Working Group on Strategic
Approaches to Community Safety
(STACS)

The Working Group on Strategic Approaches to Community Safety was established In February 1998 as a joint venture between the Public Safety Coordinating Council and the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out the purposes of the U.S. Attorney’s "Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative" ("STACS").

In summary, the purpose of STACS is to bolster the use of a collaborative, knowledge-driven, problem-solving process which will allow the Public Safety Coordinating Council and its participant agencies to:
(1) identify and analyze crime problems in Multnomah County,

(2) devise and implement strategies likely to reduce those problems and

(3) institutionalize this process through continual reevaluation and reconsideration of intervention strategies in light of new information and patterns emerging from ongoing data analysis.

The STACS approach recognizes four key principles:

All crime problems are local and require coordinated action of local justice agencies.

Knowledge and expertise of local university faculties and research institutions are needed to work closely with front-line justice professionals and community partners in analyzing crime trends and designing practical and effective strategies to fight crime.

Because the causes and solutions to crime are many and varied, a team approach is needed to combine law enforcement, parole and probation supervision, and community service providers, educators, the faith community, and others. Both "carrot" and "stick" are needed to induce high-risk offenders to remain crime-free.

A bottom-up approach works better than a top-down approach to analyze current crime trends, develop and refine street level violence reduction strategies, and oversee and evaluate operations.

The first problem to be addressed by STACS, youth gun violence, was limited to geographical areas within the City of Portland. The Working Group reported quarterly to the Council on the progress of STACS.