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Project Safe Neighborhoods

Project Safe Neighborhoods

Project Safe Neighborhoods (“PSN”) is a comprehensive, strategic approach to reducing gun violence and promoting safe communities in this country. PSN combats gun violence by bringing together local, state, and federal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and community leaders to implement a multi-faceted strategy to deter and punish gun violence. This strategy is built upon four foundational principles:

  • First, meaningful law enforcement engagement with and accountability to the community are essential underpinnings of any effective strategy to address violent crime, as well as important ends in themselves.  Accordingly, building trust and earning legitimacy within our communities is the foundation on which our strategy is built.
  • Second, violent crime is not a problem that can be solved by law enforcement alone.  Accordingly, we must invest in community-based violence prevention and intervention programs that work to keep violence from happening before it occurs.
  • Third, the Justice Department is most effective when we focus our limited enforcement resources on identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the most significant drivers of gun violence and other violent crime.  To that end, we must target our enforcement efforts and set effective enforcement priorities.
  • Finally, because the fundamental goal of this work is to reduce the level of violence in our communities, not to increase the number of arrests or prosecutions as if they were ends in themselves—we must measure the results of our efforts on these grounds.

Connecticut’s PSN Program has developed a comprehensive strategy to fulfill the goals of the national initiative. Under the leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, the District’s achieves these metrics by:

  • Engaging with community leaders regularly to understand their concerns and build trust and legitimacy within our communities,
  • Reviewing crime data from around the state and in particular from the largest cities within Connecticut to ensure that prosecutions are initiated in locations where they will have the most impact,
  • Ensuring that our recourses are focused on the most violent crimes that have the most impact,
  • Coordinating "call-ins," where law enforcement and community members directly engage with returning citizens and deliver a community message against violence, a law enforcement message about the consequences of further violence, and an offer of help for those who accept it,
  • Measuring our success in implementing our plan.

Through these collaborative efforts, Connecticut’s PSN strategy is working to reduce the amount of violent crime throughout the state.

Updated January 23, 2023