BSCC Awards $9.2m in Anti-Violence Grants

ONTARIO (April 19, 2018) – The Board of State and Community Corrections today approved 20 grant awards worth $9.2 million to help reduce violence in communities across California.

As a requirement of the California Violence Intervention and Prevention grant the Board gave special consideration to cities that are disproportionately affected by violent crime.

The Budget Act of 2017 authorized the CalVIP grant to replace the California Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention grant and allowed not just cities, but community-based organizations with experience in violence-reduction strategies to apply directly for the funds.

Ten CBOs and 10 cities were approved for funding, including Los Angeles, which received a $1 million non-competitive carve-out in the authorizing legislation. The remaining $8.2 million was divided, with half earmarked for cities and the other half for CBOs.

Applicants received special consideration if they would serve cities that are in the top 5 percent statewide for homicide, robbery and aggravated assault.

In the City of Compton’s successful bid, Volunteers of America will provide services to youth at high risk of gang involvement. In Vallejo, the police department will help trauma-impacted residents receive mental health treatment and other services. The CBO Fresh Lifelines for Youth will partner with the Oakland Unified School District to provide mentors to high-risk youth on probation.

For more information about the grant please contact Colleen Curtin at Colleen.Curtin@bscc.ca.gov or call 916-445-8066.

Summaries of all funded projects are below:

Cities (in alphabetical order)

City of Compton
Compton has partnered with Volunteers of America of Los Angeles to provide direct participant services to at-risk transition-aged youth (ages 18-25). These youths are at high-risk of gang involvement which contributes to significant criminal activity in Compton. Each participant will be assigned a Job Developer that will coordinate the array of services to positively impact the lives of the at-risk transition-aged youth. This program will provide an intake and assessment component along with case management, comprehensive employment and life skills training and the “Thinking for A Change” evidence-based integrated behavior program.

City of Los Angeles
The Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development will deliver gang intervention and prevention services in designated areas within the city. Services will include family-centered case management services for youth ages 10-15 at the risk of joining a gang and young people ages 14-25 who are gang-affiliated, along with violence interruption activities through street intervention. GRYD’s strategy is backed by an extensive data collection system and research and evaluation conducted by a group led by California State University, Los Angeles, which includes representatives from USC and UCLA. Evaluation has highlighted this strategy as effective in the reduction of: risk of joining a gang, participation in crime, and reduction of retaliatory violence.

City of Oakland
Oakland will build out its Life Coaching (intensive case management) strategy focused on individuals at highest risk of gun violence. Life coaching helps these young adults avoid violent situations and contact with the justice system through relationship-building and connection to needed resources. CalVIP funding will support the build-out of the City’s gun violence reduction system by expanding life coaching services through a culturally-relevant and trauma-informed cognitive behavioral program. Oakland CalVIP aims to: 1) Improve participation and engagement of life coaching participants at highest risk of gun violence; 2) Improve cognitive and social-emotional skills of participants; and 3) Reduce criminal justice involvement and victimization.

City of Pasadena
The Pasadena Public Health Department and its partners will implement the new “Project Safe Pasadena” which will focus on reducing violent crime among youth aged 11-24 in Northwest Pasadena and Altadena. The project is based on the “Cure Violence” public health model, and includes three components: 1) Interrupt the cycle of violence using a peer-based street outreach approach to mediate ongoing disputes and de-escalate tensions; 2) Change thinking and behavior among the highest-risk youth by providing intensive case management services to them and their families; and 3) Change community norms and improve community-police relations through a violence prevention messaging campaign, youth-focused enrichment events and community-based events that bring community and stakeholders (including police) together, and specialized training for police.

City of Perris
The PEACE (Protective factors Enacted to Advance Capable and Empowered families and youth) Project is designed to eradicate violence through a comprehensive, multi-faceted prevention strategy and multi-agency approach directed at risk factors from the following levels of influence: Individual, Relationship, Community and Societal. The City of Perris and project partners are committed to preventing violence in Perris and surrounding communities at three levels, ensuring youth thrive in a safe and healthy environment free from physical violence, bullying, gang violence, electronic aggression, and violence fueled by sexual exploitation.

City of Richmond
The Beloved Community: Next Level will serve a total of 110 youth and young adults, ages 14 to 26, in Richmond and West Contra Costa County who are currently involved or at risk of involvement in violent crime. Youth will enter the program through street outreach by the Office of Neighborhood Safety and law enforcement, health system and community referrals through the RYSE Youth Center. Project partners the Office of Neighborhood Safety, RYSE Youth Center and Richmond Police Activities League will provide a menu of evidence-based interventions that include street outreach, mentoring, case management, cognitive behavioral therapy, life skills training, stipends, structured activities and employment training.

