I 
119TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 4103 
To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to build safer, 
thriving communities, and save lives, by investing in effective community- 
based violence reduction initiatives, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 24, 2025 
Mr. HORSFORD (for himself, Mr. THOMPSON of California, Mrs. MCBATH, Ms. 
KELLY of Illinois, Mr. AMO, Ms. BARRAGA´N, Mrs. BEATTY, Mr. BELL, 
Mr. BEYER, Ms. BONAMICI, Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania, Ms. BROWN, 
Ms. BROWNLEY, Mr. CARBAJAL, Mr. CARTER of Louisiana, Mr. CASAR, 
Mr. CASTEN, Ms. CHU, Mr. CLEAVER, Mr. COSTA, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, 
Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania, Ms. DEGETTE, Ms. DELBENE, Mrs. DIN-
GELL, Mr. FIELDS, Mr. FIGURES, Mrs. FOUSHEE, Mr. FROST, Mr. 
GARCI´A of Illinois, Mr. GARCIA of California, Ms. GARCIA of Texas, Mr. 
GOLDMAN of New York, Mr. IVEY, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, Ms. 
JAYAPAL, Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia, Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE, Mr. KEN-
NEDY of New York, Mr. KHANNA, Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI, Ms. LEE of 
Pennsylvania, Mr. LIEU, Mr. MAGAZINER, Ms. MATSUI, Ms. MCCLEL-
LAN, Ms. MCCOLLUM, Mr. MENENDEZ, Mr. MFUME, Ms. MOORE of Wis-
consin, Mr. MORELLE, Mr. NADLER, Mr. NEAL, Mr. NEGUSE, Mr. NOR-
CROSS, Ms. NORTON, Ms. OMAR, Mr. PANETTA, Ms. PLASKETT, Mr. 
POCAN, Mr. QUIGLEY, Mrs. RAMIREZ, Ms. ROSS, Ms. SALINAS, Ms. 
SCANLON, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Ms. SCHOLTEN, Ms. SEWELL, Ms. SIMON, 
Ms. STRICKLAND, Mrs. SYKES, Mr. THANEDAR, Mr. THOMPSON of Mis-
sissippi, Ms. TITUS, Ms. TLAIB, Ms. TOKUDA, Mr. TORRES of New York, 
Mr. VARGAS, Mr. VEASEY, Ms. VELA´ZQUEZ, Ms. WILLIAMS of Georgia, 
Mr. LYNCH, and Mr. SMITH of Washington) introduced the following bill; 
which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition 
to the Committee on Education and Workforce, for a period to be subse-
quently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such 
provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
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A BILL 
To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services 
to build safer, thriving communities, and save lives, by 
investing in effective community-based violence reduction 
initiatives, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the 
‘‘Break the Cycle of Violence Act’’. 
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents of 
this Act is as follows: 
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents. 
Sec. 2. Findings. 
Sec. 3. Definitions. 
TITLE I—DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 
Sec. 101. Community-based violence intervention program grants. 
Sec. 102. Office of Community Violence Intervention. 
Sec. 103. Community Violence Intervention Advisory Committee. 
Sec. 104. Creation of a National Community Violence Response Center. 
Sec. 105. Sense of Congress regarding services for victims of violent crime. 
Sec. 106. Authorization of appropriations. 
TITLE II—DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 
Sec. 201. Improving approaches for communities to thrive (IMPACT) grants. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Community violence is a significant public 
health, public safety, and community infrastructure 
concern nationwide, and is a leading cause of death, 
injury, and trauma for people in the United States. 
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Community violence also disrupts employment and 
hinders a community’s social and economic develop-
ment. Today, gun violence is the leading cause of 
death for America’s youth. 
(2) From 2010 to 2021, over 233,000 people 
were murdered in the United States. Hundreds of 
thousands more were hospitalized or treated in 
emergency departments after surviving life-changing 
gunshot injuries and other violent assaults. 
(3) In 2020, the Nation suffered the largest 
single-year spike in homicides on record, driven 
largely by record spikes in fatal shootings. As of 
2021, 80 percent of all homicides in the United 
States are committed with a gun. 
