U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Gun Violence Programs: Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI)

Date Published
June 5, 2008

SACSI was a national program that helped establish the value of multiagency, federal-local partnerships in responding to gun crime. All but one of the SACSI sites targeted homicide, youth violence and firearms violence. SACSI attempted to replicate in other cities the best practices from Boston's Operation Ceasefire: multiagency collaboration, strategic problem solving and action research.

Researchers found that — if well implemented — the SACSI approach reduced violent crime in the targeted communities, sometimes by as much as 50 percent.

Key elements of the SACSI strategy were:

  • Leadership by local U.S. Attorneys' Offices within a collaborative, multiagency partnership.
  • Integration of researchers into planning and execution of intervention strategies.
  • Design and implementation of interventions that incorporate tactics proven to reduce illegal gun carrying and use.

Key findings from the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) are summarized in Paving the Way for Project Safe Neighborhoods: SACSI in 10 U.S. Cities, by J. Roehl et al., April 2008, NCJ 216298. This Research in Brief was derived from an NIJ grant report that summarized and evaluated findings from 10 SACSI sites:

The other SACSI grant reports below describe how complex gun violence partnerships are forged and interventions designed, implemented and evaluated.

Date Published: June 5, 2008