Anchor Initiative

Strong, healthy and safe neighborhoods are places where people and their families can thrive. The Rutgers School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) partnered with RCPS to further its commitment to the Rutgers University - Newark Strategic Plan (link) with its Anchor Initiative. The SCJ Anchor Initiative focuses on data-driven community engagements to reduce crime and improve public safety in transparent, civilly just and sustainable ways. This initiative coordinates multiple stakeholders and mechanisms designed to improve the impact of public safety work already underway, and implements new evidence-based practices through direct fieldwork, research and consultation.

Newark Public Safety Collaborative (NPSC)

The Newark Public Safety Collaborative (NPSC) was formed in 2018 as part of the SCJ Anchor Initiative. Through direct partnership with the Newark Mayor’s Office, other city officials, and community stakeholders, the NPSC builds on successes of past violence reduction initiatives, such as the SNC, but with a greater focus on (1) place-based predictive analytics and (2) data-driven community engagement for crime prevention and public safety in (3) transparent, civilly just and sustainable ways. NPSC brings together data analysts, social workers, policy makers and practitioners to contextualize ‘big data’ and make decisions for actions in coordinated fashion. The NPSC maximizes local resources and expertise to solve problems and improve the impact of public safety work already underway in Newark. Read More

The Safer Newark Council (SNC) was formed several years ago with the goal of creating a safer Newark through multi-stakeholder partnerships focused on crime and violence reduction. New reforms to this initiative are now underway to achieve this goal with greater focus on spatial analytics and data-driven community engagement for crime prevention and public safety in transparent, civilly just and sustainable ways. This initiative will implement new evidence-based practices to maximize local resources and expertise to solve problems and improve the impact of public safety work already underway in Newark. More details will follow in early 2019.