NPSC

DICE™ was formally tested in Newark, NJ and quickly became a model for the nation

Mentioned in the DICE™ eBook: available for free download from Simsi Press: simsi.com/dice-ebook

Rutgers University partnered with Simsi to make DICE™ readily available to communities throughout the United States and around the world.

Support

Software

Workshops

The Newark Public Safety Collaborative (NPSC) began in 2018, founded by Dr. Leslie Kennedy and Dr. Joel Caplan under the oversight of the Rutgers Center on Public Security (RCPS). It was created as part of the Rutgers University-Newark Chancellor's Anchor Initiative, in partnership with the School of Criminal Justice, and was the first DICE™ initiative to be tested using a public safety collaborative (PSC) model. The first NPSC Director was Genevieve Jones (January - June 2019) and then Dr. Alejandro Giménez Santana (July 2019 - present). Cofounder Dr. Kennedy served as Co-Executive Director from inception to 2023 (when he retired from Rutgers). Cofounder Dr. Caplan has served as Co-Executive Director since its inception.

For over 6 years the NPSC has convened nearly 40 local partners who represent multiple sectors including state, county and local government agencies; police departments; health care providers; schools and educational institutions; businesses and corporations; philanthropic organizations; and community organizations and neighborhood groups. This diverse group of local stakeholders with varying experiences, expertise and capacities enables multiple simultaneous responses to different crime problems. They receive access to data and RTM analytics, and then their problem solutions are driven by individual efforts among all partner organizations who share the common objective of improving public safety in the City of Newark. This has proven to be effective and compatible with public demands and expectations for what civilly just crime prevention and better public safety should be.

To inform community stakeholders and develop common strategies, the NPSC organizes community meetings every 60 days. The structured one-hour events (75 minutes maximum) begin with a review of local crime trends and temporal distributions of crime (i.e., current numbers; where crime concentrates; and what times of the day or days of the week), and then present RTM analyses for various crime problems in different parts of the city. (Problems are defined and prioritized by the participating stakeholders at the meetings, so problems and priorities can change over time). A discussion follows the RTM reports to form risk narratives and potential solutions, programs, or strategies to disrupt them. Data and results from RTM analysis drives the conversations that engage community participants as they develop responses to a variety of crime problems at various settings throughout the city.

NPSC meetings have catalyzed and facilitated multiple crime prevention efforts in Newark. These campaigns include a focus on mitigating the risk of robberies near ATMs, improving lighting conditions in high-risk areas for aggravated assaults, and reducing motor vehicle thefts through educational campaigns at business storefronts. NPSC has become a key facet of Newark’s public safety ecosystem, and has yielded positive outcomes with increased participation and collaboration of community agencies, businesses, and local government representatives.

NPSC has opened the door to unprecedented access to the information that we need to justify the need for more programs and investment in our community.

Amid widespread calls to reimagine public safety throughout the United States, the City of Newark has embraced DICE™ to help position itself as a leader at the center of a growing movement calling for more social justice, more equitable distributions of resources, and better policing (NJ Urban Mayor’s Press, 2022). Prior to the NPSC, Newark community organizations and residents lacked direct and comprehensive access to actionable data and analytics to identify priorities informing their programs and activities. Police had the monopoly on data, analytics, and related technologies and human resources. There were also no mechanisms for police to share the burden of crime prevention with other government agencies or community groups in structured and repeatable ways, so crime problems often received primarily law enforcement responses.

A key aspect of the strategic framework of the NPSC has been the consistency in delivering analytics and insights and ensuring that proposed actions are complementary to community organizations’ ongoing programs and activities by and for both younger and more mature residents of the city.