WestEd’s Justice & Prevention Research Center teamed up with the City of Fredericksburg and its Steering Committee on Teenage Violence to build a 5-year plan for preventing youth violence—grounded in local data and real community input. The plan was delivered to city leaders in May 2026.
The Challenge
In the first half of 2023, gun violence took the lives of two young people in Fredericksburg. In August of 2023, the city and its public schools responded by forming a Steering Committee on Teenage Violence. The stakes were already high: Violent crime had climbed roughly 51 percent over the previous decade, and pressure was building across schools, healthcare, and housing—even as public safety investments were paying off in other ways.
More than 30 people joined the committee—city officials, school leaders, police, faith leaders, health workers, and families—backed by a grant from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. They moved fast. But turning urgency into a durable, 5-year plan meant they needed a clear, data-driven process.
How We’re Taking Action
The city brought in JPRC in summer 2025 to lead that process. Over five phases, from late 2025 through spring 2026, we accomplished the following:
- Crunched the data. We analyzed school, juvenile justice, and regional health records using WestEd’s Violence Prevention Navigation Framework, built on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Connecting the Dots shared risk-and-protective-factor model.
- Mapped the gaps. We checked city and county departments against CDC risk and protective factors to see where coordination was falling through the cracks.
- Talked to the community. We ran 15 focus groups and interviews with schools, courts, police, health providers, faith and community leaders, and youth themselves—plus a survey with 96 respondents.
- Delivered 13 recommendations, in two tiers. First, fix the governance and coordination infrastructure, then invest in programs. Why that order? Because the evidence shows that the surrounding system determines whether programs actually work.
- Built a 5-year roadmap. This included a governance structure, a phased timeline, and a way to measure progress, with the Steering Committee staying in the driver’s seat.
- Handed off the final plan. We gave the plan to city leaders on May 25, 2026, and closed out the project on June 1, 2026.
Resource
- Learn more about JPRC’s Violence Prevention Navigation Framework and contact our experts.
- Fredericksburg Youth Violence Prevention Plan (delivered May 2026)
What Sets Our Work Apart
Data Meets Lived Experience We combined hard data—school, justice, and health records—with direct communications: 15 focus groups, youth-specific sessions, and a 96-respondent survey. That meant the plan captured both what the data showed and what people were actually living through.
Hidden Patterns Uncovered
We surfaced things the usual justice data misses entirely—such as the fact that 57 percent of violence-related ER visits in the region involve women and girls, a pattern that never shows up in arrest or suspension records.Infrastructure Before Programs
We sequenced our recommendations in the right order—infrastructure first. The evidence is clear: Programs launched without solid coordination only reach the kids who would have found help anyway.