Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative

The Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) began in Rochester in the Spring of 2001 when the United States Attorney for the Western District of New York led an effort to make it possible for participation of the City of Rochester. Here SACSI built in a long foundation of criminal justice cooperation that included the development of Project Exile in 1995.
The SACSI program developed based on work done in Boston which demonstrated the potential for collaborative strategies, which include strong research components, to reduce crime through developing strategic interventions. Initiatives in five cities were supported in the first round of SACSI and five more, including Rochester’s were added in a second round of funding through the National Institute of Justice. The Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative employs a collaborative problem solving approach in which leaders in the local criminal justice system scan to identify specific crime problems, research the specific characteristics of those problems and design strategic interventions based on the research.

The project is managed through the Office of the Unites States Attorney. In Rochester an Assistant US Attorney was assigned to oversee the day to day SACSI effort. The Rochester leadership group selected homicide as the crime problem to address through the SACSI process. Research early in the process supported the choice by demonstrating that Rochester had a history of high homicide rates compared with other cities, and that they appeared to be rising despite contradictory trends elsewhere. Finally, the initial scan showed that Rochester was unexceptional with regard to patterns of other crimes. An extensive and multifaceted study of homicide in Rochester was undertaken by the SACSI research team under the direction of the leadership group.

A wide range of methods and analyses were employed including analysis of official data, interview studies, forensic studies and systematic observations. The research employed action research principles in which the work group helped define appropriate research questions, considered research design issues, reviewed analyses and planned further study. The iterative process moved from broad examination of homicide to increasingly focused analyses uncovering the details of the nature of the local problem.

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http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/220488.pdf