&

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice

I s s u e s a n d P r a c t i c e s

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

OFF ICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS

BJA NI J OJJDP BJS OVC

KIDS,

COPS,

COMMUNITIES

National Institute of Justice Carnegie Corporation of New York
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

Raymond C. Fisher

Associate Attorney General

Laurie Robinson

Assistant Attorney General

Noël Brennan

Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis

Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice

World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij
Name of Chapter i

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

Kids, COPS, and Communities

by

Marcia R. Chaiken, Ph.D.

LINC

June 1998

Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice is a publication series of the National Institute of Justice.

Each report presents the program options and management issues in a topic area, based on a

review of research and evaluation findings, operational experience, and expert opinion on the

subject. The intent is to provide information to make informed choices in planning, implementing,

and improving programs and practice in criminal justice.
ii Kids, COPS, and Communities

National Institute of Justice

Jeremy Travis

Director

Richard Titus, Ph.D.

Program Monitor

and

The Carnegie Corporation of New York

Gloria Primm Brown

Program Officer

Prepared for the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, by LINC under grant

#94–IJ–CX–0015. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the author and do not

necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of

Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,

and the Office for Victims of Crime.

NCJ 169599

Cover Photo: Police take on kids in a friendly game at the Teen Center in Arlington, Texas.

Credit: Paul Knudsen, courtesy Arlington Youth Services
Name of Chapter iii

Page

Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................... vii

Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................................. ix

Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................... xiii

The Most Popular Approaches for Dealing With Juvenile Violence Haven’t Worked ......................................xiii

Effective Prevention Approaches Are Integral to National Youth Organizations .............................................. xiv

Partnerships Between Police and Youth Organizations ...................................................................................... xv

Case Studies of Exemplary Approaches ............................................................................................................. xv

Bristol, Connecticut ........................................................................................................................................... xvi

The Bristol Family Center for Boys and Girls .......................................................................................... xvi

The Bristol Police Department ................................................................................................................. xvi

Arlington, Texas ................................................................................................................................................ xvi

The Teen Center ....................................................................................................................................... xvii

Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington .......................................................................................................... xvii

Arlington Police Department ................................................................................................................... xvii

Spokane, Washington ....................................................................................................................................... xvii

West Central Community Center ............................................................................................................xviii

The Washington State University Family Focus Program ......................................................................xviii

The Spokane Police Department.............................................................................................................xviii

What You Can Do to Provide Safe, Constructive Activities for At-Risk Youth................................................. xix

Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1

The Dimensions of Violence Involving Kids........................................................................................................ 1

Kids Are Most at Risk for Violence and Serious Delinquency............................................................................. 2

Kids Are Most Vulnerable to Crime During the Nonschool Hours ...................................................................... 3

The Most Popular Approaches for Dealing With Juvenile Violence Haven’t Worked ......................................... 3

Effective Prevention Approaches Are Integral to National Youth Organizations ................................................. 4

Youth Organizations Are Trying to Reach Youth Most at Risk for Violence ....................................................... 5

Endnotes ............................................................................................................................................................... 6

Chapter 2: Crime and Youth Organizations .................................................................................................. 11

Youth-Serving Organizations Are Reaching Kids in Economically Depressed Urban Areas ............................ 11

Youth Organizations Are Reaching Kids Already Involved in Crime as Victims or Offenders ......................... 12

The More Vulnerable the Kids They Serve, the More Crime the Youth Organizations Experience .................. 13

Most Offenders Are Kids .................................................................................................................................... 14

More Offenses Are Committed by Nonparticipants Than Participants .............................................................. 14

Table of Contents
iv Kids, COPS, and Communities

Crime Takes a Heavy Toll on Organizational Resources.................................................................................... 14

Most Steps Taken to Prevent Crime Haven’t Worked ........................................................................................ 15

Police Responsiveness Is a Significant Factor in the Level of Crime ................................................................ 16

Endnotes ............................................................................................................................................................. 16

Chapter 3: Partnerships With Police .............................................................................................................. 17

More Organizations Ask for Proactive Than Reactive Policing ......................................................................... 17

Organizations Nominated Diverse Exemplary Programs ................................................................................... 18

Approaches Selected for Case Studies Met Important Criteria .......................................................................... 18

Exemplary Approaches Implemented in Three Cities Were Chosen .................................................................. 19

The Organizations Implementing These Approaches Are Affiliated With One or More of the

National Organizations Participating in the Study..................................................................................... 19

Bristol, Connecticut ............................................................................................................................................ 20

Problems Affecting Youth Have Worsened ................................................................................................ 21

Public Agencies and Local Coalitions Assessed Needs ............................................................................. 21

Implementing a Collaborative Approach Required Building Community Support................................... 21

The Bristol Family Center for Boys and Girls Is a Comprehensive, Facility-Based

Youth Development Program ................................................................................................................ 22

The Bristol Family Center Young Parent Program Helps Pregnant and Postpartum Teens ....................... 23

The Bristol Juvenile Diversion Program Is a Collaborative Effort With Other Agencies ......................... 24

Police Are Involved With the Family Center in Other Ways as Well......................................................... 24

Community Support and Volunteer Time Are Essential to the Success of the Family Center .................. 24

Arlington, Texas ................................................................................................................................................. 25

Crime Is a Concern in Arlington ................................................................................................................ 25

Organizations and Coalitions Pave the Way for a Comprehensive Response to Youth Risks ................... 26

The Teen Center Provides Safe Activities 7 Days a Week ......................................................................... 26

Observance of Rules Is Emphasized .......................................................................................................... 27

Staff Are Conscious of the Teens’ Home and Neighborhood Environments ............................................. 28

Staff Provide Opportunities for Teen Decisionmaking and Responsibility ............................................... 28

Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington Provides a Spectrum of Youth Development Programs ..................... 29

The Main Branch in Central Arlington Is Typical of Many Boys and Girls Clubs Facilities

Around the Country ............................................................................................................................... 29

Teens Praise the SmartMoves Program ..................................................................................................... 30

School-Based Child Care in Elementary Schools Keeps Younger Students Safe After

Classes Are Over ................................................................................................................................... 30

The Arlington Police Department Is Strongly Involved in Afterschool Programs .................................... 31

The School Resource Officer Program Plays a Key Role in the Arlington Crime

Prevention Action Plan .......................................................................................................................... 31

Patrol Officers Also Provide Ongoing Formal Support for Safe Afterschool Activities ........................... 31

The Approach in Arlington Receives Wide Community Support .............................................................. 31
Name of Chapter v

Spokane, Washington ......................................................................................................................................... 32

Youth Issues Are Identified by a Citywide Youth Commission ................................................................. 32

The West Central Community Center’s Outreach and Programs Seek to Break the Cycle of Poverty ..... 33

4–H Clubs Are Involved............................................................................................................................. 34

Girl Scouts Are Involved ............................................................................................................................ 34

The Washington State University Family Focus Program Teaches Family Life Skills ............................. 35

The COPS West Ministation Binds Neighborhood Adults and Youth to Police to Reduce Crime ............ 35

Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers Are Trained by Police to Help Prevent Crime .................................. 36

The Spokane Police Department Spearheads Police-Community Collaboration ...................................... 36

Police Create a Special Boy Scout Explorer Post ...................................................................................... 37

Successful Efforts in Spokane Benefit From the City’s History of Forming Coalitions to

Address Shared Problems ...................................................................................................................... 38

Spokane Benefits From a Spectrum of Youth-Serving Organizations That Provide a Range of

Programs for Meeting the Comprehensive Needs of Many Children in the City ................................. 38

Endnotes..................................................................................................................................................... 39

Chapter 4: Exemplary Partnerships Between Police and Youth Organizations......................................... 41

Police Activities at the Three Exemplary Sites Took Many Forms .................................................................... 41

Coalitions Among Police, Local Officials, Community Leaders, and Youth Organizations

Develop Strategies .......................................................................................................................................... 43

What You Can Do to Provide Safe, Constructive Activities for At-Risk Youth.................................................. 44

Endnotes ............................................................................................................................................................. 45

Appendix: Information Resources .................................................................................................................. 47
Foreword

Foreword vii

As the President noted in his most recent State of the Union

address, most juvenile crime is committed between the hours

of 3 in the afternoon and 8 at night. Especially in the inner

cities, but now in many other areas as well, when children

and adolescents are on the street and not in school or at home,

they face many risks— involvement in drugs, gangs, crime,

as well as victimization.

National youth organizations—such as the Boy Scouts, Girls

Incorporated, and 4–H Clubs—have for generations enabled

young people to engage in wholesome, enjoyable activities

after school, with their peers, in safe places, and under the

supervision of experienced adults. They have also helped

teenagers develop teamwork and leadership skills while participating in sports, games, crafts, and community service

activities. The experience of these organizations is invaluable in preventing delinquency and victimization among our

most disadvantaged and at-risk youth.

Meanwhile, the Crime Act of 1994 is putting thousands of

police officers into our cities and towns, into communityoriented policing where they can become involved in crime

prevention programs in the neighborhoods they serve and

participate in neighborhood activities. In many places, officers are getting involved in youth programs, volunteering their

time and skills and becoming known to the young participants as friendly, caring adults.

The National Institute of Justice, in cooperation with the

Carnegie Corporation of New York, sponsored a study of

several national youth organizations that are focusing their

efforts on at-risk youth. The study looked particularly at the

ways police and local affiliates of these organizations were

working together at the neighborhood level. What the study

found, as documented on these pages, holds promise for

strengthening relationships among youth, police, and the

communities they live in. This bodes well not only for the

protection of young people but for their future development

as responsible citizens.

Jeremy Travis

National Institute of Justice
Acknowledgments ix

Many major contributions to our project and report were made

by professionals and volunteers concerned about the need

for safer and more productive places for children and teens

in the nonschool hours. They include funders, researchers,

police, professionals in the field of youth development, city

leaders, and a host of service providers. They unstintingly

shared their support, data, advice, methodological skills, insights, and time in the hope that the results of this study could

help point to better ways for raising school-age children growing up in our cities. I would like to thank them for their cooperation and express my appreciation for their high level of

commitment to our Nation’s youth. In particular, I would

like to thank the following people for their help. Their affiliations and titles are identified as of 1996.

Project Sponsors

The Carnegie Corporation of New York: David A. Hamburg, President, and our Program Officer, Gloria Primm

Brown.

The National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of

Justice: Jeremy Travis, Director, and our Program Manager,

Dr. Richard Titus.

Collaborating National Youth Organization

Directors and Their Associates

Boys and Girls Clubs of America: Roxanne Spillett, formerly Northeast Regional Director; James Cox, Director of

Urban Services; Frank Sanchez, Jr., Youth Gang Prevention

Specialist. Also Desi Day, Executive Director, Alexandria/

Olympic Boys and Girls Club.

Boy Scouts of America: Stephen Medlicott, Associate Director of External Communications.

Girls Incorporated: Dr. Heather Johnston Nicholson, Director, National Resource Center; Faedra Lazar Weiss, Research Associate.

Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.: Dr. Sylvia Barsion and Michael

Conn, Directors of Research and Evaluation.

National Association of Police Athletic Leagues: Joseph

Johnson, (formerly) Executive Director; also, Detective Raleigh Harsley, PAL, Crime Prevention Unit, Alexandria (Virginia) Police Department.

National 4–H Council: Richard Sauer, President and Chief

Executive Officer; and USDA 4–H and Youth Development

Service, Jon Irby, Director.

YMCA of the USA: Lowell Overby, Associate Director,

Community Resources; Myrtis Meyer, Director of Research

and Planning, and Venetta Greer, Research Assistant.

Staff at the national office of Boy Scouts of America, Executive Directors of Girl Scout Councils, and County Extension

Agents around the country delivered our questionnaires to

volunteer leaders selected to participate in our survey.

Project Advisers

Professor Delbert Elliott (University of Colorado), Dr. Dennis Kenney (Police Executive Research Forum), Professor

Wesley Skogan (Northwestern University), and Dr. Joan

Wynn (The Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of

Chicago).

Office of Justice Programs Advisers for the LINC Survey

Virginia Baldau, National Institute of Justice; Michael Rand,

Bureau of Justice Statistics; James (Buddy) Howell, Office

of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Arlington, Texas

Arlington Youth Services: William Daley, President, Board

of Directors; Penny Roswell, Pat Sutton, and Toni Greenwell,

Board of Directors; Christine Nusser, formerly Executive

Director; Susan Herman, current Executive Director; Gary

Givens, Director of Children’s Services; Robin Hogan, Director of Adolescent Services; Archie Marshall, Sports Director, and Paul Knudsen, Photography Instructor.

Arlington Police Department: David Kunkle, Chief of Police; Deputy Chief Bowman; Sgt. Jeff Stapleton; Sgt. James

“JW” Lowery, Jr.; Crime Prevention Officer Janet Thelan;

and Rick Smith, Director of Support Services.

Acknowledgments
x Kids, COPS, and Communities

Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington: Don Kromer, Executive Director; Veronica Carter, Director of Prevention Programs; Lucinda Lynn, Roquemore Branch Director; Jean

Goodwin-Grisham, Southeast Branch Education Director;

Carmen Zelya, staff member at the T.U.R.F. Teen Center

Branch; and most especially Ken Rose, Director of

Operations.

YMCA of Arlington: Laszlo G. Szabo, Senior Program

Director; Tim McBride, Childcare Coordinator; and the other

YMCA Coordinators and Afterschool Site Directors.

City of Arlington: Judy M. Rupay, Council Member.

Bristol, Connecticut

The Family Center for Girls and Boys: Carolyn Thompson, Executive Director; Kathy Theriault, Associate Director; Linda Rich, Director of Social Services; Michelle

Wingfield, Program Director; Dawn Scriven, Program Director; Lisa Hanggi, Program Director; and Kerry Walsh,

Dance Program Director.

Bristol Police Department: Detective James A. Zalot, Criminal Investigation Division; Youth Officer Tim Ustanowski.

Department of Education: Dr. Ann Serratore, Assistant

Superintendent of Schools; Daniel Viens, Supervisor of Instruction; Michael Georgen, Supervisor of Special Instruction; Joann Galati, Assistant Principal at the Chippens Hill

Middle School; V. Everett Lyons, Principal, Bristol Eastern

High School; F. Fred Soliani, Coordinator, School/Business

Partnership Program (Board of Education/Chamber of Commerce).

City of Bristol Youth Services Bureau: Eileen McNulty,

Director; Sharon Schall, Project Coordinator; Deborah

LaBella, Project Coordinator.

Bristol Hospital Department of Social Services: Carlyn

Glaser, Program Manager.

Comm-Part/Substance Abuse Action Council: Judy

Cowan, Community Development Coordinator; Marsha

Tinella, Executive Assistant.

Spokane, Washington

Spokane Police Department: Terence J. Mangan, Chief of

Police; Cheryl Steele, Project Coordinator for Spokane

COPS; Officer Tim Conley, Neighborhood Resource Officer

in West Central Spokane. Special thanks to David D. Ingle,

Administrative Services Director, who arranged for me to

meet with Melissa M. Sullivan, Consultant; Sandy Richards,

Crime Prevention Practitioner; Officer Robert D. Walker,

Volunteer Services Coordinator; and Officer Larry Lyndskog,

Officer Mark Sterk, and Sgt. Tony Gianetto, designers/directors of the “Every 15 Minutes” Program.

Nevawood COPS: Deborah Wittwer, Chairman/Youth Director and Girl Scout Troop Leader.

Inland Empire Girl Scout Council: Judith Edmund, Executive Director; Nancy Bolt, Troop Leader in the West Central Community Center.

West Central Community Development Association:

Donald S. Higgins, Executive Director; Don McClosky, Coordinator, West Central Community Mediation Program; Rick

Harris, Recreation Programs Manager, West Central Community Center.

Spokane County Cooperative Extension: Dr. Jon Newkirk,

Chair; 4–H Program team members Carolyn Harrelson,

Marlene O’Dea, and Linda Ray; and Family Resource Assistants Brenda Cook, Velma Riddle, Linda Coustich, and

Linette Frye; and a personal thank you to a very special person, Marilyn Trail, Community Resource Coordinator.

Marilyn personifies commitment to our Nation’s children and

families.

Other appreciated contributors in Spokane include, at the

Downtown Spokane YMCA, Mary Harneteaux, Branch Director; Debbie Wagner, Founder, WINNERS: Making Neighborhood Safe Homes a Reality for Kids; Marilee Roloff,

Project Director, Breakthrough for Families (Volunteers of

America); Valerie Smith, Director of the Foster Care Services of Lutheran Social Services of Washington and Idaho;

Michael J. Erp, Executive Director, Washington State Institute for Community Oriented Policing; Joanne M. Benham,

Director, Chase Youth Commission; Steven A. Magallan,

Project Director, City of Spokane Youth Gang Drug Prevention; Barbara Ritter, YWCA of Spokane; Deborah Ivester,
Acknowledgments xi

Recreation Supervisor 1, Spokane Parks and Recreation Department; and Community Volunteer Leader Mel Carter.

Several colleagues at the Institute for Law and Justice played

a major role in carrying out the survey sample selection, designing and preparing the questionnaire, and conducting preliminary data analysis; they are Dr. J. Thomas (Tom)

McEwen, Jenny Fu, and Joan Peterschmidt.

Before joining the U.S. Department of Justice as Director of

the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dr. Jan Chaiken designed

the methods for selecting the survey sample and constructed

the sampling frame using data provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Throughout the duration of this project, my colleague, Dr.

Shama Chaiken, acted as a sounding board and provided

cogent advice.

Monique Smith of the National Criminal Justice Reference

Service provided invaluable editorial support. Dr. Christy

Visher, Science Adviser to the Director of the National Institute of Justice, offered significant technical advice during

the preparation of this report.

I thank the anonymous program leaders who devoted time

and thought to completing our survey. And finally I send my

personal gratitude to the many children and teens (especially

Harmony), who welcomed me to observe their activities and

who provided major insights about secure and productive

places in the nonschool hours. You have made clear that we

can count on you to create a safer world.

Marcia R. Chaiken
Executive Summary xiii

Executive Summary

This report is designed to help law enforcement administrators and officers understand and institute a strategy to help

prevent violence—community-oriented policing services

carried out in collaboration with youth-serving organizations.

Popular police prevention approaches such as D.A.R.E. (Drug

Abuse Resistance Education), G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Resistance

Education and Training), and the McGruff “Take a Bite out

of Crime” campaigns have helped prepare police officers to

work hand in hand in a variety of ways with local affiliates

of national youth-serving organizations. In a growing number of cities, police are working with youth groups and finding that violence involving youth is rapidly decreasing. Some

of these approaches are detailed.

Descriptions are based on a LINC study jointly sponsored

by the National Institute of Justice and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The research involved a survey of 579

affiliates of 7 national youth-serving organizations: Boys and

Girls Clubs of America, Boy Scouts of America, Girls Incorporated, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., National Association

of Police Athletic Leagues, National 4–H Council and USDA

4–H and Youth Development Service, and YMCA of the

USA.* The research also incorporated onsite studies in three

cities whose approaches were selected by a panel of experts

from among those nominated as exemplary by survey respondents. The experts selected types of approaches most

likely to lessen the risk of kids becoming involved in crime,

promote wholesome development, and provide increased

protection from delinquency and victimization.

The need for effective approaches that will prevent crimes

by and against youth is pressing, as our youth continue to be

at increasing risk for victimization and serious delinquency,

with several factors playing important roles:

• Age. Early adolescence is the time of life when people

experience the most dramatic increase in violence—both

as offenders and as victims. The rate of violent incidents

involving strangers increases, but the main rise is due to

incidents with acquaintances.

• Gender. Until early adolescence, boys and girls are

equally in danger from violence, but thereafter boys are

at most risk of homicide and girls, sexual assault. In early

adolescence, from ages 10 to 14, serious violent acts are

committed almost as frequently by girls as by boys, but

in later adolescence girls are far less likely to be violent.

• Families. Youth who grow up in violent homes are more

likely than other youth to become delinquent. But so are

even greater numbers of youth who are neglected and lack

supervision.

• Schools. Children’s attachment to school is a powerful

predictor of whether or not they will be seriously delinquent. However, even adolescents who do well in school

spend most of their waking hours outside school.

• Neighborhoods. At greatest risk for violence and victimization are children and adolescents who live in high-crime

neighborhoods where deadly weapons are common and

readily available.

Children who are frequently exposed to violence at home or

school, or—perhaps most important—to unchecked violence

among neighborhood children their own age, are most likely

to become persistently delinquent and increasingly violent.

