Red Dot Foundation Global (Safecity)

Studies show that every 73 seconds someone is sexually assaulted. Violence and harassment against women and girls, racial, LGBTQ+, and other ethnic groups prevent them from safely entering public spaces. Though hotspot-based directed patrols, proactive arrests, and problem-oriented policing have been effective “place-based” prevention strategies, the US Department of Justice reports that approximately 56% of violent assaults go unreported. Victims who are unable to report these incidents are known to suffer trauma-related impacts. Therefore, without unreported incident data, traditional crime prevention actions may be ineffective for society and for victims.

In the app/reporting marketplace, there are several solutions for victims of sexual assault that provide support resources for health care, housing, and emotional counseling. Other apps alert family members, take videos of the incident and track potential victims using their devices. These solutions are focused on helping victims after individual incidents of sexual assault but do not significantly impact prevention. However, connecting community risk factors through the creation of a public record of experiences can help communities build a movement towards prevention. Through victims' stories, the Safecity platform's location data, trend analysis, and cultural detail are critical tools that uncover unique attributes about sexual violence within communities.

The Safecity reporting platform captures anonymous data about community sexual assault/harassment incidents in a crowd map. The platform is robust enough to differentiate the type of incidents/assaults, time, day, location, including motivations or other impressions from reporters. However, the strength of the solution is the Safecity team’s engagement of the community as a customer, building trust, and training leaders and residents about using the app, and understanding location data. Communities have used this data to develop creative solutions, including using art-related media to call attention to these problems. The data has also been used to collaborate with police around specific problematic locations/times of the day. The data is may also be useful for problem-oriented policing, where police are seeking community input for crime prevention. The tool has been used effectively in other countries where gender roles are rigidly defined. Piloting the app in the US is an important next step.

The Safecity platform is actively mapping gender-based violence in numerous communities within several countries. Because of the explosion of racial violence among citizens and by police in communities across the USA and beyond, we believe that in addition to mapping gender violence, the app can be used to understand un-/underreported racial violence in communities. Consistent with our model, we have identified a community-based organization #DontMuteDC, which has forged robust relationships within their community and with the local government.  They have agreed to pilot a project in one of their community neighborhoods, to simultaneously map racial, sexual, and gender-based violence. The resulting dataset will be used to engage the community in creating solutions for collaboration with local police and city government. #DontMuteDC uses creative arts, especially Go-Go music, to raise awareness and to generate creative community-based solutions to social problems, which makes them ideally-suited collaborators to our community-anchored model.