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On October 29–31, 2007, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the Hamilton Fish Institute on School and Community Violence jointly sponsored the National Conference on Safe Schools and Communities 2007 in Washington, D.C. OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores offered welcoming remarks. Acting Assistant Attorney General Cybele K. Daley gave a keynote address. She noted three recent incidents of school violence in the United States, but added:

Talking about these tragedies gives you the sense that we're losing the fight to keep our schools safe. And yet, the statistics tell us a different story. In truth, school violence is on the decline. Two years ago, an annual study by [the] Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education found that violence in schools was at its lowest level in a decade. And last year's study showed that the rate of serious violent crime in schools continued to fall. [Still,] we can't pretend that what happened in Blacksburg, Nickel Mines, and Cleveland are just tragic aberrations. We have to do our best to prevent anything like them from happening again.

She listed several prevention approaches supported by the Office of Justice Programs, including mentoring, youth courts, and educational community service for young offenders.

The Conference on Safe Schools and Communities was designed with several goals in mind. It served as a forum for conversation and debate on issues of youth development and making schools safer. It also sought to encourage partnerships among public, private, and not-for-profit enterprises by providing a location for professionals in the field to exchange the most recent scientific findings and evidence-based practices.

The conference was geared toward violence-prevention practitioners at all levels: teachers, school psychologists and mental health experts, social workers and counselors, school administrators and boards, community organizations and youth service agencies, law enforcement and law-related educators, court administrators, researchers, and State education agencies.

The conference had four featured tracks: Bullying Prevention, Mentoring, Program Evaluation, and Community Programs.

• Bullying Prevention—Bullying happens repeatedly, in public or anonymously, from the campus to the chat room.
  This track addressed the questions: Why does anyone bully?, What are the effects of bullying?, and How can bullying behavior be redirected?

• Mentoring—To provide school and community-based practitioners with reliable and proven methods aimed at developing mentoring success for youth, this track focused on mentoring awareness, how mentoring can assist in the reduction of violence, successful and proven mentoring programs, and techniques for implementing and sustaining a successful program.

• Program Evaluation—The content of this track concerned evaluation needs such as logic models, formative and summative evaluations, and quantitative and qualitative designs.

• Community Programs—Intended to demonstrate the wide array of youth violence prevention and intervention programming initiated outside the school setting, this track addressed the special conditions, availability of resources, and leveraging of assets that characterize successful community-based programs.

Additional session content areas covered a spectrum of programs: alternative education, charter schools, crisis response planning, early care and education, juvenile justice and restorative justice, school law enforcement, strategic planning for emergencies, and youth leadership. Special sessions were held on mental health matters, Federal resources, and establishing and maintaining a youth court. Among the many timely sessions were "Creating Synergy for Gang Prevention: Taking a Look at Animal Fighting and Gangs" (discussing the effect of dog fights and other staged animal fights on neighborhoods) and "Just Turn the Darn Thing Off: Understanding Cyberbullying."

The complete proceedings from the conference are available on the Web site of the Hamilton Fish Institute.