Return to the latest GAP Report on the Asheville budget and proposed public safety priorities here.
Overview
Asheville faces real public safety challenges, but a growing body of evidence suggests that a strategy emphasizing expanded surveillance systems and reactive enforcement is unlikely to produce the strongest long-term reductions in violence.
Research from scholars like University of Chicago economist Jens Ludwig suggests that much violent behavior is shaped less by rational calculation than by stress, instability, and impulsive escalation. This challenges a long-standing public safety assumption that violence is primarily prevented through deterrence, surveillance, and punishment after harm has already occurred.
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs attempt to interrupt violence before it occurs through outreach, mentorship, conflict mediation, and targeted support for individuals at highest risk. The deeper implication of this research is both practical and moral: many acts of violence are preventable, and many lives — including the lives of victims, families, and those who commit harm in moments of escalation — do not have to be permanently destroyed.
Right now Asheville is facing serious budget pressures, affordability concerns, and difficult tradeoffs involving taxes and public services. Prevention-oriented public safety strategies are not only more effective — they are significantly less expensive than the more traditional approach Asheville has been taking that is reflected in the most recent draft budget for FY2027. It’s also important to note that CVI is not new to Asheville. The city and its community partners have invested in youth programming, community centers, reentry support, and trauma-informed services for years — often with far fewer resources and less institutional emphasis than traditional enforcement systems.
In a nutshell: we are suggesting that Asheville should rebalance its priorities by placing greater emphasis on prevention-oriented strategies that local governments have already enacted to good effect, while slowing continued expansion of expensive surveillance and enforcement infrastructure. This will save lives and money at this critical moment in our history.
Our research and analysis follows in these sections:
What Is Community Violence Intervention — And Why Does It Work?
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) refers to evidence-based strategies designed to prevent violence before it occurs. Rather than focusing primarily on arrest and punishment after harm has happened, CVI programs typically combine violence interruption, mentorship, trauma-informed support, conflict mediation, and targeted outreach to individuals at highest risk of involvement in violence.
A growing body of behavioral and public health research suggests that many violent acts are not carefully planned, but rather impulsive, situational, and shaped by chronic stress. Economist Jens Ludwig’s work draws heavily on behavioral economics and argues that violence prevention often works best when it changes the “choice architecture” surrounding high-risk moments — helping people slow down, interrupt escalation, and make different decisions during conflict.
This is a significant shift from traditional public safety thinking. Much of modern policing is built around deterrence: the assumption that people commit violence after rationally weighing consequences and risks. Ludwig’s research suggests that many violent acts instead emerge from moments of fear, anger, trauma, humiliation, intoxication, or from chronic instability, when people are not thinking carefully about long-term consequences at all.
This distinction matters because it changes what effective prevention looks like. If violence is often situational and preventable, then public safety systems should focus not only on responding after harm occurs, but on interrupting escalation before lives are permanently altered.
One of the strongest examples of prevention-oriented intervention comes from Chicago’s “Becoming a Man” (BAM) initiative, developed by Youth Guidance and studied through randomized controlled trials by the University of Chicago Crime Lab. BAM combines mentorship, group counseling, and cognitive behavioral techniques designed to help young people slow down reactions during conflict and avoid escalation. Two major studies found BAM reduced violent crime arrests by 45%-50% and increased on-time high school graduation rates by 19%. Researchers estimated the program cost roughly $1,100–$1,850 per participant annually while generating social benefits many times larger through reduced violence, incarceration, and improved educational outcomes.
For a city the size of Asheville, a meaningful pilot initiative focused on mentorship, conflict mediation, and trauma-informed youth outreach could likely be launched for a fraction of the long-term cost of expanding surveillance infrastructure or adding multiple new sworn officer positions.
Asheville’s emerging Real-Time Intelligence Center (RTIC) infrastructure will generate recurring software, storage, staffing, maintenance, and contract-renewal obligations over many years. In addition, a single fully staffed sworn officer position can ultimately cost well over $120,000 annually once salary, benefits, overtime, retirement obligations, equipment, and training are included. The current draft budget reportedly contemplates adding approximately 24 additional sworn officer positions. Before committing to expansion at that scale, Asheville should evaluate whether lower-cost prevention-oriented approaches could produce stronger long-term public safety outcomes.
Research also consistently shows that a relatively small number of people and places account for a disproportionate share of serious violence. This means targeted interventions can sometimes produce meaningful public safety benefits without large-scale enforcement expansion.
