Community Safety in Durham

[Note: This is the third of four position papers that outline Carl’s policy platform for change in Durham. Other papers in this series will address shared economic prosperity, environmental/climate justice, and affordable housing.]

Summary:

All Durham residents deserve to be safe. To achieve community safety, Durham needs an effective system to respond to crime or crisis, while also building effective strategies for violence reduction. There are a number of ways that we can improve community safety in Durham, including:

• Paying fair and competitive wages for all first responders
• Innovating our crisis response system, including expanding the HEART program
• Creating an Office of Survivor Care
• Expanding Durham’s basic income program to serve more citizens returning from prison
• Passing a “Fair Chance” housing ordinance

Community Safety

All Durham residents deserve to be safe. At present, there are too many guns on our streets and violent crime is destroying families and communities. To achieve community safety, Durham needs an effective system to respond to crimes and/or crises, including uniformed officers when dangerous and/or violent activity is happening and trained counselors and social workers when citizens are in crisis. But ultimately, true community safety means transcending simply responding to crime and building effective strategies for violence reduction. This can be achieved when everyone has a good paying job with benefits, affordable health care, access to healthy food, a great school for their children to attend, and an affordable home to live in.

Why is this important for Durham?

Like many other cities and small towns across the U.S., Durham experienced an increase in homicides during the pandemic. In the first half of 2023*, the total number of homicides in Durham remained unchanged from 2022. At the same time, total violent crime is on the decline in Durham (after a brief spike in 2020), even as the city grows in population. With respect to crime, perception is reality for many citizens. Therefore, it’s important to note that — in the city’s 2022 Resident Survey — the quality of police protection was the category of service that most residents (50.2%) identified as needing emphasis from city leaders.**

What can be done to ensure community safety in Durham?

With a conservative legislature that has limited the ability of local governments to control guns, the challenge of ensuring community safety in Durham is no easy task. Nevertheless, there are a number of ways that we can improve community safety by both strengthening our systems of responding to crisis and crime, and by working to reduce violence.

Responding to crime and/or crisis:

• Pay fair and competitive wages for all first responders. With the cost of living rising in Durham, many frontline workers find it hard to live affordably in Durham. The upcoming compensation study of city employees provides a perfect opportunity to ensure that salaries for Durham police officers and other first responders are in line with the market in the Triangle. This will reward first responders for their hard work. Moreover, this is also one of the best ways to address the vacancies that have affected the police department in Durham.
• Innovate our crisis response system. HEART has been an innovative strategy for ensuring that citizens in crisis get the help they need while allowing police officers to focus on dangerous situations. The recent city budget expanded HEART city-wide for 12 hours/day. If HEART continues to be a significant success in improving public safety, the city should consider further expansion city-wide on a 24-hour/day basis. What’s more, with recent authorization from the General Assembly, Durham should also consider employing and allowing civilian personnel to investigate traffic crashes as Civilian Traffic Investigators.

Reducing violence:

• Create an Office of Survivor Care. Research shows that victims of violence are more likely to commit violent acts themselves. The city should carefully consider a proposal from the Community Safety and Wellness Task Force to establish an Office of Survivor Care within the Community Safety Department. Such an Office would serve as an entry point and a single point of contact for families of homicide victims and gunshot survivors. Primary services would include compassionate death notification, an immediate response to crisis, peer support groups, and referrals to trauma therapy.
• Expand Durham’s basic income program, known as Excel, to serve more citizens returning from prison. Residents returning from prison are among our community’s most vulnerable residents, with a recidivism rate of 38% statewide. On an annual basis, roughly 700 formerly incarcerated citizens return to Durham. It would cost the City of Durham approximately $5 million (less than 1% of the city’s budget) to provide each of these residents with a basic income of $600 for 12 months to support their transition into the community and connections to jobs, housing, and health care.
• Pass a “Fair Chance” housing ordinance. Research shows that unhoused individuals are up to 11 times more likely to be arrested than those who are housed.*** A number of communities, such as Minneapolis, Detroit, Oakland and Seattle, have passed “fair chance” housing ordinances that create rules that limit the use of criminal records by landlords when they are screening prospective tenants. Durham should consider adoption of a Fair Chance housing ordinance so that large landlords cannot immediately disqualify housing to residents returning from prison.****

*Durham Police Department, 2023 2nd Quarter Report, presentation by Chief Patrice Andrews before City Council, August 24, 2023

** ETC Institute, 2022 City of Durham Resident Survey: Findings Report, presented to the City of Durham, North Carolina, February 2023

**Nazish Dholakia, “How the U.S. Criminalizes Homelessness, Forbes, January 1, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeseq/2022/01/01/how-the-us-criminalizes-homelessness/?sh=7dc2ea234869

****For more on Fair Chance Housing ordinances, see Megan Moore and Angie Weis Gammell, Finding Home: Removing Barriers to Housing for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals, Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, September 2023.