Kids are most vulnerable to crime during the nonschool hours

when they are least likely to be supervised by teachers or

working parents. Violent crimes by juveniles are most likely

to be committed between 2:30 in the afternoon and 8:30 at

night. Gang-related crimes, too, are more likely to take place

in these hours than at any other time of day or night.

The Most Popular Approaches for

Dealing With Juvenile Violence

Haven’t Worked

Despite attempts to “deinstitutionalize” children, locking them

up in State and local facilities is still a prime approach. Although these kids temporarily have the supervision they definitely need, once released, nothing else has changed. Other

currently popular approaches such as boot camps also just

provide temporary supervision. And although curfews theoretically extend the hours of family oversight, the periods when

kids are most likely to get into trouble are not covered.

*Information on survey methodology and findings is in the full report from this study, Raising Our Cities’ Children: Safe Productive

Places in the After-School Hours, available as NCJ 170608 from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, 800–851–3420.

Citations for statistics and studies referenced in this Executive Summary appear in the more detailed chapters that follow.
xiv Kids, COPS, and Communities

Many programs available after school—the prime time for

youth violence—are either ineffective or counterproductive.

Simply providing a supervised place doesn’t work (adolescents most at risk for delinquency won’t go or may take over

the place if they do). Sports, gang-prevention approaches that

make members more cohesive, and approaches that simply

provide information about the risks or wickedness of delinquency can backfire and make kids more delinquent.

Approaches that researchers have found to be most promising

for preventing violence and delinquency are relatively longterm, continuous, comprehensive approaches that involve

adults as tutors and mentors who teach children and teens cognitive and social skills and provide them an opportunity to

cooperatively practice these competency skills. These approaches are virtually synonymous with the approaches implemented by national youth-serving organizations.

Effective Prevention Approaches

Are Integral to National Youth

Organizations

Typically, the approaches taken by national youth organizations attempt to ameliorate more than a single factor associated with delinquency. They provide a range of activities appropriate for children of specific ages and different developmental stages, and they continue over the long term. In today’s

world, where many single parents have low incomes and less

time to spend with their children and where many schools are

literally and figuratively falling apart, youth-serving organizations can most readily provide the necessary resources children and teens fail to find elsewhere. This is especially important in neighborhoods where all essential resources for children and teens are scarce and crime rates are high.

Youth-serving organizations know that for this at-risk population they need to duplicate the elements that have for generations appealed to their adolescent participants:

• An environment in which kids are valued and adolescents are considered resources rather than problems for

their community.

• Activities that present teens with real challenges and experiences in planning, preparing for, and publicly presenting projects they and their communities truly value.

• Ongoing outreach to teens and adults in the community,

with messages that are understandable.

Findings of the LINC survey indicate that affiliates of national youth-serving organizations are:

• Reaching millions of kids. The Girl Scouts alone have

2.5 million members nationwide. When all youth-serving organizations are included, the total is far larger.

• Reaching kids in economically depressed urban

areas. Compared to organizations in prosperous neighborhoods, each affiliate in a rundown city neighborhood is serving an average of three times as many participants.

• Reaching kids already involved in crime as victims or

offenders. Girls Incorporated and Boys and Girls Clubs

are furnishing constructive activities for youth in public

housing areas where kids formerly wreaked havoc on the

property and on each other. Boy Scout Explorer Post leaders are recruiting adolescents in violence-torn neighborhoods and teaching them to work as law enforcement paraprofessionals. Girl Scout Councils are reaching girls in

extreme need of adult support, including daughters of

women in prison. And 4–H is serving runaway teens, some

supporting themselves through prostitution.

• Experiencing crimes. Among organizations included in

the LINC study, more than half reported that an offense

occurred at or immediately outside the primary program

site during the program year beginning in the fall of 1993.

Most of these offenses were committed by kids, primarily nonparticipants in the organizations.

• Losing valuable organizational resources to crime.

Three out of four of the organizations reporting at least

one violent incident or property crime in the 1993–1994

program year indicated that they suffered economic consequences, or burdens on staff who had to deal with incidents involving offenses committed by and against their

participants, or constraints on program operations and

activities.

• Suffering defeat. Most preventive steps organizations

experiencing crime have taken, such as putting locks on

doors to prevent unauthorized access to program areas,

haven’t worked (with the exception of requiring a responsible adult to accompany participants when they leave the

program site).
Executive Summary xv

The study found that some organizations experienced much

lower rates of crime than one would have expected given

their location in rundown neighborhoods in cities with high

crime rates. These are organizations that reported more police responsiveness to their needs than other youth-serving

organizations. And, as the survey results also indicated, the

primary needs of these organizations for police cooperation

center on steps to prevent crime rather than to deal with crimes

already committed.

Partnerships Between Police and

Youth Organizations

The LINC study found that partnerships between police and

youth-serving organizations take many forms, from officers

providing occasional talks to youth to officers leading groups

on an ongoing basis. They also involve police at all ranks—

from the chief to the newest police officers.

At the highest level chiefs and top administrators show their

support for strong police involvement in crime prevention

activities among high-risk youth through their participation

in youth organization advisory boards. They provide an example and incentives for their staff members to become voluntary adult leaders. They also emphasize that support of

youth organizations is part of community policing.

At the request of the youth-serving organizations, police officers are providing age-appropriate interactive programs that

help children and teens realize what to do when faced with

common dangerous situations—emergencies when they are

home alone, threats and pressures from gang members, “date”

rape attempts, or reoccurring violence among family members. Police at all ranks are volunteering to become Boy Scout

and Girl Scout leaders for kids in high-crime neighborhoods

where troops have been difficult to organize.

Police devote many hours helping to select and monitor juveniles assigned to youth-serving organizations as part of

juvenile diversion programs.

The LINC survey and case studies amply show that in many

communities, police officers routinely drop in to youth centers or participate more formally in youth center activities.

They provide a strong presence that allays community fears

about having so many “at-risk” teenagers congregating in

the area.

Among the most innovative and fruitful relationships between

police and young people have been officers’ participation in

programs that allow youth organization participants to do

“real” policing, as in one LINC study site, where boys and

girls remind residents to lock their doors, adolescents conduct overnight surveillance in parks and alleys, and youth

carry out other crime prevention projects under police supervision.

Case Studies of Exemplary

Approaches

As part of the survey, respondents were asked to nominate

exemplary prevention approaches carried out by their organizations or other organizations in their areas. More than 100

approaches were recommended for further study, with advisers to the study unanimously agreeing that case studies to

be included in this report should focus on organizations providing (1) collaborative or relatively comprehensive or extensive community programs and approaches or (2) centerbased programs with nontraditional staff, hours, or participants in cities or neighborhoods with relatively high rates of

crime. All advisers independently used active recruitment of

youth at high risk for violence or delinquency as a criterion

for selecting the programs they nominated.

One approach selected for study is being implemented in

Bristol, Connecticut; one in Arlington, Texas; and two in

Spokane, Washington.

The organizations implementing these approaches are affiliated with one or more of the national organizations participating in the study. In addition to their innovative approaches,

the selected organizations are implementing traditional youth

development practices that may be just as or more beneficial

in preventing delinquency than approaches designed solely

to prevent youth violence. They are all a vital part of a network of organizations that together are creating safer and

more productive environments for children and teens in the

nonschool hours.

The innovative approaches can best be understood in the

context of the cities in which they are occurring, the needs

of youth systematically identified by collaborative efforts,

the particular needs the organization was striving to meet,

the ongoing collaboration of other youth development organizations to meet these needs, and the collaboration with other

private and public agencies—in particular, the police.
xvi Kids, COPS, and Communities

Bristol, Connecticut

Many of Bristol’s families of French, Polish, Italian, and Irish

descent have lived there for generations, but today Bristol’s

population of 60,000 has become even more ethnically diverse, and goods-producing industries have been outnumbered by service industries; the relatively homogeneous working-class environment has changed. Upscale, middle-class

homes are going up in the outlying areas, and the central city

is now marked by areas of poverty.

Problems affecting youth have worsened in the past decade.

The schools are finding that while rates of teen pregnancy

have remained the same for a period of years, younger girls—

down to middle-school age—are now having babies. Police

and other agencies find that children are committing crimes

at younger ages.

Information gathered from schools and State and local agencies, including the Bristol Police Department, led local leaders to the conclusion that community-based services for

youth, including afterschool programs, were essential and

that a multifaceted collaborative approach would be most

effective in bringing these about.

The Bristol Family Center for Boys and Girls

The Family Center is an affiliate of Girls Incorporated. Located on a downtown street in a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood, it attracts children from all over the

city to its two-story brick building constructed more than 60

years ago as one of the first Girls Clubs, together with newer

additions built in the 1960s, including a large gymnasium,

pool, and locker room.

The Family Center is open for activities on weekdays from

6:30 a.m., when preschoolers are dropped off for child care,

until 9 p.m. when teens finish swimming, gymnastics, dance

classes, or other activities. Two particular programs carried

out by the Bristol Family Center are types of youth development programs that have been found by past research to have

long-term success in reducing children’s involvement in crime

and delinquency.

The first, the Bristol Family Center Young Parent Program,

helps pregnant and postpartum teens by giving them the option of continuing their education at the center, with trained

Family Center staff providing case management and individual counseling. The Family Center also offers these teen

mothers and the fathers of their children adult mentoring and

peer counseling.

The Family Center’s positive support for teen parents is

matched by a second program to intervene in the lives of

youth at risk of following a delinquent path. The Bristol Police Department and the Youth Service Bureau are the lead

agencies in the coalition implementing the juvenile offender

diversion program in which the Family Center collaborates.

For first-time adolescent offenders involved in minor crimes,

a common alternative is restitution through community service; in these cases the Family Center representative has the

option of volunteering to place the adolescent as an aide in

one of the Family Center programs. These adolescents commonly form a strong bond with staff and stay on as regular

participants after their mandated service is completed.

The Bristol Police Department

In addition to their ongoing Juvenile Review Board actions,

officers in the police department work directly with children

in occasional projects jointly sponsored by youth organizations and the police departments in neighborhoods where

children appear to be especially at risk.

Bristol officers also provide special training for youth organization participants on such topics as gang awareness and dealing with babysitting emergencies. Patrol officers regularly drop

by youth centers as part of the Bristol Police Department’s

“Walk-and-Talk” community policing approach.

Arlington, Texas

With a population of more than 270,000, Arlington has a

wide range of economic levels within its boundaries. Many

of Arlington’s new families have school age children and

two parents working to maintain affluent lifestyles, while

new arrivals have also included families living in poverty.

Both long-term residents and recent arrivals are concerned

by the city’s precipitous growth, its changing nature, and the

consequent strain on services.

Crime is also a concern. In 1993, for instance, Tarrant County,

which contains all of Arlington and part of Fort Worth, had

one of the highest crime rates in Northeast Texas.

To meet these challenges, an extensive spectrum of public

and private agencies have collaborated in providing more
Executive Summary xvii

services for at-risk youth and for children without supervision and developing a specific plan of action having three

primary components:

• Actively recruiting high-risk children and teens to participate in existing centers, including Boys and Girls Clubs

Centers and the Arlington Youth Services Multipurpose

Center—renamed the Teen Center by the participants who

were recruited.

• Creating new centers in unsupervised areas where children and teens were already congregating in the nonschool

hours. Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington has taken the

lead in this effort.

• Providing licensed childcare in the afterschool hours in

all elementary schools and contracting with the three major youth-serving organizations in Arlington to administer the childcare and furnish age-appropriate youth development activities.

The Teen Center

Active recruitment by two outreach workers has resulted in

the participation of many teens identified by the police and

schools as “at-risk.” The vast majority are minority group

members, predominantly African-Americans, Hispanics, and

people of mixed race. The program is characterized by:

• Emphasis on observing rules. All who come to the Teen

Center agree to take care of it, obey all laws, respect the

neighborhood, and treat each other and staff with respect.

• Mediation of peer differences. Part of teens’ preference

for playing basketball in the Teen Center is not because

of the basketball court but because adults keep the place

safe. They play basketball on the street, but since there is

no staff member on the street to referee when issues of

respect arise, they fight.

• Opportunities for teens to make decisions. Both informally and more formally—through 3-month positions as

Teen Center “youth worker” employees and through work

in the neighborhood—youth are encouraged to make decisions and take responsibility.

Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington

In addition to afterschool childcare programs in elementary

schools, Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington provides programs at six locations in different parts of the city, where

game rooms and quiet areas provide children and teens with

safe recreation. They receive help with school assignments

and engage in skill-building activities that are fun to do.

Arlington Police Department

The Arlington Police Department carries out key and highly

visible efforts to create safer places for school-age children,

including more than 25 relatively short, age-appropriate youth

education programs covering a range of issues, as well as

more sustained youth approaches such as the Drug Abuse

Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program.

As part of their duties, the police department’s “school resource officers” play a key role in Arlington’s Crime Prevention Action Plan. They maintain contacts with and actively refer children to other community agencies providing

services for children, including the Scouting organizations,

Camp Fire, Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, and Big Brothers and Sisters. School resource officers are also encouraged

to become Boy Scout Explorer Post leaders.

Patrol officers, too, provide ongoing formal support for safe

afterschool activities, such as carrying out background checks

of the youth organizations’ staff before they are hired. As

part of their regular patrol, officers stop in at youth centers

when programs are in progress and stay at least a few minutes to talk to the young participants. At the Teen Center,

they remain to watch and cheer basketball games. They also

assiduously patrol the surrounding neighborhood when large

groups of youth arrive and leave and when the adult staff get

wind of incipient violence.

Spokane, Washington

Spokane’s population of more than 180,000 includes many

new residents with few skills for surviving in an urban area.

Some are members of minority groups that have been

disproportionally affected by poverty, including Native

Americans and African-Americans, and others are recent

immigrants from Southeast Asia and East India.
xviii Kids, COPS, and Communities

A “report card” on Spokane area youth sponsored by the Youth

Commission and area businesses found that the city’s deficits

included high rates of teenage drug use, unemployment, illiteracy, and teen pregnancy. In January 1992, based on results

of five monthly public neighborhood meetings convened after

several extremely serious incidents of violent victimization of

children, an ad hoc Security Task Force composed of residents and representatives from schools and city agencies identified the categories of issues that needed to be addressed to

prevent future crimes involving children: police-community

relations, neighborhood security improvements, security education, and block networking and organizing.

A comprehensive, multifaceted program is now working on

these problems and issues in two neighborhoods, West Central and Nevada-Lidgerwood.

West Central Community Center

Spokane’s West Central neighborhood is a multiethnic community that has experienced some of Spokane’s worst problems associated with poverty, including crime. In the first 10

years of the West Central Community Development

Association’s existence, the staff concentrated on developing the West Central Community Center as a facility for

implementing interventions to break the cycle of poverty in

which many neighborhood families were enmeshed. WIC

(Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants and

Children), Head Start, classes to teach parenting skills, and

other community education programs and classes were made

available in the center, as were some youth development activities. However, according to the center’s original and current executive director, until rigorous outreach was conducted

in the surrounding neighborhood—in large part through the

efforts of COPS West and Family Focus—the programs had

minimal participation among those most in need of them.

Today the West Central Community Center is a beehive of

activity. During school hours, the center is a home away from

home for developmentally delayed adults who are cared for

by trained providers until their primary caretakers return from

their jobs. It also provides a safe and productive environment

for children and teens in the hours before and after school.

4–H activities take place in the center in the early morning,

and then participants are taken to school in vans. The Girl

Scout Council has a professional staff member who is organizing and leading troop activities in the center and introducing parents and neighborhood families to the benefits of

Girl Scouting.

The Washington State University Family Focus

Program

The Family Focus Program outreach component in West Central Spokane teaches family and life skills to parents who lack

basic methods for managing their personal lives or their homes.

Family Focus is administered by the Spokane County Cooperative Extension of Washington State University (WSU).

The Spokane Police Department

The exemplary COPS initiatives involving Spokane youth

are natural products of a departmental approach that involves

officers in community collaborations for:

• Identifying problems.

• Analyzing the specific facets of problems that have been

identified (who is involved, when, how, and why).

• Taking logical steps and community action to resolve

problems.

• Evaluating the outcomes that have been achieved.

Key to Spokane’s community policing approach is the chief’s

strong encouragement of officer approaches that go well

beyond those used for traditional law enforcement and crime

prevention, particularly for addressing problems involving

Spokane’s children and teens.

As a result of the motivation provided by the chief and supervising officers, individual officers in Spokane have developed a range of approaches for creating safer and more

creative environments for children and teens in the nonschool

hours. These include COPS West, the Nevawood COPS Youth

Volunteers, and a Boy Scout Explorer preparatory leadership program.

COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) West is a

ministation staffed by community volunteers (many of whom

are Family Focus participants or graduates) a neighborhood

resource officer assigned by the Spokane Police Department,

and more recently representatives from a number of other

public agencies, including the Office of the District Attorney and Adult and Juvenile Probation and Parole.

Both traditional and innovative neighborhood policing techniques are used by COPS West. Teams of neighbors are
Executive Summary xix

trained in dispute resolution and respond to calls involving

conflicts between community children and teens or other

residents, if the police department’s neighborhood resource

officer is confident that the confrontation can be handled

without violent responses. Adults patrol the streets before

and after school to ensure that children are safe and that older

teens are not harassing each other or younger children.

Together with WSU Family Focus staff and the West Central

Community Development Association, COPS West has taken

the lead in organizing events enjoyed by the whole neighborhood, such as the now annual Neighbor Days when a

parade highlights the start of an entire day of celebration.

Integral to the community events are the neighborhood children and teens, through their participation in youth groups

formed at the Community Center.

COPS West and WSU Family Focus have achieved documented success in creating a safer community. According to

the police department, the effort resulted in a 40-percent decrease in crime in the West Central Neighborhood between

1991 and 1994.

Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers is a core subgroup of

one of Spokane’s neighborhood COPS initiatives. Both girls

and boys, most in their midteens, participate. The girls who

belong to Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers are officially a

part of Girl Scout Troop 437. The Girl Scouts were anxious

to take on projects in the community to correct neighborhood conditions that had become visible problems. Realizing the changes that the West Central Community had

achieved through their COPS effort, one of the Senior Girl

Scouts decided to organize a similar effort in the NevadaLidgerwood area.

One of the first projects was to reclaim their neighborhood

park. They documented and reported graffiti, trash, broken

lights, and other unsanitary and unsafe conditions. They put

on summer campouts in the park for neighborhood children,

and the Spokane police and a special group of adult neighborhood COPS volunteers provided extra patrol.

The Boy Scout Explorer Post was started in 1987 as part of

the police chief’s plan to create a volunteer program in which

officers carry out youth development and community development activities with the active cooperation of neighborhood volunteers. The chief realized that, when provided with

productive opportunities, older teens can be a powerful community asset rather than a problem. He delegated the creation of an Explorer Post to a police officer who had prior

professional experience in working with older teens and had

been recognized for his previous volunteer contributions to

the community.

The intent of the post was to involve adolescents who had

little or no previous opportunity for community leadership—

not by waiving the qualifications for Explorer Scouts—but

by stimulating younger teens to meet the requirements for

joining the post. A cornerstone of this approach is the

L.E.A.D. (Leadership, Education, and Development) program for boys and girls in the seventh and eighth grades. It is

under the supervision of the officer who directs the Explorer

Post. L.E.A.D. students participate in an intensive program

of training similar to that of Explorer Scouts but more appropriate for their stage of development.

Successful efforts in Spokane benefit from the city’s history

of forming coalitions to address shared problems, among them

a citywide youth commission, coalitions of public agencies

and private organizations, neighborhood-based teams of youthserving organizations, public agencies concerned with youth,

and neighborhood volunteers. This strong community support,

together with a spectrum of youth-serving organizations and

the innovative participation of the Spokane Police Department,

have resulted in a range of programs for meeting the comprehensive needs of many children in the city.

What You Can Do to Provide Safe,

Constructive Activities for

At-Risk Youth

In their essentials, measures taken in Arlington, Bristol, and

Spokane are similar. Leaders in each city gathered information needed to assess the status of their youth. They faced

hard problems head on and came up with action plans to

address multiple factors that were endangering kids’ lives.

Rather than reinventing ways for preventing violence and

promoting wholesome development, they figured out who

in the community already had approaches most likely to be

effective. This included the police, directors of nationally

affiliated youth organizations, and other public youth-serving agencies—schools (administrators, counselors, and teachers), social services, health and treatment organizations, and

juvenile justice practitioners including judges, district attorneys, and probation officers.

Your city may already have carried out some of the steps

described in this report. However, because violence involv-
xx Kids, COPS, and Communities

ing youth has multiple causes, cities that carry out multiple

concerted actions are more likely than others to bring youth

problems under sustained control. The following steps carried out in the case study sites are offered as a checklist to

consider actions your city might take.

