Project Safe Neighborhood

Project Safe Neighborhood is an inter-disciplinary project between the Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis) and the Center for Urban and Public Affairs (CUPA) at Wright State University with other partners including Dayton Police Department, Montgomery County Juvenile Court and University of Dayton to Prevent Juvenile Repeat Offenders in Westwood neighborhood of City of Dayton, Ohio.

People

Principal Investigators: Jack L. Dustin
Co-Investigators: Amit P. Sheth
Graduate Students: Sanjaya Wijeratne

Overview

The U.S. 2010 Census reported the population living in Westwood neighborhood (or the zip code 45417) as 31,281. According to Dayton Police Department's MIS records, one third of the felony arrests made in the first quarter of 2014 were juvenile repeat offenders from Westwood. The Census also reported there were 4,823 juveniles aged from 10 to 19 in Westwood neighborhood. As of April 2014, 120 of the 908 juveniles on probation in Montgomery County (population of 534,325 in 2012) have legal residence in Westwood. Furthermore, 50% of Montgomery County youth incarcerated at the Ohio Department of Youth Services come from the Westwood neighborhood. Records from 2013 show that 249 juveniles from the Westwood neighborhood between the ages of 12-14, committed Aggravated Arson, Aggravated Robbery and Felonious Assault. These statistics along with crimes, arrests, geographical patterns etc. caused Montgomery County's Juvenile Court and Dayton Police Department to partner with Wright State University and University of Dayton to focus on developing programs to reducing juvenile crime and repeat offenders. Project Safe Neighborhood - Westwood Partnership to Prevent Juvenile Repeat Offenders was started as a result of this partnership. The goals of the project includes:

1. Research and develop the criteria for identifying the most at risk youth
2. Establish the best practices for bringing all resources to common focus for these youth
3. Increase the use of law enforcement home visits in the targeted neighborhood
4. Enhance both the services and the sanctions made available through juvenile justice system

Funding

This project is sponsored by the Ohio Criminal Justice Services (OCJS) through the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio for the Violent Gang and Gun Crime Reduction Program: Project Safe Neighborhood (2014-PS-PSN-431) under Grant No. 2014-PS- PSN-00006 to the Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis) and the Center for Urban and Public Affairs (CUPA) titled: Westwood Partnership to Prevent Juvenile Repeat Offenders. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the investigator(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact: Sanjaya Wijeratne