Blueprint for Shared Safety

Working together to build safety for all

WHAT IS SHARED SAFETY?

Shared Safety envisions a world in which everyone can attain safety and everyone takes responsibility for fostering it. Shared Safety is the pioneering work of diverse stakeholders who are rethinking how to understand, invest in, evaluate and achieve community safety.

Our work starts by taking joint responsibility – across public agencies and in partnership with communities – for deepening our understanding of who is most vulnerable, advancing health and healing, and breaking the cycle of harm.

FROM SAFETY FOR SOME TO SAFETY FOR ALL

For too long, the focus of public safety investments has been imbalanced and ineffective. The dramatic growth in prison spending and incarceration in the ‘80s and ‘90s came at the expense of prevention and community health, especially for low-income communities of color. Today, people of all walks of life agree: the prison first approach has left too many out. It’s been safety for some instead of safety for all. New strategies are emerging that bring local officials and community together, that focus on balanced approaches to safety rooted in dignity and smart justice. This new movement starts with defining and investing in Shared Safety.

“You have to do not one thing – you have to do everything, where it’s all aimed at turning lives around. That’s public safety.” Governor Jerry Brown

DESIGNING THE BLUEPRINT: A Collaborative Effort

This Blueprint is the product of more than a year of research and outreach to stakeholders and practitioners across California. The Blueprint offers a framework of principles and practices that local leaders can use to advance shared safety strategies. By shifting the focus from over-incarceration to investments that can truly make our communities safer, the Blueprint aims to re-envision public safety together.

“Safety is a public health issue. That’s why for the past 15 or 20 years, violence has been one of the most important issues that we talk about and increasingly one of the most pressing public health issues of our time.”

Dr. Mark Ghaly
Director of Community Health & Integrated Programs,
L.A. County Dept. of Health Services
“We need a fundamental switch in gears to invest in healing and recovery work in communities most impacted by crime.”

Ayoola Mitchell
Survivor
“The community has to know that a police officer or anybody from law enforcement that’s responding or answering the phone or doing whatever they are requesting, cares.”

Daniel Hahn
Chief of Police,
City of Roseville, California
“After too many decades of relying on prisons as the corrective for too many low-level offenses, reform efforts here and elsewhere are an acknowledgement that we need to be smart, not just tough, on crime…. We can reduce both crime and incarceration.”

Jeff Rosen
District Attorney,
County of Santa Clara, California

What We Invest In Grows

It’s time to invest in Shared Safety. This video highlights our misplaced spending priorities and failed investments in incarceration over education. It calls for replacing prison and justice system waste with common sense solutions that create safe neighborhoods and save public dollars.

5 blueprint principles

These guiding principles are the foundation for Shared Safety. By implementing practices that are grounded in these principles, local governments can build a strong safety infrastructure for whole communities.