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Supporting Gun Violence Prevention

For over 25 years, the Joyce Foundation, a CMF member, has supported research and education and focused on evidence-informed policies and strategies to reduce gun violence and help make communities safer through its Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program.  

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For over 25 years, the Joyce Foundation, a CMF member, has supported research and education and focused on evidence-informed policies and strategies to reduce gun violence and help make communities safer through its Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program.  

Through research supported by the foundation, a greater understanding of the intersection between gun violence issues, criminal justice issues and justice reform and the role of policing and accountability and trust in legitimacy in policing led the program to evolve in recent years. 

Joyce’s three-part strategy focuses on gun violence prevention, justice reform and more recently, violence intervention. 

The overall goal of the program’s Gun Violence Prevention focus area is to reduce gun deaths and injuries in the Great Lakes region through:

•    Advancing and implementing federal, state and local policies and practices that reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence.

•    Supporting policies to reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence.

•    Reducing the next generation’s exposure to gun violence through education on the risks of gun ownership.

•    Litigating to defend evidence-based gun policies and challenge extreme gun rights policies and practices.

Since the launch of the program in 1993, Joyce has invested more than $32 million in support of gun violence prevention research which has led to hundreds of scientific publications providing key insights into the nature of gun violence in the U.S. and its solutions.

Over a decade ago, the foundation helped found the Fund for a Safer Future (FSF), a collaborative of more than 30 funders from across the country focused on preventing gun violence.

The goal of the program’s Justice System Reform focus area is to reduce the harms and racial disparities in the criminal justice system’s response to gun violence. 

“We have been interested in understanding how to develop greater community-police trust and accountability, develop alternatives to reduce incarceration and arrests for non-violent gun offenses and  support efforts to reimagine public safety,” Tim Daly, program director, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform for the Joyce Foundation, chair of the FSF and member of CMF’s Statewide Equity Fund Strategic Support Working Group said. 

Joyce is also a member of the Michigan Justice Fund (MJF), a funder collaborative designed to address inequities in the criminal justice system throughout the state and supported by nearly a dozen CMF members. 

The MJF was created by the Hudson-Webber Foundation and is housed by the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. Dr. Quintin Williams, program officer, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform for the Joyce Foundation, represents the foundation on the fund. 

The final piece of this work is the program’s most recent Violence Intervention focus area, which sits at the intersection of gun violence prevention and justice reform and complements the strategies and priorities of those focus areas. 

Louisa Aviles, senior program officer of the foundation’s Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program, shared that although long-term work supporting the advancement of gun safety policies is important, there are several practical strategies that have emerged that have an immediate impact on community violence. 

These strategies include street outreach, which gets people involved in trying to disrupt growing conflicts that would produce community violence through their lived experiences in those dynamics. 

Hospital-based intervention, which Aviles shared is a strategy anchored in intervening at the point of contact with individuals who have been admitted into hospitals with gunshot wounds in order to prevent reentry or retaliatory violence. 

Other strategies include focused deterrence and cognitive behavioral therapy which are all designed to minimize justice system involvement for young people and reduce gun violence in struggling neighborhoods.

“We are invested in continuing to build a research base around these strategies to better understand what strategies work under what conditions to support the field as this work expands,” Aviles said.  

Last year, Joyce joined the Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC), as part of President Joe Biden’s strategy to prevent gun crime and ensure public safety, which supports both proven and new intervention strategies that reduce violence and strengthen community-based infrastructure to enhance safety for children, families and communities in an equitable way.

Several CMF members joined CVIC, led by Hyphen, including Ford Foundation, Ballmer Group, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and The Kresge Foundation.

As CMF reported, the Hudson-Webber Foundation awarded funding to Hyphen to bolster the capacity of grassroots Community Violence Intervention organizations in Detroit. 

Joyce has also worked to examine the rise of armed extremists and militias in Michigan and several other states. Recently, the foundation hosted a conversation to discuss the implications of armed militias on democratic institutions in Michigan. 

In 2021, Joyce piloted a new cross-program strategy to respond to the threat of armed extremism and to mitigate its impact on democracy and democratic institutions.

Daly shared that given recent events involving armed extremists and militia activity including the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the armed protest at the Michigan state capitol, the pilot program was initiated to understand the potential policy agendas to mitigate these threats, the role philanthropy can play in this work and if there is an opportunity for more research.

With an eye toward the 2022 elections, the foundation has begun awarding funding to prevent any repeat of these events. 

“If militias or other armed extremists prevent the reasonable engagement of government then we can never have an evidence informed policy debate about gun safety or any other issue area that we are all collectively concerned about,” Daly said. 

Daly shared that although gun violence prevention may seem too political or challenging, funders can have a big impact.

“Our 30 years in this field have shown that it may take a while but there are ways to improve the quality of living and mitigate violence,” Daly said. 

Want more?

Learn more about the Joyce Foundation’s Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program. 

Read more about the Fund for a Safer Future. 

Read more about the Community Violence Intervention Collaborative. 

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