This major multi-year initiative aims to identify and spearhead the most promising global examples of violence reduction and criminal justice transformation, proven through research to be effective, viable and replicable. In today’s polarized societies, solutions are urgently needed as the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates existing inequities, and drivers of violence.
To catalyze a global research-based exchange, including the seeding of new strategies in the United States, Salzburg Global Seminar is launching a major multi-year initiative with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the David Rockefeller Fund.
This initiative will bring together a diverse, cross-sector, international and intergenerational group of stakeholders – including young people, formerly incarcerated people and victims/survivors of violence – to identify the most effective, viable and replicable solutions to tackle youth violence and promote youth safety and criminal justice reform.
Serial failures to redress social, legal, and economic injustice and structural racism underpin violence and disproportionally shape politics, policing, and judicial systems around the world. Yet bold reforms in different jurisdictions suggest that cross-cutting interventions can be cost-effective and foster more humane, inclusive and healthier societies. What can we learn, share and take to scale for long-term results?
In many countries around the world, including the United States, there is growing recognition among policymakers and reform advocates that effective criminal justice reform must look beyond the toolkit and institutions of the criminal justice system itself. In a growing number of settings, innovations based on community-centered, cross-sectoral approaches and socially integrative methods of engaging young people and violent offenders before, during, and after they encounter the criminal justice system, are proving to be more humane, just, and effective.
Key trends and drivers that will influence the future of reform efforts worldwide include: