MENU TITLE: East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership. Series: BJA Monograph Published: June 1997 26 pages 53,355 bytes U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Assistance ------------------------------ Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from BJA at 800-688-4252. Foreword In May 1997, BJA invited representatives from a unique regional collaborative, the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership, to share their experiences with U.S. Department of Justice staff. This report is a summary of the Partnership's presentation. In the East Bay Corridor in California, regional collaboration was spurred by tragic events: an alarming rise in homicides committed by and against the area's youth. Sickened by violent crime in their neighborhoods, citizens and elected officials from local communities united to form the East Bay Partnership. The Partnership has mobilized community support on a broad range of issues. The East Bay Partnership is exciting because it is applying two concepts that are revolutionizing how we think about criminal justice and the role of government in the lives of our citizens. Those concepts, regional collaboration and community policing, have made it possible for the communities of the East Bay Corridor to achieve the goals that are truly at the heart of community-based justice: resisting crime, reducing fear, and returning a sense of civility and hope to neighborhoods once thought to be beyond help. The presenters discussed in detail how members of the Partnership have worked together to create a common vision for public safety in the East Bay Corridor and maximize coordination and leveraging of Federal, State, and local funds. With this vision and the resources to make it happen, the Partnership has implemented comprehensive, model programs that make a dramatic difference every day in the lives of East Bay residents. It is our hope that their success can be replicated in other regions across the Nation. Nancy E. Gist Director ------------------------------ Acknowledgments The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) would like to thank the staff and member organizations of the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership, including the East Bay Community Foundation, for making this grantee presentation to BJA and other U.S. Department of Justice staff. In particular, BJA would like to acknowledge the valuable leadership provided by East Bay Partnership Executive Director Maria Theresa Viramontes, who worked closely with BJA to organize the presentation. BJA would also like to thank the following individuals who represented East Bay Partnership member organizations during the presentation: Chairperson Shirley Dean, Mayor, city of Berkeley; Chief William Lansdowne and Captain Ray Howard, city of Richmond Police Department; Robert Bennett, Resource Development and Associates; Mike Smith, CopNet Lead Team Manager, Oakland Communications Information Services; Ron Johnson, Director of Camps, Camp Sweeny and Camp Ready; Carol Kizziah, Consultant, Contra Costa County Administrator; Mark Morris, Consultant, Contra Costa County; Henry Gardner, former Oakland City Manager and former Partnership Executive Director; Benjamin Bank, Chief Financial Officer, East Bay Community Foundation; and Lina Hancock, Community Mobilization Coordinator, East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership. ------------------------------ Contents Introduction: Learning More About a Dynamic Regional Collaborative The East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership: A Brief History The Partnership's Strategic Planning Process: A Foundation for Regional Cooperation Strategic Planning: What the Partnership Learned Implementing a Strategic Plan and Making It Work Lessons From the Implementation Process How the Partnership Functions Organizational Structure and Key Players Integrating Resources for Implementation Prioritizing Partnership Activities The Partnership's Impact on Communities and Policymaking Examples of Partnership Initiatives Community Mobilization and Community Policing Information Sharing Collaboratives: CopNET and the Public Policy Data Library Youth Violence Prevention, Intervention, and Aftercare Programs The Partnership's Future Sources for Further Information ------------------------------ Introduction: Learning More About a Dynamic Regional Collaborative The East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership (also referred to in this report as the East Bay Partnership or the Partnership) is a collaborative of nearly 50 public and private groups, including cities, counties, school districts, higher educational institutions, and law enforcement agencies. The collaborative represents 1.5 million people living in a 75-mile region along the I-80 Freeway in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay area. (For a current list of partners, see "The East Bay Partnership in Focus, Public Safety Corridor Partners as of May 1997 " below.) ------------------------------ The East Bay Partnership in Focus Public Safety Corridor Partners as of May 1997 City of Alameda Alameda County Office of Education City Police Chiefs City of Albany Contra Costa County Office of Education Alameda County Sheriff's Department City of Berkeley Alameda Unified School District Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department City of El Cerrito Albany Unified School District School District Police Departments City of Emeryville Berkeley Unified School District College and University Police Chiefs City of Fremont Emeryville Unified School District California State University, Hayward City of Hayward Fremont Unified School District Contra Costa College District City of Hercules Oakland Unified School District University of California, Berkeley City of Newark Hayward Unified School District East Bay Community Foundation City of Oakland John Swett Unified School District National Funding Collaborative City of Piedmont New Haven School District City of Richmond Newark Unified School District City of San Pablo Piedmont Unified School District City of San Leandro San Leandro Unified School District City of Union City San Lorenzo Unified School District County of Alameda West Contra Costa County School District County of Contra Costa ------------------------------ To expand knowledge throughout the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) of