A community
approach
to prevent
violence.
Violence Reduction Councils (VRC) are an interdisciplinary, data-driven and public health-focused approach to violence prevention and intervention.
VRCs create a framework for community members from diverse backgrounds to collaborate and identify recommendations proven to:
Prevent violence.
Meet the unique needs of the community.
Rebuild trust among local governments, law enforcement and community members.
What is a Violence Reduction Council?
What is a Violence Reduction Council?
Violence Reduction Councils (VRCs) are a public health-based model to prevent violence in cities. VRCs bring together public health, social service agencies, criminal justice, and community-based organizations involved in violence prevention. Collectively, these groups review homicides and assault information at the aggregate and case level.
Each VRC review team shares unique case information about the victim and suspect(s) involved, circumstances that led to the incident, neighborhood factors, and perspectives about the city’s broader violence trends. Members identify gaps or weaknesses in policy and practice, and systemic barriers to violence prevention.
The VRC then proposes recommendations to address these barriers and enhance the city’s violence prevention infrastructure. A smaller VRC working group refines the recommendations and works with city leadership to create policy and programmatic changes.
VRC in Action
The first generation of a violence reduction council, the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, was highly effective, leading to an over 52% decrease in homicides in its first two years, from 2005 to 2007. Adopters of the review process and VRC infrastructure have improved and strengthened partnerships and increased the capacity of participating systems, agencies and individuals to identify systematic opportunities for prevention to build and sustain positive change reducing violence.
Why This Matters
Violence — specifically homicides and firearm assaults —are a public health crisis in cities across the U.S.
30%
30% increase in gun violence homicide rates in the U.S. in 2020 - the highest annual increase in more than 100 years.1
15-24
Second leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24 is gun violence - surpassing cancers, heart disease, diabetes and liver disease combined.1
14x
Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. Black people are 14 times more likely to die by homicide than white people.2
Implementing a Violence Reduction Council.
Implementing a Violence Reduction Council.
Violence Reduction Councils include two review teams — a criminal justice review team and a community service provider review team — along with an executive committee. Ongoing information and data-sharing across teams is critical throughout the review process. We are here to help support building data infrastructure to ensure quality of data and information across systems. Please email ViolenceRC [at] jhu.edu (ViolenceRC[at]jhu[dot]edu) to learn more.
Lead Agency
Summary
Includes the office of violence prevention, local health department, human services department, district attorney’s office or police department, who oversee the VRC and provide administrative support.
Who is involved
Director and VRC staff.
What they do
The lead administrative agency should have an institutional commitment to reducing violence and providing resources and staff to support the VRC.
Executive Leadership
Summary
This governing body — which is essential to the success and sustainability of a VRC – includes city leadership, such as the health commissioner, mayor, police chief and the district attorney, as well as community based organizations who champion the process and implement the recommendations.
Who is involved
Community leaders and local leaders, such as the mayor, police chief and health commissioner, supported by mid-tier agency representatives, like team leads and supervisors.
What they do
A smaller team of mid-tier agency representatives (working group) support the executive committee members to refine recommendations and outline steps and resources needed for implementation. The mid-tier team aggregates data, case findings and recommendations and discusses them with the VRC executive committee and then shares the status of recommendations to the case review teams.
Working Group
Summary
Mid-tier agency representative who works closely with the review teams to identify recommendations and elevate them to executive leadership.
Who is involved
Mid-level representatives from many of the same organizations as the executive committee, generally 10-15 people including team leads, supervisors, etc.
What they do
Members understand the policy and practice of their agencies and the best course for recommendation, ensure preliminary groundwork is completed for individual case reviews, and are the primary conduit for most recommendations that require executive-level approval and support.
Criminal Justice Review Team
Summary
Examine the case specific sensitive information about the factors that led to a series of cases, focusing on system level violence reduction strategies.
Who is involved
Criminal justice stakeholders with information about the suspect, victim, and neighborhoods, including mid-tiered and frontline researchers and representatives from law enforcement (local, state, federal), sheriff, prosecution (county and federal), corrections, and the medical examiner/coroner office.
What they do
Evaluate sensitive information from criminal justice partners about the victim, perpetrator or environment where the violent incident occurred. These reviews allow public safety stakeholders to identify system weaknesses and develop prevention and intervention strategies, rather than responding to violence.
Community Service Provider Review Team
Summary
Examines the who, what, when, where and why, including environmental conditions that may have led to an incident or could prevent future ones. Reviews aggregate data from law enforcement, EMS and hospitals (other data sources as identified), as well cleared or closed homicide cases.
Who is involved
Representatives from the public health department, social service agencies, school district, community-based organizations, and public safety organizations.
What they do
Reviews closed cases to understand the factors that contributed to the violent incident, examines services the perpetrator and victim received and resources in the neighborhood, and discusses missed opportunities for intervention. Their recommendations enhance collaboration and trust between service providers, community violence intervention programs and city agencies.
