BOSTON - Friday,
May 28, 2021 - Mayor Kim Janey, the Office of Health and Human Services
and Public Safety, and the Boston Police Department yesterday announced
the City of Boston’s 2021 Summer Safety Plan. The plan is guided by the
public health lens of prevention, intervention, response and recovery
initiatives. To prevent violence, the City will direct activities,
programs and policies on constructive engagement. For intervention,
Boston will employ strategies for behavioral change or improve specific outcomes
for specific communities. The City will respond to violence by
mitigating community impact and meeting the immediate needs of victims
and families. The recovery from violence will ensure ongoing and
long-term support for individuals, neighborhoods, and communities as a
whole.
The strategies in
the Summer Safety Plan represent the work that City departments are
currently participating in, while also highlighting the existing gaps in
services and funding within Boston’s current reality in the neighborhoods.
The City of Boston, in partnership with community-based organizations, is
working to address the social determinants of violence, while being
intentional about creating pathways to opportunities for all Boston
residents.
“As our city
recovers from the pandemic, we will strive to make this summer a season
of safety and healing. Working together, across departments, we will
apply a racial justice lens as we address violence and promote peace
using a public health framework of prevention, intervention, response,
and recovery,” said Mayor Janey. “I’d like to thank our City departments,
community partners, and Boston residents for supporting our comprehensive
2021 Summer Safety Plan to address and prevent violence.”
The Violence
Prevention Plan is guided by five goals:
1. Scale up
prosocial activities, mentoring programs, and employment opportunities to
engage more youth
Summer creates the
need for greater engagement in prevention programming outside of the
classroom.
2. Strengthen
intervention efforts and suppression of crime in hotspots across the
city.
Intelligence-driven
deployment, targeted engagement with gang-involved young people, and
intervention-based services, are particularly important during the summer
months.
3. Ensure
neighborhoods are supported and connected to resources to help them
respond and recover from incidents of violence.
The summer
presents a greater need to proactively connect community members to
trauma services and other community health initiatives.
4. Expand
intentional outreach and engagement for specific populations.
Summer requires a
focus on youth and young adults engaged in the criminal justice system,
proven-risk young people, and underserved groups like girls and those 25-35.
5. Promote
positive activities and community engagement in public spaces.
Summer gives us
the opportunity to bring communities together in parks, playgrounds, and
other open spaces to build neighborhood cohesion.
To accomplish
this, the cross-departmental group will focus on alignment and
coordination to connect efforts across City-funded work and
community-invested programming, seeking to bring activities to young
people. This includes identifying gaps and working to create the needed
additional supports and resources. The coordination ensures ongoing,
consistent effort to connect the City’s strategy with needs and
resources. The entire strategy is conducted through a justice lens, with
an intentional focus on the needs of those most impacted by violence in
the community and the social inequities and systemic racism that creates
such an environment.
In addition to the
collaborative efforts led by city departments, Boston is also partnering
with community-based organizations by providing grants through the Youth
Development Fund. Building on the previously-announced $885,000 awarded to
organizations,
an additional $100,000 in grants will be available to nonprofits to
bolster summer programming and efforts targeting violence prevention. |
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