this complex and diverse grantee, including how it defines its local community, how it organizes itself to deal with crime, and how it delineates major crime challenges and strategically plans to overcome them, BJA invited representatives of the Partnership to Washington, D.C., to make a formal presentation on May 5, 1997. This event gave the Partnership an opportunity to engage an OJP-wide audience and discuss salient accomplishments and future challenges regarding the dynamic, regional collaboration it has achieved. The Partnership's presentation discussed the formation of the collaborative, with a detailed look at the strategic community-based planning process it used to identify and launch its major initiatives. The presentation then focused on three major Partnership initiatives: community mobilization and policing, regionwide information sharing, and youth violence prevention. Due to time limitations, the Partnership was not able to discuss all of its comprehensive and collaborative working groups and the initiatives those groups are pursuing. For more detailed information on the Partnership's activities, contact its main offices at 510-832-7071. The East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership: A Brief History The East Bay Partnership was "born out of tragedy" after a bloody weekend in June 1993, during which 23 shootings occurred. Violence had escalated in the East Bay Corridor to the point that, by 1993, homicide was the leading cause of death among youth in Corridor communities. In response to this violence, local political leaders convened a roundtable of elected officials, policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and community members. They recognized that the arbitrary lines that define jurisdictions are meaningless in fighting crime and formed a voluntary partnership that "combines political will with staff resources across jurisdictional lines" to find practical solutions to the problems the communities were experiencing. In November 1993, after months of debate, a memorandum of understanding was signed by three cities--Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland--to form the Partnership. Political leadership was critical to the formation of the Partnership. Tom Bates, a member of the California State Assembly, served as the founding chair and worked with local elected officials to get them to join the collaborative and provide in- kind staff and office space. The East Bay Community Foundation, the Partnership's fiscal agent, also played an important role in convening the Partnership. A private, nonpolitical philanthropic organization respected by all of the Partnership's founding members, the Foundation fostered cooperation among Partnership members. Funding from BJA's Comprehensive Communities Program (CCP) and the National Funding Collaborative (NFC), a private, nonprofit national organization funded in part by BJA, supported the Partnership's formation. In 1994, the Partnership hired administrative staff, and in 1995, it hired program staff. In the fall of 1995, following 15 months of intensive debate over how the collaborative would govern itself, the Corridor Council, the Partnership's administrative voting arm, designed the Partnership's organizational structure and approved bylaws to ensure that local governments would have an equal say in the collaborative regardless of the size of the jurisdictions they represent. The Partnership's Strategic Planning Process: A Foundation for Regional Cooperation With funding from the NFC, the Partnership conducted a formal community needs assessment to clarify its scope and direction. The assessment included 19 focus groups of key constituents; informal roundtable discussions among Corridor Council members; community surveys and polls; interviews with institutional, political, and community leaders; and surveys of Partnership members and leaders. In addition, the Council's standing committees developed goals and objectives for their activities and made policy recommendations. The result of the strategic planning and community needs assessment process was a workplan. The workplan included a comprehensive strategy and a set of goals, activities, and expected outcomes, on which all of the partners had to agree. The overarching themes of the comprehensive strategy included adopting a regional approach against crime and violence, recognizing the value of prevention efforts, developing and implementing comprehensive activities and programs, realizing the need to focus on each community's strengths, providing all segments of the community with access to the Partnership, and underscoring the importance of research and evaluation to validate assumptions about what works and to identify best practices. Strategic Planning: What the Partnership Learned As it prepared to implement its comprehensive strategy, the Partnership learned critical lessons about establishing a strategic planning process that is thorough and effective. First, it is important to be realistic about the time required to get members to work together, particularly in a large collaborative: everything requires more time than one might expect for collaboration to occur. A collaborative as large as the East Bay's requires a long-term workplan. In 1994 and 1995, the Partnership developed 1-year workplans. In 1996, it developed a 2-year workplan. Because of the Partnership's current size, a 3-year workplan has been recommended. In addition, data collected through the community assessment were invaluable to the Partnership's strategic planning. Information and statistics about the East Bay communities were collected, reviewed, analyzed, and published before the planning process began to give Partnership members the knowledge they needed to make decisions about the Partnership's work. The Partnership learned that in an area as large as the East Bay it can be difficult to develop the indepth neighborhood involvement needed for the strategic planning process. To remedy this situation, the Partnership made a concerted effort during the planning process to focus the neighborhood groups by using polls and surveys and by ensuring that the groups were composed of representatives from local areas. The most important lesson the Partnership gained from its strategic planning experience is that it is important that all members formally approve the planning process and adopt