Police chiefs and other law enforcement executives can:

• Get to know the directors of youth-serving agencies and

be willing to sit on their advisory boards and on community coalitions addressing youth issues.

• Encourage officers to volunteer at youth organizations in

the community and publicly reward them for their efforts.

• Incorporate joint activities between police and youth-serving organizations into the day-to-day operation of the

department.

Directors of youth organizations and agencies can:

• Introduce themselves and their organizations to the police chief and welcome a police presence on and around

their premises.

• Invite police to put on prevention programs with the children and adolescents they serve and to participate in recreational activities for youth.

• Participate in city task forces that deal with youth issues,

in neighborhood coalitions to advocate for safe activities

for youth, and in community antidrug, anticrime efforts.

• Work with police and child protection agencies to identify and provide services to youth who may be perpetrators or victims of crime.

• Work with police and community leaders in offering their

centers as places where troubled teens can perform community service.

• Advocate for youth among local officials and legislative

bodies and teach young participants to be advocates.

• Work with other youth-serving organizations in joint ventures on a continuing basis.

• Get to know the educational and religious leaders in the

community and find ways to have fruitful working relationships or to plan comprehensive solutions to common

problems.

Community coalitions and collaborations can:

• Make sure they have a strong police, youth organization,

and at-risk youth presence.

• Talk to police and others to determine the scope of delinquency and the range of adolescent experiences that contribute to it.

• Find out what services are currently available for at-risk

kids.

• Assess the needs of youth for wholesome skill-building

activities that they will enjoy after school.

• Find or advocate for places that can house afterschool

programs where they are the most needed, operated by

organizations that have demonstrated experience in providing them.

Local officials and other community leaders can:

• Find out from the organizations that work with kids what

kids’ greatest needs are.

• Find ways public agencies (such as youth-serving and public housing agencies) can collaborate to keep youth off

the streets and in safe activities.

• Help launch or participate in coalitions dedicated to this

goal.

• Wherever possible, promote a comprehensive approach

to delinquency prevention that involves both police and

youth-serving organizations and demonstrated experience

in serving teens.

The full report provides more complete descriptions of these

steps as taken by the organization leaders in the three case

study cities. Their actions represent an arduous undertaking,

and they willingly shared their experiences so that this report could be written. They are also prepared to provide advice and support to you. Their names and information for

contacting them are furnished in the appendix. They will be

glad to hear of your commitment to provide safe, productive

places for our Nation’s youth.
Introduction 1

Chapter 1

Introduction

Alarmed by a precipitous increase in the rate of violent crimes

involving children and teens over the past decade,1 police,

schools, youth-serving organizations, and other community

groups are trying a variety of tactics to stem this dangerous

trend. Not all efforts are effective, and no single approach

has unqualified success. But a growing body of research suggests that some efforts by police in partnership with other

community agencies are instrumental in creating safer places

for youth. While researchers are trying to sort out particular

causes and effects, all agree that the upwardly spiraling rates

of violence involving children and teens has been checked

and in many places has started to decline.

Yet the problem is far from solved. Adolescents are three

times more likely to be victims of violence than adults.2

Murders of juveniles were still 66 percent higher in 1995

than in 1985.3 And communities are still searching for better

ways to prevent violence and promote the sound development of our kids.

This research-based report has been written to help law enforcement administrators and officers realize and institute a

strategy that has been found to help prevent violence—community-oriented policing services carried out in collaboration with youth-serving organizations. In a growing number

of cities, police are coming to realize that youth organizations are not just for little kids and not just for youth who are

by nature good kids.

With the help of police, in addition to serving the little

Brownie Girl Scout selling cookies door to door, the Girl

Scout program is providing opportunities for former gang

members to improve skills for finding and keeping jobs. In

addition to teaching animal care to elementary school students, 4–H staff are also conducting outreach to runaway

teens whose main source of income is prostitution. While

still providing afterschool activities in downtown centers,

Boys and Girls Clubs, Girls Incorporated, and the YMCA

corporations and branches are creating satellites in public

housing and other urban areas where kids have been exposed

to day-to-day violence.

Popular police prevention approaches such as D.A.R.E. (Drug

Abuse Resistance Education), G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Resistance

Education and Training) and the McGruff “Take a Bite Out

of Crime” campaign have helped pave the way for police to

work hand in hand in a variety of ways with local chapters of

national youth organizations. Community-oriented policing

has created a new opportunity for partnerships with youth

organizations who know how to help kids stay out of trouble

and give them the boost they need to be successful. Together

these partners are creating safer environments for children

and teens—many of whom are at high risk for delinquency

and violence. In the following sections, a variety of cooperative activities are described.

Descriptions are based on approaches recently studied as part

of research jointly sponsored by the National Institute of

Justice and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The research involved a LINC survey of 579 affiliates of 7 national

youth-serving organizations: Boys and Girls Clubs of

America, Boy Scouts of America, Girls Incorporated, Girl

Scouts of the U.S.A., National Association of Police Athletic Leagues, National 4–H Council and USDA 4–H and

Youth Development Service, and YMCA of the USA. As

designed, about half the affiliates were located in big cities

with high crime rates. The research also incorporated case

studies that included onsite observations of approaches in

three cities: Bristol, Connecticut; Arlington, Texas; and Spokane, Washington. A panel of experts selected approaches

used in these cities from among those nominated as exemplary by survey respondents. The selected approaches incorporate elements that research tells us prevent delinquency

and support wholesome development.

The Dimensions of Violence

Involving Kids

National statistics show how pressing is the need for effective approaches that will prevent crimes by violent youth.

Juvenile arrests for murder and manslaughter increased 60

percent in the 1980s and another 45 percent from 1990 to

1993.4 In 1991, juveniles were responsible for about one out

of five violent crimes including rape, robbery, and assault.5

Although the rates of juvenile violence began to decline in

1994 and 1995, juveniles were responsible for a greater proportion of violent crime.6
2 Kids, COPS, and Communities

The number of youth who are victims of violence has also

increased. Between 1987 and 1992, the number of children

aged 12 to 17 who were victims of violent crimes increased

23 percent,7 and one out of eight children aged 12 to 15 were

victims of violence in 1993.8 In 1992, head injuries from

firearms resulted in more deaths among teens and young

adults than head injuries from automobile accidents and falls

together.9 Recently more teens have died from firearm injuries than all natural causes combined.10 Public places have

become extremely dangerous in communities where firearms

are readily available and frequently fired. Front-page headlines of driveby shootings are graphic illustrations of the 72-

percent increase from 1983 to 1992 in fatal traumatic brain

injuries from firearms among young people aged 15–24.11

In addition, hidden violent offenses against children are being committed in the nonschool hours but in less visible settings. About 50 percent of rape victims are girls in their teens

or younger. In 1992, about 17,000 preteen girls were raped—

an estimated 16 percent of all rape victims that year.12 Countless children have been damaged by abuse and neglect outside the school setting; more than 140,000 children were

seriously damaged in 1990 alone.13

Although 1997 U.S. Department of Justice statistics14 indicate that national efforts may have started to stem the violence affecting our youth, many children and teens realistically view the world as unsafe. They see violence as normal.

Young girls who are sexually assaulted are advised by their

friends to “get over it, it happens.”15 In a growing number of

urban neighborhoods, boys expect to die young.

Kids Are Most at Risk for Violence

and Serious Delinquency

Although children and teens around the country view their world

as perilous, a growing body of research suggests that children

are more or less vulnerable to violence and delinquency depending on their individual characteristics, their family situation, their adjustment to school, and their neighborhood and

community.

Age is one of the most important characteristics that determines

whether or not a child will become a victim of violence or engage in serious delinquency. Children are most at risk of becoming victims of violence at two stages—during early infancy

and during the adolescent years.16 While babies are most likely

to be victims of family members and others in their household,

adolescents are exposed to increasing dangers from strangers

and, more substantially, from acquaintances. In 1994, adolescents aged 12 to 17 were three times more likely than adults to

be victims of violent crimes.17 While a few children commit

serious violent offenses in the early school-age years, the onset

of violence usually does not occur until the onset of puberty.18

In addition to the age of a child, gender plays an important part

in determining vulnerability to violence. Until early adolescence,

boys and girls are equally likely to become victims of the most

serious form of violence—homicide. Thereafter boys are most

at risk.19 However, at the age when boys become increasingly at

risk of violent deaths, girls become most vulnerable to rape and

other sexual violence.20

Earlier studies of delinquency suggested that overall, compared

to boys, girls are less likely to commit crimes, and those who

are delinquent are more likely to commit secretive offenses like

theft rather than aggressive or violent crimes like purse snatching or robbery.21 However, more recent studies have shown that

in early adolescence, from ages 10 to 14, serious violent acts

are committed almost as frequently by girls as by boys, and in

some cities young teen girls commit more violent crimes than

boys.22 In the later teen years, girls are less likely than boys to

act violently.23

Family situations are also major determinants of whether a child

will become a victim of violence or an offender. From birth to

adolescence, the person most likely to assault a child is a member of his or her own family.24 Although child abuse has been

shown to be a significant cause of serious delinquency and results in an intergenerational cycle of violence, recent studies

have demonstrated that severe parental neglect is just as likely

to lead to serious delinquency as physical assault.25 Even in the

vast majority of homes where parents are not abusive or criminally neglectful, children are more likely to become seriously

delinquent if their mothers, fathers, or caregivers lack good

parenting skills or the ability to provide ongoing supervision.

Schools too play a major role in increasing or decreasing the

probability that a child will become seriously delinquent or a

victim of violence. Several studies have shown that children’s

inability to achieve in school and their lack of attachment to

school are powerful predictors of serious delinquency. Since

some schools have 10 times more violence than others,26 the

particular school a child attends makes a significant difference

in the child’s exposure to violence. Children who are frequently

exposed to violence at home, at school, and perhaps most important, unchecked violence among neighborhood children their

own age are most likely to become persistently delinquent and

increasingly violent.27
Introduction 3

Just as violence (particularly violence involving children and

teens) differs from school to school, it varies from city to

city and from neighborhood to neighborhood. Research on

urban crime28 has confirmed the anecdotal information gathered by experienced law enforcement officers about neighborhoods most likely to erupt in youth violence. The neighborhoods are for the most part economically impoverished,

and their residents are likely to be members of minority

groups or recent immigrants. An estimated 46 million people,

18 percent of the population, live in poverty. Close to 59

percent of these are working families with children who by

definition cannot afford to purchase the basic necessities of

life—food, clothing, and adequate shelter29—much less resources to privately provide supervised neighborhood activities for children. Moreover, studies in Chicago neighborhoods

suggest that residents in high-crime areas do not have the

social skills or social organization needed to demand, as a

community, that children and teens (and adults) follow accepted norms of behavior in public.30

Kids Are Most Vulnerable to Crime

During the Nonschool Hours

Growing numbers of teens and younger children are spending more and more hours out of school in places that are

unsupervised and unsafe. Even children and teens who are

rarely absent are in school for a limited amount of time because school days are short and schools are not in session

during vacations, holidays, and weekends. Children aged 9

to 14 commonly spend about 60 percent of their waking time

outside school.31 Violent crimes by juveniles are typically

committed in the afterschool hours between 2:30 in the afternoon and 8:30 at night.32

When children reach puberty, as a normal and necessary part

of their development they seek out group activities that challenge them to take risks. However, research suggests that

adolescents who affiliate with a delinquent group enter a vicious cycle. They commit more delinquent acts and begin to

believe that these acts are normal. As they seek out other

adolescents with similar beliefs, the number of offenses they

commit goes up.33

While most adolescents seek to belong to a group, relatively

few identify their group of friends as a gang. Most of those

who say they belong to a gang generally associate with gang

members for a limited number of years. However, teens who

are in gangs commit more property and drug crimes than

other children their age. Research in one city revealed that

although they constituted less than one-third of adolescents,

gang members committed more than two-thirds of violent

crimes by juveniles.34 Gang-related crimes too are more likely

to take place in the afterschool hours than at any other time

of day or night.35

When asked about what they wanted during the nonschool hours,

many children and teens wistfully mentioned places, spaces,

and activities that others take for granted: “ . . . safe parks and

recreation centers . . . libraries with the latest books, videos, and

records . . . chances to go camping and participate in sports . . .

long talks with trusting and trustworthy adults who know a lot

about the world . . . and opportunities to learn new skills.”36

Many of these requests have long been met by traditional youthserving organizations. Coincidentally, very limited research on

these types of approaches has serendipitously found that they

reduce juvenile delinquency. However, since they were not designed to prevent delinquency, by and large their crime reduction value has not been understood.

The Most Popular Approaches for

Dealing With Juvenile Violence

Haven’t Worked

When asked how they would curb violence involving youth,

most people have two solutions: (1) get tough and lock up

the troublemakers and (2) provide education and recreation.

In a Yankelovich poll, 79 percent of adult Americans said

that the best way to reduce teen violence was to provide

tougher criminal penalties for juvenile offenders.37 Currently

the most appealing methods for dealing with troublesome

children involve physical constraints. Despite attempts to

“deinstitutionalize” children, in 1993 this country locked up

more than 53,000 children in State facilities and many more

in long-term local facilities.38 We are incarcerating so many

children that 62 percent of those living in long-term juvenile

facilities in 1991 were housed in units operating above their

designed capacity,39 and in 1995 this increased to more than

70 percent.40

Even so-called alternatives to incarceration actually depend

on physically constraining adolescents. Congress has mandated greater use of boot camps to incarcerate young offenders and rapidly teach them self-discipline through military

drills, even though these approaches appear to have little or

no effect on delinquency unless combined with communitybased approaches.41 Recently, curfews for banning young

people from city streets, without regard to where they will

go and what they will do, are gaining popularity. Between
4 Kids, COPS, and Communities

1990 and 1994, 33 cities had longstanding ordinances, and

26 major cities passed new laws restricting where minors

can be after 11 p.m. (and some after 10 p.m).42 Little at present

is known about their effectiveness; however, expectations for

reducing violence should not be high since far fewer violent

crimes are committed by children and teens after 10 p.m.

than in the hours immediately after school.43

As violence involving children has escalated, the failure of

current legal approaches for controlling this violence has

become evident. In growing numbers, children are unsupervised, neglected, abused, and delinquent. They cannot simply be removed from their parents and assigned to other adults

or institutions. Children who are repeatedly removed from

their homes and made wards of the state have been found to

have a high probability of being delinquent in later years.44

The most persistent and violent predatory offenders who terrorize their neighborhoods are frequently “state-raised” children who were previously placed in juvenile institutions.45

An equally simple but more compassionate popular response

to stopping youth violence is to spend more funds on teaching youth to be less violent and on providing safe places for

them to play. About 73 percent of the people queried in the

Yankelovich poll mentioned earlier were in favor of more

government spending on educational and recreational facilities for teenagers.46 In response, numerous Federal, State,

and local agencies are funding prevention initiatives.

PAVNET (the World Wide Web site of a consortium of Federal agencies including the Department of Justice) provides

information about 540 prevention programs, many of them

receiving Federal funds.47 Typically, each agency provides

funds for education limited to one facet of one specific type

of problem. For example, in its 1995 directory and resource

guide, the Office of National Drug Control Policy listed 50

Federal funding programs mandated to address different aspects of drug abuse. The programs are administered by 10

different departments and numerous agencies within each

department, yet a substantial body of research indicates that

most single-problem, single-strategy approaches are not effective for reducing delinquency, much less violence.48

While a growing body of research indicates that some forms

of prevention can be effective, the same studies also suggest

that many well-intentioned prevention programs do not have

a discernable impact on reducing juvenile violence or other

forms of delinquency, and some may actually increase delinquency and violence. Types of programs least likely to be

successful in prevention include those that simply provide a

supervised afterschool setting (adolescents most at risk for

delinquency won’t go or may take over the place if they do),

sports, peer mediation, approaches that make gangs more

cohesive, instructional approaches that depend on providing

information about the risks or wickedness of delinquency,

and—counter to popular thought—approaches designed simply to improve children’s self-esteem.49

Approaches that criminologists have found to be most promising for preventing violence and delinquency are relatively

long-term, continuous, comprehensive approaches that involve adults as tutors and mentors who teach children and

teens cognitive and social skills and provide them an opportunity to cooperatively practice these skills.50 These approaches are virtually synonymous with the approaches

implemented by many national youth-serving organizations,

including those described in this report.

Effective Prevention Approaches

Are Integral to National Youth

Organizations

While criminologists have been studying the types of programs that can prevent violence and delinquency, researchers in child and adolescent development have been assessing

approaches that can best help youth achieve their full potential. The results have been very much the same.

A review of several seminal works in the field of adolescent

development has classified six areas in which adolescents

need support and opportunities in the community setting for

building competencies: health/physical, personal/social, creative/cognitive, vocational, and areas involving communal

ethics and citizen participation.51 More specifically, adolescents need opportunities to build and practice basic life skills

known to be integral to healthy adolescent development:

“problem-solving skills, planning and decisionmaking skills,

cognitive strategies for resisting peer and media influences,

skills for increasing self-monitoring and self-regulation, and

coping strategies to deal with everyday stresses.”52

Like criminologists, experts in youth development recognize

that children and teens are shaped in multiple environments.

The separate contexts that are instrumental in determining

immediate behavior and the long-term future of children and

adolescents—“families, schools, peers, the media, the workplace, and communities—have distinct functions, and one

cannot replace the other.”53 However, unlike many criminologists, researchers in youth development recognize that in the

United States afterschool programs provided by community-
Introduction 5

based youth organizations have been a cornerstone of this

network for more than a hundred years.

Beginning in the last half of the 19th century, organizations created to serve children in rural and urban settings included 4–H

Clubs established by the County Extension Departments of the

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Boys Clubs (now called Boys

and Girls Clubs), Girls Clubs (now named Girls Incorporated),

and settlement houses. With the advent of urbanization and

change, organizations such as the YMCA were established and

dedicated to preserving mainstream religious values, first among

young adults and later among younger children.

As suburban areas developed in the early 1900s, other youthdevelopment organizations such as Boys Scouts of America and

Girls Scouts of the U.S.A. were imported from England. Troops

provided opportunities for hands-on learning experiences to

children who, unlike rural youth, had little or no involvement in

contributing to their families’ livelihood and, unlike children in

large urban settings, had limited access to the live arts, museums, or the rich cultural experience of city streets.

Typically, the approaches taken by national youth organizations possess the essential characteristics of programs that

have been found to prevent delinquency: (1) They are comprehensive, attempting to ameliorate more than a single factor associated with delinquency and simultaneously focusing on multiple problem behaviors; (2) they are appropriate

for children of specific ages and developmental stages; and

(3) they continue over the long term, certainly more than a

few months, and often several years.54 The approaches bolster the “protective” factors that allow adolescents to make

the perilous transition from childhood to adulthood without

becoming deeply enmeshed in violence and other forms of

delinquency.

As suggested above, protective factors that prevent children

from becoming delinquent include their individual competence, adults who provide support and safety, productive experiences in school, and—especially in early adolescence—

groups of friends who stay out of trouble.55 Although the

objectives of traditional youth organizations are typically

stated in terms of positive development rather than prevention of negative outcomes, promoting these protective factors is integral to the mission of these organizations.

Many of the activities carried out in youth organizations have

been carefully designed by experienced professional staff to

promote problem-solving skills, intellectual abilities, communication skills, and self-efficacy—attributes now known

to help prevent delinquency.56 By providing opportunities for

parents or other caring adults to play and work productively

together, whether at YMCA aquatics events, Police Athletic

League ball games, Girl Scout and Boy Scout camping trips,

or youth club community projects, these organizations can

help forge closer relationships between children and adult

family members. By creating supervised settings in which

children and teens can meet relatively good kids their own

age and select activities they like and learn from, youth organizations also help children form friendships with nondelinquent peers.

The functions of youth organizations go well beyond protecting children and teens from imminent delinquency. According to professionals most familiar with childhood and

adolescent development, community-based youth organizations constitute a cornerstone of the institutions necessary

for people to reach their full potential. “Afterschool activities that are viewed as voluntary and enjoyable provide a

developmental transition between childhood play and disciplined activities of adulthood”57 needed by all adolescents—

especially those who lack creative play and supportive adults

at home or in school.

In today’s world, where many single parents have low incomes and less time to spend with their children and where

many schools are literally and figuratively falling apart, activities in the community—including those of youth-serving

organizations—achieve increasing importance. Youth organizations are seen as places in the community that can most

readily provide necessary resources children and teens fail

to find elsewhere.58 This is especially important in neighborhoods where all essential resources for children and teens

are scarce and crime rates are high.