Policing plays a role in public safety. But research indicates that policing alone is unlikely to address the underlying conditions that drive cycles of violence.
Learn more:
- Overview of Becoming a Man program
- New York Times article about the effectiveness of these programs (which are scrambling for money after being defunded by the federal government)
- Cure Violence Globally
- University of Chicago Crime Lab
- Unforgiving Places (2025 book by Jens Ludwig)
- What Is Community Violence Intervention? (article from the Giffords Center for Violence Intervention)
- National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform
- Everytown Community Safety Fund
Examples From Other Cities
One common misconception is that Community Violence Intervention only works in very large cities with enormous budgets. In reality, many smaller and mid-sized cities have implemented scaled-down versions of CVI using modest staffing, nonprofit partnerships, and targeted investments.
| City | Population | Approach |
| Richmond, CA | ~110,000 | mentorship and violence interruption |
| Kalamazoo, MI | ~73,000 | nonprofit-led prevention grants |
| Delano, CA | ~50,000 | peacekeeper and trauma-informed model |
These examples suggest that smaller cities do not need massive new bureaucracies to begin investing in prevention-oriented public safety strategies. Many successful programs start with small pilot investments, trusted community partnerships, and focused intervention aimed at the relatively small number of people and conflicts driving the majority of serious violence.
Richmond provides the strongest long-term evidence among these examples. The city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety was created after Richmond experienced 47 homicides in 2006. By 2023, homicides had fallen to 8 — an 83% reduction — while firearm assaults declined from 242 to 37, an 85% reduction. Researchers caution that no violence trend can be attributed to a single factor alone, but Richmond’s prevention-oriented approach has become one of the most influential and widely studied CVI models in the country.
Delano’s peacekeeper model is newer and has not yet been evaluated as extensively as Richmond’s program. However, local reporting indicates the initiative has contributed to reductions in gun violence while expanding trauma-informed outreach, mentorship, and community support services in one of California’s smaller agricultural cities.
Kalamazoo’s recent violence intervention investments are notable less because of long-term outcome data — which remain limited — and more because they demonstrate how a smaller city can implement collaborative, nonprofit-led prevention strategies without building a massive new bureaucracy.
More broadly, recent research on Cure Violence-style interventions in New York City found the programs were associated with roughly a 14% reduction in shootings, suggesting that well-implemented violence interruption strategies can produce measurable public safety benefits at a lower cost.
Learn more:
How Does CVI Compare to More Officers and Surveillance?
Research on police staffing and crime reduction is mixed. Some studies show that increasing police staffing can reduce certain categories of crime, especially property crime, but the impact on serious violence is often smaller than commonly assumed. Meanwhile, adding sworn officers creates substantial long-term costs tied to salaries, benefits, pensions, overtime, training, and equipment.
Asheville has also recently approved acceptance of approximately $1.14 million in federal funding connected to development of a Real-Time Intelligence Center (RTIC). The federal grant does not require a direct local match. However, the system will still generate ongoing local costs tied to software licensing, cloud storage, staffing, maintenance, equipment replacement, and future contract renewals. City documents also describe efforts to lock in long-term pricing through a seven-and-a-half-year Axon contract that includes FUSUS integration software.
Even where surveillance systems help solve crimes after the fact, solving crimes is not the same as preventing violence. Evidence that integrated surveillance systems substantially reduce violent crime remains limited and mixed, while concerns around privacy, data sharing, and long-term vendor dependency continue to grow.
CVI programs are often substantially cheaper than expanding police staffing or surveillance infrastructure. Even modest investments in violence interruption, youth outreach, conflict mediation, and trauma-informed support have been shown to prevent costly cycles of violence before they occur.
For example, published estimates suggest Chicago’s BAM program has historically operated at participant costs far below the annual long-term cost associated with incarceration or even a small number of additional sworn officer positions, while producing significant reductions in violent crime involvement among participating youth.
Buncombe County Has Invested in Prevention — But Not at the Same Scale
Over the years, Buncombe County and community partners have invested in programs designed to reduce instability and social isolation, most notably the Community-Based Public-Health Response to Violence (CPrV) program. Unlike traditional law enforcement infrastructure — which is supported through stable, recurring municipal operating budgets — Buncombe County’s community violence prevention efforts have been built largely through temporary grants, including MacArthur Foundation funding, ARPA recovery dollars, and federal DOJ awards. As a result, the programs remain comparatively fragile and vulnerable to shifting political priorities and the expiration of external funding streams.