the workplan to be implemented. Because members of a collaborative join voluntarily, they are free to leave at any time. To keep members involved, it is critical to develop a multiyear workplan and require its adoption by every member. Other elements that help keep a collaborative together are progressive, passionate political leadership; formal agreements among members for workplan implementation and staff requirements; awareness of and sensitivity to local planning and its relationship to regional efforts; educational forums in the community to build consensus on issues and policies, raise public awareness, and encourage political leadership; and meetings between Corridor Council leaders or the Partnership's executive director and community members to solicit support. Implementing a Strategic Plan and Making It Work Successfully implementing a single strategic plan for numerous diverse communities requires several key elements. The most important principle is that each member agree on and commit to the strategy and adopt the workplan to be implemented. To ensure this level of commitment, the Partnership requires formal agreements from each jurisdiction. These agreements are made through memorandums of understanding, service agreements, legislation and resolutions, local ordinances on policy, charters, and protocols. The Partnership identifies the most appropriate agency or jurisdiction to run a program, which then is implemented by interagency in-kind staff or technical work teams. Using this approach helps the Partnership define authority and responsibilities for each project. The key to the Partnership's successful program implementation is to be flexible, open, fair, assertive, and consistent with the work teams. It also is important to be aware that members might compete against one another for funding opportunities and to make efforts to reduce or restrain negative competition among them. Lessons From the Implementation Process The Partnership's implementation process did not occur without difficulties. The members learned that collaboration takes time and intense involvement of staff and volunteers. It also requires constant communication among members and with the public. Communication can be expensive, however. As the Partnership increases public awareness of its work, the community's expectations for results also increase, leading to greater financial expense. Moreover, collaboration generally is not rewarded financially by public or private funders. More often, funds are available on a competitive basis, encouraging isolation and competition among the Partnership's members and discouraging sharing of funds. The Partnership also learned that the management and work styles required to work on collaborative teams often are in sharp contrast to the line authority management and work styles familiar to employees of public institutions. Most public agencies do not reward or understand the entrepreneurial leadership skills required for a collaborative to be successful. In spite of these difficulties, the Partnership's members have benefited greatly from their cooperation in implementing the workplan. Collaboration allowed jurisdictions and community members to cross-train, share knowledge, and build organizational capacity, and it facilitated comprehensive community problem solving. The Partnership found, for example, that collaboration led to the institutionalization across member jurisdictions of system changes that resulted in more cost-effective service delivery. Finally, although raising expectations among the public was expensive, it served as an incentive to solve problems and deliver results. How the Partnership Functions Organizational Structure and Key Players When it approved its bylaws, the Partnership designed its organizational structure. The East Bay Community Foundation serves as the Partnership's fiscal agent. The Corridor Council sets policy for the organization and its personnel, agrees on an annual budget and ensures that funds are handled properly, authorizes grant applications, and hires the Partnership's executive director. The Council meets at least six times a year, with an annual meeting in February. The membership of the Council consists of three State legislators, two county supervisors, two county administrators, five representatives from the Constituent Assembly, a representative from the East Bay Community Foundation, three members of Congress, and two county superintendents of education. In addition, the Council includes three city managers, three mayors, three police chiefs/sheriffs, and three school superintendents representing Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. The Corridor Council established standing committees for education, law enforcement, juvenile justice, economic development, community outreach, personnel, and youth council. These committees are responsible for strategic planning and grant management related to their areas of expertise. In keeping with the themes of the original workplan, participants in the collaborative represent all segments of East Bay communities. Key players in the Partnership are: o Youth and youth organizations from the community. o Community activists. o Political leaders, including members of Congress and the State legislature, county supervisors, mayors, and school board members. o Institutional leaders, including CEOs of institutions of higher education, county CEOs, city managers, police chiefs and sheriffs, and CEOs of corporations, nonprofit and other public agencies, and religious organizations. o Philanthropic leaders, including the East Bay Community Foundation and the National Funding Collaborative. (The Wellness Foundation, although not a direct funder of the collaborative, financially supports several member agencies.) o Technical staff and consultants. Integrating Resources for Implementation Based on the crime prevention and control strategy established by the Corridor Council and community priorities, the Partnership coordinates funding from State and local governments, the Federal Government, and private, nonprofit foundations. It receives funding from the U.S. Department of Justice (Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), National Institute of Justice, and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Education. Short-term (1 to 5 years) funding is provided through grants awarded by public and private agencies. These