Youth Organizations Are Trying

to Reach Youth Most at Risk for

Violence

Although youth organizations have played a recognized role

in raising the Nation’s children, a seminal study by the

Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development found that

communities least likely to have the benefit of youth organizations’ afterschool programs are those in which parents and

schools have the fewest resources to devote to children and

teens.59 In many of these communities, national youth organizations are striving to pull together the fundamental resources needed to implement afterschool programs. They are

simultaneously struggling to recruit children and adolescents
6 Kids, COPS, and Communities

already involved in crime and violence and to minimize the

costs of crime at their own program sites.

Recognizing the formidable problems that children and teens

in many communities face at home and on the streets, youth

organizations are developing new approaches to help young

participants overcome serious obstacles to their well-being

and to reach their full potential. Youth organizations are

acutely aware of what they need to do to recruit participants

at the age when they are most vulnerable to violence—adolescence—from economically depressed neighborhoods with

high crime rates and with residents who cannot provide safety

for their kids or collectively solve neighborhood problems.

Youth-serving organizations know that for this at-risk population they need to duplicate the elements that have for generations appealed to their adolescent participants:

• An environment in which kids are valued and adolescents are considered to be resources rather than problems

for their community. The environment includes clear rules

for behavior and membership, accompanied by flexibility in responding to the real crises faced by many teens. It

also includes adults who are attuned to the interests, aspirations, and values of adolescents, treat them as adults,

yet recognize that—like all children—they still need

protection.

• Activities that present teens with challenges and experiences in planning, preparing for, and publicly presenting

projects they and their communities value. Presented with

enough activities to allow choice, teens are encouraged

to take on activities that will develop their capabilities

through hands-on experience and practice. Prodded,

nagged, teased, and loved, teens are persuaded to meet

the challenges the activities present.

• Ongoing outreach to teens and adults in the community,

with messages that are understandable. Outreach activities involve other neighborhood institutions and people

who are integral to the day-to-day lives of the teens.60

At the same time, national organizations and their local affiliates know that to create these environments, to provide

these activities, and to conduct successful outreach in neighborhoods where youth are at highest risk for violence, they

must deal with the pressing need to deal with crime that

touches participants and staff. Police in some communities

are playing a major role in addressing this issue.

Endnotes

1. Although analysis of several different sets of national

data shows an increase in juvenile arrests for violent

crime in the period from 1985 to 1993, calculations of

the levels of increase vary depending on the source of

data and the types of offenses included in the category

of violent crime. Two data sets are commonly used to

estimate numbers of crimes committed by juveniles. One

is collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics about victimizations of persons 12 years and older; these data are

collected in a survey of a national probability sample of

U.S. households (the National Crime Victimization Survey). The other set of data is collected by the FBI and

includes Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data provided

by police departments and other law enforcement agencies; the UCR data include crime incidents reported to

the police and details about arrestees, such as their age;

supplementary data are collected about homicides.

2. Sickmund, Melissa, Howard N. Snyder, and Eileen PoeYamagata, 1997, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1997

Update on Violence, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department

of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention.

3. Ibid.

4. Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, 1994, “Prevention as Cumulative

Protection: Effects of Early Family Support and Education on Chronic Delinquency and Its Risks,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 15, no. 1:28–54.

5. Snyder, Howard N., and Melissa Sickmund, 1995, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: A National Report, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

6. Sickmund, Snyder, and Poe-Yamagata, 1997.

7. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice

and Delinquency Prevention, June 1994, Juvenile Victimization: 1987–1992, Fact Sheet no. 17, Washington,

D.C.

8. Bastian, Lisa, 1995, Criminal Victimization, 1993, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Introduction 7

9. Sosin, Daniel M., Joseph E. Sniezek, and Robert J.

Waxweiler, 1995, “Trends in Death Associated With

Traumatic Brain Injury, 1979 Through 1992,” Journal

of the American Medical Association, vol. 2273, no.

22:1778–1780.

10. May, John P., 1995, “Taking Aim at Handgun Violence,”

Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 2273,

no. 22:1739–1740.

11. Sosin, Sniezek, and Waxweiler, 1995.

12. Langan, Patrick, and Caroline Harlow, 1994, Child Rape

Victims, 1992, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

13. U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1995,

A Nation’s Shame: Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the

United States, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Health and Human Services.

14. See, for example, statistics on ages of homicide victims

in 1994: Greenfeld, Lawrence A., 1996, Child Victimizers: Violent Offenders and Their Victims, Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, fig. 16, p. 17.

15. Focus groups on violence against women as girls were

conducted by LINC in cooperation with Girls Incorporated, Girls Incorporated of Rapid City, Pocatello (Idaho)

Police Department, and Rapid City (South Dakota) Police Department as part of a locally initiated police research project sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (95–IJ–CX–0047).

16. Maltz, Michael, September 1997, personal communication based on analysis of FBI supplementary homicide

reports.

17. Snyder and Sickmund, 1995, p. 4.

18. Kelly, Barbara Tatum, David Huizinga, Terence P.

Thornberry, and Rolf Loeber, 1997, Epidemiology of Serious Violence, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

19. Snyder and Sickmund, 1995.

20. Ringel, Cheryl, 1997, Criminal Victimization 1996, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, p. 4.

21. See, for example, Simon, Rita J., 1975, Women and

Crime, Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath.

22. Kelly, Huizinga, Thornberry, and Loeber, 1997.

23. Ibid.

24. Greenfeld, 1996.

25. Widom, Cathy Spatz, 1989, “Child Abuse, Neglect, and

Adult Behavior: Research Design and Findings on Criminality, Violence, and Child Abuse,” American Journal of

Orthopsychiatry, 59:355–367. Also Barbara Tatum Kelly,

Terence P. Thornberry, and Carolyn A. Smith, 1997, In

the Wake of Childhood Maltreatment, Washington, D.C.:

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice

and Delinquency Prevention.

26. For example, a U.S. Department of Education survey of

teachers conducted in 1990–1991 estimated that from 2

to 8 percent of teachers had been victims of violence.

However, a Harris poll of a nationally representative

sample of teachers assigned to grades 3 to 12 in 1992–

1993 found that 11 percent of teachers reported having

experienced violence in the school setting. And a 1993–

1994 survey of teachers in 44 schools in Lucas County,

Ohio, found that in schools serving grades 7 to 12, 2

percent of the teacher respondents had been victims of

robbery; 43 percent had been victims of theft; and 21

percent had been physically threatened.

27. For studies of the development of violence, see Elliott,

Delbert S., 1994, “Serious Violent Offenders: Onset,

Developmental Course, and Termination—The American Society of Criminology 1993 Presidential Address,”

Criminology, vol. 32, no. 1:1–22; also David Huizinga,

1997, “Developmental Sequences in Delinquency,” in

L.J. Crockett and A.N. Crouter, eds., Pathways Through

Adolescence: Individual Development in Relationship to

Social Contexts, New York: Erlbaum; and R. Loeber and

D.H. Hay, 1994, “Developmental Approaches to Aggression and Conduct Problems,” in M. Rutter and D.H. Hay,

eds., Development Through Life: A Handbook for Clinicians, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 488–515.

28. Sampson, Robert J., Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton

Earls, 1997, “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy,” Science, August,

277:918–924.
8 Kids, COPS, and Communities

29. National Research Council, 1995, Citro, Constance F.,

and Robert T. Michael, eds., Measuring Poverty: A New

Approach. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

30. Sampson et al., 1997.

31. Timmer, S.G., J. Eccles, and I. O’Brian, 1985, “How

Children Use Time,” in F.T. Juster and F.B. Stafford, eds.,

Time, Goods, and Wellbeing. Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan, Institute for Social Research.

32. Snyder and Sickmund, 1995.

33. See Thornberry, Terence, Alan J. Lizotte, Marvin Krohn,

Margaret Farnworth, and Sung Joon Jang, 1994, “Delinquent Peers, Beliefs, and Delinquent Behavior: A Longitudinal Test of Interactional Theory,” Criminology, vol.

32, no. 1:47–84.

34. Thornberry, Terence P., and James H. Burch, 1997. Gang

Members and Delinquent Behavior, Washington, D.C.:

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice

and Delinquency Prevention.

35. Sickmund, Snyder, and Poe-Yamagata, 1997.

36. Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1992, A

Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool

Hours, New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York.

37. Wilson-Brewer, Renée, Stu Cohen, Lydia O’Donnell, and

Irene Goodman, 1991, Violence Prevention for Young

Adolescents: A Survey of the Art Educational Development Center Inc., prepared for the Carnegie Corporation

of New York, Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Council on

Adolescent Development.

38. Rudenstine, Sonya, 1995, Juvenile Admissions to State

Custody, 1993. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention.

39. Snyder and Sickmund, 1995.

40. Sickmund, Snyder, and Poe-Yamagata, 1997.

41. Mackenzie, Doris, Ernest L. Cowles, and Thomas C.

Castellano, 1995, “‘Boot Camp’ Drug Treatment and

Aftercare Intervention: An Evaluation Review. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute

of Justice.

42. Ruefle, William, and Kenneth Mike Reynolds, 1995,

“Curfews and Delinquency in Major American Cities,”

Crime and Delinquency, vol. 41, no. 3:347–63.

43. Snyder and Sickmund, 1995. The National Institute of

Justice is currently funding research on curfews in several cities. Reports on this research are projected to be

available in 1998.

44. Krisberg, Barry, James Austin, Karen Joe, and P. Steele,

1989, The Impact of Juvenile Court Sanctions, San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency; also

Katherine Hunt Federle and Meda Chesley-Lind, 1992,

“Special Issues in Juvenile Justice: Gender, Race, and

Ethnicity,” in Ira M. Schwartz, ed., Juvenile Justice and

Public Policy, New York: Lexington Books, pp. 165–195.

45. Chaiken, Marcia, and Jan Chaiken, 1990, Redefining the

Career Criminal: Priority Prosecution of High-Rate

Dangerous Offenders, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice; also Jan

M. Chaiken and Marcia R. Chaiken, 1982, Varieties of

Criminal Behavior: Summary and Policy Implications,

Santa Monica, California: The Rand Corporation.

46. Wilson-Brewer et al., 1991.

47. Information about the number of contacts was provided

by J. Thomas McEwen, Institute for Law and Justice.

Information about the number of programs on PAVNET

in October 1996 was provided by John Gladstone, U.S.

Department of Agriculture.

48. See Lipsey, Mark W., 1992, “Juvenile Delinquency Treatment: A Meta-Analytic Inquiry into the Variability of

Effects,” in Cook, Thomas, ed., Meta-Analysis for Explanation, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 83–

126; also Patrick Tolan and Nancy Guerra, 1994, What

Works in Reducing Adolescent Violence: An Empirical

Review of the Field, Boulder, Colorado: The Center for

the Study and Prevention of Violence, University of Colorado.

49. See Tolan and Guerra, 1994; Brewer, Devon D., J. David

Hawkins, Richard F. Catalano, and Holly J. Neckerman,

1995. “Preventing Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offending: A Review of Evaluations of Selected

Strategies in Childhood, Adolescence and the Community,” in Howell, J.C., B. Krisberg, J.D. Hawkins, and

J.J. Wilson, Sourcebook on Serious, Violent, and Chronic

Juvenile Offenders, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage

Publications; also University of Maryland Department
Introduction 9

of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1997, Preventing

Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising,

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office

of Justice Programs.

50. See Tolan and Guerra, 1994; also Brewer et al., 1995.

51. Pittman, Karen J., 1991, A Rationale for Enhancing the

Role of the Nonschool Voluntary Sector in Youth Development, Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development.

52. Hamburg, Beatrix, 1990, Life Skills Training: Preventive Interventions for Young Adolescents, Report of the

Life Skills Training Working Group, Washington, D.C.:

Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development.

53. Based on J. Wynn, 1987. Communities and Adolescents:

An Exploration of Reciprocal Supports, Chapin Hall Center for Children, Chicago: The University of Chicago.

54. Chaiken, Marcia, and David Huizinga, 1995, “Early Prevention of and Intervention for Delinquency and Related

Problem Behavior,” The Criminologist, vol. 20, no. 6.

55. Hawkins, J. David, Richard F. Catalano, and J.Y. Miller,

1992, “Risk and Protective Factors for Alcohol and Other

Drug Problems in Adolescence and Early Adulthood:

Implications for Substance Abuse Prevention,” Psychological Bulletin, no. 112:64–105.

56. Bogenschnieder, Karen, Stephen Small, and David Riley,

undated, received at LINC 1992, An Ecological RiskFocused Approach for Addressing Youth-At-Risk Issues,

Chevy Chase, Maryland: National 4–H Center.

57. Larson, R., and D. Kleiber, 1992, “Free Time Activities

as Factors in Adolescent Adjustment,” in P. Tolan and B.

Cohler, eds., Handbook of Clinical Research and Practice With Adolescents. New York: Wiley.

58. Based on J. Wynn, 1987.

59. Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1992.

60. McLaughlin, Milbrey W., Merita Irby, and Juliet

Langman, 1994, Urban Sanctuaries: Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-City Youth,

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Crime and Youth Organizations 11

“In January, at about 7 p.m., gunfire started going off

behind the building, scaring all the kids who were inside and outside. Most of the kids ran home after the

first shots were fired. The shots continued for about

45 minutes to an hour. When the police finally arrived,

they arrested three teenagers who live about 150 feet

from the building. They were shooting at the apartments right above the [youth organization]. They had

all been drinking.” LINC Survey Respondent

This incident is an all too common occurrence for millions

of children and teenagers living in inner-city neighborhoods,

and the time—7 p.m.—is in the time range when dangerous

events involving young people are most likely to occur. When

they are out of school and out of their homes, young people

are most at risk for committing offenses and most vulnerable to becoming victims of crime themselves.

Today major youth-serving organizations are reaching millions of children and teenagers nationwide, with the Girl

Scouts alone reporting 2.5 million members. They are targeting this time period—and increasingly the most at-risk

youth—for recruitment into safe, wholesome, enjoyable, and

age-appropriate activities. The organizations studied in the

survey sponsored by NIJ and the Carnegie Corporation of

New York (Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Boy Scouts of

America, Girls Incorporated, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., National Association of Police Athletic Leagues, National 4–H

Council and USDA 4–H and Youth Development Service,

and YMCA of the USA) are offering safe havens and alternatives to risky, delinquent behavior for youth in the most

“dangerous” hours of the day for them—from the time school

is dismissed until the early evening hours.

Our survey found that during the school year 3 p.m. is the

most common time for youth organizations to begin activities, and 9 p.m. is the most common time for activities to end.

Chapter 2

Crime and Youth Organizations

Youth-Serving Organizations Are

Reaching Kids in Economically

Depressed Urban Areas

Our conversations with key staff of the national organizations collaborating in this study indicated that despite the

findings of a seminal Carnegie Corporation study1 showing

youth organizations to be least likely to serve those most in

need of such programs (young people in neighborhoods most

affected by poverty), these organizations were committed to

providing programs for more children and teens in the most

impoverished neighborhoods.

Also contrary to the assumption that national youth organizations focus almost exclusively on relatively well-to-do

communities, among all responding organizations in our

study sample of 579,2 under half were located in neighborhoods that could be characterized as prosperous (6 percent)

or middle-class (40 percent). Most were in communities that

were working class (37 percent) or poor (16 percent). Many

neighborhoods were experiencing some structural decay (26

percent) or extensive structural decay (12 percent). Although

very few organizations were located in areas that were considered to be unsafe for walking during daylight hours (8

percent), slightly over half were in neighborhoods thought

to be unsafe after dark.

Local affiliates of Boys Clubs (now named Boys and Girls

Clubs) and Girls Clubs (now named Girls Incorporated) have

long been providing programs for school-age youth in the

least affluent sections of cities. More recently, with the assistance of funding from Federal agencies, both organizations have made successful strides in establishing centers and

branches in public housing and on the grounds of schools in

inner city and other economically depressed areas. In addition to the solid comprehensive core programs for guiding

children productively into and through adolescence, both

organizations have developed age- and culture-appropriate

(and, at Girls Incorporated, gender-appropriate) programs for

preventing a spectrum of harmful behavior, including substance abuse and early initiation of sexual activity. Key to

the programs’ success is the incorporation of activities that

children and teens not only learn from but greatly enjoy.3
12 Kids, COPS, and Communities

Police Athletic Leagues (PALs) and the “Ys” (YMCA corporations and branches) too have long served urban youth.

Under the supervision of off-duty police officers, PALs have

organized baseball leagues for city boys for many years, and

“Y” aquatics programs have become relatively ubiquitous.

In recent years, both of these organizations have reoriented

their primary mission toward providing more comprehensive services to people in inner cities.

While baseball and aquatics programs remain fundamental

activities that bring youth into PALs and Ys, affiliates now

include programs to meet other needs such as tutoring to

enhance academic and employment skills. In some cities

PALs have combined efforts with other youth organizations

to provide more comprehensive services; for example, in

Washington, D.C., PAL has organized boys and girls clubs

to sponsor programs staffed by officers from the Metropolitan D.C. Police Department. Around the country YMCA affiliates have expanded their mission so extensively that administrators often repeat a new informal organizational motto:

“We are still the YMCA, but “A’” [for “Association”] is the

only letter that still tells what we are.” As with Girls Incorporated and Boys and Girls Clubs, local Y branches are also

providing more activities in inner city locations away from

their traditional buildings.

Inner-city areas do not have many afterschool programs, as

the Carnegie Corporation study made abundantly clear. So it

is not surprising that when a national organization charters

an affiliate to provide youth activities in an impoverished

area, school-age children come in droves. On average almost three times as many participants were being served by

each responding affiliate in a poor city neighborhood as in

prosperous neighborhood.

Youth Organizations Are Reaching

Kids Already Involved in Crime as

Victims or Offenders

In response to the growing involvement in crime and substance abuse of “latch-key” children and undersupervised

teens, all seven national youth organizations collaborating

in our study are implementing programs designed to help

youth avoid “risky” behavior as well as more traditional programs providing opportunities for constructive contributions.

Realizing that children and teens in inner-city areas are most

likely to engage in harmful activities and least likely to be

provided with activities essential for their wholesome development, all collaborating organizations are attempting to

bolster the ability of their affiliates and charter members to

serve communities where the need is most pressing.

The LINC national survey of youth-serving organizations

provided evidence that actions are being taken to provide

more programs for children and youth in types of neighborhoods that are commonly underserved. By design, about half

of our survey sample of 579 were nationally affiliated youth

organizations in large cities with relatively high rates of

crimes (about 300), with the remainder in small cities and

towns (about 150) or in large cities with relatively low crime

rates (about 150). Contrary to the myth that some of the national youth-serving organizations confine their services to

relatively crime-free towns, all seven of the national organizations collaborating in our study were providing programs

for children and teens in large cities with high crime rates

that were randomly selected for the LINC survey.

Moreover, almost three-fourths (72 percent) of the reporting

organizations were involving participants during the developmental stages when young people are most likely to become involved in delinquent acts—early adolescence through

the teen years.

Based on the reported problems involving young participants,

organizations were opening their doors to and actively recruiting children and teens at risk for delinquency or violence. Twenty percent of responding organizations reported

having taken action in the past year on behalf of a participant who had been abused or neglected. Over 20 percent of

responding organizations reported that a participant had committed an offense at their program sites during the past year.

Although a relatively small proportion (2 percent) reported

the need to deal with a participant who had brought a gun,

over 7 percent reported having to take action when a participant brought another type of weapon.

Girl Scout and Boy Scout organizations, too, have implemented a number of promising initiatives for actively involving girls and boys in urban neighborhoods where children

and teens lack constructive opportunities in the nonschool

hours. Both scouting agencies have supplemented their traditional activities with programs to help participants recognize consequences and successfully deal with the harsh realities faced by many of our youth, such as violence and substance abuse. Led by volunteer police officers, Boy Scout

Explorer posts in neighborhoods where poverty is rampant

and violence is epidemic are successfully recruiting adolescents to work as law enforcement paraprofessionals. Girl
Crime and Youth Organizations 13

Scout Councils are reaching out to girls in extreme need of

adult support and opportunities for productive activities in

the nonschool hours—including daughters of women in

prison.

