Project Safe Neighborhoods — Federal Community Violence Reduction Grants

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is the Department of Justice's primary grant program for reducing violent crime in communities — authorized at 34 U.S.C. §§ 60701–60705 with $50 million per year in authorized funding. Unlike traditional law enforcement grants that fund cops or prosecutors in isolation, PSN is built around a partnership model: each U.S. Attorney's Office in the country's 94 federal judicial districts is required to coordinate local partnerships between federal, state, and local agencies, community organizations, researchers, and victim advocates. The partnerships develop custom strategies based on local crime data — which may emphasize focused deterrence, gang intervention, community outreach, or targeted federal prosecution of repeat offenders depending on what the data shows. PSN began as an initiative in 2001 and was formally codified by Congress in 2018.

Current Law (2026)

Legal Authority

• 34 U.S.C. § 60702 — Establishment (authorizes the Attorney General to establish and carry out PSN within the Office of Justice Programs)
• 34 U.S.C. § 60703 — Purpose (program purpose is to foster partnerships between federal, state, and local agencies, community representatives, victim advocates, and researchers to create safer neighborhoods through sustained reduction in violent crime, including by developing evidence-based prosecution strategies and coordinating with community organizations)
• 34 U.S.C. § 60704 — Rules and regulations (requires 30% of funds to be locally controlled; directs the AG to create the program through locally focused guidance)
• 34 U.S.C. § 60701 — Definitions ("firearms offenses" under 18 U.S.C. § 922 or § 924; "Program" meaning the PSN Block Grant Program; "transnational organized crime group")

How PSN Works

The U.S. Attorney as convener: The central innovation of PSN is putting the U.S. Attorney's Office at the center of a local collaboration rather than having DOJ simply mail out grants. Every U.S. Attorney in the country is responsible for convening a partnership that includes state and local law enforcement, prosecutors, community organizations, and researchers. This creates accountability at the local level — the U.S. Attorney has a stake in whether the strategy works.

Data-driven strategy: PSN partnerships use crime data — often provided by academic research partners — to identify the small number of people in a community who are at the highest risk of either committing or being victims of violent crime. Research consistently shows that a small fraction of individuals, networks, and locations account for a disproportionate share of violence. PSN strategies try to focus resources — both law enforcement and social services — on those specific individuals and places.

Focused deterrence: Many PSN partnerships use a strategy called "focused deterrence" or "Group Violence Intervention," originally developed in Boston in the 1990s and refined in cities including High Point (NC), Oakland, New Haven, and others. The approach involves community leaders, law enforcement, and service providers collectively communicating to gang members and other high-risk individuals: continued violence will result in swift federal prosecution; help is available to those who want it. The face-to-face "call-in" sessions that characterize focused deterrence are often organized under PSN.

Federal prosecution of repeat offenders: PSN also supports coordinated federal prosecution of firearms offenders (see Federal Firearms Law) and other violent criminals whose state-level sentences would be insufficient to deter or incapacitate. Federal firearms charges carry mandatory minimums and longer sentences than most comparable state charges. Channeling repeat violent offenders into federal court — where there is no parole — is part of the PSN toolkit in many districts.

Local flexibility: The statute requires 30% of funds to be locally controlled, meaning local PSN steering committees — not DOJ headquarters — decide how those dollars are spent. Different districts use PSN differently based on their crime profile. A rural district may focus on methamphetamine-related violence; an urban district may focus on gang-related shootings.

How It Affects You

If you live in a high-violence neighborhood, PSN is one of the federal programs most directly aimed at the safety conditions in your specific community. The program's most distinctive feature — putting the local U.S. Attorney's Office at the center of a violence reduction partnership rather than relying on remote grant-making from Washington — means that the quality of PSN in your area depends heavily on how seriously your district's U.S. Attorney takes the mission. In cities where PSN has worked best (Boston, Oakland, High Point NC, New Haven), community residents have seen measurable reductions in gun violence: studies of focused deterrence implementations have found 20–63% reductions in group member homicides in the years following a well-executed call-in program. If you're in a PSN-active district, look for the Group Violence Intervention program at your U.S. Attorney's Office — these are the direct call-in sessions where community members, clergy, and social workers sit alongside law enforcement to deliver a message and an offer simultaneously. Find your district at justice.gov/usao.

If a family member is involved in gang activity or at high risk of violent crime, PSN-funded outreach organizations in many cities operate as the service-delivery arm of focused deterrence — the people who follow up after a call-in session to connect individuals with job training, housing assistance, substance use treatment, and mental health services. The Trump DOJ's 2025 PSN revamp deprioritized Community Violence Intervention (CVI) funding — which had supported violence interrupters and street outreach workers under Biden — in favor of an enforcement-first model. If CVI programming was reduced in your community, check whether your city has established local or state funding for violence interruption; Chicago, New York, and Baltimore have built city-funded CVI infrastructure. Your U.S. Attorney's PSN coordinator can explain what social service referral options remain available in focused deterrence call-ins in your district.

