2026 Conference on Violent Crime

This session will cover various criminal justice trends, including violent crime and gun violence, and will identify online sources for data on crimes, drugs, and more in Virginia.

The City of Norfolk has seen a decrease in homicides and gun violence since 2023. This hour-long discussion summarizes the principles and practices necessary to achieve sustainable reductions in violence, providing an actionable pathway toward safer communities.

Sex trafficking occurs daily across Virginia, with traffickers targeting individuals with vulnerabilities and exploiting them for profit. While much attention is rightly focused on traffickers and survivors, far less is understood about the role of buyers in sustaining this system. Sex trafficking operates within a framework of supply and demand—without demand, exploitation would not be profitable.
This presentation examines the critical role buyers play in perpetuating trafficking. It explores emerging insights into buyer behavior, including patterns of coercion, violence, and abuse that directly contribute to victim harm. The session will also address strategies communities can implement to disrupt demand, hold buyers accountable, and reduce the conditions that allow trafficking to persist.

There are more cellular devices in the world than people. Are we maximizing all this data to its fullest? Do other agencies hold intelligence that could solve our case? How do we overcome the siloing of this information? This presentation will explore these questions and more.

Provided.

This presentation examines how traditional physical security models—built around fixed perimeters, access control, and ground-based threats—are increasingly ineffective against the rapid evolution of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS). It explores how commercially available drones have transformed the threat landscape by enabling low-cost, highly adaptable aerial surveillance and strike capabilities that bypass conventional defenses. Drawing on recent operational examples and emerging trends, the session highlights critical vulnerabilities across military installations, critical infrastructure, and domestic security environments.
Participants will gain insight into the operational characteristics of sUAS, the gaps in current detection and response frameworks, and the growing need for integrated counter-UAS (C-UAS) strategies. The presentation emphasizes layered defense approaches, including sensor fusion, electronic warfare considerations, and interagency coordination, to address these challenges.

This breakout session will build upon the methodologies discussed during the keynote, providing additional approaches and case studies that highlight the techniques in practice.

This presentation provides an overview of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. Attendees will gain insight into the types of online child exploitation cases ICAC investigates, how the task force network operates, and how investigators can effectively leverage ICAC resources for CyberTip triage, digital forensic support, and multi-state coordination. It also highlights current challenges, such as rising case volume and cross-platform offender behavior, and includes a gaming platform case study demonstrating how offenders contact minors and how these investigations unfold.

This presentation reviews key legal updates from the Virginia General Assembly that affect law enforcement, Departments of Corrections (DOC), and Departments of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). This session highlights new laws, focusing on the practical implications of these updates and how agencies can maintain compliance with current legal standards.

This block of instruction identifies common themes, technical gaps, and recommendations found across completed NFS and homicide reports across all National Public Safety Partnership (PSP) sites. The presentation will provide stakeholders with an understanding of the types of recommendations made to PSP sites through non-fatal shooting and homicide assessments. The presentation will identify common gaps in non-fatal shootings and homicide investigation capabilities and practices to strengthen investigative capacity.
Some common findings and recommendations include:
• Identifying the impact on investigations with delayed submission of evidence to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) for analysis.
• Identifying proven requirements and establishing policies, protocols, and practices involving homicide and non-fatal shooting investigative practices.
• Identifying the impact of designating investigators with specialized knowledge of and techniques involved with homicide and non-fatal shootings investigations.
• Importance of partnering with federal law enforcement agencies to strengthen investigations.
• Recognizing how investigator outreach to neighborhoods experiencing high rates of homicides and non-fatal shooting incidents can promote victim-witness safety and cooperation, promote public safety, and reduce fear and violence.

Mental health problems are often linked to violence risk, and mental health treatment to violence risk reduction. This formulation allows people with different perspectives to come together and pursue shared goals. However, the rationale behind these linkages is based on both accurate and inaccurate appraisals of the nature of those associations. Productive policy and supportive responses to students in crisis or suspected of being at risk for violence will come from a solid understanding of the relationship between mental health problems and violence risk; this presentation will provide information on the nature of that relationship. Audience members will then be challenged to consider the tensions and conflicts that may arise when navigating a landscape that involves real and perceived threats, and shared obligations to individuals and the public safety.