City of Sacramento
In collaboration with Advance Peace (a non-profit community based organization), Sacramento will implement the Peacemaker Fellowship to strengthen and expand gang intervention supports and reduce youth-related gang violence within the city. The Peacemaker Fellowship program works to interrupt gun violence by providing transformational opportunities to those identified as most likely to be perpetrators and/or victims of gun violence. The key components of the program include: (1) intensive engagement, (2) Life MAP (management action plans), (3) culturally responsive counseling and healing, (4) excursions, (5) internships, and (6) intergenerational mentoring. Advance Peace will offer 18 months of personalized intensive engagement to a cohort of 25 youth between the ages of 12–17 who are gang involved and are identified as being at the highest risk of being perpetrators or victims of gun violence.

City of San Bernardino
San Bernardino’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP), an updated version of the Boston “Ceasefire” strategy, is designed to respond to community violence as an effort to reduce gun violence citywide, to improve outcomes for young people at highest risk of violence, and to strengthen trust-based working partnerships between the community and police. The city aims to achieve its goals and objectives through real-time analysis and coordination of trauma-informed, culturally relevant intervention and prevention strategies, individual and family case management services, crime suppression rooted in principles of procedural justice and long-term transitional service plans for individuals.

City of Stockton
The Operation Ceasefire partnership in Stockton has achieved successful outcomes as well as created a Leadership Council with funds from BSCC’s Strengthening Police/Community Relations grant, which consist of clients at high risk of gun violence who have made progress and become advisors and advocates. The Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) proposes to build on these successes to mobilize the community behind violence reduction as well as make the Leadership Council a community asset. The CalVIP grant will allow our partners, Friends Outside, to expand Ceasefire to Ceasefire Reentry and Ceasefire Family Support. A consortium of faith-based partners led by Faith in the Valley will conduct community engagement to spread a message of violence reduction and build community support for Ceasefire.
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City of Vallejo
The Vallejo Police Department (VPD) seeks to expand its “We’re In This Together” Program to communities in South Vallejo and to special populations that include the homeless, Latino, Filipino and youth. Police will partner with the community to learn what residents want and together determine acceptable practices. Along with increased interactions, VPD seeks to provide non-enforcement connections to intervene with trauma-informed services to reduce justice involvement and help residents experience success, receive treatment and become productive members of society. WITT2 will expand programming proven effective in Vallejo and similar communities, to include the addition of youth activities in South Vallejo and with Latino youth, outreach to Filipino communities, and procedural justice and social supports to the homeless.

Community-Based Organizations (in alphabetical order)

Another Choice, Another Chance
Another Choice, Another Chance (ACAC) will provide trauma-informed, cognitive behavioral therapy to African American youth in Sacramento who have been identified as suffering from a violent traumatic experience. Specifically, ACAC will provide individual and group mental health, trauma and addiction counseling to youth ages 7 to 21 who have been identified as being involved in gangs or violent behaviors or who may be suffering from trauma as a result of crime and violence. ACAC will also focus on building the capacity of other treatment providers to provide trauma-informed and culturally appropriate services by offering the “Think Trauma” curriculum.

Brotherhood Crusade of Los Angeles
This proposal introduces “Proud to be Me,” a collective impact, trauma-responsive youth/gang violence prevention project aimed to significantly reduce the disproportionately high level of violence in Los Angeles County Service Planning Area 6 (SPA 6), with an emphasis on Compton, Inglewood, Lynwood and South Los Angeles. Brotherhood Crusade, the Los Angeles County Probation Department, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and other partners will work collaboratively to: (1) reduce recidivism and gang violence among SPA 6 high-risk youth by reframing their attitudes, behaviors and beliefs, thereby deterring their desire to join gangs or engage in violence; and (2) increase the number and percentage of SPA 6 high-risk youth earning a diploma or equivalency certificate who are well prepared for college/career by replicating “Proud to be Me” across LAUSD and Probation.

Catholic Charities of the East Bay
“Experience Hope” is a multi-faceted school-based intervention that reduces and prevents violence by addressing trauma-related social, emotional, and behavioral problems in low-income students of color, while training school staff in restorative practices that provide effective alternatives to traditional discipline. Currently, Catholic Charities provides individual elements of “Experience Hope” at seven schools in the Oakland Unified School District, with one full-service site currently in operation at Montera Middle School. CalVIP funding will enable the agency to create an additional full-service site at the high-need Alliance Academy middle school, serving approximately 50 additional youth at risk of perpetration of and/or victimization by violence and training 24 school staff.