Although 4–H and the USDA 4–H and Youth Development

Service may still be best known for their activities involving

youth in the farmlands of the United States, their services are

reaching deep into the lives of children and teens in urban

America. Rather than simply extending traditional agrarian

activities to city locations, programs are based on research

and are carefully designed to promote problem-solving skills,

intellectual abilities, communication skills, and self-efficacy—

attributes known to help prevent delinquency.4

 In some urban

areas hardest hit by epidemics of substance abuse and crime,

4–H and Youth Development staff are among the front line

organizations implementing programs for children and teens

with the highest probability of violent incidents and deaths;

for example, in Washington, D.C., outreach for teen prostitutes is provided from a van that is dispatched on Friday and

Saturday nights to downtown locations.5

The More Vulnerable the Kids They

Serve, the More Crime the Youth

Organizations Experience

Given the high rates of crime in cities and neighborhoods in

which affiliates of collaborating youth organizations are providing services, as well as the at-risk status of young participants, it is not surprising that crime had occurred at many

program locations during the previous year. Among organizations included in the LINC study, more than half (51 percent) reported that an offense occurred at or immediately

outside the primary program site during the program year

beginning in the fall of 1993. Vandalism was the most common type of incident and was reported by approximately 40

percent of the organizations.

Theft of organizational, staff, or participant property was the

second most common form of offense and was reported by

38 percent of organizations. Incidents involving violence in

the past year were reported by slightly over 20 percent of

organizations. Felonious assaults on staff or participants were

somewhat less common.

In general, the less economically prosperous an area served

by a large city youth organization, the more likely the organization was to have experienced crime—especially violent

crime. Crime was a significantly greater problem at program

locations in communities and neighborhoods where needs

for youth services are most pressing. Among organizations

located in large cities with relatively high rates of crime, 61

percent reported at least one crime at the primary program

site in the past year, and 45 percent reported at least one

incident of vandalism. Significantly more organizations in

large cities reported an incident involving violence or threats

of assaults; violent (or latently violent) incidents were reported by 26 percent of organizations in large cities6

 and 16

percent of organizations in small cities and towns.

Within large cities, crime took a greater toll on youth organizations in relatively poor, minority neighborhoods experiencing many forms of urban blight. Compared to large-city

organizations located in all-white areas, those serving minority neighborhoods were significantly more likely to experience vandalism (54 percent compared to 29 percent) and

property crime (64 percent compared to 35 percent); they

were almost four times more likely to be affected by violent

crime (38 percent compared to 10 percent).

Overlying these findings is an additional significant factor the

survey analysis uncovered. The relatively high number of offenses experienced by organizations serving economically

disadvantaged big-city neighborhoods appears in large part to

be a factor of the relatively numerous school-age children they

are serving and the prolonged time periods in which programs

are operating. Responding organizations in poorer neighborhoods were serving significantly more participants and were

operating more hours each year than organizations in more

affluent neighborhoods. In fact, our study found that the level

of crime experienced by the organizations was more strongly

associated with the number of hours they operated and the

number of children they served than with the economic level

of the neighborhood or the presence of minority groups in the

neighborhood. The annual hours of operation and number of

children served by the organization together accounted for

approximately 13 percent of the variation in the number of

offenses reported by the responding organizations.

However, even after controlling for the number of children

served and hours of operation, several aspects of program

setting and participants’ characteristics appeared to be significantly associated with the amount of crime affecting the

youth-serving establishments. As could be expected from a

large body of past findings, age and gender of participants

were significant factors associated with the overall level of

crime. Organizations serving more boys than girls reported

higher levels of crime, as did organizations serving children

of a mix of ages including adolescents (compared to those
14 Kids, COPS, and Communities

serving exclusively younger children or just teens). Program

location was found to be associated with a small but significant variation in the number of offenses reported—organizations located in less affluent areas in youth club settings

had higher rates of crime, independent of the number and

characteristics of youth served. Together number and characteristics of participants, number of hours in operation, and

setting accounted for more than 20 percent of the variation

in the number of offenses.

Gender of participants and the relative economic level of the

neighborhood were the factors found to have the strongest

correlation with the number of incidents involving violence

that reportedly took place. After controlling for the number

of hours in the program setting, which explained a significant but small variation in violence, gender and socioeconomic level accounted for additional variation in the level of

violence. Together these three factors accounted for only a

relatively small amount of variation between organizations.

In fact, there was little variation to be explained because, in

general, youth-serving organizations appeared to be sanctuaries from violence—and for staff and adult volunteers, sanctuaries from all types of victimization.

Most Offenders Are Kids

Independent of where they were located and whom they were

serving, organizations affected by crime during the past program year preponderantly reported that offenders committing these crimes were children or teens rather than adults.

Approximately 32 percent of organizations affected by crime

reported that offenses had been committed by an adult, and

about 66 percent reported that offenses had been committed

by a child or teen.

Adult offenders were significantly more likely to victimize

organizations located in relatively poor areas than ones in

more prosperous neighborhoods; among those affected by

crime, 36 percent of organizations in poverty areas and 41

percent in working class areas reported being victims of an

adult offender compared to about 22 percent in middle-class

and 1 percent in affluent neighborhoods. Adult strangers were

more likely to commit offenses in or immediately outside

the program locations than adults related to participants or

well known to staff or than adults who were known by sight

to the staff. About three-fourths (76 percent) of organizations affected by adult offenders reported that the offenders

were strangers, compared to about one-third who reported

being victims of well-known adults (32 percent) or recognizable adults (31 percent).

More Offenses Are Committed by

Nonparticipants Than Participants

In general, among organizations reporting offenses by juveniles, nonparticipants were more likely to be the offenders

than participants; 42.3 percent reported that offenses had been

committed by nonparticipants, 21.4 percent by participants,

and 36.3 percent by both members and nonmembers. The

balance of young insiders or outsiders committing offenses

did not differ significantly across neighborhoods with different economic levels. However, significant variations in

the membership status of youthful offenders were found between organizations in different settings and between organizations serving youth with different characteristics.

Not surprisingly, organizations exclusively serving young

children were most likely to report that juvenile offenses affecting their organization were committed just by outside

youth; 67 percent said that nonparticipants were responsible

for all juvenile offenses, whereas only 32 percent of organizations serving adolescents reported that nonparticipants were

solely responsible for offenses. Among organizations serving more boys than girls, just 22 percent blamed outside youth

alone for crimes affecting the organization.

Crime Takes a Heavy Toll on

Organizational Resources

Administrators of national youth organizations point out that crime

is a serious barrier to providing programs for children and teens

in inner-city neighborhoods and in other areas with high rates of

poverty and violence. According to these experienced directors,

not only is crime costly in terms of organizational and staff property lost or stolen, but parents and guardians need to know that

their children are safe—otherwise they don’t want them to participate. The children and teens themselves are anxious to find

afterschool locations where they are not in danger.

Yet unlike organizations that expel troublemakers to prevent

crime, in collaborating youth organizations administrators note

that young participants, especially adolescents, are more likely

to participate voluntarily if program sites both literally and

figuratively have an open-door policy. Organizations that are

highly selective may eliminate some troublemakers, but they

also eliminate youth most in need of delinquency prevention

and youth development activities. By being selective they can

earn a reputation among neighborhood youth for being unfriendly or, worse, for being elitist and therefore justifiable

targets for vandalism and other hostile acts.
Crime and Youth Organizations 15

Findings about the relative personal safety of program directors (under 10 percent reported personally being victims

of a crime in the program setting) are not likely to dampen

their concern about the effects of crime on their organizations. Among the organizations reporting at least one violent

incident or property crime in the 1993–1994 program year,

more than 75 percent indicated that the organization suffered

in a definable manner as a consequence. Economic consequences were sustained by 57 percent of organizations; for

example, 43 percent of organizations reporting any crime

had more than $100 worth of property purposely destroyed.

The second type of consequence most likely to result was the

burden on staff who had to deal with incidents involving offenses committed by and against their participants. Close to

half (48 percent) of organizations reporting crime also reported

that staff were involved in activities directly related to dealing

with crime incidents. Staff were just as likely to be reacting to

incidents in which young participants had been victimized

outside the program environment as to crimes that had taken

place at the program site. For example, staff in organizations

experiencing crime were just as likely to be taking action on

behalf of children abused or neglected at home as they were to

be actively engaged in dealing with participants who were abusing other members at the program site.

For about one-third of the organizations (33 percent), crime

also had discernible negative consequences for program operations and activities. Fifteen percent had started to limit

the hours the program operated to times when they thought

participants and adults could be most safe when traveling to

and from the program location. About an equal percentage

had to curtail some activities because equipment or other

necessary materials had been maliciously destroyed. Fear of

crime made it difficult to recruit staff and participants for 12

percent of the responding organizations.

Most Steps Taken to Prevent Crime

Haven’t Worked

Whether or not they reported crimes during the 1993–1994

program year, practically all organizations responding to our

survey had instituted at least one approach that they hoped

would create a safer environment for their school-age

participants.

The most widely used approaches simply involved using

locks on doors, gates, cabinets, and closets to prevent unauthorized access to program areas (reported by 60 percent of

organizations) and organizational equipment (reported by 67

percent). These were also among the crime prevention approaches most recommended by the responding program

directors. Preventing access to organizational equipment was

found to be associated with lower rates of car or van theft.

However, in our analysis, locking doors to program areas

was not found to be significantly related to lower rates of

any type of crime; moreover, unless doors can be locked to

prevent entrance but not exit from the program area, this

measure presents a fire hazard.

Another widespread and highly recommended approach involved requiring a responsible adult to accompany participants when they left the program site. The findings of the

study support this recommendation, since this was the only

measure that was found by itself to be significantly correlated with lower overall rates of crime.7

Approaches that were gaining in popularity involved conducting background and criminal record checks on staff and

volunteers; from 1993 to 1994, 10 percent of all responding

organizations had instituted checks on volunteers and 6 percent had checked on staff. This measure was recommended

by more than 80 percent of program directors; however, fewer

than half of responding organizations were conducting these

checks at the time of our survey.

Measures that were used by the fewest organizations and

recommended by the fewest program directors involved conspicuous distrust of youth; in particular these were practices

for denying participation to youth who were most likely to

be delinquent (implemented by 4 percent of organizations

and recommended by under 10 percent of program directors) and installing metal detectors (implemented by under 1

percent of organizations and recommended by 8 percent of

program directors).

Other approaches that were recommended by many program

directors but used by fewer than half of organizations included programs to help youth avoid becoming victims of

crime, programs to prevent participants from becoming offenders, approaches that actively involve youth in crime prevention activities, and collaborative efforts with other organizations to prevent crime.

While these approaches may be effective in preventing crime

in other settings, they may be more a reaction to high levels

of crime than effective ways to prevent crime. The survey

results showed that the more crime an organization experienced, the more preventive measures it adopted.
16 Kids, COPS, and Communities

Police Responsiveness Is a

Significant Factor in the Level

of Crime

The study did, however, find one factor that appeared to be

strongly associated with less crime. Police responsiveness

to organizational requests was strongly and significantly related to lower levels of overall crime experienced by the reporting organizations.8

 The next chapter describes ways police responded to the needs of the organizations.

Endnotes

1. Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. 1992, A

Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool

Hours, New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York.

2. Six hundred organizations responded to the LINC survey; 21 were eliminated from the study because of incomplete or otherwise flawed data in the returned

questionnaires.

3. See for example, Chaiken, Marcia, 1993, The Girls Incorporated Teens for Teens Project: How It Works, New

York, N.Y.: Girls Incorporated.

4. Bogenschnieder, Karen, Stephen Small, and David Riley,

undated (received at LINC 1992), An Ecological RiskFocused Approach for Addressing Youth-At-Risk Issues,

Chevy Chase, Maryland: National 4–H Center.

5. Cooperative Extension Service for the District of Columbia, 1995, private communication in response to snowball survey conducted by LINC under subcontract to the

Institute for Law and Justice for the Office of Juvenile

Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Grant

95–JN–X–0010.

6. The percentage of organizations in large cities reporting

violent incidents was the same regardless of the crime

rates.

7. Once other factors (including the number of children

served each year) were held constant, this relationship

was no longer significant.

8. Police responsiveness was a subjective measure ranked

by responding program directors who had called the police department for any reason. Despite concern that the

measure might be capturing dissatisfaction with police

among victims of crime, the study found no significant

association between respondents’ personal experience

with crime and their ranking of police responsiveness.
Partnerships With Police 17

Chapter 3

Partnerships With Police

LINC survey responses from directors of youth organizations indicated that the police played an important part in the

success of these organizations’ efforts to provide safe havens and to provide alternatives to dangerous activities and

delinquency, and youth organizations for the most part are

prepared to reach out to their police. Like police in the communities described in the three case studies below, police in

many cities in which survey respondents were located worked

hand in hand with youth organizations in a number of ways.

Two out of three of the organizations responding to the survey had called police at least once during the 1993–1994

program year. Among organizations experiencing an incident involving violence, theft, or other property offense, 18

percent called to report a crime in progress, 20 percent to

report a crime involving a participant, and 37 percent to report another type of crime that had already occurred at the

program location.

Many organizations—28 percent of those that said they had

experienced at least one offense—did not report these crimes

to the police, primarily because they did not consider them

to be crimes. Among the organizations that did report crimes,

close to half said they only reported some incidents, about a

quarter reported most incidents, and the rest said they reported all incidents. Eight out of 10 of the organizations said

the departments were “very responsive” to the calls. Most of

the rest termed the police “moderately responsive,” and only

1 percent said police were “unresponsive.”

Significantly, organizations asking for help from a police

crime prevention unit reported more success in obtaining a

response than those requesting the attention of a patrol unit.

However, calls for help because of a crime in progress or

other crime-related matters generally received a good response. In addition, organizations that reported police were

very responsive were more likely to have low rates of crime

than those who reported that police were moderately responsive or not responsive. These last two groups reported more

than twice the number of offenses at their program sites than

those reporting that their police were very responsive.

More Organizations Ask for

Proactive Than Reactive Policing

Contacts with the police were more likely to be initiated by

the youth-serving organizations to prevent crime than to report crime. In fact only one in four of all the organizations

that called police during 1993–1994 called to report a crime.

About a third called to report another type of emergency.

Many more called to ask the department for help in preventing violence and other crimes involving participants, as shown

below by the survey responses:

• A substantial proportion (nearly 72 percent) wanted an

officer to give a one-time talk to youth participants about

drugs, crime, child abuse, or other crime-related topic.

• About 55 percent wanted pamphlets or other information

about crime prevention.

• A similar proportion (51 percent) asked the department

to provide a drug prevention, crime prevention, or other

program the police had developed for youth.

• About 50 percent wanted to arrange a field visit to the

police (or sheriff’s) department.

• A substantial proportion (nearly 21 percent) called to report suspicious people in the area who might be about to

commit a crime.

• About 24 percent requested police or sheriff’s surveillance when participants were arriving at or leaving the

program location.

• A smaller proportion (about 16 percent) asked for a specially trained youth officer to be assigned to work regularly with youth.

As can be seen from these findings, many of the organizations (half) asked for more than one of the types of prevention approaches specified above.
18 Kids, COPS, and Communities

As part of our survey, we asked respondents to nominate

exemplary prevention approaches carried out by their organization or another organization in their area that they recommended detailing in this report. More than 100 approaches

were recommended for further study. Although many respondents nominated efforts in which they were personally involved, quite often respondents recommended an approach

implemented by another organization. Police programs such

as D.A.R.E. and G.R.E.A.T. were among programs nominated as exemplary.

Organizations Nominated Diverse

Exemplary Programs

Based on brief descriptions provided in the completed questionnaires, the programs and approaches were categorized

as follows:

Type A: Collaborative or relatively comprehensive or extensive community programs and approaches.

Type B: Center-based programs with nontraditional staff,

hours, or participants.

Type C: Workshops and 1-day programs provided for youth

by youth.

Type D: More traditional programs provided by law enforcement officers.

Type E: General, more traditional programs and activities provided by the nationally affiliated youth-serving organizations.

Type F: Videos produced by a national organization—their

utilization and youth group discussions of them.

Type G: More traditional community programs such as

Neighborhood Watch and “block homes.”

Approaches Selected for Case

Studies Met Important Criteria

Project advisers were asked to help select three of the many

interesting programs nominated by the survey respondents

for further study. The advisers unanimously agreed that case

studies should focus on organizations providing collaborative or relatively comprehensive or extensive community

programs and approaches (Type A) or center-based programs

with nontraditional staff, hours, or participants (Type B) in

cities or neighborhoods with relatively high rates of crime.

All advisers independently used active recruitment of youth

at high risk for violence or delinquency as a criterion for selecting the programs they nominated. Although many survey

respondents nominated traditional police programs such as

D.A.R.E. or programs designed to prevent delinquency such

as Boys and Girls Clubs’ “Smart Moves” and Girls

Incorporated’s “Friendly PEERsuasion,” advisers also independently recommended a focus on approaches that went well

beyond delinquency prevention programs and nominated organizations that provide collaborative or comprehensive community programs or nontraditional center-based programs.

Realizing that safe places are a critical concern of youth and

their families, one adviser examined program descriptions

for a mention of police cooperation. Also considered were

respondents’ assessments of the responsiveness of police to

the youth organizations’ requests. Based on previous studies

conducted in a large number of cities, one adviser recommended against several approaches involving police departments that “on paper look good but are not really happening.” The adviser recommended sites that appeared to be

making advances in community policing.

Another adviser assessed the extent to which the programs

reportedly provided resources and opportunities likely to

foster childhood and adolescent development, especially

those culturally appropriate for minority youth. As previously

discussed, research in child development strongly suggests

that adolescents require a range of activities that challenge

them to solve problems, plan and make decisions, resist negative peer and media pulls to risky behavior, and deal with

everyday frustrations. The adviser nominated approaches that

described opportunities for adolescents to develop these important skills.

Based on the large body of research showing that delinquency

prevention is best accomplished by reducing multiple risks

and promoting multiple protective factors in adolescence,

another adviser focused on the extent of arrangements for

cross-agency collaboration available to comprehensively

meet these needs. This adviser selected approaches that described active collaboration between public agencies focused

on children, families, and communities on one hand and nonprofit youth-serving organizations on the other.
Partnerships With Police 19

Exemplary Approaches

Implemented in Three Cities

Were Chosen

The recommendations for approaches for further study were

based on different criteria yet were remarkably congruent

and led to the selection of four approaches carried out in

three cities. One approach selected for study is being implemented in Bristol, Connecticut; one in Arlington, Texas; and

two in Spokane, Washington.

Followup calls to survey respondents in these sites further

suggested that all three cities provide an opportunity to research exemplary collaborative approaches. These three cities also offer wide variation in terms of geographic location,

economy, history, and culture. Spokane and Arlington both

have relatively high rates of crime, and in all three sites the

approaches are being carried out in the types of neighborhoods our survey found most likely to be affected by crime—

working-class neighborhoods with sections where residents

were living in poverty.

Two of the approaches, those provided by the Family Center

for Girls and Boys in Bristol and the Teen Center in Arlington, involve facility-based youth development programs with

special outreach to and activities for adolescents facing threats

to their current and future safety and well-being. The primary program sites are settings our survey found most likely

to be affected by crime—centers entirely devoted to programs

for children. Both the Bristol and Arlington centers are noticeably free of graffiti, vandalism, and other evidence of

structural decay evident on other buildings in the nearby vicinity. Activities in both centers are carried out with the active support and collaboration of police.

Typical of many of the surveyed organizations serving children in less affluent neighborhoods, the centers in Bristol

and Arlington are providing activities 6 or more days each

week for relatively high numbers of school-age children and

teens. However, many of the adolescents being served in these

centers are not typical of those who most frequently participate in youth centers.

The Family Center in Bristol includes among participants

teen parents and their babies, young offenders assigned by

the Bristol Juvenile Review Board to carry out community

service, and children who are physically challenged. The

Arlington Teen Center actively recruits and provides productive activities for adolescents with diverse ethnic backgrounds and a spectrum of gang affiliations. The neighborhood from which participants are drawn had been experiencing a surge of youth violence, and a relatively large number of participants have previously been involved in some of

the most serious incidents, including homicides.

Thus the Bristol and Arlington programs offer approaches

that hold special promise for providing wholesome alternatives for at-risk youth during the afterschool and early evening

hours.

The two approaches in Spokane—Nevawood COPS Youth

Volunteers and the Washington State University Cooperative Extension Family Focus Program—are taking place in

two neighborhoods in which the Spokane Police Department

is carrying out one of the most innovative community oriented policing services (COPS) efforts in the country. Both

the COPS youth volunteers in the Nevada-Lidgerwood

(Nevawood) area and Family Focus in the West Central Spokane communities are integral to comprehensive COPS efforts. Before Family Focus and COPS West, Central Spokane was known as “felony flats.” The contiguous Nevada

and Lidgerwood neighborhoods were never among the highest crime areas, but before the COPS efforts were initiated,

the community reportedly began to experience increasing

rates of crime, including more burglaries, more vandalism,

and more youth violence. The approaches in Spokane are

distinctive because they so greatly involve the police in all

aspects of dealing with the youth served.

