Evaluation of Pennsylvania Community Violence Intervention Programs

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania night skyline from the Market Street bridge with state capitol dome in the background.

Challenge

Pennsylvania wanted to better understand community-led violence prevention efforts.

Communities and organizations face many challenges when planning and implementing evidence-based community violence intervention (CVI). Since 2021, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) has funded over 200 Violence Intervention and Prevention (VIP) programs and Coordinated Community Violence Intervention (CCVI) strategies that are working to intervene and prevent violence across Pennsylvania.

Solution

NORC and partners will study PCCD-funded violence prevention efforts to identify successes, challenges, and best practices.

In 2023, PCCD funded NORC at the University of Chicago and Temple University-Harrisburg to conduct a study of the VIP and CCVI grantees to learn about how the different services and program models have been implemented, their successes and challenges, impacts, and best practices.

The NORC and Temple research team will conduct this study by completing the following activities:

Stage 1: Learn about funded programs via a program survey,
Stage 2: Select 40 VIP programs and 5 CCVI programs for a more detailed exploration,
Stage 3: Meet with the 45 selected programs to conduct staff interviews and focus groups, meet with community members served by the programs, and review de-identified program and other administrative data,
Stage 4: Analyze and summarize the information learned from the programs and administrative data,
Stage 5: Draft and publish the findings.

Throughout this process, NORC and partners will engage with program staff to better understand their work.

Results

Evaluations are in progress.

This will be one of the most comprehensive studies to date on how funding can support effective community-led efforts to address violence. Findings will highlight Pennsylvania's investment and the community's efforts to intervene and prevent violence across the state. Reporting will be shared with all PCCD VIP and CCVI grantees, as well as nationally, to increase knowledge about strategies and best practices for the effective implementation of anti-violence community-based services, programs, and strategies.