Intersectoral violence prevention: the potential of public health–criminal justice partnerships

Abstract

Building successful intersectoral partnerships to address health is critical to reaching health promotion goals. With the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase in violence during the pandemic and the heightened demand for racial justice resulting from police killings of people of color, particularly young, black males, intersectoral public health–criminal justice partnerships must be more thoroughly examined. Violence prevention is both a public health and criminal justice issue, with public health systems emphasizing primary prevention and criminal justice systems addressing violence prevention at secondary and tertiary levels. Public health–criminal justice collaborations can provide an opportunity to seize upon unrealized violence reduction goals across the spectrum of prevention. At the same time, issues remain that are at odds across field boundaries as exemplified through community violence prevention. While there have been successful examples of such collaborations, past public health–criminal justice partnerships also demonstrate the challenges of working together. These challenges have yet to be systematically described and rooted in the larger literature on partnerships. In this paper, collaborative challenges are enumerated and evidence-informed strategies to overcome those barriers to achieve violence reduction goals are identified as a way to ground further intersectoral partnership work between public health and criminal justice.

Characterization of Homicides in Mexico: Analysis of 2015–2022

“…Its repercussions have led it to be considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a critical public health issue that extends beyond the mere act of aggression, affecting communities, societies, and nations at large. Due to its magnitude, its reduction has been proposed as part of the agenda towards 2030 for sustainable development [1][2][3][4].…”

“…The recognition of violence as a public health concern is not novel; however, its persistent prevalence, particularly in Mexico, necessitates a renewed focus on its etiology, consequences, and mitigation strategies [5,6]. International organizations, including the United Nations (UN) and the WHO, have long advocated for an intersectoral approach to address violence [4,7].…”