The Organizations Implementing

These Approaches Are Affiliated

With One or More of the National

Organizations Participating in

the Study

The Family Center in Bristol and the Teen Center in Arlington are both affiliates of Girls Incorporated. The Nevawood

youth volunteers are organized as a troop associated with

Girls Scouts of the U.S.A., and the Family Focus program is

part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture 4–H and Youth

Development Service.

In addition to their innovative approaches, the selected organizations are implementing traditional youth development

practices that may be just as or more beneficial in creating

safer places in the nonschool hours. Although the specific

activities carried out by participants vary from approach to
20 Kids, COPS, and Communities

approach, each is deeply rooted in a fundamental youth development perspective and incorporates basic youth development processes including:

• Providing a choice of age-appropriate activities that are

mentally and physically challenging and have been enjoyed by generations of children and teens under the supervision of mature adults trained in child and adolescent

development.

• Creating ongoing opportunities for school-age participants

to share responsibilities and learn from each other, at the

same time creating similar opportunities for parents,

neighbors, and community organizations to work together

in raising children.

Moreover, and perhaps most important, although the approaches involve staff and activities that can effectively promote wholesome development, as programs provided by

many affiliates, they also demonstrably and observably are

enjoyed by the young participants as well as the adults.

Some processes integral to the selected approaches are less

common among other youth-serving organizations. These

involve the remarkable extent to which they are reaching out

into the community to involve children, teens, and adults

who could greatly benefit from but are not already involved

in these types of activities—actively recruiting them and

when necessary modifying times, locations, organizational

rules, or content to meet special needs. The organizations

selected for study also seem to have an uncommonly clear

recognition of the limits of any one organization’s ability to

serve all children in the community and to meet all the needs

of the children who are being served. They are a vital part of

a network of organizations that together are creating safer

and more productive environments for children and teens in

the nonschool hours.

The directors of the organizations selected for study were

working hand in hand with other local youth development

agencies affiliated with national organizations—more specifically affiliates of the YMCA of the USA in Arlington and

Spokane, the Boys and Girls Clubs in Arlington and Bristol,

and the Boy Scouts of America in Spokane.

This recognition and participation in a network of agencies is

due as much to the communities in which they were located

as to organizational direction. Each community had launched

a comprehensive effort to identify and meet enduring and

emerging needs of young people in the city. The innovative

practices being carried out by the organizations were developed to address specific concerns about the safety and

wellbeing of children identified through these systematic community efforts. All are adaptations of more typical youth development practices to meet the realities and constraints faced

by school-age children and families living in their city.

Therefore the innovative approaches selected for study can

best be understood in the context of the cities in which they

are occurring, the needs of youth systematically identified

by collaborative effort, the particular needs the organization

was striving to meet, the ongoing collaboration of other youth

development organizations to meet those needs, and the collaboration with other private and public agencies—in particular, the police.

The three case studies that formed a core complement to the

LINC survey follow. They describe programs in the old town

of Bristol, Connecticut, the growing city of Arlington, Texas,

and the inner-city neighborhoods of Spokane, Washington.

Bristol, Connecticut

Bristol is located in the rolling hills of central Connecticut.

The city was first incorporated in 1785 but was founded before the Revolutionary War. Like numerous New England

towns that began as agrarian English settlements and rapidly

developed into urban manufacturing centers, Bristol shifted

early in its history from farming to clockmaking and then to

production of other metal goods. Over the centuries, Bristol

attracted new immigrant groups to provide the manual labor

needed for industrial growth. Today Bristol’s population of

60,000 has become more ethnically diverse. However, unlike larger cities that have gone through successive waves of

ethnic and racial change, many of Bristol’s families of French,

Polish, Italian, and Irish descent have lived there for generations. Goods-producing industries have been outnumbered

by service industries, and the relatively homogeneous working-class environment has changed. The central city is now

marked by areas of poverty, and upscale middle-class homes

are going up in the outlying areas. Yet Bristol proudly maintains its distinctive red brick 18th and 19th century structures and its blue-collar origins.

As in many New England cities and towns, honor is given to

residents who can claim they are lifelong residents or Bristol

natives, and prestige is earned through contributions to organizations rooted in the community rather than ones having national or State affiliations.
Partnerships With Police 21

Many business owners were raised in Bristol, attended Bristol

schools, and now contribute time to the schools as part of

the Bristol Mentor program; in the 1994–1995 school year,

through a school-business partnership, more than 300 people

committed an hour each week to support students in schools.

Problems Affecting Youth Have Worsened

Educators and administrators of youth-serving organizations

believe that many problems have intensified in the past decade. “Our city used to be more like a stable small town,”

one educator commented. “Now we have many children from

split families moving back and forth between Bristol and

other cities, new families moving in to escape big city problems but bringing big city problems with them: children who

are abused, neglected, malnourished, and lacking basic medical care.” Information from Bristol Hospital indicates that a

growing number of such cases involve single mothers raising children in public housing. Because of mental illness,

many are having great difficulty coping with their children.

The schools are finding that while rates of teen pregnancy

have remained the same for a period of years, younger girls—

even those of middle-school age—are now having babies.

Police and other agencies find that children are committing

crimes at younger ages.

Public Agencies and Local Coalitions

Assessed Needs

For two decades the City of Bristol Youth Services Bureau,

one of 69 bureaus formed by the State of Connecticut more

than 20 years ago, has been assessing the needs of children.

Specifically mandated and funded jointly by the State and

municipality to be an administrative coordinating unit for all

community youth services, as well as a direct service provider, the Youth Services Bureau functions to meet the needs

of all the city’s children and teens as well as those with special needs, including youth who have come to the attention

of the juvenile justice system. Although the core professional

staff is relatively small (three professionals in 1995), the

agency was instrumental in the formation of the Greater

Bristol Community Leadership Team (GBCLT). This is an

organization of local officials, representatives of community

and business groups, and directors of public and private agencies and service organizations whose mission is to link the

public and private sectors of the greater Bristol community

to maximize opportunities for families and individuals. Based

on a survey of youth and family service needs, GBCLT has

designated public safety a top priority and considers organizing neighborhoods and improving access to services to

be integral to its mission.

In addition, other information gathered from schools and State

and local agencies (including the Bristol Police Department)

led local leaders to conclude that community-based services

for youth, including afterschool programs, are essential for

community and personal problem solving, public safety, and

community development. In particular, afterschool approaches were seen as necessary to:

• Counter peer pressure to engage in harmful behavior and

counter the availability of alcohol, drugs, and other temptations.

• Build children’s positive self-concepts by providing them

with opportunities for rewarding activities.

• Divert youth from the juvenile justice system.

• Help parents, children, and teens cope with changes in

family structure.

• Alleviate boredom among some adolescents and meet

children’s and teens’ need to have fun.

Given the range of youth issues recognized in Bristol, the

Youth Services Bureau and cooperating agencies realized that

a multifaceted collaborative approach would be most effective in resolving them. Identified as essential were approaches

for children and adolescents already experiencing difficulties, as well as programs for promoting personal growth and

development among all Bristol youth.

Implementing a Collaborative Approach

Required Building Community Support

Bristol used several approaches for gaining and maintaining

widespread support for creating safe places for youth in the

nonschool hours:

• Preparing community leaders for collaboration to meet

the needs of children and teens.

• Actively engaging many city officials and directors of influential organizations.

• Broadening the base of support by reaching into communities to achieve strategic objectives.
22 Kids, COPS, and Communities

specific grades—such as the sixth grade

Friday night socials—are held on a regular

basis. In the nonschool hours there is typically a stream of children and parents coming and going, groups of parents talking

quietly while waiting for participants to finish activities and, not infrequently, a parent

who is trying to convince a young participant that “it is really time to leave now.”

Neighborhood families with children are

encouraged to use the playscape equipment

when it is not in use for Family Center activities, and, barring rain, a few parents or

other supervising adults are usually sitting

outside the center.

As in most Girls Incorporated settings,

center staff have both academic degrees

and experiential training for providing the types of instruction and emotional support children and adolescents need to

try challenging new activities—and to try again if initial attempts are not successful. A relatively high number of staff

are themselves Girls Clubs of America “graduates” and consider their lives enriched and their decisions to enter the youth

development profession shaped by their early and ongoing

Girls Clubs experiences.

Members of the board and trustees for the Family Center are

representative of the breadth of public and private sector representatives who have been involved in providing services

for youth in the nonschool hours; they include an assistant

superintendent of schools, the president of one of the leading industrial companies, a CPA, an insurance company administrator, an employee of a city department, an investment

manager in a local branch of a major bank, and several retired residents.

Two programs in particular carried out by the Bristol Family

Center are also types of youth development programs that

have been found to have long-term success in reducing

children’s involvement in crime and delinquency. One involves outreach and services to adolescent parents and their

babies. The other diverts first-time juvenile offenders from

the justice system and into productive youth development

programs.

The primary means of implementing these approaches was

through:

• Community workshops on human service activities, community change, networking on several levels, and effective youth programming.

• Experiential programs, such as the city’s “Challenge

Course,” a facility for carrying out activities that build

community teamwork and teach cooperative problemsolving skills.

• Neighborhood outreach and focus groups that targeted

eight neighborhoods for training on how to bring about

systematic change.

Support building led to the development of a multifaceted

center that incorporated a focus on supporting families and

preventing delinquency.

The Bristol Family Center for Boys and Girls

Is a Comprehensive, Facility-Based Youth

Development Program

The Family Center is open for activities on weekdays from

6:30 a.m., when preschoolers are dropped off for child care,

until 9 p.m. when teens finish swimming, gymnastics, dance

classes, or other activities. On Saturday it is open from 8 a.m.

to 5 p.m. In addition, other events, limited to adolescents in

Family Center girls put on a show for seniors.

Family Center in Bristol, Connecticut
Partnerships With Police 23

The Bristol Family Center Young

Parent Program Helps Pregnant and

Postpartum Teens

For many years, clinical services for pregnant adolescents were provided by a local hospital. To help

prevent the growth in inadequate child care, Girls

Incorporated was asked to provide a once-a-week

parenting class for adolescent mothers and fathers

at the hospital clinic. However, it became evident

that a more comprehensive approach was needed,

given the 90-percent school dropout rate of pregnant teenagers. Many pregnant teens did not show

up for scheduled physical exams and frequently

missed parenting classes at the hospital. In addition

to clinical services, the young mothers needed daily

support both during their pregnancy and after childbirth to ensure that their own educational, health, and emotional needs were met in addition to the needs of their babies.

Given its long-term affiliation with Girls Incorporated and its

experience in supporting the comprehensive development of

girls and teen women, the Family Center seemed the logical

choice to coordinate efforts to meet this need.

Under the direction of Family Center staff and in collaboration with Bristol public schools, pregnant and postpartum

teens now have the option of continuing their education at

the center. School classes are held during school hours, with

individual instruction available since the classes are relatively

small. Instruction is given in infant development, child psychology, nutrition, and other topics integral to good parenting.

Not only do the young parents lack the skills for child rearing that come with maturity, but many do not have good role

models to imitate because their own mothers and fathers may

never have had the opportunity to learn good parenting skills.

A room directly across the hall functions as a nursery staffed

by experienced childcare workers. During breaks between

classes in the Family Center and in the schools, the childcare

providers encourage the young mothers and fathers to play

with their babies, change them when necessary, and discuss

sleeping and eating patterns and other concerns.

Frequently, typical adolescent stresses come to the fore—

emotional stresses such as the need to establish an independent identity leading to conflicts with their own mothers and

fathers; social affairs involving boy friends, best friends, and

dating; and academic subjects involving future career choices.

To address these concerns, trained Family Center staff provide case management and individual counseling. Close and

ongoing coordination between the clinical staff in the hospital, the teacher assigned by the school, and the Family Center program coordinator helps ensure immediate attention to

these problems. Home visits by the Family Center staff in

the nonschool hours also help.

The Family Center recruits and trains adult mentors who provide the young mothers with additional support in the form

of advice and friendship. Mentors are volunteers—usually

parents themselves—who receive 12 hours of training before they are matched with pregnant teens. They commit at

least 6 months to the program and provide between 1 to 4

hours’ encouragement each week to the young mothers. More

than half the matches are successful and lead to an ongoing

supportive relationship that lasts throughout the perinatal

period.

The program has added a peer counseling component to help

strengthen the young parents’ resolve to delay further pregnancies until they are older, more educated, and financially

independent. Young parents who have returned to school provide information to their peers about pregnancy prevention.

According to the assistant superintendent of schools, although

pregnancy rates among students have not declined, the percentage of teen mothers who complete school has increased

from about 11 percent to 85 percent, and the number of teen

mothers having second babies has greatly decreased. Bristol

Hospital officials say very few cases of child neglect or abuse

are now found among the teen parents.

Teen mom gains positive support at Bristol’s Family Center.

Family Center in Bristol, Connecticut
24 Kids, COPS, and Communities

The Family Center’s positive support for teen parents is

matched by its involvement in the lives of youth at risk of

following a delinquent path.

The Bristol Juvenile Diversion Program Is a

Collaborative Effort With Other Agencies

The Bristol Police Department and the Youth Services Bureau are the lead agencies in the coalition implementing the

juvenile offender diversion program in which the Family

Center collaborates. The coalition also involves the Bristol

Public Schools, other youth development organizations, the

Department of Probation, and both public and private agencies providing clinical services for school-age children and

their families.

Representatives from these agencies meet on a regular basis

to review cases of juveniles who have been detained by the

police. Representatives who attend the Juvenile Review Board

meetings are generally “hands-on” practitioners who have

ongoing contact with a relatively large number of schoolage children in Bristol. All information discussed during review board meetings is confidential.

First, a juvenile officer provides detailed information about

the incident leading to the arrest of a juvenile, including information about all children directly or indirectly involved.

During the meeting members of the board can often provide

additional information about the family and background of

the children involved in these incidents. Since those attending include juvenile officers from the police and probation

departments, school counselors, directors of afterschool activities for adolescents, and staff from local agencies providing psychological counseling, a multifaceted view of the

young offenders can be developed.

Board members discuss alternative options for a plan of action for each child, with options ranging from essays to be

written by the young offenders about the consequences of

their offenses for their own future and for people affected by

the crime to prosecution in adult court. For first-time adolescent offenders involved in minor crimes, a common alternative is restitution through community service; in these cases

the Family Center representative has the option of volunteering to place the adolescent as an aide in one of the Family Center programs.

Adolescents who perform community restitution in the Family Center must sign a contract with the Juvenile Review

Board that specifies the number of hours they are to work in

a set calendar period. They are given the Family Center telephone number, the name of a staff contact, and instructions

about how to call and set up their work schedule. If they do

not contact the center staff or fail to complete their contract,

the review board is notified and the case is brought up for

review again.

The only Family Center staff members who know which

young program aides are providing involuntary service are

the one that served as the representative on the review board

and the participant’s contact in the center. They make a special effort to provide extra opportunities for counseling that

will help the adolescent choose more constructive, productive actions on an ongoing basis, including continuing to

spend nonschool hours as a regular participant.

Police Are Involved With the Family Center in

Other Ways as Well

In addition to their ongoing Juvenile Review Board actions,

police officers work directly with children in occasional

projects jointly sponsored by youth organizations and the

police departments in neighborhoods where children appear

to be especially at risk. During activities such as antidrug

poster-coloring contests, officers talk with the children and

have an opportunity to learn about drug activities, family

abuse, and other threats to the children’s well-being. Although

such intelligence about illegal neighborhood activities is investigated and can result in law enforcement actions, officers more typically respond to problems in the family by referring the family to a local agency with programs or services appropriate for helping resolve specific problems.

Bristol officers also provide special training for youth organization participants on such topics as gang awareness and

dealing with babysitting emergencies. Patrol officers regularly drop by youth centers as part of the Bristol Police

Department’s “Walk-and-Talk” community policing approach. In their community outreach, officers have reportedly changed the focus of Neighborhood Watch from complaint sessions to proactive citizen activities for monitoring

gang and drug activity and organizing block parties and other

productive activities for children and teens. The police department helps obtain small grants for these parties.

Community Support and Volunteer Time Are

Essential to the Success of the Family Center

The Juvenile Review Board and the Young Parent Program

are two examples of the coalitions formed in Bristol to en-
Partnerships With Police 25

sure that children and teens receive the services they need to

avoid becoming involved in crime in the nonschool hours.

Another is the Child Protection Team coordinated by the

Bristol Hospital Department of Social Services and composed

of representatives from the Family Center, the Department

of Mental Retardation, a sexual assault crisis intervention

organization, the visiting nurses association, the Bristol Board

of Education Special Services Administration, and the Bristol

Youth Services Bureau. The team assesses cases of abuse or

neglect that come to the attention of any of the collaborating

agencies, takes appropriate action, involving other agencies

if necessary, and conducts followup assessments.

Volunteer activities are encouraged by both the public and

private sectors. Students are given credit toward high school

graduation for community service. More than 300 students

each year work in the nonschool hours as volunteer aides in

the Family Center, the local hospital, the library, and other

community organizations. Each school in Bristol has been

“adopted” by a business that encourages its employees to

meet with an individual student during the work day. Employees of city agencies are also encouraged to become

mentors.

In other words, Bristol has successfully mobilized a variety

of community resources to meet agreed-upon needs for support for teen parents and positive experiences for children to

counteract a variety of risk factors for youth in this changing

community.

Arlington, Texas

With a population of more than 270,000, Arlington, Texas,

is in essence the newest and largest city involved in the case

studies and the city with the widest range of economic levels. Located between Dallas and Fort Worth and within sight

of the tall buildings in both central cities, Arlington is the

home base for several major corporations including American Airlines, Arlington General Motors, and the electronic

firm Tandy’s Incredible Universe. The faculty of the University of Texas at Arlington, located in the center of the city,

have helped boost the educational level of residents to one

of the highest in the Nation. Business at hotels and restaurants is supported by their proximity to the Dallas-Forth

Worth Airport, the theme park Six Flags Over Texas, and a

new baseball park.

Arlington residents are offended by those who refer to the

city as a bedroom community for Dallas and Fort Worth,

pointing out that Arlington was established as a trading post

more than 150 years ago. However, as with many Texas cities, the development of the settlement into a major urban

area was primarily a post-World War II phenomenon made

possible by 20th century transportation. Residents are fond

of pointing out that Arlington has an established reputation

for good schools, high-quality living, and a flavor distinct

from either of the two large bordering cities. Arlington has

grown rapidly in the past decade precisely because of those

characteristics and has attracted a spectrum of new residents,

including commuters who are building large homes in new,

well-to-do neighborhoods. Many of Arlington’s new families have school-age children and two parents working to

maintain affluent life styles.

New arrivals have also included families living in poverty

who are trying to escape the severe difficulties, including

early deaths, common to the economically depressed areas

of the larger cities. Large apartment complexes have been

designated as assisted housing and are themselves ethnic

enclaves of primarily African-American or Hispanic residents

within the larger confines of Arlington. Both long-term residents and recent arrivals are concerned by the city’s precipitous growth, changing nature, and consequent strain on

services.

Crime Is a Concern in Arlington

Arlington’s history of problems involving crime and delinquency are well documented by studies sponsored by city,

State, and nonprofit agencies. In 1993, Tarrant County, which

contains all of Arlington and part of Fort Worth, had one of

the highest crime rates in Northeast Texas, surpassed only

by adjacent Dallas County. The area had a relatively high

availability of guns; Tarrant, Dallas, and adjacent counties

had more than 9,000 dealers legally licensed to sell firearms.1

This may help explain why in Tarrant County in 1993, more

than 70 juveniles were referred to court for violent crimes,

including 25 for murder.2 But a recent study by a senior faculty member at Sam Houston State University suggests that

Arlington’s overall efforts to reduce crime are having a demonstrable impact. The Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan

area had the second highest overall crime rate among all

metropolitan areas in Texas in 1984, but in 1993 it ranked
26 Kids, COPS, and Communities

15th. Although the rate of violent crime increased, the increase was less than in the majority of other Texas metropolitan areas.3

 Moreover, perhaps due to vigorous substance

abuse prevention efforts in the Arlington area, Tarrant County

has had a relatively low rate of drug-related arrests.4 Gang

prevention also seems to be paying off. Police officers report that Arlington youth who identify themselves as gang

members do not appear to be connected with gangs in other

cities but belong to new, transitory groups that borrow gang

names and symbols described in newspapers and on television from Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities.

