About the Preventable Crime Project
A nonpartisan research nonprofit tracking sentencing outcomes, judicial performance, and criminal justice policy across all fifty states — because everyone deserves to live on safe streets.
The Preventable Crime Project documents sentencing outcomes and reoffense data at the state and federal level and tracks the enactment status of criminal justice policy across all fifty states. We publish the stories behind that data and write the analysis that explains what it means. We run data-driven initiatives and produce content built to educate the public and force the issue into view. The public has a right to know when the system lets a dangerous offender back onto the streets, and we use that record to push courts, corrections systems, and legislatures to be accountable to the people they are meant to protect.
Founded in 2026, the Preventable Crime Project began with a conviction older than any statute: public spaces belong to everyone. All should have the right to walk down a street at night, park their car outside, and let their children out to play without fearing for their lives. Unfortunately, in many states and cities across America, soft-on-crime policies have made realizing this right impossible. Weak laws, ineffective prosecution, and lenient sentences have put repeat offenders back on the street again and again to victimize the innocent.
Tyler Brown spent three decades cycling through the criminal justice system, convicted of armed robbery, drug trafficking, a prison escape, a stabbing, witness intimidation, and a shootout with Boston police officers. Each time, a sympathetic court and a permissive prosecutorial approach sent him back to the street years sooner than his record warranted. On May 11, 2026, he was free again and walked onto Memorial Drive in Cambridge, a block from Harvard's campus, and fired approximately 70 rounds indiscriminately on a busy public street, hitting two men who survived only because they were rushed into surgery in time. Read more here→
Our founder was a Harvard student at the time and watched as his classmates worriedly spent the afternoon confirming each other's safety by phone. It was the last straw: years of watching policy after policy fail the people it claimed to protect, culminating in an afternoon when that failure arrived close enough to count classmates among the potential casualties. That frustration motivated the creation of the Preventable Crime Project, which is now compiling its first statewide datasets for California, New York, and Massachusetts.
The Preventable Crime Project is a nonprofit research organization recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) (EIN 42-2782336), effective May 26, 2026. We do not accept funding contingent on specific findings, and we do not endorse candidates or take positions in elections. Our data and methodology are published for independent verification.
