S2638-118

2. Findings Congress finds the following: Community violence is a significant public health, public safety, and community infrastructure concern nationwide, and is a leading cause of death, injury, and trauma for people in the United States. Community violence also disrupts employment and hinders a community’s social and economic development. Today, gun violence is the leading cause of death for America’s youth. From 2010 to 2021, over 233,000 people were murdered in the United States. Hundreds of thousands more were hospitalized or treated in emergency departments after surviving life-changing gunshot injuries and other violent assaults. In 2020, the Nation suffered the largest single-year spike in homicides on record, driven largely by record spikes in fatal shootings. As of 2021, 80 percent of all homicides in the United States are committed with a gun. Communities across the Nation experience enormous disparities in safety that are driven by inequitable social and structural determinants of health. Interpersonal shootings are disproportionately concentrated in neighborhoods harmed by past and present racial discrimination, segregation, redlining, disinvestment, mass incarceration, and concentrated poverty, and this violence’s toll falls overwhelmingly on people of color, especially young Black and Brown men and boys and their loved ones. From 2015 to 2020, Black children and teens were more than 12 times as likely to be shot to death as their White peers. Hispanic children and teens and Native American children and teens were both about 2.6 times as likely to be shot to death as their White peers. Over this period, 72 percent of children murdered before their 18th birthday were people of color, and more than 50 percent were Black. Black boys and men make up less than 7 percent of the population in the United States, but account for more than 50 percent of all gun homicide victims each year. Violence is responsible for nearly half of all deaths among Black boys and young men, ages 15 through 24, meaning the parents of a Black son in this age group are as likely to lose their child to homicide as nearly every other cause of death combined. This violence imposes enormous human, social, and economic consequences. Studies show that gun violence has a national economic cost of $557,000,000,000 annually. The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention presented research to Congress demonstrating that youth living in inner cities show a higher prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers in the Nation’s wartime military. While the vast majority of these young people resiliently persevere, people who have been victims of violence are at substantially higher risk of being violently reattacked or killed. Additionally, both direct and indirect violence exposure have been associated with a host of poor health outcomes, including chronic illness, anxiety, depression, and substance misuse. When properly implemented and consistently funded, coordinated, community-based strategies that utilize trauma-responsive care and interrupt cycles of violence can produce lifesaving and cost-saving results in a short period of time without contributing to mass incarceration. These strategies identify those at the highest risk, coordinate individualized wraparound resources, provide pathways to healing and stability, and monitor and support long-term success. Many cities have substantially reduced community violence in recent years by implementing various combinations of these strategies, which include the following: Community outreach programs, which hire violence intervention and prevention specialists who have established relationships, relatable lived experiences, and credibility with individuals in their communities at high risk of violence and connect them with intensive counseling, mediation, peer support, and social services in order to reduce their risk. Evaluations have found that these programs, particularly when integrated into wider networks of supportive services, are frequently associated with significant reductions in gun violence. A recent study of Safe Streets Baltimore looked at data from 2007 to 2022 and found that this strategy was associated with a statistically significant 23 percent reduction in nonfatal shootings. Hospital-based violence intervention programs (referred to in this section as HVIP), which work to break cycles of violence by leveraging credible violence intervention and prevention specialists to provide intensive counseling, peer support, case management, mediation, and social services to patients recovering from gunshot wounds and other violent injuries. Research has shown that violently injured patients are at high risk of retaliating with violence themselves or being revictimized by violence in the near future. Evaluations of HVIPs have found that patients who received HVIP services were often less likely to be convicted of a violent crime and less likely to be subsequently reinjured by violence than patients who did not receive HVIP services. Group violence interventions provide tailored social services and support to group-involved individuals at highest risk for involvement in community violence. This intervention, which must be trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and community-driven to be most successful, includes a process for community members to voice a clear demand for the violence to stop and narrowly focused enforcement actions against those who continue to engage in acts of serious violence. The approach coordinates law enforcement, service providers, and community engagement efforts to reduce violence in ways that do not contribute to mass incarceration. Violence interruption and crisis management, which respond to potentially violent incidents to mediate conflicts or to scenes where violence has occurred to offer trauma-informed services and community supports to survivors and others exposed to violence. These strategies help to prevent retaliatory violence and promote healing and well-being. Programs that include these components have reported deescalating dozens of disputes that were highly likely to end in lethal violence. Access to job and entrepreneurship training, apprenticeship, and technological and digital literacy programs are effective tools in reducing community violence. A 2012 University of Pennsylvania study of 13 high-violence schools in the Chicago area found well-targeted, low-cost employment policies can make a substantial difference, and the city’s most violent neighborhoods saw a 43 percent drop in violent-crime arrests of participants in a youth job program. Individualized wraparound services and opportunities include housing support, financial assistance, reentry services, legal assistance, therapeutic services, grief counseling or targeted victim services, and skill building based on the needs of survivors or individuals at the highest risk of community violence. Leveraging the relationships of violence intervention and prevention specialists, these services are used in the context of structured, person-centered peer mentorship that facilitates personal transformation by meeting people where they are and offering to help participants change the trajectories of their lives. The past year has had a disproportionate impact on youth unemployment, with 2,900,000 more unemployed youth in mid-2020 compared with pre-2020 levels. Simultaneously, the 2020 recession accelerated an already increasingly digital and automated workforce, and youth must attain the digital, technological, and other technical skills necessary to thrive in the future of work. While jobs in the customer service and food industry could fall by 4,300,000 between 2018 and 2030, health care and science, technology, engineering, and math occupations could grow more now than ever. Intentional and sustained investments in community-based violence reduction strategies can reverse recent increases in homicides, help to heal impacted communities, and reduce the enormous human and economic costs of community violence, without contributing to mass incarceration.