grants are used to test and implement new programs and to replicate existing projects in order to establish standard practices across the Corridor. The Partnership also requires a long-term commitment of funds to allow it to institutionalize successful programs. To secure these funds, it reauthorizes local and State funds or works to create new local and State revenues. The Partnership keeps in mind realistic timeframes for making fiscal policy changes. At the local government level in the East Bay, it takes 1 to 3 years to reauthorize or create new funds. At the State level in California, it takes 2 to 5 years to reauthorize or create new funds. To identify new funding streams, the Partnership communicates with the State Treasurer's Office, the State Controller's Office, the State Auditor's Office, the State Department of Finance, State legislative committees, and the Governor's Office. Prioritizing Partnership Activities Successful implementation of the workplan requires a clear statement of the Partnership's priorities. To prioritize the workplan activities, the Partnership's Corridor Council has approved guidelines for administering the strategic plan. These guidelines include the following criteria, which are considered by the Council when reviewing potential Partnership projects. A project exhibiting more of these criteria has the best chance of being adopted. A priority project should: o Cluster activities in principal themes with clear focus. o Use an integrated systems approach. o Evaluate readiness of effort. o Acquire members' consensus on effort. o Identify sources of funding. o Include the community as a partner. o Plan for discretionary funding. o Incorporate the Corridor's leadership in implementation. The Partnership's Impact on Communities and Policymaking According to the East Bay Partnership, to be successful a regional collaboration must: o Be willing to listen to every member to make sure that everyone is on board. o Have a neutral convener, such as the East Bay Community Foundation, for whom all of the partners have respect and with whom they will be willing to enter into a partnership. o Have strong political leadership with the courage and willingness to solicit the support of new partners. o Have advocates in each community who have a strong awareness of problems in their neighborhoods and the resources that are available to address those problems. The partnership's advocates must be articulate about communicating this information in meetings with high-level political leaders. The Partnership has helped political leaders think comprehensively and move discussion beyond one program to a system of programs and service delivery. The members have learned from one another what works and what does not. The Partnership has given the region a new vision about how to approach problems. Prior to the establishment of the collaborative, the concept of regional government had not been successful in the East Bay because territorial local governments worried about what they would have to sacrifice. The Partnership has taught the partners that a regional approach to solving community problems is not about sacrificing autonomy but about reaping the benefits of cooperation. The Partnership has opened new sources of funding for member jurisdictions that would not have been available to individual agencies. But the real benefit of collaboration in East Bay goes beyond the funding, because funding is not constant. The Partnership's accomplishments will long outlive its funding because the Partnership has institutionalized collaboration and made the jurisdictions willing not only to make a portion of what they have received in Federal and State funding available to the Partnership, but also to think about making available some of their own local resources. That is a revolutionary idea. Examples of Partnership Initiatives To provide a better understanding of how its major crime strategies were developed and implemented, the Partnership included in its presentation a detailed discussion of three major initiatives: community mobilization and policing, regionwide information sharing, and youth violence prevention. The Partnership uses a pilot approach to establishing corridorwide policies and practices. For example, the city of Richmond is the primary site for community-oriented policing, the city of Oakland is the site for the information-sharing collaborative, and selected projects in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties are the sites for youth violence models. Community Mobilization and Community Policing The move to community-oriented, problem-solving policing in the Corridor was supported and facilitated by well-established East Bay Corridor community organizations. As of March 1997, the East Bay Corridor had 19 community policing programs. The majority of these programs, which receive funding from the U.S. Department of Justice Community Oriented Policing Services program and Office of Justice Programs, have resulted in recorded decreases in crime from 1993 to 1996. The Partnership has enabled communities in the Corridor to establish policies and programs that otherwise would not have been possible. Policies include developing corridorwide community policing standards and establishing youth academies and domestic violence protocols. Youth Academies Every law enforcement agency in the Corridor has established youth academies that bring inner-city, at-risk youth together with law enforcement mentors. Through the academies, neighboring cities with varying resources have combined their efforts by sharing resources and providing training to each other. Agencies no longer fight one another over funds, but instead work together to decide how best to spend them. The Partnership breaks down traditional boundaries between groups and people in the region and thereby gives every city, big or small, a voice in how to manage the Corridor's resources. Domestic Violence Protocol The Partnership also has made it possible for police chiefs throughout the Corridor to agree on one Domestic Violence Protocol, which has been instrumental in reducing domestic violence in the region. The goal of the protocol is to bring together law enforcement, social services, and researchers to develop the best police practices for domestic violence situations. The protocol has been adopted by all 23 member law enforcement agencies and is being implemented