(4) Communities across the Nation experience 
enormous disparities in safety that are driven by in-
equitable social and structural determinants of 
health. Interpersonal shootings are disproportion-
ately concentrated in neighborhoods harmed by past 
and present racial discrimination, segregation, red-
lining, disinvestment, mass incarceration, and con-
centrated poverty, and this violence’s toll falls over-
whelmingly on people of color, especially young 
Black and Brown men and boys and their loved 
ones. From 2015 to 2020, Black children and teens 
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were more than 12 times as likely to be shot to 
death as their White peers. Hispanic children and 
teens and Native American children and teens were 
both about 2.6 times as likely to be shot to death 
as their White peers. Over this period, 72 percent of 
children murdered before their 18th birthday were 
people of color, and more than 50 percent were 
Black. 
(5) Black boys and men make up less than 7 
percent of the population in the United States, but 
account for more than 50 percent of all gun homi-
cide victims each year. Violence is responsible for 
nearly half of all deaths among Black boys and 
young men, ages 15 through 24, meaning the par-
ents of a Black son in this age group are as likely 
to lose their child to homicide as nearly every other 
cause of death combined. 
(6) This violence imposes enormous human, so-
cial, and economic consequences. Studies show that 
gun violence has a national economic cost of 
$557,000,000,000 annually. The Director of the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Divi-
sion of Violence Prevention presented research to 
Congress demonstrating that ‘‘youth living in inner 
cities show a higher prevalence of post-traumatic 
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stress disorder than soldiers’’ in the Nation’s war-
time military. While the vast majority of these young 
people resiliently persevere, people who have been 
victims of violence are at substantially higher risk of 
being violently reattacked or killed. Additionally, 
both direct and indirect violence exposure have been 
associated with a host of poor health outcomes, in-
cluding chronic illness, anxiety, depression, and sub-
stance misuse. 
(7) When properly implemented and consist-
ently funded, coordinated, community-based strate-
gies that utilize trauma-responsive care and inter-
rupt cycles of violence can produce lifesaving and 
cost-saving results in a short period of time without 
contributing to mass incarceration. These strategies 
identify those at the highest risk, coordinate individ-
ualized wraparound resources, provide pathways to 
healing and stability, and monitor and support long- 
term success. Many cities have substantially reduced 
community violence in recent years by implementing 
various combinations of these strategies, which in-
clude the following: 
(A) Community outreach programs, which 
hire violence intervention and prevention spe-
cialists who have established relationships, re-
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latable lived experiences, and credibility with in-
dividuals in their communities at high risk of 
violence and connect them with intensive coun-
seling, mediation, peer support, and social serv-
ices in order to reduce their risk. Evaluations 
have found that these programs, particularly 
when integrated into wider networks of sup-
portive services, are frequently associated with 
significant reductions in gun violence. A recent 
study of the Safe Streets Baltimore looked at 
data from 2007 to 2022 and found that this 
strategy was associated with a statistically sig-
nificant 23 percent reduction in nonfatal shoot-
ings. 
(B) Hospital-based violence intervention 
programs (referred to in this section as 
‘‘HVIP’’), which work to break cycles of vio-
lence by leveraging credible violence interven-
tion and prevention specialists to provide inten-
sive counseling, peer support, case management, 
mediation, and social services to patients recov-
ering from gunshot wounds and other violent 
injuries. Research has shown that violently in-
jured patients are at high risk of retaliating 
with violence themselves or being revictimized 
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by violence in the near future. Evaluations of 
HVIPs have found that patients who received 
HVIP services were often less likely to be con-
victed of a violent crime and less likely to be 
subsequently reinjured by violence than patients 
who did not receive HVIP services. 
(C) Group violence interventions provide 
tailored social services and support to group-in-
volved individuals at highest risk for involve-
ment in community violence. This intervention, 
which must be trauma-informed, culturally re-
sponsive, and community driven to be most suc-
cessful, includes a process for community mem-
bers to voice a clear demand for the violence to 
stop and narrowly focused enforcement actions 
against those who continue to engage in acts of 
serious violence. The approach coordinates law 
enforcement, service providers, and community 
engagement efforts to reduce violence in ways 
that do not contribute to mass incarceration. 
