By Chaplain Clementina Chéry
When we talk about safety, what do we really mean?
For some, safety means the absence of violence. For others, it means protection—systems in place to respond when harm occurs. But for many families—especially those who have experienced loss—safety is something deeper.
Safety is not only about what happens after harm, and it is not always something that statistics can measure. It is about what exists before harm occurs. It is a feeling. The feeling that your child can walk home safely. That your loved ones will be treated with dignity. That your community will respond with care—not silence—when something goes wrong. That things will be okay.
For families impacted by violence, that feeling is stolen from them. Once it’s gone, we begin to understand that any numbers that measure safety statistically are meaningless to a traumatized family and an impacted community.
When Safety Is Missing
When safety is missing, its absence is not always visible, but it is felt, nonetheless. The void shows its face parents who cannot sleep until their children are home, or young people who carry fear instead of freedom, or communities that normalize, and thus become immune to, trauma.
It rears its head in silence. Silence in the wake of violence. When families are grieving. When systems respond too late—or not at all. Silence erodes safety.
For many families, the feeling of safety is even more elusive when their loved one’s homicide remains unsolved. These families live in a constant state of uncertainty. No one has been held accountable. The crime goes unanswered. Peace of mind is impossible. Families carry not only the pain of loss, but also the ongoing weight of unanswered questions, public silence, and the fear that their loved one’s life has been forgotten.
Unresolved violence also impacts entire communities. It weakens trust in authorities and deepens trauma. And like an open wound that won’t heal, violence for which no one is held accountable under the law deprives families and neighborhoods of whatever closure justice may bring.
At the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, every day we see the importance of walking alongside families whose loved ones’ cases remain unsolved. Through our work with our Unsolved Homicide Ambassadors and survivors of victims, families continue to shine a light on their loved ones’ lives while advocating for healing, justice, remembrance, and community support.
Because just as silence threatens safety, so too does isolation.
Rethinking What Keeps Us Safe
We must ask ourselves: Are we investing enough in what actually keeps us safe? True community safety is not built only through enforcement. It’s also built by communities where neighbors know and care for one another, schools that support students’ emotional well-being, ready access to mental health care and trauma-informed services, and spaces where young people are equipped with the tools to resolve conflict before it becomes a crisis.
It’s important to remember that community is more than simple proximity to one another. This is universal, as true in Dorchester, Mass., Dorchester, England, or anywhere in between. True community transcends physical distance, existing wherever and however people share honesty, compassion, trust, and humanity.
In “The Different Drum,” M. Scott Peck defines community as “a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and delight in each other, making others’ conditions our own.”
In other words, safety grows when people feel connected enough to care deeply for one another, mourn together, support one another, and recognize that another person’s pain is not separate from their own. And to take this one step further, safety grows even stronger when these conditions–people who are connected and who feel seen, valued and supported–are in place before harm occurs.
Community is often the first witness to a threat to safety. A neighbor checks in on a frail or elderly person. A teacher notices a change in a student’s behavior. A friend realizes something is not quite right. These everyday acts matter. They are the foundation of safety.
The Role of Healing in Safety
At the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, we have learned that healing, like accountability and connection, is not separate from the idea of safety; it is essential to it. Unaddressed trauma does not disappear. It often resurfaces in our homes, schools, places of worship, workplaces, and streets.
But when people are given space to heal, cycles of harm can be interrupted, relationships can be restored, communities can begin to rebuild trust. Healing, also, helps create the conditions where safety can be felt.
Creating safe communities is a shared responsibility for all of us. For governments, this responsibility requires public investment in community-based organizations. For community groups, it means working with institutions and private citizens toward common goals. For the rest of us going about our lives, it means a shared commitment to show up for one another
Safety is not something we outsource. We have to build it ourselves, together. It is rooted in love. Strengthened by unity. Guided by faith and hope. Sustained through courage. Grounded in justice. Renewed through forgiveness. And if we are willing to build it together safety is, yes, a feeling, but possibly more than that too—a shared reality.
Chaplain Clementina Chéry is the president and chief executive officer of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute.