with police training grants. The Partnership also will conduct research, with the support of NIJ, to identify best practices for creating an assessment tool to help police officers manage domestic violence situations. A Local Success: Community Policing in Richmond Community policing efforts in the city of Richmond are representative of similar policing efforts throughout the corridor. The concept of community policing has changed the way the Richmond police officers police their community. Officers have become part of the neighborhoods as the Richmond Police Department has assigned them responsibility for smaller neighborhood areas. Like other inner cities, Richmond, which has a population of 110,000, has unemployment, poverty, a high dropout rate, and single-parent homes. The department divided the city into five community policing districts, each with its own area commander and three officer-neighborhood specialists who regularly attend neighborhood council meetings. The officers patrol the neighborhoods differently than in the past by using horses, bicycles, and foot patrols. Police are involved in all of the school districts in the area, and each school, public or private, is assigned an officer. The city of Richmond is divided into 37 ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods with their own councils and neighborhood watch groups. The police department individualizes its services to each neighborhood and allows the neighbor-hood council groups to have input into their neighborhoods' law enforcement policy decisionmaking processes. Richmond's police managers attend monthly regional community policing meetings in the Corridor to learn from other cities' community policing strategies, exchange ideas, and share information about problems to be avoided or successful efforts that can be implemented in other departments. The city has seen the results of its efforts. In 1992, there were 62 homicides in the city; in 1993 and 1994, there were 52; and in 1995, there were 24--the largest drop in the number of homicides in a decade. In 1996, there were 34 homicides. Overall, crime in the area has decreased 25 percent since 1993, the largest decrease Richmond has ever experienced. To reduce the amount of firearms on the streets, the city, with the assistance of BJA's Comprehensive Homicide Initiative, has implemented a Neighborhood Gun Suppression Reward Program. In the past 10 years, 320 of 410 homicides in Richmond involved the use of handguns. Residents are encouraged to report illegal firearms to police, and the city awards $100 to citizens who provide information that leads to the recovery of an illegal firearm. To ensure that parolees and probationers adhere to their sanctions, the police department has instituted a parole and probation program in which police officers work overtime with probation and parole officers. Through the program, police enhance the safety of parole and probation officers, make house checks, and help enforce parole and probation sanctions. In the first 4 months of the program the officers have made 25 arrests, conducted 56 searches and 163 home visits or street contacts, and confiscated 3 illegal firearms. Richmond police officers are especially proud of the department's Police Athletic League (PAL) program, which serves 2,500 youth in West Contra Costa County. PAL gives the department's officers the opportunity to collaborate with other officers in the area on community programs and events involving youth. The program's Willie McGee Computer Center is located close to a middle school and has support from the city and its business community. In 1995, the department began its first truancy program, Operation Stay in School. The program is geared toward prevention, rather than enforcement, and involves officers from all areas of Contra Costa County in cooperation with local school districts. From January to December 1996, officers identified and returned to school 295 youth, many of whom had not attended school for 2 years. The department subsequently found that 40 percent of these youth have stayed in school. In addition, Richmond officers are taking the initiative to volunteer in the area by adopting schools on their beats and organizing activities for neighborhood youth. All of the public schools in the area have been adopted by an officer. The officers meet one- on-one with students, faculty, and parents, and meet monthly with school officials to discuss any issues they may have. Events the officers have organized include holiday gatherings in public parks, one-on-one counseling, and encouragement of student involvement in positive activities. All of these efforts have fostered a perception among neighborhood residents that police are no longer "those people who come into the neighborhood," but "people who are part of neighborhood life." Information Sharing Collaboratives: CopNET and the Public Policy Data Library CopNET: Creating a Regionwide Information Network for Law Enforcement Through CopNET, East Bay police departments have united under the coordination of the Partnership to develop a community policing software and hardware platform and to build a common foundation for future growth of law enforcement computerized information needs in the Corridor. The project is designed to provide timely and accurate information about perpetrators, vehicles, and crimes to officers in the field from multiple jurisdictions. Ultimately, CopNET will provide the following: o Real-time data access across all 23 police jurisdictions in the East Bay Corridor. o User interface for ad-hoc queries. o Clear, detailed data analysis. o Access to data from State, regional, and other agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the National Crime Information Center. o A wealth of crime analysis capabilities. There are barriers to achieving these goals, however. Data collected by law enforcement agencies in the Partnership are not in a standard format and are not easily shared. The infrastructure necessary to connect networks and databases is not available within the Partnership's agencies because the agencies have developed their systems independently. These barriers become problems when jurisdictions need to share information on a particular case. To build solutions to these problems, the Partnership uses an approach that combines centralized management and distributed implementation. The combined approach is designed to