The Department of Justice has ordered the Newark Police Department to make reforms to its policing practices, so that public safety will not compromise the human rights. An investigation into the NPD has shown that officers made too many undocumented stops and used unjustified excessive force, resulting in community mistrust. The Newark mayor has begun re-training the police force, reworked standards for punishing police misconduct, advocated body cameras, and civilian oversight of the police department – all of which has started to improve community relations and build trust.

Nongovernmental groups – especially ones that depend on donations – hate to fail, and never make their failures public. But at new conferences, social activists share and learn from failure.

In order to create a larger role for aid recipients in conversations about how success and failure are defined for international aid, the What Went Wrong project was founded. People use mobile phones to contact the journalists about a failed aid project, and the journalists gather information about the project, publish reports on social media, and share their findings with the people who originally reported.

The "Focused Deterrence" approach to lowering gang violence was hailed as a success in Philly when shootings went down, but is that the whole story? The strategy is also receiving some notable critiques, including the claim that the social services and employment opportunities it claims to provide have been less than forthcoming.

In the 20th century, Colombia’s city of Medellin was a center for drugs and violence. Then the city developed a cable car system that enabled cheap transportation for people to find employment. The cable car system revitalized the economy of the city and made it much safer. However, other cities have tried cable cars for revitalization and found less success, even failure.