WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National League of Cities (NLC) commends the White House, U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education for convening the new National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention.  The Forum brings local leaders from six cities together with federal agencies to develop and implement effective, comprehensive strategies for curbing youth and gang violence.  

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With full backing from the White House, multiple federal agencies – including the Departments of Justice, Education, Health & Human Services, Labor, and Housing & Urban Development, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, and Centers for Disease Control – will seek to identify innovative policies and practices to support local anti-violence efforts, and coordinate existing resources more strategically to address unmet local needs.  As federal agencies help Forum cities change the way they do business in preventing youth violence, they have made a similar commitment in order to better support local efforts.

"City leaders place top priority on the safety of children and youth," said Donald J. Borut, executive director of NLC.  "This Forum will not only help the six participating communities stem youth violence, but will also identify effective strategies that can be applied in cities across the nation.  NLC applauds the Administration's support for intergovernmental partnership and collaboration in confronting this national challenge.  We look forward to working with the Administration to explore promising approaches and share them with our members."

The Forum is inspired in part by the work of the California Cities Gang Prevention Network, a 13-city initiative launched in 2007 by NLC's Institute for Youth, Education and Families and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.  The network seeks to reduce gang violence and victimization through cross-city peer learning, identify and implement best practices, and initiate state and federal policy changes that support effective local strategies.  Two of the six Forum cities – Salinas and San Jose – also participate in the California network. The other cities at the Forum are Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Memphis.

Both groups bring together diverse stakeholders teams that include city and other local leaders, police chiefs and other law enforcement officials, school superintendents, community organizations and the business community.  Both Forum and network teams are charged with developing and implementing plans that adhere to several core principles: multi-disciplinary partnerships; balanced approaches that blend prevention, intervention, enforcement and reentry; and use of data-driven strategies.

One of the key recommendations emerging from the California Cities Gang Prevention Network is the need to make federal funding streams more flexible in covering insufficiently supported components of comprehensive local violence prevention plans.  Despite significant budget constraints, many of the cities participating in the network have blended a mix of federal, state, local and private funding to finance the implementation of their plans.  However, restrictions on the use of this funding have limited cities' ability to direct resources to where they are most needed.

The National League of Cities is the nation's oldest and largest organization devoted to strengthening and promoting cities as centers of opportunity, leadership and governance. NLC is a resource and advocate for 19,000 cities, towns and villages, representing more than 218 million Americans. For more information on the California Cities Gang Prevention Network visit www.nlc.org/iyef or www.ccgpn.org.

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SOURCE National League of Cities

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