Durham spent 2 1/2 years envisioning a safer city. Here’s how they want to make it happen.
After two and a half years spent envisioning a safer Durham, community leaders are calling for action.
The Durham Community Safety and Wellness Task Force, commissioned in 2021 by the city, county and school system, will formally unveil its recommendations at a public meeting Saturday.
They call for wide-ranging changes, from establishing a survivor care office to serve victims of gun violence to hosting consent workshops in public schools. They also call for replacing vacant police positions with unarmed teams that respond to 911 calls.
These are their recommendations, sorted according to the roundtable that came up with and developed them.
Criminal legal:
- Expand diversion programs, both before and after arrest
- Reduce the use of cash bail
- Implement the recommendations from the Prescriptions for Repair pilot that consulted survivors of gun violence. The city and Duke University cofunded the pilot last year.
- Create an Office of Survivor Care to support victims of violent crime and their families
- Improve conditions in the county jail.
- Reform social services and the Abuse/Neglect/Dependency Court
- Expand Local Reentry Council services offered after incarceration
Crisis care response:
- Slow down the county’s Youth Home project to have more public conversations. The over $30 million project was approved in 2021.
- Move all police department vacancies to the department operating the HEART program.
- Make opioid reversal kits available to all city and county staff.
- Significantly expand harm reduction services.
Violence prevention:
- Fund local ethnodramas that educate and empower Black families.
- Host a hackathon to prevent gun violence. This, the only marked complete, was held in May.
- Hold consent workshops in Durham Public Schools.
Youth and schools:
- Revise the school resource officer program.
- Implement restorative wellness practices for youth and the adults serving them.
Want to learn more?
The final report will be formally unveiled this weekend.
When: Saturday, Oct. 28, 2-4 p.m.
Where: Holton Resource Center, 401 N. Driver St., Durham
This story was originally published October 27, 2023 at 3:13 PM.