106. Authorization of appropriations There is authorized to be appropriated to the Department of Health and Human Services to carry out this title, in addition to any amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated or made available to the Department of Health and Human Services for such purpose— $300,000,000 for fiscal year 2024; $500,000,000 for fiscal year 2025; and $700,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2026 through 2031.

201. Improving approaches for communities to thrive (IMPACT) grants The Secretary of Labor (in this section referred to as the Secretary) shall award grants to eligible entities for year-round job training and workforce programs authorized under section 129(c)(1) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (29 U.S.C. 3164(c)), with the elements described in section 129(c)(2)(C) of such Act (29 U.S.C. 3164(c)(2)(C)), for opportunity youth in communities disproportionately affected by gun violence for the purposes of connecting opportunity youth to in-demand occupations. To be eligible to seek a grant under subsection (a), an entity shall be— a community-based, nonprofit organization that— serves the residents served by an eligible unit of local government; has a track record of providing community-related activities or support program innovation in communities of color; focuses on training technical skills to prepare opportunity youth for in-demand occupations; and provides— training for opportunity youth who are basic skills deficient; and soft skills training that enables opportunity youth to engage successfully in work culture; an Indian Tribe or an agency primarily serving Native Americans; an entity that carries out activities authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (29 U.S.C. 3101 et seq.) that has a focus on opportunity youth; a federally or State recognized apprenticeship program; an accredited community college; or an eligible unit of local government. The Secretary shall require grantees under this section to report to the Secretary on primary measures funded under this section for— entry into job training, education, apprenticeship, skilled trades training, or other paid and unpaid work experiences that have as a component academic and occupational education programs; and changes in overall school enrollment, unemployment, or weekly earnings for opportunity youth participating in activities of the respective grantee. In this section: The term basic skills deficient means an individual who— is a youth and has English reading, writing, or computing skills at or below the 8th grade level on a generally accepted standardized test; or is unable to compute or solve problems, or read, write, or speak English, at a level necessary to function on the job, in the individual’s family, or in society. The term in-demand occupation means an occupation described in section 3(23)(A)(ii) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (29 U.S.C. 3102(23)(A)(ii)). To carry out this section, there is authorized to be appropriated $1,500,000,000 for the period of fiscal years 2024 through 2031, to remain available until expended through fiscal year 2031.