New Report: Conversations on Community Safety
North Carolina Leaders Across the Aisle Discuss Making Our Communities Safer
Over four meetings last Spring, North Carolina leaders and impacted people from government, business, advocacy, and the community came together to discuss an important question: What should we do to make North Carolina communities safe? Today we’re pleased to issue our report detailing those discussions on how community leaders worked across the political aisle to understand different points of view, productively disagree, and have healthy discussions to advance solutions to improve the lives of North Carolinians.
This project was a collaboration between the Duke North Carolina Leadership Forum and the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law School. The North Carolina Leadership Forum (NCLF) provides an opportunity for civic, business, and political leaders from across North Carolina to discuss issues central to the future of our state. NCLF partnered with the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law both to provide research and policy expertise and to participate in the conversation as a way of better understanding community views. NCLF is part of the new Center for Community Engagement, which facilitates community-engaged scholarship between community partners and Duke University to address pressing societal challenges.
“While all of us value safety in our communities, we bring different ideas of how to achieve safety and prioritize different approaches. The conversations that came out of the forum illustrated the value of taking the time to build relationships and have tough conversations, and we are heartened by the participants’ willingness to continue engaging with each other. It was also a pleasure to partner with the Wilson Center, who brought invaluable expertise to the discussion as it unfolded,” said Debbie Goldstein, Associate Vice President/Vice Provost for Community-Engaged Scholarship.
This cohort followed NCLF’s established, thoughtful process of working together to establish guiding values, ask important questions, and advance potential solutions. Participants chose to focus on issues of lack of adequate and appropriate treatment for behavioral or mental health needs, the role of guns in making communities less safe, the collateral consequences of justice system involvement, and the failure to address the root causes of crime. Participants discussed addressing these solutions through better rehabilitation and reentry supports, better policing with better training and pay, increased education in schools on gun lethality, and increased support for victims of crimes.
At the conclusion of the program, forum participants expressed that they better understood others with opposing views, why people hold the perspectives they do, and where they were able to identify areas of agreement. The goal of the NCLF cohort is for participants to continue to work on these issues in our communities.
“In a time of increasing polarization around issues of crime, public safety, and justice, it is more important than ever to keep having community conversations around these important issues. The Wilson Center was proud to participate and support this cohort and looks forward to continuing working together to create a safer and more just North Carolina,” says Wilson Center Executive Director Yvette Garcia Missri.