Organizations and Coalitions Pave the Way for a

Comprehensive Response to Youth Risks

Crimes affecting youth are a special concern among the many

civic associations committed to preserving quality of life in

Arlington. They gathered information, analyzed it, and drew

up recommendations that eventually became a specific plan

of action. Steps along the way included the following:

• The United Way of Metropolitan Tarrant County organized an effort to assess community problems and to identify the resources needed to address the most serious.

Under the direction of the United Way’s 1990 Priorities

Committee composed of executives from corporations,

volunteer organizations, and public agencies, an indepth

study of community problems was launched. Findings

regarding youth and their families accounted for 8 of the

10 problems given top priority by the Priorities Committee. They were school dropout; chemical misuse and dependency; family distress, stress, and life crises; illiteracy;

lack of child care; youth at risk (of not making a successful transition to adulthood); teen pregnancy; and violence

and victimization. Lack of child care and youth at risk

were identified as focal issues to be addressed through

collaborative community effort.

• Citywide task forces, spurred by a City of Arlington Crime

Prevention Action Plan designed by 100 residents and community professionals, carried out research in the areas of

violent crimes, education and youth, business, and neighborhoods. What they found led them to recommend the

creation of afterschool and summer programs as well as

greater availability of existing programs.5

• Arlington Human Service Planners (AHSP) convened a

group of citizens and youth service professionals to explore the dimensions of issues concerning children in the

city. In addition to a staff member from the agency funding AHSP (United Way of Metropolitan Tarrant County),

the AHSP Committee included representatives from seven

voluntary youth-serving organizations and representatives

from city agencies that deal with youth (including the

police department, the public library, and the department

of parks and recreation). The school district provided information about the precipitous increase in the number of

children entering Arlington schools in the past decade and

showed the extent of problems such as the number of pregnant and parenting teens in school and school dropout

rates. The police provided information about the number

and types of arrests of youth, and the Department of Child

Protective Services pinpointed neighborhoods most likely

to report child abuse. The AHSP Committee recommended

the establishment of a permanent city-sponsored citizens

commission on youth and families.

These collaborative efforts led to a specific plan of action

for providing afterschool programs for as many school-age

children in Arlington as possible. The plan had three primary activities:

• Actively recruiting high-risk children and teens to participate in existing centers, including Boys and Girls Clubs

Centers and the Arlington Youth Services Multipurpose

Center.

• Creating new centers in unsupervised areas where children and teens were already congregating in the nonschool

hours. Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington has taken the

lead in this effort.

• Providing licensed childcare in the afterschool hours in

all elementary schools in Arlington and contracting with

the three major youth-serving organizations in Arlington

to administer the childcare and furnish age-appropriate

youth development activities. The three agencies involved

are the YMCA, Arlington Youth Services, and Arlington

Boys and Girls Clubs. The three organizations have divided the schools more or less equally, and fees for

childcare are based on a sliding scale depending on the

family’s income.

The Teen Center Provides Safe Activities 7 Days

a Week

The Teen Center was opened in 1992 by Arlington Youth

Services (AYS) as part of its ongoing adaptation of services

to help address concerns about high-risk youth. AYS itself
Partnerships With Police 27

was established in 1976 as the Arlington Girls Club, and

within 3 years a second Arlington Girls Club center was

opened. While retaining its strong programming for girls,

the organization began to add additional services in the early

1980s, with coeducational activities provided in the new

Multipurpose Center (renamed the Teen Center in 1992 by

the adolescent participants).

The Teen Center occupies a medium-sized, one-story concrete building in one of the older city areas in Southeast Arlington. This is a neighborhood of small homes surrounding

the block containing a large elementary school, the Teen

Center, and an adjacent small building housing an AYS meeting room and a storage room.

The primary areas in the Teen Center consist of an entrance

area with a check-in desk, a separate section of administrative offices and meeting room for the AYS staff, a gymnasium/basketball court, a photography darkroom, a kitchen,

and a large game room. The game room has an area with

computers, another with multipurpose tables used for arts

and crafts, and a third with a couch and chairs, all surrounding centrally placed Fooz Ball and pool tables.

The Teen Center is open 7 days a week. On weekends it is

open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.; teens typically start drifting

in around noon. On school days it stays open until 9 p.m.,

except on Wednesday, when it is open until 10 p.m. (with

only the teens 15 and older permitted to stay). The Teen Center commonly attracts up to 100 participants each day. (The

unduplicated count of teens who participated in center activities between January 1, 1995, and March 15, 1995, was

552. Over 50 percent of participants in January through

March were aged 15 or older. The vast majority—(83 percent) were minority group members, predominantly AfricanAmerican, Hispanic, and mixed race.) Active recruitment by

two outreach workers has resulted in the participation of many

teens identified by the police and schools as at risk. Participation is limited to youth aged 11 to 18 who follow the center rules formally endorsed by the teens.

Observance of Rules Is Emphasized

Participants agree that all who come to the Teen Center will

take care of it, obey all laws, respect the neighborhood, and

treat each other and staff with respect. Participants who smoke

in the building, leave trash for others to pick up, or refuse to

cooperate with staff are asked to leave the building. Instances of

stealing, property destruction, threats, violence, or possession

of illegal substances result in calls to police and legal action.

An additional rule that the teens decided was critical is the

prohibition of gang symbols. Although many of the participants claim gang membership, the Teen Center is considered neutral territory. Signs, colors, gestures, and other representations of gang affiliation are not welcome. Weapons

of any type, including sticks and metal objects, are by agreement not brought into the center.

Photo taken by member of photo class at Teen Center in

Arlington.

Youth participant, Arlington Youth Services.
28 Kids, COPS, and Communities

Given the large numbers of teen boys in the center and many

past incidents involving violence (in other settings), all staff

members are vigilant and constantly monitor all areas. Except for restrooms and the photography darkroom (used only

under the supervision of the instructor), there is agreement

that doors to all rooms occupied by participants must stay

open at all times. Participants are allowed to bring their own

audio equipment as long as they use earphones, but another

unwritten rule is “no loud music.”

Staff Are Conscious of the Teens’ Home and

Neighborhood Environments

Because many participants live in neighborhoods where respect is difficult for adults to achieve, they are sensitive to

challenges from other teens, which usually occur during competitive sports. Alert staff typically take immediate action in

such situations, first by breaking the tension with a simple

take-charge action like blowing a whistle or making a timeout sign, then by talking quietly to the two participants involved in the challenge and demanding an instant replay. No

one is blamed, everyone saves face, and respect is maintained.

The majority of participants have been recruited through

outreach to teens who have already been experiencing difficulties, including contacts with police, in neighborhoods

where most teens never previously had the opportunity to

participate in constructive activities in the nonschool hours.

One critical barrier to participation—the need to get safely

to and from the center—has been overcome by vans owned

by Arlington Youth Services and operated by staff. These

make frequent runs between participants’ neighborhoods and

the center immediately after school is over and at the end of

specific blocks of planned activities.

Teens interviewed have made clear that part of their preference for spending many hours playing basketball in the Teen

Center was not because of the basketball court. “We play

basketball on the street,” they say. But there is no staff member on the street to referee when issues of respect arise.

“Archie, he knows when to say ‘chill.’ On the street, there’s

no Archie to say chill, so we fight.”

Some of the staff are considered more than just “OK.” The

physical education instructor, who has a rich experience in

working with delinquent youth, is admired as much for being fair as for his height and obvious skills on the basketball

court. He recognizes the dreams the teens are playing out on

the Teen Center court, and while he doesn’t discourage these

dreams, he takes opportunities to sit on the bleachers and

talk to them about more realistic ways of achieving success

as adults. The photography instructor, a professional who

has spent many hours convincing photo supply shops to provide equipment to the Teen Center, has sparked great interest in capturing the world of the center and the participants’

neighborhoods on film. He has instructed and inspired a large

number of teen “hot shots” to produce artistic photos that

are rightfully applauded by residents throughout the city.

To ensure that girls and younger teens are not excluded from

the basketball court, some hours are set aside exclusively for

their use. To facilitate development of the more advanced

skills of the older teens, the court is reserved on Wednesday

nights from 6 to 10 p.m. for their use, and at 8 o’clock the

younger teens must leave the center.

Staff Provide Opportunities for Teen

Decisionmaking and Responsibility

For the most part, the staff provide guidance by asking about

future schedules and needs for supplies. “Are you guys going to want to do anything special for Easter? If you want to

make baskets or something like that for the kids at home,

you need to give me a list of stuff you need—like eggs or

whatever.” Or, “They say it’s going to be nice this weekend.

Do you guys want us to get hot dogs or meat and charcoal so

you can cook stuff for lunch on Saturday?”

More formal opportunities are provided for 3-month positions as paid Teen Center youth workers. Only four paid positions are available at any given time for teens aged 14 years

and older, so the jobs are actively competed for by the teens.

The teens must fill out formal applications and are provided

with a complete job description listing all tasks required of

aides—from washing out trash cans to introducing new members to the rules of the Teen Center and to other youth. Applicants are interviewed, and those hired receive performance

reviews. Although the teens see this as a good way to earn

money, the staff are more interested in teaching good work

habits. Because the youth workers are responsible for keeping the Teen Center clean and tidy, they, rather than the staff,

are the ones most likely to make sure that the other participants obey the rules about taking care of the center and not

leaving trash for others to pick up.

Participants are also organized for carrying out work in the

neighborhood such as gardening for elderly residents. According to one of the staff, the younger participants who do

not yet qualify for paid employment are those most enthusiastic about such opportunities. Organized activities that are
Partnerships With Police 29

more likely to hold the older teens’ interest include programs

dealing with concerns teens are facing on a day-to-day basis, such as substance abuse. Pool tournaments, poster contests for events such as Black History Month, and activities

involving science and math puzzles appeal to them.

Teens in all three groups independently offered the same

suggestion for what they wanted changed in the center—

longer hours on weekends, until 10 or 11 p.m.

“We like this place. We learn how to do nice things

for each other.”

“Before I was always in trouble. Here I have good

stuff to do and someone to break up fights.”

“Other places kick you out—not here.”

“In school I always fail. Here I do good.”

Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington Provides a

Spectrum of Youth Development Programs

Girls Incorporated is one of several national organizations

providing center-based afterschool programs in Arlington.

Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington provides programs at six

locations in different parts of the city.6 It fully demonstrates

the characteristics of seasoned youth organizations delineated

earlier (fiscal and administrative knowhow, professional staff

knowledgeable in child development, and the ability to involve children in activities that develop leadership skills).

Organized and incorporated in 1959, its motto is “Leading

Arlington’s Youth for Today and Tomorrow.” The mission of

the organization is “to help all youth, with special emphasis

on youth at risk, develop to their maximum potential.”

The Main Branch and the Southeast Branch are housed in

buildings owned by Boys and Girls Clubs. As an outgrowth

of an afterschool program, one branch was created on the

grounds of a school. One center limited to youth 13 and older

is located in a city shopping mall. Except for this relatively

new program exclusively for adolescents, all branches serve

boys and girls from the ages of 6 through 17 during nonschool

hours on weekdays and Saturdays.

The Pebble Creek Branch and the Parklane Branch operate

in space provided by the owners of apartment complexes

where many single mothers receiving housing assistance live

with their children. The manager of the Parklane Apartments

interviewed for this project was enthusiastic about the onsite

branch and its effect on the children. She described the destructive behavior of the children, especially the 9- to 12-

year-olds, before the branch opened, pointing out that “with

300 children around and nothing for them to do, of course

they were getting into fights and destroying property.” She

excitedly pointed out areas that in addition to being vandalism free are now clean and neat. “They all love getting the

awards for doing cleanups,” she said.

The Main Branch in Central Arlington Is Typical

of Many Boys and Girls Clubs Facilities Around

the Country

In addition to a gym, the Main Branch has a large game room

furnished with a counter where the staff welcome and check

members in as they arrive and welcome and record information about guest children who accompany members. The

game rooms are equipped with a number of pool tables and

Fooz Ball tables, which are in high demand and provide a

social focus for children and teens.

As at the Main Branch, facilities typically have another relatively large room furnished with long tables and chairs and

several individual stations with computers. Here children

complete homework assignments, receive tutoring, work together on quiet projects such as newsletters, and participate

in programs that involve discussion groups and written

materials.

Except for computers, which are typically the newest equipment, furnishings are commonly long-lasting, sturdy, and

utilitarian, and the floors (other than the high-gloss gym floor)

are swept and polished clean but often scuffed with many

years of use. Walls are frequently adorned with drug and

crime prevention posters furnished by national organizations;

bright splashes of color are provided by the artwork of the

younger children, posters for community events made by the

older children, and trophies and awards for the many “bests”

earned by club members.

Branches in public housing apartment buildings are more

likely to consist of a single large room divided by furnishings into areas for different functions. Members of the smaller

branches are driven on one of several club vans to use the

gym at the Main Branch.

Staff use sanctions for breaking rules in a way that can help

children take positive actions to redeem themselves. For example, since rule breaking frequently occurs when children

become overexcited and lash out verbally or physically, “time
30 Kids, COPS, and Communities

out” is used to discipline a child whose behavior is disruptive. Staff are unambiguously instructed to locate a time out close

to the activity in which the infraction occurred. During the time out, the disciplined

children are required to sit quietly with their

legs crossed and their hands folded in their

laps until they are calm enough to rejoin

the activity.

Teens Praise the SmartMoves

Program

“SmartMoves,” the Boys and Girls Clubs

comprehensive primary prevention program, provides small-group discussion about temptations

many children entering their teen years face on a daily basis,

including alcohol use and premature sexual activity. The program helps adolescents realize how they can refuse to take

serious risks without seeming “not cool” or becoming social

outcasts.

Feedback from the teens indicates that they first came to the

local club because it was there and they had nowhere else to

go. They stayed because the club “hires good staff people—

people who go out of their way to do things for kids.” Favorite activities are carwash fundraisers, volunteer work in nursing homes and at community cleanups, and field trips to

places they have never been before.

When asked what approaches they thought should be replicated throughout the country for all teens, teens have praised

the SmartMoves program for the effects they said were visible among the participants in their neighborhood, especially

on attitudes toward sex and drugs and subsequent behavior.

They have recommended that all adolescents participate

in the program, which they are quite sure helps “the

younger kids” be safer in the nonschool hours.

School-Based Child

Care in Elementary

Schools Keeps Younger

Students Safe After

Classes Are Over

The three organizations that

provide school-based childcare

(YMCA, Arlington Youth Services, and Arlington Boys and

Girls Clubs) have different independent functions and call

their afterschool programs by

different names. However,

they have established essentially the same policies and

practices. All hire University of

Texas students majoring in relevant fields as onsite staff for

the programs. All are qualified

to provide academic tutoring.

Staff hired by all three organizations prepare weekly “lesson

plans” specifying a range of

activities appropriate for children of different ages and with different interests. Each organization meets the high standards required for licensed

childcare, including provision of safe places, a relatively high

staff-to-participant ratio, wholesome snacks, and a sign-out

procedure that ensures each child leaving is in the care of an

authorized adult.

All meet in either the school gymnasium or school cafeteria

as soon as school is over, and the activities carried out by the

children involve a choice of age-appropriate physical exercise (such as circle games for the youngest children and tether

ball or relay races for the oldest), arts and crafts for fostering

fine motor skills, board games for broadening intellectual

skills, and cooperative projects for developing social skills.

Younger children ask for and receive more individual attention from the staff than children approaching adolescence,

who are more interested in communicating with each other.

With the occasional exception of a child who has been assigned to a solitary, short time out for breaking a rule known

to all participants (such as pushing or shoving), and a numYouth pitch in to brighten up outside of

Arlington’s Teen Center.

Youth participant, Arlington Youth Services

Arlington Teen Center kids do yard work

for older residents.

Paul Knudsen, Arlington Youth Services
Partnerships With Police 31

ber of the youngest children who tend to run out of steam

and get cranky as evening approaches, most children appear

to be happily occupied in one-on-one or group activities.

The Arlington Police Department Is Strongly

Involved in Afterschool Programs

A prime area of police involvement is in the juvenile diversion program, in which police play an important role in helping identify detained juveniles for assignment to the Teen

Center by the courts.

In addition, the Arlington Police Department carries out

highly visible key efforts to create safer places for schoolage children. Its efforts involve a wide spectrum of independent crime prevention programs, some implemented by the

department itself and some carried out as part of the City of

Arlington Crime Prevention Action Plan mentioned earlier.

The department provides formal support to youth organizations, and officers at every rank in the department, including

the chief, carry out volunteer activities.

Independent departmental efforts include more than 25 ageappropriate, relatively short youth education programs covering a range of issues. For the youngest latch-key children

(kindergarten through grade 4), programs focus on such topics as self-help in emergency situations and “stranger dangers.” Programs for children approaching adolescence (grades

4 through 6) include making choices, living with alcoholic

parents, responding to gang alerts, and babysitting safely.

The department also implements more sustained approaches,

many developed as part of U.S. Department of Justice efforts, such as the D.A.R.E. program. To familiarize children

with police, officers distribute trading cards with their pictures, their descriptions, and safety tips.

The School Resource Officer Program Plays a

Key Role in the Arlington Crime Prevention

Action Plan

The goals of the School Resource Officer Program are to (1)

provide a valuable service to the Arlington Independent

School District and the community as a liaison between the

school district and the police department, (2) communicate

with youth in a positive manner and dispel myths and misconceptions, (3) educate youth by providing relevant and

informative educations programs, (4) enhance the police’s

image by example and through positive youth contacts, and

(5) provide problem resolution, counseling, and enforcement

when necessary.7 Officers who apply for the position are selected in part on the basis of a prior record of “positive citizen contacts.” As part of their duties, school resource officers maintain contacts with and actively refer children to other

community agencies providing services for children, including the scouting organizations, Camp Fire, Boys and Girls

Clubs, YMCA, and Big Brothers and Sisters. School resource

officers are also encouraged to become Boy Scout Explorer

Post leaders.

Patrol Officers Also Provide Ongoing Formal

Support for Safe Afterschool Activities

Patrol officers carry out background checks of the youth organizations’ staff before they are hired. Staff say the police

respond rapidly to any calls about potential crimes or crimerelated incidents. As part of their regular patrol, officers stop

in at youth centers when programs are in progress and stay

at least a few minutes to talk to the young participants.

At the Teen Center, patrol officers regularly drop by in the

late afternoon and remain to watch and cheer basketball

games. They have an easy comraderie with the staff and many

of the participants. Their presence is not only welcomed by

those involved in Teen Center activities but is key to the residents’ willingness to have the center in their neighborhood.

When the Teen Center was first proposed, the neighborhood

was literally up in arms at the idea of having gang members

and a large number of minority teens concentrated in the

area. However, once the police made clear that they would

patrol regularly to keep the peace, the community agreed to

give the center a trial period. The more frequent presence of

the police in the community is now seen as a benefit rather

than a necessity.

In addition to cooperating formally with the youth organizations, the police department also encourages officers and civilian staff to actively support the organizations in a volunteer capacity. Top administrators serve on the organizations’

advisory boards and capital fund campaigns; staff at every

rank devote off-duty hours to coaching, leading, and working with Arlington’s children and teens on a regular basis.

The Approach in Arlington Receives Wide Community Support

Community leaders interviewed as part of this study are

pleased with the services being provided by the youth organizations described here. Some feel that more caution should

be exercised when recruiting adolescents who have committed crimes. However, even those with the most reservations
32 Kids, COPS, and Communities

about serving young offenders or other at-risk youth take

pride in participants’ individual success stories.

By and large community members appear to strongly endorse many of the innovations that have been made to foster

this success. Coalitions have been formed between professional organizations providing youth services, and children

and teens in youth organizations greatly benefit from the direct services and financial support of volunteer auxiliaries

and community betterment organizations such as the Junior

League. Members of the women’s auxiliary for AYS provide hours of onsite administrative support as well as helping hands for creative projects. Their gala annual fundraisers

such as the Cinderella Ball result in ongoing support for activities for children most in need of safe places in the

nonschool hours.

Spokane, Washington

Shortly before the end of the 19th century, the first settlers

of European descent moved inland from towns on the Oregon-Pacific coast and established sawmills on the Spokane

River. Surrounded by large mountainous tracts of towering

evergreen trees, the area had for many generations been Indian fishing lands; the natural resources attracted other white

settlers who founded Spokane. Within a few years of their

arrival, the State of Washington was established. As with

many western cities, Spokane’s population soared when the

railroad reached town. The boom continued when precious

minerals were discovered, and today the population stands

at more than 180,000. In addition to being a major distribution point for goods for the Northwest, the city provides an

economic, educational, and cultural center for the northeastern part of the State. Residents take pride in the city’s own

acclaimed symphony orchestra and riverside parks built for

the 1974 World’s Fair.