Subcommittees
Summary
Work closely with review teams (often a subset of review team members) to focus on an implementation strategy for related recommendations. Usually ad hoc and time limited.
Who is involved
Typically three members, including people from the executive committee or working group, one of the VRC review teams and/or an outside expert, such as a community outreach coordinator.
What they do
Take a recommendation or set of related recommendations identified through the review teams, further develop the recommendation(s) and create an implementation plan and completion timeline.
Establish a Violence Reduction Council in Your Community.
Establish a Violence Reduction Council in Your Community.
Interested in learning more about implementing a Violence Reduction Council in your community? The Violence Reduction Council guide is your go-to resource for how to start a VRC in your community.
It includes eight modules that will help explain what a VRC is, how to establish one, and the suggested steps to unite the community to develop actionable recommendations.
Module 1: Violence Reduction Council (VRC) Structure
- What are the key components of a VRC?
- Who should be involved?
- What are expected outcomes?
Module 2: Building a Violence Reduction Council
- What does staffing look like for a VRC?
- What are the roles of the VRC staff?
- How to recruit and maintain members of the VRC?
Module 3: Forming Partnerships Across Agencies and in the Community
- Who are the partners involved in the VRC?
- Why should the partners be involved?
- How to engage community service providers?
Module 4: Fostering Involvement from Communities Disproportionately Impacted by Violence
- What are ways for the VRC to acknowledge systemic inequities?
- What is the role of community violence intervention programs?
- What opportunities are there to leverage offices of violence prevention?
Module 5: Planning Your VRC Meeting
- What to do before the meeting to prepare?
- For VRC staff?
- For VRC teams?
Module 6: Facilitating Your Review Meeting
- What should be included in the meeting agenda?
- What are confidentiality considerations for the meeting?
- What guidance is available on facilitating to elicit information and problem solving?
Module 7: Collecting VRC Data
- What is the data collection process?
- What does the VRC data system include?
- What considerations for data sharing?
Module 8: Building a Recommendation Plan
- What are the best strategies to move a recommendation from a VRC review to implementation?
- Who should be included in a subcommittee and when should it be created?
- How are the recommendations documented, assessed and monitored?
Violence Reduction Council Process.
Violence Reduction Council Process.
After a violent incident occurs, the case may be selected through the VRC process as identified below. Additional information about how to structure and schedule review meetings throughout this process are detailed in the toolkit.
“Oftentimes information reveals those involved in a homicide ‘knew it was coming.’ They’re predictable. If we can predict them, we should be able to prevent them.”
Mallory O’Brien, PhD, associate scientist, Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who created the concept of a Violence Reduction Council in Milwaukee.
Recommendations to Prevent Violence.
Recommendations to Prevent Violence.
Successful VRCs rely on active engagement by members beyond the detailed case discussions, including formation, implementation, assessment, and continuation of prevention strategies. The VRC director should reinforce that recommendations can be identified and implemented through the VRC’s collaborative and data-driven problem-solving process.
The types of recommendations vary, and most likely fall into the following categories:
Systemic
The recommendation addresses a gap, weakness or problem within a particular system or across systems (e.g. lack of witness protection program, lack of information sharing around juvenile charges) aiming to develop a community-wide safety plan with input from residents.
Population-specific
The recommendation affects or targets a specific population, specifically those at higher risk for becoming a victim or suspect of homicide or related violent crime (e.g. develop a safe nights program for youth during summer break, support positive mentoring programming, especially for males precursor to the fatherhood initiative).
Agency-specific
The recommendation affects only one sector or partner agency (e.g. create real time consolidation of firearm information, distilling more information from the independent records systems to support the frontline officer, precursor to Crime Gun Intelligence Centers, create a referral mechanism to notify school system when a child experiences a violent episode).
Strategies for Community Capacity Building
The recommendation enables community and/or community based organizations to develop or enhance skills, knowledge and resources (e.g. develop a mechanism to capture the community impact of a homicide from residents, develop and deploy an awareness campaign on straw purchasing, develop and deploy mediation training for community organizers, or determine means to intervene in potential retaliation in homicides).
Quality Assurance-related
The recommendation strengthens or improves the VRC review process (e.g. revamp shooting reviews, invite specialty units to the reviews, or invite the faith community to the review process).
About the VRC Project.
About the VRC Project.
The Violence Reduction Council builds off a successful model developed in Milwaukee by Mallory O’Brien, project lead and associate scientist at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The model facilitated collaborations between public health, public safety partners, and the community to review homicide-related deaths to better understand data patterns and trends and identify missed opportunities for intervention or provision of services. To effectively scale this strategy and implement it in new jurisdictions, O’Brien and the team developed a public health-oriented toolkit that emphasizes best practices, establishes high-quality data infrastructure, and provides technical and peer support.
The project was supported by the Bloomberg American Health Initiative based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Bloomberg American Health Initiative, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, addresses pressing health issues in five critical areas including addiction and overdose, adolescent health, the environment, food systems and violence through education, research and practice.
Contact us for inquiries, technical assistance or support with resources.