Birmingham-Area Leaders Launch Governance Partnership to Decrease Violence

By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times In the wake of a record-setting year for homicides in the City of Birmingham, a nonpartisan research organization has launched a partnership with area leaders and agencies to decrease violence and increase health and opportunity in Jefferson County. Birmingham ended 2024 with 151 homicides, the highest number of killings in the city in nearly a century. The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) will serve as an intermediary for the newly formed Birmingham-Jefferson County Justice Governance Partnership which seeks to understand and address the conditions that give rise to crime in neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. Birmingham City Councilor LaTonya Tate and Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson co-chair the BJC-JGP and convened the partnership’s leadership council last week at the Women’s Foundation of Alabama. “You have to have every person a part of the ecosystem,” she said. “You have to have the health department, you have to have philanthropy, you have to have the city, you have to have the county, you have to have the state, you have to have the judges, you have to have the DAs – especially when you’re trying to transform peoples lives … if you’re telling...