support fast transactions that give officers in the field immediate responses to their queries. But it also allows for long transactions for detectives who need all the available information on a given situation. CopNET's goal is to provide to the field officer a 2- to 4-minute response to basic queries. CopNET will also provide information to officers across jurisdictional boundaries, establish an environment for sharing all crime data across those boundaries, and provide a standard systems infrastructure--computers, networks, and databases- -that allows for cost-effective expansion to a future CopNET participant. To do this effectively and sustain it, the Partnership will have to manage the information flow requirements as more members are added. CopNET's design assumes that every jurisdiction has a records management system that tries to standardize, verify, and ensure the quality of client information. CopNET's purpose is to translate subsets of that information into a common computer language and store them on a distributive set of servers. The City of Oakland will manage the system; it will not be necessary for each site to have a system manager. Public Policy Data Library: Building a Better Picture of Crime and Services Community policing and community-based prevention efforts have increased the need for information that provides a more detailed picture of the environmental context in which crime occurs and inventories the services available to at-risk families. One of the Partnership's primary goals is to give public agencies information that allows them to quickly identify trends in youth violence, gang membership, and drug abuse and to implement a forceful response. Modern computer systems give communities the ability to inexpensively collect, store, and analyze large amounts of data, providing new insight into how communities and families function. However, many agencies' management information systems lag behind current technology, and bureaucratic barriers often make it difficult for agencies to respond to technological change. To collect information on everything that impacts its communities' health and well-being, the Partnership has retained experts in the field to conduct a community needs assessment study. The study is compiling information on individual events and people in areas such as crime, birth and death rates, hospital admissions, and land use. The Partnership will make this information available to citizens, policymakers, community agencies, and community police officers through a Public Policy Data Library. One example of the value of the Partnership's needs assessment efforts was an analysis conducted for the city of San Leandro, which provided the city a clear blueprint for directing resources for new aftercare programs. Using computer mapping, the assessment staff plotted 6 years of crime data to identify where and when youth commit crimes and where and when they are victims of crime. The results showed that youth in San Leandro more often committed crimes and were victims of crime between 3 and 6 p.m. Plotting the locations of schools on the same map indicated that children were being victimized on their way home from school. The locations of afterschool programs were also plotted on the map, which showed that afterschool programs were concentrated in areas in which the least crime occurred. There were no afterschool programs, however, in areas in which the most crime occurred. This led to plans to locate effective afterschool programs in high-crime areas. Another example is an analysis of the city of Oakland's teen birth rate. The Partnership was interested in conducting an abstinence program in East Oakland and wanted information on the rate of births to teenagers in five census tracts. Using data from an 8-year period, the needs assessment staff showed the community that 100 percent of the increase in births to teens in the area was among Hispanic girls with partners 5 or more years older. On the basis of this analysis, the community concluded that abstinence programs are not the most appropriate method for preventing teen pregnancy in their area and that programs must be made available in Spanish. Youth Violence Prevention, Intervention, and Aftercare Programs Preventing youth violence is at the heart of the Partnership's vision for raising the quality of life in the East Bay. (See "The East Bay Partnership in Focus, Youth Violence Prevention Initiative" on page 16.) Youth violence prevention activities throughout the Corridor are built around the idea that youth at risk of violence and incarceration and those already in the region's juvenile justice system need a full range of prevention, intervention, treatment, and aftercare services. To make sure that all children in the Corridor benefit from youth services, the Partnership has helped member jurisdictions establish common guidelines for truancy, punishment, alternative placement, and treatment and aftercare programs. Through its continuum-of- care and SafeFutures programs and a host of other initiatives, the Partnership has made a priority of creating jobs for youth, protecting them in their neighborhoods and at school, and offering alternatives to drugs and gangs through youth academies and afterschool, extended day, mentoring, and school-to-work programs. It also emphasizes the need for effective aftercare programs for youth who will likely reoffend after they leave the juvenile justice system. Aftercare Programs in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties The Partnership's commitment to providing youth in the region's juvenile justice system a complete continuum of care was illustrated in the presentation by the level of attention given to aftercare, a critical phase during which juvenile offenders attempt to rejoin their communities. Alameda and Contra Costa Counties each run a juvenile offender aftercare program through their probation departments and share a portion of the BJA Comprehensive Communities Program grant for alternatives to incarceration. In addition, Contra Costa County operates a SafeFutures program funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in the U.S. Department of Justice. The Partnership provides a framework for program implementation and an infrastructure for integrating funding, policies, and procedures related to youth programs. ------------------------------ The East Bay Partnership in Focus Youth