(D) Violence interruption and crisis man-
agement, which respond to potentially violent 
incidents to mediate conflicts or to scenes where 
violence has occurred to offer trauma-informed 
services and community supports to survivors 
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and others exposed to violence. These strategies 
help to prevent retaliatory violence and promote 
healing and well-being. Programs that include 
these components have reported deescalating 
dozens of disputes that were highly likely to end 
in lethal violence. 
(8) Access to job and entrepreneurship training, 
apprenticeship, and technological and digital literacy 
programs are effective tools in reducing community 
violence. A 2012 University of Pennsylvania study of 
13 high-violence schools in the Chicago area found 
‘‘well-targeted, low-cost employment policies can 
make a substantial difference’’, and the city’s most 
violent neighborhoods saw a 43 percent drop in vio-
lent-crime arrests of participants in a youth job pro-
gram. 
(9) Individualized wraparound services and op-
portunities include housing support, financial assist-
ance, reentry services, legal assistance, therapeutic 
services, grief counseling or targeted victim services, 
and skill building based on the needs of survivors or 
individuals at the highest risk of community vio-
lence. Leveraging the relationships of violence inter-
vention and prevention specialists, these services are 
used in the context of structured, person-centered 
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peer mentorship that facilitates personal trans-
formation by meeting people where they are and of-
fering to help participants change the trajectories of 
their lives. 
(10) The past year has had a disproportionate 
impact on youth unemployment, with 2,900,000 
more unemployed youth in mid-2020 compared with 
pre-2020 levels. Simultaneously, the 2020 recession 
accelerated an already increasingly digital and auto-
mated workforce, and youth must attain the digital, 
technological, and other technical skills necessary to 
thrive in the future of work. While jobs in the cus-
tomer service and food industry could fall by 
4,300,000 between 2018 and 2030, health care and 
science, technology, engineering, and math occupa-
tions could grow more now than ever. 
(11) Intentional and sustained investments in 
community-based violence reduction strategies can 
reverse recent increases in homicides, help to heal 
impacted communities, and reduce the enormous 
human and economic costs of community violence, 
without contributing to mass incarceration. 
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS. 
In this Act: 
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(1) COMMUNITY VIOLENCE.—The term ‘‘com-
munity violence’’— 
(A) means nonfatal firearm injuries, ag-
gravated assaults, homicides, and other acts of 
life-threatening 
interpersonal 
violence 
com-
mitted outside the context of a familial or ro-
mantic relationship; and 
(B) does not include acts of violence moti-
vated by political beliefs. 
(2) ELIGIBLE UNIT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT.— 
The term ‘‘eligible unit of local government’’ means 
a municipality or other local government that— 
(A) for not less than 2 out of the 3 cal-
endar years preceding the date on which an ap-
plication for a grant is submitted under section 
101— 
(i) experienced 35 or more homicides 
per year; or 
(ii) experienced 20 or more homicides 
per year and had a homicide rate that was 
not less than double the national average; 
or 
(B) has a compelling need to address com-
munity violence, as determined by the Sec-
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retary, based on high levels of homicide relative 
to other localities within the same State. 
(3) OPPORTUNITY YOUTH.—The term ‘‘oppor-
tunity youth’’ means individuals who— 
(A) have attained 16 years of age but not 
yet attained 25 years of age; and 
(B) are not— 
(i) enrolled in education or training on 
a full-time or part-time basis; or 
(ii) employed on a full-time or part- 
time basis. 
TITLE I—DEPARTMENT OF 
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 
SEC. 101. COMMUNITY-BASED VIOLENCE INTERVENTION 
PROGRAM GRANTS. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary of Health and 
Human Services (in this title referred to as the ‘‘Sec-
retary’’) shall award grants to eligible entities to support, 
enhance, and replicate coordinated community violence 
intervention. 
(b) ELIGIBILITY.—To be eligible to seek a grant 
under this section, an entity shall be— 
(1) a community-based, nonprofit organization 
that— 
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