The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $161,040 to the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College to support a project aimed at reducing larceny in Los Angeles, which has risen since the 2014 passage of Proposition 47, a measure that reduced some nonviolent felony offences to misdemeanors. This grant falls within Open Philanthropy's work on criminal justice reform.
The National Network for Safe Communities is a project housed at John Jay College of Criminal Justice that provides support to cities around the country implementing proven strategic interventions for building safer communities. The project in Los Angeles will use the focused deterrence model created by David Kennedy to build a partnership to reverse the rising larceny trend by addressing a small number of people responsible for the bulk of the crimes. The strategy reinforces community norms against crime to intervene where risk is highest. The first phase of the project will include a problem analysis to determine the scope of the problem in Los Angeles and lay the foundation for strategic implementation. The National Network for Safe Communities plans to help implement this intervention as a pilot project in Los Angeles.