Public Safety Study

View the final report from the public safety study.

The Missoula County Community Justice Department’s first public safety survey closed on Oct. 7, 2022, and a follow up one closed in July 2023. Thanks to everyone who responded! Many other counties across the nation are participating in this study, and Missoula came out with one of the highest response rates of the first survey.

The County has worked with researchers to ask over 1,500 residents in Missoula County and two other counties (Mecklenburg, NC and St. Louis, MO) what it means for a community to be safe. These responses have been narrowed to 120 statements that touch on things like low rates of violent crime, access to affordable housing, and the ability to move through the day without fear of being harmed.

This information was then used to create a map to define and measure community safety, which can be used to set priorities, guide action and assess change. View it under "documents" on the right-hand side.

Then, we performed a second survey called the "Redefining Community Safety" survey, which closed on July 31.

Staff compiled a draft report of this study and met with a local board of stakeholders. The final report is now available in the "documents" section on the right-hand side, and you can read a basic recap of the study below under "Surveys."

If you have any questions, please contact Lee Slocum at slocuml@umsl.edu

This project is funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety & Justice Challenge Research Consortium. The Safety & Justice Challenge is a national initiative to safely reduce jail populations. The Safety & Justice Challenge examines the efficiency of justice system processes and offers pretrial and reentry programming and services based on local data and evidence-based screening methods. Missoula County is one of the 57 cities, counties and states participating in the consortium network. Since 2017, the county has received $1.4 million in grant funds from the MacArthur Foundation to reduce the jail population and recidivism. Learn more about the jail diversion efforts online.