PUBLIC SAFETY

Goal - Community residents should feel secure and free from threat; both the strongest and the most vulnerable citizens should be equally protected. A healthy community provides crime prevention measures, police prosecutorial, judicial, and correctional systems that deter crime and penalize criminal behavior.

Public Safety Grants Program Director - Luceia V. LeDoux

Active Public Safety Grants as of May 2009:

Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans - Civic Justice Initiative - This program offers employment and leadership training to formerly incarcerated persons to help with their reintegration into the community. Thirty participants per year work at area non-profit agencies, aiding them to provide vital services in exchange for a stipend, health benefits, and an education award.

Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans - Hispanic Public Safety Program - This grant has the purpose of improving relations between the growing Hispanic community and various metro New Orleans law enforcement agencies. The goal of this program is to achieve a more equitable public safety environment, particularly as it relates to the Hispanic community, through language services, community outreach and sensitivity training.

Home Builders Institute - Operation Reconstruct - The Home Builders Institute has a record of industry-validated training, positive results and reduced recidivism rates for its court-involved students. The planning grant will seek to help youthful and adult ex-offender residents of Orleans Parish rebuild their lives and community by securing $300K to fund Operation Reconstruct and develop a sustainability strategy.

Louisiana Justice Coalition - St. Bernard and Plaquemines Community Defense Project - This project will recreate the public defender offices in St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish as community defender offices as they continue their rebuilding effort post-Katrina. BCM funded staff will support community-oriented defender projects in these offices that improve the performance of the entire criminal justice system, leverage state resources more efficiently and strengthen communities.

Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans Inc. - Community Conferencing: Using Crime and Conflict to Build Healthy Communities - Neighborhood Housing Service's Community Conferencing program provides a participatory, community-based process which empowers those affected by youth crime and conflict in their communities to collectively find solutions to these problems and prevent their reoccurrence. Conferencing holds youth accountable for their actions and intercedes in the trajectory of juvenile delinquency while building community resiliency. Community Conferencing is a process in which the victim, the offender and affected community members come together in a safe setting with an impartial facilitator to discuss the impact of a crime and reach reparation agreements

New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation - Community Safety Initiative (CSI) - This is a data driven planning initiative that seeks to foster partnerships while building an infrastructure, which consists of a Community Safe Haven that provides comprehensive social service delivery in conjunction with law enforcement. CSI strives to initiate and sustain long-term revitalization of the Central City area.

Orleans Parish Juvenile Court - Peer Court Planning Grant - Orleans Parish Juvenile Court is seeks to deepen existing collaborative efforts within the community and among stakeholders to develop a data driven, sustainable, Peer Court that enhances the capacity of the juvenile justice system on the front end for the continuum of care, increases public safety, and improves outcomes for children, youth, families and communities.

Orleans Public Defenders - Approaching the Crime Problem Holistically: Transforming the Orleans Public Defenders - This project seeks to rebuild the Orleans Public Defender Office as a model community defender office. The "community defense" model of public defense is one that seeks to meet the client's needs both inside and outside the courtroom, so as to attack the fundamental nature of the problem rather than simply the criminal charge.

Plaquemines Community C.A.R.E. Centers Foundation, Inc. - Plaquemines Community C.A.R.E. Centers - This program will provide wrap-around care, mental health services, and social services for at-risk children to prevent future criminal behavior of at risk children who have not yet engaged in criminal activity (C.A.R.E. -- Counseling-Assessment/Advocacy-Resources-Education).