Partnerships to Prevent Youth Violence.


Series: BJA
Published: August 1994
13 pages
25,459 bytes


PARTNERSHIPS TO PREVENT YOUTH VIOLENCE

Across the country, virtually no community has been
untouched by the increasing number of incidents of
youth violence; such incidents can involve gang
member against gang member, student against
teacher, or drug "lord" against underling. Law
enforcement officials are widening the scope of
their cooperation with citizens to combat causes of
youth violence such as economic instability, weak
parental and community controls, lack of
recognition and stake in the community, and
disconnection from support systems. The shared
goals of drastically reducing, if not eliminating,
youth violence and of creating climates in which it
cannot flourish can cement partnerships that reduce
crime and advance positive long-term police-
community relationships. This bulletin provides
information on a variety of collaborative programs
that should help laww enforcement support and
encourage similar partnerships nationwide.

The alliances against youth violence complement the
movement within policing toward greater
collaboration between law enforcement and residents
of the community. Fruitful partnerships between law
enforcement and citizens are promoted by community
policing, with law enforcement becoming acquainted
with community residents, learning about problems
in the neighborhoods, and enlisting support for
preventing crime and improving neighborhood safety.
Such partnerships can be particularly important for
dealing with youth violence, its underlying causes,
and the conditions that foster violent behavior.

No single program will prevent youth violence: The
causes are diverse, and solutions must involve many
individuals and groups. To develop educational,
recreational, and anticrime programs and
activities that will help youth understand and
resist violence, police can actively seek and
promote connections with  existing institutions such
as schools, parent groups, neighborhood
associations, professional groups, and service
organizations.

Partnerships against youth violence have two
related objectives: to keep young people from being
perpetrators of violence and to keep them from
being victims of violence. To reach the first
objective, partnerships focus on strategies that
deflect young people from violence, teach them
peaceful means of resolving conflict, and heighten
their awareness of the effects and consequences of
violent behavior. The second objective is furthered
by showing young people ways to avoid conflict and
dangerous places or situations. Some partnerships
are formed after a violent event has traumatized
the community, enabling young people and their
parents and teachers to form supportive bonds and
work with police to prevent future recurrences of
violence. All partnerships that bring together law
enforcement officials and the community are founded
on common cconcerns and goals and on a shared belief
that everyone must play a role in preventing
violence.

Partnerships With Schools

Schools offer many opportunities for effective
partnerships. Youth clubs may be eager to present
information that teaches youth effective skills in
avoiding dangerous situations at home and away from
home, how to be observant and aware of their
surroundings at all times, and how and when to
notify someone in authority when they feel
threatened. Law enforcement can be an integral part
of such personal safety programs, not only by
teaching personal safety skills but also by
emphasizing positive alternatives to illegal
behavior, peer pressure resistance skills, and
youth's importance as people who can help make the
community crime free.

Conflict resolution, peacemaking, and anger
management training are also topics of potential
interest to youth who have not previously thought
about nonviolent ways to handle disputes. In San
Francisco, many elemenntary schools "let the kids
settle it." Children who have been trained as
mediators use their skills to help classmates
peacefully resolve playground disputes. The
mediation training, conducted by Community Boards
of San Francisco, involves youth as young as fourth
graders in learning how to help keep playground
disputes from escalating into physical
confrontations. Teachers and administrators credit
the program with substantially improving the
climate of the whole school, not just the
playground area.

Partnerships between law enforcement and the
educational community are not new. Project D.A.R.E.
(Drug Abuse Resistance Education) has been
implemented in communities around the country,
using police officers to teach elementary school
students in classrooms how to resist peer pressure
to use drugs. In addition to achieving this
important purpose, Project D.A.R.E. has shown
thousands of children that police officers are
knowledgeable, understanding members of the
community and their allies in dealing with violence
and its consequences. The D.A.R.E. program can
include antiviolence and positive self-esteem
training along with assertiveness, stress
manage-ment, and resistance to negative peer
pressure.

