- Mentoring
- coaching, job training
- educational services
- Family services
- Mental health services
- Career planning
- Literacy
- Youth services.
Skill building
- Clients develop goals and work toward them by building valuable skills that help them grow
- Job training and career coaching
- Building social and interpersonal skills critical for the workplace or for personal growth.
Both Cohort and individualized supports
- There is value in going to a workplace with peers who are also working on the same skills.
- Other services, however, like mental health services for example are better suited for an individual intervention that can be more tailored to the individual.
"Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships"
Partners:
- provide space for meetings and programming;
- are sources of referrals for clients coming into a program, partners to whom the program refers clients who have a particular need; and
- are critical for small programs that do not have the capacity to provide a wide range of services themselves.
Best Strategies for Allocating Resources
- The bottom-up approach to public safety: focus resources on communities in greatest need in order to achieve greatest benefit for everyone
- Gather direct community input and emphasize community-led implementation
- First, conduct safety needs assessments of target communities
- Employ the residents of target communities to implement interventions within their own communities
- Multiple benefits: builds trust, directs income into communities, utilizes local informal knowledge networks, establishes buy-in
- Maximize available resources - RPSA investment $250 million over 3 years.
- Coordinate and collaborate across all fields and jurisdictions towards shared goals.
- Ensure decisions are informed by careful, well-designed data
Conceptualizing the work moving forward
While research offers valuable insight, we recognize that LAC members bring important expertise as well:
- Your expert knowledge of your community
- Data driven - the capacity to connect important data with your expert knowledge to drive decisions
- A commitment to developing a customized approach based on assets in your community (Not all models/approaches work everywhere)
- Building the "infrastructure" for violence prevention at the community level - a comprehensive approach will be necessary
Local Advisory Council Breakout Sessions
Breakout Sessions
30 Minute Breakout Discussions with your Municipality Local Advisory Council
- Provide Introductions
- Based on the data provided for your community area, please discuss as a group the following questions:
- How does this align/not align with what you know about your community?
- How does this data help you start shaping your goals?
- What additional information do you need to inform your decisions?
Data needed can be found: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iyuw9QN7ft468BaE_t3_lX_HIPz6esJkTLdQ3m49Kiw/edit?usp=sharin
Please assign a scribe for your group to write your notes and feedback on your group slides.
Meeting 2 and Meeting 3 Requirements
Meeting #2: Working Group
- Date and Time: 04/14/22 @ 11:00am
- What to Bring: Materials from the LAC toolkit
- What's the Goal: Utilizing the materials in the toolkit, conduct a community resource inventory activity.
Meeting "3: Formulating Recommendations
- Date and Time: 04/26/22 @ 11:00am
- What to Bring: Materials from the LAC toolkit, notes from Meeting #2, etc.
- What's the Goal: Using your materials and key information from the previous convening, draft recommendations using the provided template.
Final Recommendations
OFVP is looking for recommendations that include thoughtful answers to the following questions:
- What are the systemic or "root cause" factors that are perpetuating violence in your community?
- Who is impacted by violence and who needs to be prioritized for violence prevention programming?
- What are the types of programs that need to be prioritized to address firearm violence?
- Where should those services be focused?
- How should the program be designed, i.e., timing and hours of services, available wrap around services, location, to meet the needs of the community?
- What best practice interventions are you aware of that could best meet the needs of the community?
Next Steps and Adjourn
- Review LAC tool kit
- Generate additional questions/information you will need to further evaluate your community
- Send us recommendations (as requested) for additional LAC members
- Contact us with any additional feedback or direction for your community: DHS.ViolencePreventionServices@illinois.gov
- For more information on OFVP, RPSA and our LACs: https://www.dhs.state.il.us/OFVP
