The Commission framed lack of inner city opportunity within a larger American economy that prized material success and within a tradition of violence that the media transmitted particularly well:[2] In one of its most important final report passages, the National Violence Commission observed:[2] To be a young, poor male; to be undereducated and without means of escape from an oppressive urban environment; to want what the society claims is available (but mostly to others); to see around oneself illegitimate and often violent methods being used to achieve material success; and to observe others using these means with impunity – all this is to be burdened with an enormous set of influences that pull many toward crime and delinquency.

To be also a Negro, Mexican or Puerto Rican American and subject to discrimination and segregation adds considerably to the pull of these other criminogenic forces.The Violence Commission recommended new investments in jobs, training and education – totaling $20B per year in 1968 dollars.

As it evolved, the Foundation's mission was to identify, finance, replicate, evaluate, communicate, advocate for and scale up politically feasible multiple solution inner city ventures.

The priority was on wraparound and evidence based strategies that worked for the inner city and high risk racial minority youth.

[8][9] The Senate forum was published in a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science edited by Curtis[10] and covered in a story in Foundation News.

Using a public-private approach, efforts should be made to combine employment, community involvement and family to prevent crime; move away from a federal policy of increased incarceration; reverse the "trickle down" policy of federal anti-crime programs affecting neighborhoods to a "bubble-up" process emanating from the local level; and formulate a new cooperative role for police as supporters, not strictly enforcers.Titled To Establish Justice, To Insure Domestic Tranquility, the 1999 update of the National Violence Commission was featured in a debate on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Yet, at the same time, prison building has become a kind of economic development policy for [white] communities which send lobbyists to Washington.

For example, the 1999 Detroit Free Press editorial focused on the Violence Commission's 1969 "city of the future" prediction of "suburban neighborhoods, increasingly far-removed from the central city, with homes fortified by an array of security devices; high-speed police-patrolled expressways becoming sterilized corridors connecting safe areas [and] urban streets that will be unsafe in differing degrees…That was in 1969.

"[20] In 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the Washington Post published commentary by Curtis that reminded the nation of how, in 1969, a majority of National Violence Commission members, including both Republicans and Democrats, recommended confiscation of most handguns, restrictions on new handgun ownership to those who could demonstrate reasonable need, and identification of rifle and shotgun owners.