News & Stories New Approaches to Reimagining Public Safety in the U.S. South Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 2/4/2026 on 2/4/2026 The Heising-Simons Foundation’s Human Rights program envisions a society where all people in the United States are supported to live whole, safe, and dignified lives. Since 2020, part of that work has been dedicated to advancing understanding of community-based public safety responses in the U.S. South. Grantees like Policing Alternative and Diversion Initiative and Refund Raleigh provide impactful examples of alternative initiatives rooted in collective wellness, care, and accountability. Read the full story below. Helping People Heal and Thrive "We know that there is a need to support solutions and approaches that don’t rely on punishment and instead promote real safety by helping people heal and thrive." Leonard Stroble had spent over 10 years unhoused when the Atlanta Police Department found him sleeping in an abandoned YMCA building. “My life was raggedy,” he said. In many cities, police would arrest someone like Stroble, who was just trying to make it through the night. But thanks to a community-led program, the officers called for help instead. He had tested positive for COVID-19 and needed a bed.“I was put in a hotel the same day,” Stroble said. “After that, it took about four months to get into an apartment.”He’s since maintained a roof over his head—but he didn’t get here alone. Atlanta’s Policing Alternative and Diversion Initiative (PAD), a compassionate, alternative resource for local emergencies, added him to the city’s housing queue. During his office visits, he’d fix little things here and there. The team quickly realized Stroble was skilled, so they hired him. He now works as a maintenance technician for the same organization that came to his aid over five years ago. PAD, as the group is widely known, is cultivating a new approach to crisis response. And they’re not the only ones. In the South, communities are rising up to reimagine public safety infrastructure and demand better from policymakers. Photos: Two PAD workers speak to a man outside in Atlanta, and a PAD worker steps out of a white PAD vehicle. Photos courtesy of PAD. “The South is known as a place where punishment, harm and criminalization have deep roots,” said Jill Cartwright, program officer of the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation. “But there also is a long history of resilience. Many of the most transformative movements, policies, and thinking around social justice and human rights have come from the South.”The Foundation’s Human Rights program envisions a society where all people in the United States are supported to live whole, safe, and dignified lives. Since 2020, part of that work has been dedicated to advancing understanding of community-based public safety responses. “It’s an emerging area of work that is under-resourced in philanthropy, but one that holds great promise,” says Angie Junck, Human Rights program director. “We know that there is a need to support solutions and approaches that redefine accountability beyond punishment, focusing instead on repair, healing, and building the conditions for real safety and collective well-being.”Thanks to alternative programs such as PAD, people are recognizing that steel handcuffs and cells aren’t the answer for someone in crisis. Often times, what people need is therapy, treatment, or healthcare. Impacted communities also need to build their capacity to mediate conflict and invest in opportunities for connection and well-being to interrupt and prevent harm cycles at the source.“These new first response alternatives and community safety models show people that something different is possible,” Cartwright said. Reimagining Safety “Our mission is to reduce the amount of arrests and incarceration for individuals with those unmet needs." PAD focuses on individuals experiencing extreme poverty, mental health concerns, and substance abuse—a particularly vulnerable segment of the population that the U.S. carceral system disproportionately harms. Over a third of the people behind bars have a mental illness, but that number is only 23 percent among the wider public. Moreover, addiction affects more than half of those incarcerated, a jump when compared to the entire country. On that last point, the United States would save $4.8 billion, when compared to current practices, if even 10 percent of people who abuse substances in prison were sent to treatment instead.“Our mission is to reduce the amount of arrests and incarceration for individuals with those unmet needs,” said Denise White, PAD’s deputy director. “People get arrested for screaming because they’re responding to internal voices or charged with disorderly conduct or public nuisance for going to the bathroom in public because they were denied a restroom.” Or for someone like Stroble: trespassing to sleep safely for a night. Between January and October 2025, PAD responded to 1,453 calls from 311, 911, and law enforcement. The result? Twenty-eight people transitioned to permanent housing. Nearly 200 received shelter for a week or more. Over 700 people got connected with food assistance. Since 2021, four years after PAD’s launch, officers have successfully conducted 892 referrals where individuals qualified for and consented to PAD services. These numbers would likely only grow if law enforcement would fully utilize PAD’s resources. Graphic: 64% of people who called PAD between January and October 2025 recieved housing, shelter, or food assistance. In Atlanta, officers can even bring someone (with their permission) directly to a 24-hour diversion center where they meet with a peer support specialist who identifies immediate and long-term needs. In 2025, the center received over 1,500 diversions, reducing the number of people sent into the local criminal legal system. The goal is to help prevent that individual from clashing with law enforcement again. The center, attached to the city jail, welcomes visitors with a popcorn machine. The smell of butter is the first to hit their senses. Hot meals and reclining chairs are available for anyone who wants to recover.