Police can work with schools in developing
anticrime curriculums for older children, too, such
as the Teens, Crime, and the Community curriculum,
now in use in a number of schools.1 They can lend
their support to educators in infusing existing
courses with anticrime messages and personal
protection strategies and encouraging community
anticrime action by the students. School and
community policies that declare school campuses and
public places (e.g., parks, recreation centers)
where youth tend to congregate as "drug-free,
gun-free, violence-free zones" send clear messages
about expected and tolerated behavior.

Law enforcement personnel and teachers, as well as
others who care for youth, can also become
effective educators on gun safeety and violence
prevention, as programs such as the STAR (Straight
Talk About Risks) curriculum2 have shown. Schools,
recreation centers, and other places that attract
young people can provide opportunities to teach
youth about the personal and community conse-
quences of violence, about alternative ways to
settle disputes, and about legal and safety
restrictions on handguns.

The Southeastern Michigan Spinal Cord Injury Center
has developed a highly effective program in which
youthful victims of gun violence, now paraplegic or
quadriplegic, go before groups of students to show
them, by personal example, the consequences of
using guns. Their testimonials touch students as no
classroom text or lecture can, but the schools can
work with police, victim groups, and the victims
themselves to make such presentations possible.

In Dade County, Florida, several groups came
together to cosponsor a Gun Safety Program
following a report of 137 handgun incidents in the
public school system during the school year. The K-
12 program features a comprehensive curriculum,
teacher training, youth crime watch, parent
education, and media involvement. The partners
include the national Center to Prevent Handgun
Violence, the Dade County School Board, Youth Crime
Watch of Dade County, local agencies, and the police
department.

Youth violence was a growing concern in affluent
Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering Washington,
D.C. There were 1,400 reported cases of child abuse
and 1,021 reported incidents of attacks against
students in 1990. The county's Mental Health
Association organized an antiviolence conference
with the school system, other county agencies, and
the Police Department's Youth Division. The
conference led to improved coordination among
agencies serving children, and the group
subsequently sponsored a "Voices Vs. Violence"
competition for young people to express their
antiviolence messages to peers in stories, poems,
and posters. ThiThis has grown into a year-round
campaign.

Law enforcement agencies, in partnership with
parents, teachers, students, and school
administrators, can promote similar programs in
their own communities.

Colleges and universities, too, have a stake in
working with police. After a rash of five murders
near the University of Florida, the Alachua County
Sheriff's Department and the Gainesville Police
Department established a partnership with the
university to address students' fears about the
murders and to raise awareness about crime
prevention and personal safety. The student
government spearheaded a "Think Smart: Together for
a Safe Community" campaign, displaying "Think
Smart" posters and distributing brochures with a
do-it-yourself personal security checklist. In the
months following the murders, students made
dramatic changes in their conduct. They increased
their requests for student escorts, stopped jogging
alone at night, and were more careful about
securing theirr residences. Violent crime on campus
plunged 26 percent in 5 months. The police crime
prevention unit could barely meet the demand for
presentations.

Partnerships With Neighborhood Residents

Neighborhood block watches have for a long time
supplied another good example of police-citizen
partnership. Block watches empower residents to
take responsibility for keeping their homes and
neighborhoods safe from crime and violence.
Particular magnets for crime and violence are
inner-city neighborhoods that have been plagued
with both crime and physical deterioration, seen in
abandoned cars and buildings, broken outdoor
lighting, and littered parks and other public
places. Many communities have recognized the
connection between neighborhood deterioration and
crime and have worked with government regulatory
agencies (such as transportation, housing, health,
sanitation, and public utilities) and the police
department to clean up neighborhoods, making them
inhospitable to wouldd-be criminals. Young people
have participated and even taken the lead in
cleanups.

