City of Atlanta officials say they are assessing programs intended to stem violence. Other cities have been working on similar initiatives as violent crime rises nationwide. To bring you that perspective, we’ve worked with our partner, the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. Here we feature a compilation of their work on other cities’ crime-fighting initiatives.

Their compilation begins with this introduction:

America has multiple gun-violence problems, from mass shootings to domestic violence to violent felonies like robbery committed with the gun as an essential tool. But the category of crime that accounts for the most violent deaths in America is community violence, also known as urban violence or street violence. While violent crime in America has fallen roughly by half since its most recent peak in the early 1990s, it remains stubbornly persistent in geographically tiny corners of our cities, among small numbers of people, mostly young men, for strikingly similar reasons – namely, a dire set of social conditions ready-made to turn mundane interpersonal “beefs” deadly because of the plentiful supply of guns.

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People attend the Black Pride gathering at Piedmont Park in Atlanta on Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025. While Atlanta is a beacon  for Pride in the South, many outside the metro area live a much different reality, says writer Barry M. Cole. (Ben Gray for the AJC)

Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal

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Julian Conley listens during opening statements in his trial at Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. The 25-year-old is accused of fatally shooting 8-year-old Secoriea Turner in July 2020. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)

Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com