Community anti-violence groups are lobbying the governor’s office for $10 million in federal funding to help keep hospital-based violence intervention programs alive, and $80 million to keep the programs going in the longer term. Programs in Newark, Jersey City and Paterson have been credited with reducing shootings and other crimes by intervening in conflicts before they turn violent. But without dedicated funding from the state, program leaders say they’ll cease to exist as federal dollars dwindle from the Victims of Crime Act.
According to a statement from the state attorney general’s office, it is “actively working with the Governor’s Office to secure funding for the Hospital-based Intervention Programs when the current federal VOCA dollars are exhausted. In the interim, we are working with each of the nine H-V-I-P program sites to process and provide extensions … to ensure that programming will not shut down on October first.”
“We need that money. We’re in the communities, we’re in the hospitals, we’re in the streets, we’re trying to give back to the kids. We’re trying to save our communities,” the Paterson Healing Collective said.
