Preventing Violence Through Community Justice: A Study on the Relationship Between Community Justice Models and Violence Prevention .

This technical brief explores the correlations between community-centered justice strengthening models and reductions in crime and violence. The brief examines five regionally diverse, USAID-funded rule of law programs.

Community justice projects primarily seek to improve and provide local communities with catered access to justice services. This includes legal assistance, developing community-level institutions, and outreach efforts to improve community-justice sector relations. Common desired outcomes of community justice programs include faster case adjudication, improved accountability, and improved trust between the justice sector and the community. Community justice projects rarely have primary goals of preventing or reducing violence – rather, they focus on improving access to justice. This brief seeks to explore the theory that community justice programming can have an appreciable impact on preventing violence.