NCJ Number
198172
Date Published
July 2002
Length
75 pages
Annotation
This report focuses on the role that churches and congregations play in delivering social programming to high-risk youths.
Abstract
Addressing the relationship between high-risk youths and faith-based social programming, this report discusses the role of churches and congregations in limiting youth-based criminal activity. After introducing the Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) National Faith-Based Initiative for High-Risk Youths as a program begun in 1996 seeking to ascertain whether faith-based organizations could help youths previously involved in criminal activity, this report describes the P/PV program initiative. Drawing on key aspects of a Boston program that demonstrated that a partnership could be formed between the faith and the justice communities, the P/PV demonstration program was designed to focus on high-risk youths, to develop appropriate programming, and to foster partnerships among faith-based institutions and the justice community. Beginning in late 1998, the P/PV demonstration project began at seven sites in the Bronx, Cleveland, Denver, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. Additional sites in Brooklyn, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Baton Rouge, Detroit, Fresno, Tulsa, and Washington DC were added later in the year. These 15 sites comprise the data analyzed in this study. Focusing on the recruitment of program participants, the author describes the 88 percent Africa-American, 72 percent male, 79 percent school-enrolled individuals who took part in the P/PV programs. With 60 percent of program participants having been arrested at least once, program participants were referred to the faith-based programs through the justice systems, schools, outreach, parents, church members, or themselves. Surveying service delivery across the sites, this report describes the mentoring, education, employment-related, life skills, conflict management, recreation, and cultural services provided by faith-based organizations. After discussing programming challenges, this report describes the roles of prayer, faith, incorporation of religious concepts into program activities, and the role of secular partners. Arguing that program participants did not react negatively to the faith-based practices occurring within the programs, the author concludes that the faith-based organizations' programs for high-risk youths provide an effective, alternative safe haven for congregational adults and youths to come together to support a new lifestyle. 25 Notes