The Jacksonville Journey invested in the after-school program Team Up, where then-12-year-old Matthew Fluellen (right) helped 10-year-old Aaminah Muhammad in a computeer math class in this May 2009 photo.

I’ve watched with interest the recent discussion about bringing back the Jacksonville Journey program. Frankly, it’s not something that I think should be done. Not that I oppose the broad agenda of the program — to the contrary.

But the serious weaknesses of the Jacksonville Journey model of anti-violence programming have already revealed themselves once again: Abrupt leadership turnover driven by local elections and funding aspirations far too limited to have any lasting impact, as well as behind-the-scenes and non-data-driven posturing for public funding.

The Jacksonville Journey was supposed to be a minimum down payment for a vital piece of civic infrastructure in which Duval County has repeatedly failed to invest — a permanently funded, independent, dedicated source of revenue used to improve the lives of local children and families.

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Consider the Miami-Dade Children’s Trust. This type of independent resource is the only way that Duval will finally develop a long-term strategic plan for reducing violence that is data-driven and separated from political machinations.

The establishment of the Miami-Dade Children’s Trust featured a lot of political back and forth (along with donor-class resistance), but also fierce ground-up community advocacy and coalition building that was ultimately successful. Going back to Mayor Ed Austin, however, Duval has repeatedly tried — and failed ― to secure a permanent funding source for this sort of public resource.

Why? The rhetoric of “consolidation” has, for too long, propped up an “economies of scale” mythology for local government that benefitted few at the cost of many. Translation? For decades, government on the cheap has generated compounding problems and deferred costs to later generations of taxpayers.

This is precisely where Jacksonville finds itself today, in literally every sphere of local government.

But the needs of both children and this community are also different today than in 2009. For example, social media figures directly into local violence and complicates the lives of young people in ways not operative then. Mayoral administrations of both parties have long responded to our violence problem with messaging strategies built around the chimera of “local programs” built in their own image.

In this 2010 photo, Travis Higgs carries materials out of a commercial building on Swan Street in the area now known as Jacksonville's Railyard District before commencing the building's demolition for a Jacksonville Journey project.

In 2009 the violence problem was so acute, however, that leadership lost control of the message and the community pushed back. I served on the Jacksonville Journey oversight committee as an appointee of Mayor John Peyton and independently evaluated several Jacksonville Journey projects.

The Journey program had two short-term strengths: First, then-State Attorney Harry Shorstein showed up describing what he called a “tale of two cities,” documenting how violence was concentrated on Duval’s Northside and raising concerns about racial disparities in violence.

The second strength was the insistence of Susie Wiles (Mayor Peyton’s chief of staff) that “we’re not just going to throw money at this problem. All funding will be performance-based and failing programs will be cut.” And it was; a system of quarterly reporting and external oversight assured programs were held to account.

Underperforming programs were cut, and results were genuinely achieved. Then, Mayor Alvin Brown inexplicably eliminated the program.

Today, I want to see something more substantial: a local referendum to permanently fund civic infrastructure for children. A city is not just its “downtown.” For too long brick-and-mortar have dominated Duval’s civic agenda — not human beings. Today is a different moment; if it doesn’t happen now, it will never happen.

Michael Hallett, Ph.D., is a professor of criminology at the University of North Florida.

This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Independent revenue source only way Duval can effectively reduce crime