Community police officers in Dade County, Florida;
Lansing, Michigan; and Norfolk, Virginia have
teamed up with social workers, school
officials, public health professionals, and other
human service providers on site in selected
neighborhoods. Together, they are addressing
community and family issues that contribute to
delinquency and violence.3

In Seattle off-duty police officers joined Saturday
afternoon graffiti "paintout parties," using
materials donated by the city's sanitation
department.4 This kind of visible working together
of police and citizenry to improve their
neighborhoods sends a message to young people that
the community belongs to its residents.

Working with law enforcement agencies, some
municipalities such as Oakland, California, have
even worked with residents to use noncriminal codes
and statutes such as health, fire, building, and
sanitation regulations to shutt down or discourage
criminal activity and to promote local renovation
and civic improvements.

Other communities have educated their young people
and adults about gangs, racism, family and personal
stress, economic pressures, substance abuse, and
guns and other weapons through:

o School assembly programs.
o Youth-led projects.
o Health fairs and job fairs.
o Communitywide media campaigns.
o Youth counseling sessions.
o Drug-free, gun-free school zones.

Law enforcement personnel can encourage and
participate in such community efforts on a variety
of levels: by providing support and encouragement,
participating in planning, or serving as official
or unofficial representatives in community groups
that sponsor such activities. They can help enlist
youth as both peer and community educators.

In Lakewood, a Denver suburb, police took the lead.
A Citizens Police Academy was established to teach
citizens such as neighborhood leaders, active
retired persons, young people,  and business owners
how the police department operates and how citizens
can cooperate with the police to reduce incidents
of crime and gang activity. When a young Lakewood
boy was murdered, the police recruited Citizens
Academy graduates to help search for evidence. The
Academy has also encouraged better understanding
between police and both adult and young citizens in
the community.

Providing Youth With Positive Alternatives

Youth violence sometimes occurs in areas where idle
groups of youths congregate. Youth departments and
private organizations have developed programs to
entice such young people off the streets and into
healthy activities.

Police organizations have traditionally involved
themselves in youth activities, recognizing that
children and youth, particularly in inner-city
neighborhoods, need safe recreational activities
that can engage their energy and enthusiasm.
Participating in such activities enables police
officers to know (and be known by) the  young people
on their police beats before they get into trouble
with the law. Partnerships with other groups
interested in the welfare of youth maximizes these
efforts.

For instance, if young people are frustrated and
even getting into trouble because they have no safe
place to "hang out," the com-munity's crime
prevention officer and the manager of the local
building supplies company can organize a work party
of youth to transform an abandoned store into a
social club for alcohol- and drug-free weekend
parties. A well-known example is the Midnight
Basketball League, which has chapters in 38
communities across the country. The League gives
older youth (17 to 21), particularly residents of
public housing, a safe and positive environment
during the potentially violent hours of 10 p.m. to
2 a.m. Schools provide the gym facilities,
businesses and service groups provide uniforms and
equipment, and individuals volunteer to be coaches
and lead other activities such as workkshops on
education, employment, and health issues in
conjunction with the league. In many communities,
law enforcement plays an active role.

The Police Athletic League (PAL) in Houston, Texas,
provides a wide range of positive alternatives for
700 to 900 young Houstonians each year. Sports like
track, basketball, and soccer are combined with
educational field trips and community service
(e.g., helping elders with housework, planting
trees in the community park) to provide a range of
interesting, nonviolent, drug-free options for
youth ages 10 to 17. The program's list of partners
includes the YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, Chicano
Family Center, Parks and Recreation Department,
Exchange Clubs of Houston, and local churches.
Sports teams from Rice University and the
University of Houston provide tickets to their
games and encourage their athletes to counsel PAL
youth on the importance of education.