Centinela Youth Services (CYS)
CYS will fund the Everychild Restorative Justice Center (ERJC), a pre-booking diversion and intervention model that opens life-changing opportunities for youth to: 1) receive support to manage root cause needs that influence their behaviors, 2) make amends for any harm they have caused, and 3) avoid the destructive impacts of a criminal record while regaining their potentials to learn and contribute to their communities. With its partners, Compton Unified School District (CUSD) and Compton School Police, CYS will provide ERJC services for at least 200 middle, high and continuation school students whose violence-linked offenses or risk factors place them at highest risk of arrest, expulsion or school removal in the CUSD. Additionally, those students at risk of imminent suspension, expulsion, or removal for violence-linked behaviors, truancy, or academic failure, will receive assessment-driven interventions through Restorative Case Conferences that bring together school, family, and community stakeholders to coordinate immediate interventions and long-term supports.

Fresh Lifelines for Youth
FLY’s project aims to create a coordinated prevention and intervention effort across Oakland’s youth serving systems. FLY’s prevention strategy is to partner with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) to provide our law-related education curriculum at alternative education and continuation schools to serve the City’s most marginalized students, who are also the most susceptible to violence. Through formal partnerships with Alameda County Probation Department and Juvenile Court, FLY will pilot its Court Appointed Friend and Advocate (CAFA) Mentor Program as an intervention strategy to support high risk probation youth with strategies proven to be successful at reducing violence, such as volunteer-based mentoring and court advocacy. With a range of options, at-risk youth will be able access collaborative programs tailored to their needs to reduce violence in Oakland.

Huckleberry Youth Programs
Because a major risk factor for violence and criminal activity is school failure; and the risk of school failure is higher in the transition from middle school to high school; and more students fail 9th grade than any other grade of school, with poor and minority students twice as likely as others to fail. The overarching principle behind Huckleberry Project READY is that academic support and social emotional learning/development (SEL/D) delivered through intensive one-on-one case management and groups, combined with parental support and education delivered in a school setting can reduce rates of school failure and arrest amongst youth with multiple risk factors. To achieve the goal of matriculating youth to the 9th and 10th grades while avoiding contact with the juvenile justice system, the program works with youth from second semester of 7th grade through first semester of 9^th grade, with the most intensive services offered in 8th grade.

Sierra Health Foundation, Center for Health Program Management
A multi-sector collaborative known as the Steering Committee on Reduction of African American Child Death (now the Black Child Legacy Campaign, or BCLC) was created in Sacramento to develop and implement a response to this public health crisis. The four leading causes of death are infant sleep-related deaths, child abuse and neglect deaths, perinatal deaths and third-party homicides. This project will focus on third-party homicides in AA youth. The BCLC Steering Committee selected seven Community Incubator Leaders (CILs), which are trusted CBOs operating in each of seven targeted geographic areas. These CILs have approximately 189 years of combined experience and expertise in providing social services to the focus population. These CILs will have the expertise and networks in place to implement the proposed violence prevention, intervention, and family services program to reduce third-party homicides.

South Bay Workforce Investment Board (SBWIB)

Inglewood youth are disproportionally affected by violence and will receive evidence-based services for diversion, restorative justice, and employment opportunities through the Inglewood Community and Regional Engagement Violence Intervention and Prevention (I-CARE VIP). The project will provide diversion and employment opportunities for youth ages 14-18 in partnership with the Inglewood Unified School District, School Police and Inglewood Police Department. SBWIB and Centinela Youth Services (CYS) will partner to provide trauma-informed case management along with paid pre-employment training, paid work experience, and job search assistance. CYS will provide their highly effective diversion services that includes mental health diversion, Families Able to Resolve Situations mediation, Victim Offender Restitution Services mediation, and Everychild Restorative Justice Center case management.

Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy
Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy (YVYLA) is a non-profit organization serving the youth of San Bernardino County. The target population of YVYLA is youth and young adults residing in the city of San Bernardino. Through a comprehensive four-part strategy our project is designed to reduce violent crime by: 1) increasing employment readiness and supporting job search for our target population, 2) increasing the number of our target population who receive mentors, case management, therapeutic mental health and addiction counseling services; 3) increasing high school graduation rates; and 4) increasing the number of individuals who receive prevention services and curricula in our community.

Youth Alive!
To prevent retaliation, reduce the number of re-injuries, increase safety and promote healing from trauma in Oakland, Youth Alive! will directly respond to shootings and killings through an integrated system of citywide violence interruption, hospital-based violence intervention (called Caught in the Crossfire or CiC), homicide crisis response and support, and mental health counseling. There are four components: (1) CiC Intervention Specialists will respond to shootings and provide ongoing mentoring and intensive case management to victims; (2) Violence Interrupters will conduct safety assessments for victims of violence and mediate conflicts in the community in response to, or anticipation of, shootings or killings; (3) Crisis Responders will connect with the loved ones (“victim groups”) of homicide victims within 48 hours; and (4) Highly trained, licensed counselors will provide trauma-informed mental health services.