Nonetheless, the CPrV reflects many of the core insights behind Community Violence Intervention: that violence prevention is connected to stability, trust, opportunity, and strong community relationships. Asheville already has many of the institutional ingredients needed for a BAM-style prevention initiative, including community centers, youth-serving nonprofits, mentorship programs, trauma-informed organizations, and school partnerships. What’s needed now is stable funding, coordination, and long-term political commitment to prevention-oriented work.
Research increasingly suggests that this imbalance may be both less effective and more expensive over time. Violence is closely connected to trauma, housing instability, chronic stress, social isolation, untreated mental health needs, and cycles of retaliation. Prevention-oriented approaches attempt to interrupt these patterns early by stabilizing high-risk situations and strengthening community relationships before violence escalates.
Every preventable act of violence leaves lasting damage — not only for victims, but for families, neighborhoods, and the individuals who commit harm themselves. A public safety system focused primarily on punishment after violence occurs accepts a level of human devastation that more preventive approaches may help avoid.
A prevention-centered strategy is therefore not simply about shifting money from one public safety strategy to another. It is also about preserving the broader community systems — including community centers, youth services, housing stabilization, and neighborhood infrastructure — that help reduce instability and violence before harm occurs.
Proposed FY2027 Budget Adjustments
Asheville is currently debating difficult tradeoffs involving taxes, staffing, and public services. In that context, the city should avoid creating unnecessary long-term surveillance and staffing obligations while preserving community resources that themselves contribute to long-term public safety.
1. Pause Further Surveillance Expansion
Asheville should avoid expanding camera integration systems, license plate reader infrastructure, and long-term surveillance software commitments until independent evidence demonstrates clear public safety benefits relative to cost.
Because many surveillance systems generate recurring software, storage, maintenance, and contract costs, slowing future expansion could likely avoid approximately $250,000–$500,000 annually in additional long-term obligations over the next several budget cycles.
2. Phase In or Defer a Portion of Proposed Staffing Expansion
Rather than immediately committing to the full proposed expansion of approximately 24 additional sworn positions, Asheville should consider phasing in or deferring a substantial portion of that growth while evaluating whether prevention-oriented approaches can reduce violence more effectively and at lower long-term cost.
Deferring even 10–15 fully staffed positions could potentially avoid roughly $1.5–3 million annually in future structural personnel obligations once salary, benefits, retirement, training, overtime, and equipment costs are included.
3. Create a Modest Community Violence Prevention Pilot Fund
Rather than building a large new bureaucracy, Asheville should begin with a modest pilot investment focused on youth outreach, conflict mediation, trauma-informed support, and community-based intervention partnerships.
An initial investment in the range of $250,000–$500,000 annually would allow Asheville to test prevention-oriented approaches at a scale more appropriate to the city’s size and fiscal environment.
Even after funding a modest prevention-oriented pilot initiative, Asheville could still potentially free up millions of dollars in long-term budget flexibility by slowing surveillance expansion and phasing in sworn staffing growth more gradually. A more restrained approach to surveillance expansion and staffing growth could potentially avoid approximately $750,000–$1.5 million annually in future structural costs.
Even after funding a modest prevention-oriented pilot program in the range of $250,000–$500,000 annually, Asheville could still potentially free up roughly $500,000–$1 million in budget flexibility.
Those savings could help reduce pressure for the proposed property tax increase while preserving existing community resources that already contribute to long-term public safety, including retaining current community center hours (instead of cutting them back), youth programming, transit access, park maintenance, housing stabilization efforts, and other neighborhood-based services.
In other words, the choice is not simply between policing and CVI. It is also about whether Asheville will preserve the broader community infrastructure that helps prevent violence in the first place.
Conclusion
Asheville has a choice.
The city can continue doubling down on increasingly expensive surveillance systems, increased hiring, and reactive enforcement strategies, or it can begin building a public safety model rooted in prevention, trust, and evidence.
The research increasingly points in one direction: communities reduce violence most effectively when they invest in people before violence occurs.
A meaningful expansion of Community Violence Intervention programming — paired with restraint on large-scale surveillance and staffing expansion — would likely save more lives, strengthen community trust, and reduce long-term costs.
But the argument for prevention is not only financial. Every preventable act of violence leaves lasting harm for victims, families, neighborhoods, and often the individuals who commit violence in moments that may never have needed to escalate. A public safety system should not measure success only by how effectively it responds after tragedy occurs. It should also be judged by how much suffering it prevents in the first place.
In a moment of fiscal pressure and rising community concern, Asheville should choose prevention over escalation.