“We’re trying to have the center be inviting,” White said. “It can be very traumatic for someone to have an officer take them somewhere.”Community-based public safety approaches offer a transformative vision for safety, rooted in care, accountability, and the social conditions that allow communities to thrive. Atlanta isn’t the only city investing in strong community safety nets. In Raleigh, N.C., organizers are pushing for something similar. Photos: A PAD worker shows resources offered at a PAD Diversion Center, and two smiling PAD workers pose outside in front of a brick wall for a photo. Photos courtesy of PAD. Prioritizing Community and Connection "The city of Raleigh needs a refund." Photos: Reports by Refund Raleigh on demands to “refund” the city, as well as the shortcomings of the ACORNS program. Refund Raleigh has spent the past five years door-knocking and listening to its neighbors to understand what “safety” looks like to them. The organization also asked community members to rank city budget priorities that would actually help their families thrive beyond crisis. Is it mental health services and housing? Access to food and education? Or something else entirely? In 2020, North Carolina and local governments spent over $3 billion on policing. Refund Raleigh, through its work with the Raleigh People’s Budget Coalition, has empowered the community to speak up on how they’d prefer their tax dollars be used and to champion those ideas during city council meetings. In some cases, dozens of people have shown up.And the city is paying attention.In 2021, the Raleigh Police Department launched the Addressing Crises through Outreach, Referrals, Networking, and Service unit, or ACORNS. The program encourages police to connect individuals experiencing homelessness, mental health challenges, or substance abuse to support services. However, the police department maintains it, so police officers must be willing to refer eligible individuals to resources instead of a jail.Refund Raleigh released a report in early 2023 detailing ACORNS’s shortcomings in its two-year lifespan, including the underwhelming number of completed referrals due to its overreliance on police. The report included a proposal to transition ACORNS to an independent entity similar to the successful Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) program in nearby Durham, N.C. That proposal led to the expansion of city-wide crisis response offerings under a new name: Raleigh Crisis Alternative Response for Empathy and Support. Raleigh CARES, as it is most often called, includes ACORNS, a crisis diversion line, a care navigation team, and a soon-to-be-established community response team. Video: 5-minute preview of a 33-minute documentary film about Durham’s HEART (Holistic Empathetic Alternative Response Teams) program. “Ultimately, we consider it a success when our conversations are able to change the narrative and are able to raise consciousness around not just mental healthcare and wellness on its own, but also going back to the root causes of our suffering, the conditions that produce our suffering,” said Brea Perry, a steering committee member at Refund Raleigh.The root causes Perry is referring to run deep: economic injustice, intergenerational trauma, and state violence, to name a few. But they’re not insurmountable—not if governments invest in addressing them. Local budgets reflect a city’s priorities, and Raleigh has its priorities all mixed up.“The city of Raleigh needs a refund,” Perry said. “Every year in the city budget—and this is the case with most, if not all, cities across America—the highest line item is the police budget.”Her organization is campaigning for more funding to address systemic issues like housing, at-risk youth, and mental health. Perry knows firsthand what it feels like to be chronically unwell. She spent a period this summer struggling to get out of bed. “Things that people experience and feel every day, I also experience,” she said.That’s why Refund Raleigh isn’t just focused on the police or emergency response—the group brings wellness resources directly to the community by focusing on holistic well-being (housing, food, youth, vulnerable population care, crisis support) and directing city funds toward community-identified priorities. “Mental health is not just about the individual things you can do: the meditations and the yoga,” Perry said. “We have to come outside of our individualistic notions of wellness to take care of each other and also to study and understand why we are so unwell.”“No single agency, department, or organization holds all the tools needed to address the full picture of someone’s life,” said White of Atlanta-based PAD. “When we work together, we honor the dignity of our participants by showing them that their well-being is a shared responsibility, not a burden to be passed from one system to the next.” A Way Forward "We must grow our society’s capacity to imagine and experiment with new and reclaimed ways of relating to one another with care, dignity, and thoughtful accountability." Videos: PAD volunteers offer assistance to members in their community. Videos courtesy of PAD. The achievements of PAD and Refund Raleigh are just a few examples of what is possible when philanthropy invests in alternative response and community safety initiatives that are rooted in collective wellness, care, and accountability. By focusing on tangible supports like alternatives to 911 while building grassroots capacity for harm prevention and budget advocacy, these models bridge the gap between immediate safety needs and a long-term vision of what true public safety means for everyone.“Our grantee partners understand that the work of reimagining public safety is not just a one-to-one replacement of the current system with a more compassionate one. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the complex problems faced by our society,” Cartwright said. “Instead, we must grow our society’s capacity to imagine and experiment with new and reclaimed ways of relating to one another with care, dignity, and thoughtful accountability. The Human Rights program is supporting that experimentation in the U.S. South and in other places where it has the highest potential for impact.” This story was written by Yessenia Funes. She is available on all major social media @yessfun. Human Rights Close Share this page Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Share on Email