Cleveland is experiencing the highest violent crime rate in decades

This $2,000,000 Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance under the Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CFDA 16.045) will fund a collaborative effort between two Cleveland-based nonprofit organizations, the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance and the Brenda Glass Multipurpose Trauma Center, to enhance and expand their hospital-linked community violence interruption and prevention services. The funding will allow the organizations to meet the increasing demand for their trauma-informed, equity-focused services targeting high-risk Black youth aged 15-24 in highly segregated, high-crime neighborhoods. Additionally, the grant will support the development and implementation of a needs assessment, process evaluation, and impact evaluation to document and assess the effectiveness of this comprehensive community violence intervention program, which is the only one of its kind in the Greater Cleveland area.

Homicides increased by 38 percent, and shootings increased by 40 percent from 2019 (pre-covid) to 2022 (post-covid). To address this increase in violent crime, particularly gun violence, over the past several years, two nonprofit community-based, black-led organizations, the cleveland peacemakers alliance (peacemakers) and the brenda glass multipurpose trauma center (trauma center), have collaboratively provided comprehensive hospital-linked community violence outreach and trauma recovery services to the high-risk victims of gun violence and their familiesthose hospitalized following a gunshot and their families. Current services target black youth aged 1524 residing in highly racially segregated, high-risk neighborhoods. Services are trauma informed, are equity focused, and incorporate the perspective of victims of gun violence and their familieswithout mandated contact with police or hospital systems. In response to long-standing challenges in our community intensified by covid, peacemakers and trauma center have been unable to keep up with the demand for services. Moreover, the citys great need for direct services has made IT challenging to fund large-scale, multiyear research and evaluation activities to evaluate the intervention. Peacemakers and the trauma center, and in collaboration with the criminology research center at cleveland state university, seek funding to enhance, document, and asses this hospital-linked community violence intervention. More specifically, we are requesting funding to: (a) enhance and expand capacity in CVI service delivery efforts to meet increasing needs in our community due to rising gun violence; (b) develop and implement a need assessment, a process evaluation, and an impact evaluation of the greater clevelands only hospital-linked community violence interruption and prevention effort (category 1, community-based/tribal organizations); and (c) enhance peacemakers and trauma centers capacity to collect performance metrics and outcome data and conduct ongoing program monitoring and evaluation. This would be the first federal award from BJA to directly fund services provided by two culturally specific community-based organizations in cleveland.