Violence Prevention Initiative The Partnership's successful efforts to stop youth violence stress the need for both enforcement and prevention. The initiative's 12 priorities are listed below. Gun Initiatives: Establishing community-friendly gun laws, including those that would eliminate "junk guns"; requiring trigger locks on guns; establishing zoning restrictions for gun sales; limiting home sales of guns; and requiring background certification of gun dealers. (This initiative is supported by foundation, and not Federal grant, funds.) Extended Day Programs: Establishing afterschool programs, Beacon schools, and Healthy Start programs to make schools a safe environment for children and community activities. Gun Hotline: Making a toll-free number available to anonymously notify authorities of illegal gun sales and people with guns at school. School-to-Work Programs: Establishing job training programs to provide students with opportunities for real jobs after they graduate. Youth Leadership Programs: Developing programs that create opportunities for young people to develop leadership skills and take active roles in crime prevention. Youth Academies: Establishing youth academies to encourage positive relationships between police officers and young people through the development of problem-solving skills. Safe Passage Home: Establishing in high-risk communities a community network among schools, churches, and nonprofit organizations to protect students going to and from school.* Truancy Prevention: Establishing, in cooperation with the region's school districts, a regional truancy standard to integrate regional truancy centers with comprehensive case management and referrals to alternative educational programs.* Strike One, You're In: Establishing a diversion program for first-time juvenile offenders that incorporates community-based mentoring, peer group counseling, and educational options. A Common Community Approach: Establishing regional juvenile justice guidelines with consistent punishments, alternative placements, and significant aftercare programs. Gang Diversion Programs: Developing programs for gang members and at-risk youth and their siblings to curb the level of violence and reduce the number of young people involved in gangs. Making Peace: Developing, in cooperation with schools and youth services, conflict resolution and mediation training for young people. *Since the May 5, 1997, presentation, the State of California allocated substantial funding to support the Truancy Prevention program. On May 17, 1997, Attorney General Reno attended the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant award ceremony for northern California, during which COPS awards for the Safe Passage Home program were made to two Partnership members. ------------------------------ Aftercare in Contra Costa County Five years ago, Contra Costa County began to replace its juvenile hall, which was old, unsafe, and overcrowded. The Partnership helped the county assemble an advisory committee of law enforcement professionals, county officials, and county residents to plan the new facility. The committee eventually reached a consensus for the plan, based on an assessment of the specific needs of juveniles in the system at that time. The assessment provided information about the juveniles' histories, the types of crimes they had committed, the mental health problems they may have had, and whether or not they were in school. The planning process resulted in the creation a continuum of care, a comprehensive set of programs designed to address all needs of the juvenile delinquents in Contra Costa County. The county now has a continuum-of- care grant from OJJDP to help identify areas in which more services for juveniles are needed. Contra Costa County currently operates 45 programs in its continuum-of-care program, 2 of which are funded by the Partnership and 14 of which are supported by OJJDP SafeFutures and continuum-of- care grants. These programs include diversion, postadjudicated aftercare, substance abuse treatment, short-term detention, prevention, and early intervention programs. Aftercare in Alameda County Similarly, Alameda County's aftercare program, located at Camp Sweeny, benefits from a focus on juvenile needs. The 105-bed nonsecure residential facility, which began operation in May 1996, serves males ages 14 to 18, with an average age of 17«. The length of the program is 6 to 12 months, with an average stay of 9 months. The camp is an honor program, and participants must earn their way to graduation. Juveniles are eligible for the camp if they are in need of school placement, have 6 to 8 weeks left in the residential phase of the program, and owe restitution. Each juvenile is assigned a deputy probation officer who counsels him throughout the program. To measure the impact of its program, Camp Sweeny compared a control group of 50 juveniles who had completed the residential phase of the program with a group of 50 juveniles who went on to complete the aftercare program. The evaluation included comparisons of job or education placement, job retention, recidivism, convictions, and amount of restitution collected. Aftercare participants retained their jobs for 3 months or longer and were less likely to be arrested and convicted for felonies than were members of the control group. The program placed juveniles who did not have marketable skills in an employability internship program. By pairing juveniles with camp service staff during their daily duties, the program allowed the juveniles to develop employable skills in areas such as landscaping, engineering, and carpentry. The SafeFutures Program in Contra Costa County SafeFutures, a comprehensive, youth-focused initiative supported by OJJDP, is coordinated with other Partnership youth activities. Often, separate funding sources and their programs address the same issues and problems but never "touch base," making it difficult to coordinate their integration. Contra Costa County, however, because of the regional coordination facilitated by the Partnership, has ensured that its SafeFutures grant does not conflict with or duplicate other grants. Contra Costa County has used SafeFutures funds to build on the counties' employment aftercare programs and to redesign the organizational culture of probation. Using the case management component of employment aftercare, the SafeFutures program is trying to provide case