Safer Pennsylvania Project
Together, we can create a Safer Pennsylvania.
Sexual Harm is Preventable.
Pennsylvanians deserve policies that genuinely make our communities safer and achieve measurable reductions in the risk of sexual harm—not just policies that sound tough on paper. Guided by the Safer Pennsylvania Team, these pillars are advanced through powerful multidisciplinary collaboration. Together, voices from government, healthcare, education, law enforcement, community organizations, and nonprofits unite to build innovative, unified approaches to prevention and response, ensuring a Safer Pennsylvania for everyone.
What We’re Working On
Prevention
Sexual Harm is Preventable, not Inevitable.
Pennsylvania must champion a bold shift from solely reacting to sexual harm after it occurs to proactively preventing it before it begins. By prioritizing primary prevention—through accessible education, robust resources, and inclusive programs for everyone at risk of experiencing or causing harm— we must build safer, healthier communities for all.
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Public Policy
Modernizing Laws and Ensuring Evidence-Based Policies
Pennsylvania must modernize laws and policies using evidence-based strategies that actively prevent sexual harm, ensure effective treatment for those who have caused harm, and foster comprehensive healing for survivors. By embracing proven practices and keeping pace with emerging challenges, Safer Pennsylvania pledges to build a safer, more just, and more resilient future for all.
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Transformation
Healing, Responsibility, and Safety
Pennsylvania must envision a future where every person affected by sexual harm—whether survivor or perpetrator—can embark on a journey of healing, responsibility, safety, and transformation. By embracing restorative practices and empowerment, we must nurture a culture where harm is acknowledged, wounds are healed, and all involved are supported in regaining balance, moving forward with hope and dignity.
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Responsibility
Ethical, Effective, and Efficient Use of Resources
Pennsylvania must invest its resources responsively, where they will have the most significant impact in preventing harm. By continually reimagining and modernizing traditional approaches, Safer Pennsylvania aims to ensure that every dollar is used wisely, advancing the most innovative, efficient, and evidence-based solutions to protect communities and foster lasting safety for all.
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Our Programs Focus
We’re committed to creating a Safer Pennsylvania.
Helping communities and families ensure sexual harm is prevented before it happens is our ultimate goal and that those who cause sexual harm are not only held accountable, but given tools to remain safe, contributing members of society.
Join the Movement for a Safer Pennsylvania
Join our mission to ensure survivors of sexual harm can heal, knowing that those who are at risk of causing harm are receiving best-practice, evidence-proven treatment, and that we are doing everything we can to ensure a Safer Pennsylvania — together.
Become a Partner
There are several ways individuals, companies, organizations can partner with the Safer Pennsylvania Project including:
- The Safer Pennsylvania Legislative Caucus is a bipartisan group of state senators and representatives who are committed to supporting our core values.
- The Safer Pennsylvania Reentry Council (SPARC) is a group of community and nonprofit organizations working to ensure Safer PA’s core values are included in reentry programming including parole, probabtion, treatment, and peer support.
- The Safer Pennsylvania Policy Advancement Team (SPAPAT) works to implement public safety measures with a trauma-informed, sexual harm prevention focus across Pennsylvania’s agencies, bureaus, and commissions.
- The Safer Pennsylvania Concerned Citizens Council (SPACCC) ensures that everyone who fully supports Safer PA’s pillars has a place at the table.
Volunteer
Lend your time and skills to make a difference. Whether it’s helping in the field, supporting education programs, or assisting online, your efforts directly support safe, healthy families and communities across Pennsylvania.
Recommend Safer PA Project to a Friend
Do you know an individual, organization, or agency that would be a “perfect fit” to work with the Safer PA project? Use this form (Coming Soon) to send them an e-mail about the Safer PA project and encourage them to get involved. Safer PA supports an attraction model of involvement. We encourage those with interest to reach out to us to get involved.
“Society needs prevention, healing, and justice. Yet governments continue to focus more heavily on reactive measures.”
“People who are willing to do the work, get better, learn from their mistakes, make amends, and pay their debt to society deserve the opportunity to be a full member of it if we are willing as legislators to be bold, take a stand, and ensure we are making evidence-based policies. There are common-sense reforms from thirty years of understanding what works and what doesn’t.”
“[We must] ensure that schools adopt age-appropriate curriculums on preventing child abuse so students are provided with the necessary information to recognize the signs of child abuse and report such abuse…”
“Sexual assault is a frequent and serious problem today. By starting young and teaching consent as a fundamental value in human interaction, we will develop and strengthen the importance of this value in adolescence and adulthood.”
We’re on a mission to create a Pennsylvania where sexual harm is preventable, not inevitable; where indiviudals who cause harm are both held accountable and receive the support and tools necessary to ensure the safety of our communities moving forward.
How We Work
We collaborate with local groups, educators, grassroots organizations, policy makers, elected officials, and experts across the country to design and implement solutions support our core values.
Where We Operate
- Pennsylvania
Our Core Values
We’re guided by four foundational principles:
- Prevention: We recognize that sexual harm is preventable, not inevitable and that there is so much more we can be doing to ensure a Safer Pennsylvania.
- Public Policy: We recognize that thirty-year-old public policies, rooted in what we knew then must be modernized to ensure public safety.
- Transparency: Open communication and accountability drive trust.
- Empowerment: We equip communities with tools to lead their own change.
Why It Matters
In 1995, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge signed into law “PA Megan’s Law” creating a registry of individuals who have been adjudicated of certain sexual offenses. Megan’s Law was supposed to make our communities safer by allowing individuals to “keep tabs” on those with convictions. Instead, it has created a false sense of security.
- Pennsylvania State Police data shows that sexual harm arrests continue to increase.
- United States Department of Justice data shows that over 95% arrests for sexual harm are of individuals who are not on the registry.
- RAINN reports that 93% of sexual harm is caused by persons with an existing relationship to the victim, not a “stranger down the street.”
- In the largest recidivism study ever done, the U.S. Department of Justice reported a small 3.5% reconviction rate after three years, showing sexual crimes as the lowest reoffense rate of any crime except murder.
- Pennsylvania spends millions of dollars per year to track adjudicated individuals with the lowest risk of reoffense, keeping police from actually keeping Pennsylvanians safe.
- After thirty years of sexual offense studies and research, all the evidence points toward a better model of sexual harm prevention. Now, if we only could consider it.
By the numbers…
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