NCJ Number
145158
Date Published
1993
Length
2 pages
Annotation
The National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 created the AmeriCorps, a national service program in which young Americans will receive an educational award to defray the cost of postsecondary education in return for a commitment to engage in substantive, skill-building work in the Nation's communities.
Abstract
AmeriCorps can help fill the gaps in the continuum of public safety services by providing comprehensive and integrated services in crime prevention, police protection, crime victim assistance, and community-based public safety services in urban and rural areas. By instilling a sense of citizenship in the Nation's youth, AmeriCorps will hopefully have an effect on the causes of juvenile delinquency, drug use, and violence. Local police and criminal justice agencies can apply to become participants in the AmeriCorps program. Police practitioners have suggested that AmeriCorps can help move community policing efforts forward, court administrators and judges plan to use AmeriCorps workers to make the criminal justice system more accessible to the community, victim assistance providers are looking to involve AmeriCorps in the movement toward restorative justice, and correctional personnel will use AmeriCorps volunteers to help prepare offenders to make the transition from prison to a drug-free, crime-free life.