Other Partnership Opportunities

Law enforcement officials can establish
ppartnerships with a multitude of community
residents or groups: religious leaders, Boys &
Girls Club members, business people, health
professionals, social service providers, coaches,
pharmacists, parents, and youth themselves.
Innovative ways in which police and community
groups have worked together in cities and towns
around the country include:

o Provision of organized recreation, tutoring
programs, part-time work, and volunteer
opportunities.

o Provision of training in anger management and
conflict resolution for youth (and adults).

o Establishment of mediation and counseling
programs in which trained youth play key roles in
reaching their peers.

o Development of a phone list of local
organizations that can provide counseling, job
training, guidance, and other services for youth,
to be shared with individuals and groups that need
the services.

o Implementation of Court Watch to help support
youthful victims and witnesses and see to it that
criminals get fairlrly punished.

o Enforcement of local drug-free clauses in
rental leases, anti-noise and anti-nuisance laws,
and housing, health, and fire codes.

o Organization of rallies, marches, and other
group activities against drugs, crime, and
violence.

o Establishment of drug-free, gun-free parks and
schools, working with recreation officials.

Steps to Partnering

Law enforcement personnel and others who have
embarked on a working relationship against youth
violence, whether with a local school, neighborhood
association, service club, or youth group, have
found several steps to be helpful in achieving
success.

Learning what the problems really are. Residents or
members of the community should help to identify
the problems that exist or threaten to establish
themselves. Youth from the community should be
included in these discussions. Facts and opinions
should be assembled, with discussion incorporating
everyone's concerns and culminating in consensus on
several approachess toward solution. For example, if
young children walking home from school are being
taunted, bullied, and even physically hurt by a
group of older teens, neighbors can establish a
block parent program to help the youngsters arrive
home safely. The high school service club might be
enlisted to help patrol key walking routes. In
addition, the presence of police officers along the
young children's route could be increased.

Selecting strategies that will work. Having
identified the problem, the community partners
should select one or more strategies that will
alleviate the problem or deal with its causes. For
maximum success, roles should be clearly assigned
to each group, ensuring broad support and
participation. If direct intervention would
endanger community residents, law enforcement
representatives can help identify safer
alternatives. Strategies need to be based on
experience and accurate information. They may reach
toward indirect causes as well as direct ones.

Enlisting others in the effort. Other neighborhood
institutions and organizations that should be
enlisted in the effort and whose activities should
be coordinated and focused on fulfilling the
partnership's goals include Boys & Girls Clubs,
businesses, religious organizations, schools, civic
associations, and social and fraternal groups.

Involving young people. The involvement of young
people in community solutions to youth violence
problems is essential. By this means they find a
role that will bring them a sense of self-worth and
recognition and lead to their developing a stake in
their community.

These steps were successfully followed by a
comprehensive partnership between law enforcement
and community groups in Memphis, Tennessee. There
the Shelby County Sheriff's Department and the
Memphis Police Department joined with the Memphis
Area Neighborhood Watch and more than a dozen other
groups and 53 professionals to conduct the Violence
Reduction Project at the L.MM. Graves Manor housing
complex. In a wide-ranging program that included
tutoring, positive activities, cultural
celebrations, and field trips, children in the
neighborhood learned how to protect themselves
against crime and drugs, handle schoolwork better,
and express themselves in nonviolent ways. Parents
had the opportunity to join their children during
informal talks by volunteers from key local
agencies on such subjects as health education,
social services, the juvenile justice system, drug
abuse prevention, and community services. A Junior
Deputy Program and special Neighborhood Watch
training helped both youth and adults meet and
develop positive relationships with the sheriff's
and police departments.

Creating Partnerships That Work

Coordinated prevention strategies will address
significant causes of violence in a local context,
working through the community institutions that
interact with children and their families.

Partnerships work best if participants  are willing
to focus on the shared objective rather than on
their own agendas, and if leadership is shared. In
addition, partnerships have been most successful
when the young people themselves join in the
planning. Many successful programs simply give
young people the attention they otherwise lack in
the community.