management aftercare, whether for employment or other services, for all youth coming out of out-of-home placement and eventually for all youth who are on postadjudication field supervision by probation. In addition, the program's administrators have learned that there are different types and levels of collaboration and that the nature of the collaboration needs to be targeted to the nature of the program activity. The Partnership has played an important role in bringing together regionwide political leaders to make regionwide policies. However, juvenile justice programs, particularly if they are to be accessible to youth, need to be very localized, almost at the neighborhood level. The nature of the collaboration changes, particularly at the implementation stage, for each community. The SafeFutures program in Contra Costa County has advisory committees made up of key leaders in the community. Many of these committee members also serve on the Partnership advisory committee. This level of collaboration is helpful in establishing uniform policies and for establishing programs, such as CopNET, that benefit the entire region. In addition, SafeFutures requires collaboration at the "street level," with a large number of partners, which is a completely different kind of collaboration requiring a different set of skills. One way that local initiatives such as Safe Futures complement the Partnership, as it tries to set a framework for programs like truancy or gun prevention in the region, is by providing specific program implementation for regionwide priorities. Future Steps To Prevent Youth Violence The Partnership plans to ask each school board in the East Bay to adopt the East Bay Corridor's regional truancy policy as a standard. The policy requires cities and schools to conduct community police sweeps, manage a caseload of chronic truants, provide alternative education, coordinate with juvenile courts, and assess the educational process for chronic truants. Since the presentation on May 5, 1997, the Partnership has received substantial funding from the State for its Truancy Prevention Program. Another crucial program for youth is the Partnership's Safe Passage Home initiative designed to deal with the victimization of youth. On May 17, 1997, Attorney General Reno visited Oakland to take part in the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program award ceremony for northern California law enforcement agencies. Both the Oakland and Richmond police departments received COPS funding for their Safe Passage Home proposals, in which the Partnership was named as an active member. As part of the May 17 event, the Attorney General toured the proposed Oakland Safe Passage target area with local neighborhood residents and members of the East Bay Partnership. Finally, based on findings from the community assessment that children more often commit crimes and are victims of crime between the afternoon hours of 3 and 6, the Partnership will move forward with its Extended Day Initiative. In order to mobilize youth, the Partnership held a team building conference in 1996 that included training and national presenters. This conference was attended by over 400 participants, including 80 children. The Partnership's Future Since its creation in 1993, The East Bay Partnership has been a forerunner in the movement to make crime prevention the responsibility of the whole community in active coordination with criminal justice system agencies, including traditional law enforcement agencies. The Partnership, formed in response to a pressing regional concern--stopping violence among youth-- has mobilized communities in the area to work together to address quality-of-life issues that are too complex for any single law enforcement or community-based agency. In the process, it has become a powerful agent for bringing new Federal and State funds to the East Bay and for encouraging more effective use of all resources among Partnership members. Most important, as communities in the East Bay prepare to take on new problems presented by changing demographics and the information needs of a increasingly sophisticated world, the Partnership proves that regional collaboration can work. Through its demonstration regarding the efficacy of voluntary regional cooperation and collaboration, the Partnership has built a solid foundation for the future of all Corridor residents and jurisdictions. To begin disseminating information about its achievements to other regional governments and grantmaking agencies at the State and Federal levels, the Partnership has hired an independent evaluator to examine how well its collaborative process works among both public and private agencies. The evaluation, funded by the National Funding Collaborative, is scheduled for completion in late summer of 1998. This evaluation promises to provide an additional source of information and knowledge regarding voluntary regional partnerships among governmental, private sector, and not-for- profit organizations and community members across multiple jurisdictions. Sources for Further Information East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership Maria Theresa Viramontes, Executive Director 1222 Preservation Park Way Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: 510-832-7071 Bureau of Justice Assistance Comprehensive Communities Program Lluana McCann 810 Seventh Street NW. Washington, DC 20531 Phone: 202-305-1772 World Wide Web: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA Bureau of Justice Assistance National Funding Collaborative J. A. Marshall 810 Seventh Street NW. Washington, DC 20531 Phone: 202-616-3215 World Wide Web: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA BJA Clearinghouse P.O. Box 6000 Rockville, MD 20849-6000 Phone: 1-800-688-4252 E-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org World Wide Web: http://www.ncjrs.org Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 1100 Vermont Avenue NW. Washington, DC 20530 Phone:Department of Justice Response Center 1-800-421-6770 World Wide Web: http://www.usdoj.gov/cops/ Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention SafeFutures Kristen Kracke 810 Seventh Street NW. Washington, DC 20531 Phone: 202-616-3649 World Wide Web: http://www.ncjrs.org/ojjhome.htm Urban Enhanced Enterprise Communities Lonnie Carter City of Oakland 475 14th Street Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: 510-238-3718