If you're a local law enforcement officer, prosecutor, or city official in a high-crime jurisdiction, PSN gives you access to federal resources that are otherwise hard to reach: research partnerships with university criminologists to map your crime data and identify highest-risk networks, training on Group Violence Intervention through the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College (nnscommunities.org), and federal prosecution coordination for repeat violent offenders. The federal firearms charges available through PSN — 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) felon-in-possession and § 924(c) use of a firearm in a crime of violence — carry mandatory minimums and longer sentences than comparable state charges, with no parole in federal prison. The 30% locally controlled funding requirement (34 U.S.C. § 60704) means your local PSN steering committee — not Washington — decides how a meaningful share of those dollars are spent. Contact your U.S. Attorney's PSN coordinator directly; grants flow through DOJ's Office of Justice Programs at ojp.gov.

If you're a community organization working on violence prevention, reentry, or youth services, PSN grants have historically funded nonprofits providing violence interruption, credible messenger outreach, reentry employment support, and community-based alternatives for individuals diverted from prosecution. Under the Trump DOJ's 2025 enforcement-first revamp, CVI-specific grants were deprioritized — but the statute still requires 30% of PSN funds to be locally controlled by the local partnership, giving community members some leverage over where those dollars flow. If you're positioned to be a PSN partner in your district, connect directly with your U.S. Attorney's Office PSN coordinator — grant priorities and partner selection are made locally, not from DOJ headquarters. See also COPS grants and Byrne JAG for related federal funding streams that nonprofits can access independently of PSN.

Evidence of Effectiveness

Research on focused deterrence strategies implemented through PSN-style partnerships has generally found significant reductions in violent crime. Studies in multiple cities found 20-63% reductions in homicides and gun violence in the years following implementation. The National Institute of Justice has classified focused deterrence as an evidence-based practice. However, PSN's overall effectiveness depends heavily on the quality of local implementation — partnerships where community organizations are genuinely involved and where social services are actually delivered tend to outperform those that are primarily enforcement-focused.

State Variations

PSN operates through all 94 federal judicial districts, which do not always align with state boundaries. Large states like California and Texas have multiple U.S. Attorney's districts with separate PSN strategies. The character of PSN in each district — which communities are targeted, which strategies are used, which organizations are funded — is shaped by the U.S. Attorney's priorities and the composition of the local partnership.

Pending Legislation

PSN authorization through FY 2021 has been continued through appropriations. Proposals to increase PSN funding and expand requirements for community involvement — ensuring that grassroots community organizations have meaningful seats at the table rather than being token participants — appear in various crime reduction bills. The Biden and Trump administrations have both used PSN as a framework for community violence intervention efforts, with different emphases on prosecution versus social services.

Recent Developments

• Trump DOJ shifted PSN back to enforcement-only model — CVI funding deprioritized: Biden-era DOJ had significantly expanded PSN to include community violence intervention (CVI) funding — grants to violence interrupters, street outreach workers, and credible messenger programs that operate outside traditional law enforcement. The Trump DOJ's 2025 revamp of PSN returned the program to its original enforcement-focused model, deprioritizing CVI grants and emphasizing prosecution, focused deterrence strategies, and law enforcement coordination. DOJ's Office of Justice Programs (which administers PSN grants) updated grant requirements to reflect the enforcement-first approach; cities that had built CVI programs around PSN funding face funding gaps.
• Focused deterrence and the "Group Violence Intervention" model — what evidence shows: PSN's most evidence-based component is the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) model — formerly called David Kennedy's Group Violence Reduction Strategy — which uses direct communication between law enforcement and identified gang members to deliver a clear deterrence message combined with offers of social services. GVI implementations in cities including Boston, Oakland, Chicago, and Detroit have shown statistically significant reductions in group member shootings in randomized and quasi-experimental evaluations. PSN has funded GVI technical assistance through the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College; the Trump DOJ has maintained GVI as a PSN priority because it is enforcement-compatible, unlike broader CVI programs.
• 2023-2024 homicide decline — attributable causes debated: After the 2020-2021 surge in homicides (a 30% national increase in 2020), U.S. homicide rates began declining in 2022-2023, with some major cities reporting significant reductions. Whether PSN, increased police staffing, economic improvement, or other factors drove the decline is actively debated among criminologists. FBI crime statistics show continued declines in 2023; advocates for both enforcement approaches and CVI approaches claim credit. The Biden DOJ's simultaneous investment in both enforcement (PSN) and CVI created a natural experiment that researchers are studying, but attribution is complicated by simultaneous policy changes.
• PSN and immigration enforcement — conflicting goals in sanctuary jurisdictions: The Trump DOJ has conditioned some PSN grants on jurisdictions sharing immigration information with ICE — a policy that sanctuary cities and some police chiefs argue undermines the trust-based community policing that effective violence reduction requires. Community members who fear that contacting police will lead to immigration enforcement are less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigations. The tension between PSN's violence reduction mission (which requires community cooperation) and immigration enforcement compliance conditions (which can reduce community cooperation) is a recurring policy conflict in jurisdictions with large immigrant populations and high violence rates.