The number of partnerships that link law
enforcement and other community groups will
increase as communities take steps to combat the
violence that threatens their children and youth
every day. As U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who
has led the effort to break down barriers among
disciplines and organizations in working to reduce
crime, once observed, "Prevention is not a police,
social work, or prosecutor's function. It is
everyone's function."5

Resources

Tested youth antiviolence program ideas are
available from many national and local resources,
as are training programs in crime prevention,
conflict resolution, youth involvement, volunteer
recruitiing, and funding. Resources that can offer
helpful information include the following groups:

Boys & Girls Clubs of America
National Headquarters
100 Edgewood, Suite 700
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-527-7100

Bureau of Justice Assistance Clearinghouse
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
800-688-4252

Center to Prevent Handgun Violence
1225 Eye St. NW., Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20005
202-289-7319

D.A.R.E. America
P.O. Box 2090
Los Angeles, CA 90051
800-233-DARE

Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
800-638-8736

Midnight Basketball League
HUD Drug Information & Strategy Clearinghouse
(DISC)
P.O. Box 6424
Rockville, MD 20850
800-578-DISC (3472)

National Crime Prevention Council
1700 K St. NW., 2d Floor
Washington, DC 20006-3817
202-466-6272

National Institute for Dispute Resolution
1901 L St. NW., Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
202-466-4764

National School Safety Center
4165 Thousand Oaks Blvd.
Westlake Village, CA 91362
805-373-9977

National Victims Resoesource Center
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
800-627-6872

Stop the Violence Clearinghouse
National Urban League, Inc.
500 East 62d St.
New York, NY 10021
212-310-9000

HOW MUCH VIOLENCE? HOW MANY VICTIMS?

National figures show that teens are victimized
more than any other age group by crimes of
violence, including rape, robbery, and assault.6
On average, young people ages 12 to 19 are victims
of 1.9 million violent crimes annually, but fewer
than half the violent crimes against young people
are reported. Victimization rates for teens are
twice as high as those for adults. Statistics also
show that youth commit violent crimes out of
proportion to their number in the population.

TEN THINGS TO TEACH KIDS

These 10 ideas for children are at the heart of
many police-community partnerships to reduce youth
violence.

o  Settle arguments with words, not fists or
weapons. Don't stand around and form an
audience when others are arguing. A group
makes a good target for violencnce.

o  Learn safe routes for walking in the
neighborhood, and know good places to seek
help. Trust feelings, and if there's a sense
of danger, get away fast.

o  Report any crimes or suspicious activities to
the police, school authorities, and parents.
Be willing to testify if needed.

o  Don't open the door to anyone you don't know
and trust.

o  Never go anywhere with someone you don't know
and trust.

o  If someone tries to abuse you, say no, get
away, and tell a trusted adult. Remember,
it's not the victim's fault.

o  Don't use alcohol or other drugs, and stay
away from places and people associated with
them.

o  Stick with friends who are also against
violence and drugs, and stay away from known
trouble spots.

o  Get involved to make school safer and better--
having poster contests against violence,
holding antidrug rallies, counseling peers,
settling disputes peacefully. If there's no
program, help start one!

o  Help younger children learn to avoid being
crrime victims. Set a good example and
volunteer to help with community efforts to
stop crime.

1. A curriculum for secondary schools developed by
the National Institute for Citizen Education in
the Law and the National Crime Prevention Council,
with substantial support from the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,
Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of
Justice.

2. The STAR curriculum, now in use in a number of
school systems around the country, was developed
by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence,
Washington, D.C.

3. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention. Innovative Community Partnerships:
Working Together for Change. NCJ 147483. OJJDP
Summary. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, Office of Justice Programs. May 1994.

4. National Institute of Justice. Community
Policing in Seattle: A Model Partnership Between
Citizens and Police. NCJ 136608. Research in
Brief. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, Office e of Justice Programs. August 1992.

5. Remarks to the National Forum on Preventing
Crime and Violence, Washington, D.C., April 29,
1993.

6. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Teenage Victims.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
Office of Justice Programs. 1989.