Behavioral Interventions to Prevent Community Violence

  • By: Cole CS
  • Published: 10/13/2009

Unlike environmental interventions that focus on the community environment and policy changes that can affect that environment to reduce violence, behavioral interventions focus on individuals. Behavioral prevention programs attempt to reduce violence by working with people who are at risk of becoming violent. Many such efforts target at-risk youth in dangerous environments. Efforts include providing alternative activities or training youths in conflict resolution.

Highlights
Injury-Free Coalition for Kids. RWJF's Injury-Free Coalition for Kids established hospital-led projects in cities across the country to prevent childhood injuries, including injuries from violence. In Chicago, a peer-mentoring program pairs teens with younger children for youth development activities. In Detroit, local police educate young children about guns and distribute trigger locks in the community. In Cincinnati, a Friday night basketball league offers recreation and a safe haven for male youth during peak summer hours of community crime and violence. See Program Results on the Injury-Free Coalition and on the Chicago site.

Model Truancy Program in Boston. The Boston YMCA's Promoting Higher Attendance Team identified truant youth and connected them with counselors and other community services. The project was an extension of the successful Boston Strategy (described previously). (See Program Results on ID# 036449.)

Caught in the Crossfire. A project in California connects young adults who have overcome violence in their own lives with youth who are hospitalized due to violent injuries. The purpose is to reduce retaliation, re-injury and arrest, and promote positive alternatives to violence. It also is part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships program. (See the Caught in the Crossfire Web site.)

Teen Center. United Teen Equality Center (UTEC) provides a safe and multicultural place of belonging, emphasizing the holistic development of at-risk youth in Lowell, Mass. UTEC is a drop-in center that offers the most at-risk young people an opportunity to become involved without any pressures of becoming a part of a more structured program. Supported by RWJF through its Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships program, UTEC conducts intensive street outreach, builds upon participants' unique strengths, and creates opportunities to support them in becoming agents of social change and organizers in the community. (See the UTEC Web site.)

SURVIVE. In 2002, researchers at Columbia University developed a 12-week curriculum designed to help parents mitigate the effects that living in violent neighborhoods may have on their children. The intervention, called SURVIVE (Supporting Urban Residents to be Violence-Free in Violent Environments) teaches families about the effects of violence and offers parents techniques to help their children deal with it. The researchers conducted a pilot of the curriculum with 24 families. (See Program Results on ID# 042446.)

Other Behavioral Violence-prevention Projects

Lessons Learned

  • The three M's—monitoring, mentoring and ministering—can make a difference in the lives of at-risk youth. (See Program Results on ID#030696.)
    • Monitoring. Some at-risk juveniles who have had nonviolent run-ins with their peers, neighbors and the law need little more than a dedicated probation officer or a caring adult volunteer looking over their shoulder.
    • Mentoring. Other at-risk juveniles need responsible adults in their lives on a deeper, more intensive level to help them with their personal problems, to offer a sympathetic ear and to lend a guiding hand.
    • Ministering. Still other juveniles are among the nation's most severely at-risk children—abused and neglected as infants and toddlers; exploited for sex, drugs and money as adolescents; and already involved in (or quite likely to become involved in) serious, organized or predatory street crime. Their broken lives and spirits need a type and degree of adult help that is holistic, personal and challenging.
  • Involve youth. Young people want respect from adults, and they want adults to listen to them. (See Program Results on ID# 036082.)
  • The term truancy is inadequate to describe the issue of nonattendance at school. Children and young people miss school for different reasons at different ages. "Sometimes they aren't in school because they have to take care of younger siblings while a parent works," said the director of the Promoting Higher Attendance Team (PHAT) in Boston. "They aren't criminals or potential criminals." (See Program Results on ID# 036449.)

Program Results Topic Summary: Preventing Community Violence

  1. 1 Environmental Interventions to Preventing Community Violence
  2. 2 Behavioral Interventions to Prevent Community Violence

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