Recent migration from the larger urban coastal cities has

brought new middle class residents to Spokane who are fleeing urban blight and seeking a “better way to live.” However, they rapidly discover that, though smaller in size, Spokane also has its bleak side. It has neighborhoods in which

many residents live in poverty, and it has problems often associated with poverty that have a negative impact on day-today life.

Many new residents in Spokane arrive with no mainstream

American-style leadership skills and few skills for surviving

in an urban area. Some are members of minority groups that

have been disproportionately affected by poverty, including

Native Americans and African-Americans. Others are recent

immigrants from Southeast Asia and East India, while still

others are of European descent and now enmeshed in poverty.

Youth Issues Are Identified by a Citywide Youth

Commission

Established by city ordinance in 1985 and using the “Caring

Community Model” developed by University of Washington researchers David Hawkins and Richard Catalano, the

Youth Commission has taken responsibility for communication and networking, investigation and research, and advocacy. A “report card” on Spokane area youth sponsored by

the commission and area businesses found:8

• The school dropout rate was lower than the national average, but 1,000 Spokane County students who entered the

freshman year in high school in 1988 did not graduate;

Spokane pays about $3.3 million per month to support

dropouts and their families.

• Drugs and alcohol were used several times a week by 45

percent of Spokane area youth; 15 percent used them daily.

Among 10- to 17-year-olds arrested in Spokane, 80 percent used drugs or alcohol, and 65 percent were dependent on substances; 40 percent started using drugs before

age 12.

• Over 20 percent of youth aged 16 through 19 who were

actively seeking employment in 1989 could not find jobs.

Most lacked the skills needed for employment.

• One out of eight 17-year-old teens in Spokane was functionally illiterate.

• In 1986, almost 600 teenagers gave birth; another 556

teens terminated pregnancies; 11 percent of all births in

Spokane were to mothers under 20 years of age.

• In 1987, there were 3,916 arrests of school-age children

(10 through 17), meaning that about 10 percent of all

school-age youth were arrested.

A recent research effort spearheaded by the Youth Commission included a survey conducted by the YMCA to assess

the needs of teens throughout the city, a majority of whom

requested a center of their own. In response, the commission

rapidly conducted an inventory of buildings that could serve

the purpose using resources provided by the public and private sectors.
Partnerships With Police 33

Realizing that the results of citywide surveys do not necessary capture priorities of particular neighborhoods, committees formed in the West Central Community Center by the

Community Development Association carried out their own

neighborhood needs assessment and publicly presented findings and recommendations to the Spokane City Council.

Rather than focusing on problem behavior involving individual neighborhood youth, West Central Spokane task forces

have focused on community conditions that need to be addressed to prevent problems involving school-age children

and to create a safer and more productive community for

children and their families. In January 1992, based on results of five monthly public neighborhood meetings convened

after several extremely serious incidents of violent victimization of children, an ad hoc Security Task Force composed

of residents, representatives from schools and city agencies,

and West Central Community Center staff identified the categories of issues that needed to be resolved in order to prevent future crimes involving children:

• Police-community relations. Specific conditions included low levels of service, perceived discrimination

against minority group residents, and lack of communication between the police and residents.

• Neighborhood security improvements. Conditions included lack of traffic signs, poor neighborhood lighting,

neighborhood eyesores (abandoned houses and cars and

other trash), and lack of safe places for entertainment in

the neighborhood.

• Security education. Parents needed to learn how to take

more responsibility for the supervision of their children.

• Block networking and organizing. A major concern was

the lack of communication between neighbors. This resulted in the inability to take coordinated action to ensure

the safety of children and families.

The task force provided 30 recommendations that were translated into actions that led to the collaborations and approaches

described in this report.

Components of the approaches taken in Spokane include:

• The West Central Community Center, which operates with

the cooperation of many community-based organizations.

• The Washington State University Family Focus Program,

which teaches life skills to adults.

• COPS West, a ministation staffed by community

volunteers.

• Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers, teens who participate

in crime reduction activities under the supervision of

police.

The West Central Community Center’s Outreach

and Programs Seek to Break the Cycle of Poverty

Spokane’s West Central neighborhood is a multiethnic community that has experienced some of Spokane’s worst problems associated with poverty, including crime. The West

Central Community Center (under the direction of the West

Central Community Development Association) functions as

a locus of community consensus building for innovation and

change. The center is working closely with regional directors of 4–H and Girl Scouts to develop new procedures that

will better meet the needs of neighborhood children.

The physical plant is a large, one-story modern building constructed more than 16 years ago as part of a federally funded

effort to revitalize the social and economic structure in the

surrounding neighborhood. In its first 10 years, the West

Central Community Development Association concentrated

on developing the Community Center facility and implementing programs designed to break the cycle of poverty in which

many neighborhood families were enmeshed. WIC (a Special Supplement Food Program for Women, Infants and Children), Head Start, classes to teach parenting skills, and other

community education classes were made available in the

center, as were some youth development activities. However,

the programs had minimal participation among those most

in need, according to the center’s original executive director.

This changed when rigorous outreach was conducted in the

surrounding neighborhood, in large part through the efforts

of COPS West and Family Focus (as discussed later).

A large number of the small, modest bungalows that constitute most of the West Central neighborhood house single

mothers struggling to feed and clothe their children or older

residents living on fixed minimal stipends. Although a number of residents have always lived in the area, some single

mothers followed husbands or boyfriends who were incarcerated in the nearby county correctional facility. A little over

5 years ago, few neighbors knew each other, and most were

afraid to go out after dark because of crime including rapes

and other attacks on people and property. Many residents

felt totally isolated and depressed about neighborhood conditions but didn’t think that they could do anything about it.
34 Kids, COPS, and Communities

Today the West Central Community Center is a beehive of

activity. Referrals for virtually any social, psychological, or

health service are easily accessible in written form or from

Community Center staff. During school hours, the center is

a home away from home for developmentally delayed adults

who are cared for by trained providers until their primary

caretakers return from their jobs. The center also provides a

safe and productive environment for children and teens in

the hours before and after school.

Beginning in the early morning, many working

parents drop their children off for before-school

youth development activities. Rather than being left

in empty homes and walking to school through

unsupervised areas, elementary school children

have choices of activities in which they can participate until they are taken by van to school.

4–H Clubs Are Involved

Realizing the important role they could play before as well as after school, 4–H has started an early

morning club in the center in conjunction with the

Family Focus Program. The 4–H Club activities,

provided as part of the Family Focus Program, are

geared for children living in urban environments

and facing urban realities. Many of the older children are excited about participating in 4–H

projects—hands-on activities accompanied by information tied to the activities that seems like “good stuff to

know” rather than like “boring lessons.”

From after school until early evening, the center is filled with

children and adolescents participating in a range of activities, beginning with snacks and homework help and followed

by a choice of age-graded programs. The administrative staff

is working hand in hand with directors of regional offices of

national youth-serving organizations to develop the interest

and capacity of the community residents to provide volunteer-led youth programs.

Girl Scouts Are Involved

The Inland Empire Girl Scout Council is one of the organizations working with the center. Until recently Girl Scouts

did not have a visible presence in the West Central community. Many mothers in the neighborhood never had an opportunity to be Girl Scouts or other youth group participants

as children. So when the council first tried to organize troops,

they found a lack of women in the neighborhood who valued youth development activities sufficiently to volunteer to

be trained as leaders.

In response to this lack, the Girl Scout Council adopted innovative procedures to meet the needs of girls and to introduce neighborhood families to the benefits of Girl Scouting.

A professional staff member is organizing and leading troop

activities in the center. Parents’ interest and confidence in

taking over troop activities are being bolstered by their recruitment for weekend events and their involvement in

projects the girls take home to complete.

Although the council has adapted ordinary procedures to meet

the realities in the West Central community, it has not changed

the nationally developed, age-appropriate skill-building program that results in recognized achievements by girls in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The Community Center is also the primary meeting place

for cross-cutting groups creating a safe community and promoting the participation of all residents, including children

and teens. Many of these meetings involve coalitions of professionals and community representatives who are collaborating to ensure that services provided in the community are

as productive as possible and to plan future joint enterprises.

After-school activity at West Central Community Center features

team-building game.

Family Focus Coalition and WSU/Spokane County Cooperative Extension
Partnerships With Police 35

The Washington State University Family Focus

Program Teaches Family Life Skills

The Family Focus Program outreach component in West

Central Spokane is designed to teach skills to adults who,

while growing up, did not learn basic methods for managing

their own personal lives or their own homes. Family Focus

is administered by the Spokane County Cooperative Extension of Washington State University (WSU) and supervised

by the WSU community resource coordinator.

Small classes are held in the homes of the participants, concentrating on providing basic living skills first; second, skills

to conduct the everyday business of running a household;

and third, skills for parenting and managing a family. Finally, skills for working with larger groups in the community are discussed and opportunities to exercise them provided through newly formed neighborhood groups.

Processes integral to Family Focus are designed to break

down social isolation and bring neighbors together for mutual day-to-day support and assistance. A door-to-door visit

by the Family Focus Team recruited neighborhood residents

for the program. The Family Focus outreach and implementation staff, family resource assistants, are for the most part

down-to-earth women whose many years of practical experience in organizing homes, managing their own families,

and participating as volunteers in community associations

have equipped them well for their roles.

Conversations with women in the program indicate they are

learning many routine skills—such as using time outs to deal

with their own children. They are gaining confidence in their

ability to take charge of themselves, their homes, their families,

and their neighborhoods. Program outcomes achieved from

January 1, 1993, through June 30, 1994, have been documented

by a WSU study. They included a 35-percent increase in the

average time parents spent with their children each day, a 38-

percent increase in the time parents spent on self-improvement

activities, a 41-percent decrease in watching television, and a

58-percent increase in the number working or going to school.9

The COPS West Ministation Binds Neighborhood

Adults and Youth to Police to Reduce Crime

Housed in a building donated by a local business owner,

COPS (Community Oriented Policing) West is a ministation

staffed by community volunteers (many of whom are Family Focus participants or graduates), a neighborhood resource

officer assigned by the Spokane Police Department and, more

recently, representatives from a number of other public agencies including the Office of the District Attorney and Adult

and Juvenile Probation and Parole. COPS West was organized in 1991 by a community resident who had recently

moved to the West Central neighborhood from a distant urban area. Horrified by the abduction of two children and the

murder of one child shortly after she moved into the area,

she worked with the West Central Community Development

Association director, the Spokane Police Department, and

business owners in the neighborhood to create a comprehensive set of approaches for reducing crime and restoring community control.

Both traditional and innovative neighborhood policing techniques are used by COPS West. Block Watch and McGruff

safe houses are part of the effort as are D.A.R.E. and neighborhood cleanups. But COPS West has also implemented other

strategies. Teams of neighbors are trained in dispute resolution and respond to calls involving conflicts between community children and teens or other residents, if the neighborhood

resource officer is confident that the confrontation can be

handled without violence. Adults patrol the streets before and

after school to ensure that children are safe and that older teens

are not harassing each other or younger children.

A close bond has been forged between uniformed police officers and residents through joint participation in upbeat community events and programs designed to express appreciation for each other’s efforts, such as Holiday Meals for Police Officers. Together with WSU and the West Central Community Development Association, COPS West has taken the

lead in organizing events enjoyed by the whole neighborhood, such as the now annual Neighbor Days when a parade

highlights the start of an entire day of celebration. Integral

to community events is the participation of neighborhood

children and teens in the COPS Junior Volunteer Groups and

other youth groups formed at the Community Center. The

neighborhood resource officer is highly visible at many community events, coalition meetings and, as noted in an independent study of the Spokane Police Department’s Neighborhood Resource Officer Program, carries out activities responsive to the community’s needs.10

Together COPS West (including its neighborhood resource officer component) and WSU Family Focus have achieved documented success in creating a safer community. According to the

police department, the effort has resulted in a 40-percent decrease in crime in the West Central neighborhood between 1991

and 1994. In 1994 the police department hired the resident who
36 Kids, COPS, and Communities

initiated COPS West to coordinate the numerous COPS organizations taking form in neighborhoods around the city.

Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers Are Trained

by Police to Help Prevent Crime

Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers is a core subgroup of one

of Spokane’s neighborhood COPS initiatives. Currently the

group has more than 60 active participants, both girls and boys,

most in their midteens. The girls who belong to Nevawood

COPS Youth Volunteers are officially a part of Girl Scout Troop

437, originally organized more than 10 years ago as a Brownie

Girl Scout troop for 6- to 8-year-old girls living in a predominantly working class neighborhood adjacent to the West Central community. The leader inspired them to go well beyond

basic requirements for earning Girl Scout badges and awards

and to tackle projects that other girls their age never thought

they could.

By the time they were Senior Scouts (aged 15 to 17), the

girls were anxious to take on projects to correct neighborhood conditions that had become visible problems, such as a

deteriorated local park that was no longer safe for their activities. Realizing the changes that the West Central community had achieved through the COPS effort, one of the Scouts

decided to organize a similar effort in the Nevada-Lidgerwood

area as part of her Girl Scout Gold Award Project.

With the support and encouragement of her troop leader and

the active cooperation of the Spokane Police Department’s

COPS coordinator and neighborhood resource officer, the

Senior Scout organized her sister Girl Scouts to recruit other

neighborhood adolescents who could be trained by the police as youth volunteers. She persuaded a local business owner

to provide a facility on Mount Spokane for training youth

volunteers—and also to “provide a hiking excursion, swimming, horseback riding, and meal for each junior volunteer

that is trained.”11 Many girls volunteered, as did neighborhood boys who had never thought scouting was “cool.”

One of the volunteers’ first projects was to reclaim their neighborhood park. They documented and reported graffiti, trash,

broken lights, and other unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

They put on summer campouts in the park for neighborhood

children, and the Spokane police and a special group of adult

neighborhood COPS volunteers provided extra patrols.

Over the following year the Nevawood Youth Volunteers

began to take on a wide range of projects, including “Knock

and Nag” for reminding residents to keep their doors locked,

a blanket drive for residents in need, and Alley Watch—occasional 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. outdoor vigils in areas formerly

experiencing high rates of burglary, carried out under the

supervision of the police. Although their projects take them

out into the community several times a week, the volunteers’

planning meetings are held just once a month and are conducted entirely by the youth. As a group they decide which

of the many projects requested by the community to take on.

The Spokane Police Department Spearheads

Police-Community Collaboration

The department provides one of the finest examples of outcomes that can be achieved through community-oriented

policing services. The COPS initiatives already described in

this report are natural products of a departmental approach

that involves officers in community collaborations for:

• Identifying problems.

• Analyzing the specific facets of problems that have been

identified (who is involved, when, how, and why).

• Taking logical steps and community action to resolve

problems.

• Evaluating the outcomes that have been achieved.

Key to Spokane’s community policing approach is the chief’s

strong encouragement of actions by officers that go well beyond traditional law enforcement and crime prevention approaches, particular those addressing problems involving

Spokane’s children and teens. As a result of the motivation

“COPS West Neighbor Days” parade features quilt made

by COPS West volunteers from an elementary school

student’s design.

County Cooperative ExtensionFamily Focus Coalition and WSU/Spokane
Partnerships With Police 37

provided by the chief and supervising officers, individual

officers in Spokane have developed a range of approaches

for creating safer environments for children and teens.

One example is “Every 15 Minutes,” a 2-day, 1-night program designed by an officer who was sickened by a number

of visits he had to make to inform parents that their teens

had died in alcohol-related accidents on prom night. The program, provided in all Spokane high schools in late spring, is

entirely funded by local businesses and carried out on a volunteer basis by officers and their spouses. Two days of activities involving the junior and senior high students culminate in a multimedia performance by the students that obviously captures their minds and emotions and leads to their

immediate decisions not to drink and drive. Since the program was initiated, there have been no more alcohol-related

fatalities in Spokane on prom night.

The COPS-N-Kids annual car and truck event held at the

end of the summer is another initiative officers have launched

to deal with an ongoing youth problem. As in many cities,

teens from all over the area would drive to a central location

to “cruise.” Many cities have cracked down on cruising by

passing and enforcing ordinances prohibiting this activity.

However, officers in Spokane went to bat for the teens, pointing out that–if properly monitored and directed–cruising was

not innately bad for the community or for the participants.

Officers convinced auto businesses and adults with auto-related hobbies, such as show-car owners, to come down to

the cruising area and help the teens maintain their vehicles.

The annual end-of-summer car and truck event, including

free food and drinks, is promised to the teens if cruising has

remained trouble free during the preceding months. Cruising in Spokane reportedly is an essentially wholesome activity since the officers have been involved, and adults as

well as youth look forward to the August COPS-N-Kids event.

Police Create a Special Boy Scout Explorer Post

The final police effort to be described in this report is a traditional youth development approach, a Boy Scouts of America

Explorer program. But, as is typical of many of the youth

approaches in Spokane, the program is integral to the philosophy and implementation of community-oriented policing services. The Explorer post was started in 1987 as part

of the chief’s plan to create a volunteer program in which

officers carry out youth development and community development activities with the active cooperation of neighborhood volunteers. In addition to the Explorer post volunteers,

others in the volunteer program are police reserve officers,

Spokane Community College students (co-ops), senior volunteers, and volunteer specialists.

The chief realized that, when provided with productive opportunities, older teens can be a powerful community asset

rather than a community problem. The chief involved an organization with a long history of providing proven youth

development programs—in this case Boy Scouts of America.

He delegated the creation of an Explorer post to a police

officer with prior professional experience in working with

older teens who had been recognized for his previous volunteer contributions to the community.

After initial discussions with the national organization to learn

the fundamentals of the Explorer program, the officer visited posts formerly created in other police departments where

Scouts were drawn from urban neighborhoods. The initial

set of Scouts recruited for the program were older teens with

an interest in law-enforcement careers who, according to the

officer leading the post, “were guaranteed to succeed—teens

who were already leaders in church groups or in school.”

And succeed they did. They enthusiastically completed the

rigorous training carried out at the Spokane Police Academy

and began working side by side with uniformed officers and

adult volunteers in highly visible positions. They gained positive publicity for the post and their communities. But that

was just the beginning of the program.

The intent of the post was to involve adolescents who had

little or no previous opportunity for community leadership—

not by waiving the qualifications for Explorer Scouts—but

by stimulating younger teens to meet the requirements for

joining the post. A cornerstone of this approach is the

L.E.A.D. (Leadership, Education, and Development) program provided under the supervision of the officer who directs the Explorer post. Spokane girls and boys in the eighth

and ninth grades can apply for the program and are selected

in part to reflect the ethnic diversity in the city. L.E.A.D.

students participate in an intensive training program similar

to that of Explorer Scouts but more appropriate for their stage

of development. Training not only involves physical exercise but also exercises for increasing communications skills,

teamwork and, as is explicit in the program name, leadership skills. Officers who are involved in working with

L.E.A.D. participants, including the chief, are drawn from

all ranks.

Students who would like to become Explorers but are having difficultly making the school grades required by the program are given extra support. As is common in Spokane,
38 Kids, COPS, and Communities

other youth organizations help provide this support. For example, the Explorer leading a police department horse at a

Nevawood fundraiser had been tutored by several of the

Nevawood youth volunteer participants. Uniforms are donated by local businesses as is other equipment so the economic realities faced by many Spokane teens are not an obstacle to participation. Together, as in many other approaches

involving Spokane youth, police and community members

are working hand in hand to help children and adolescents

reach their full potential and to create safe places in the

nonschool hours.

Successful Efforts in Spokane Benefit From the

City’s History of Forming Coalitions to Address

Shared Problems

In addition to police leadership and participation in youth

development activities, Spokane has benefited from wide

collaboration with other youth-serving public agencies and

community groups. Among these are:

• The citywide Youth Commission, established in 1985

and composed of citizen members (seven adults and four

teens) and advised by one board composed of representatives from a broad spectrum of youth-serving agencies

and another board composed of teen representatives

throughout the city. The Youth Commission has created a

number of teams for addressing specific issues, including

the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition; the Spokane

Service Team, which provides teens educational preparation and opportunities for carrying out community service projects in small groups; and neighborhood-based

implementation of Project Get REAL (Recreational Alternatives for Leisure), which provides field trips, preparation for employment classes, and leadership training in

the nonschool hours.

• Coalitions of public agencies and private youth organizations. These agencies have committed to working together to support the Youth Commission’s efforts by providing comprehensive services for children most at risk of

committing violence—especially those who have little or

no family support or support from schools. As needs for

services are identified, representatives of agencies form ad

hoc groups to solve problems.

Another group, headed by a concerned parent and composed of representatives from the police department, child

protection services, a private foster care/adoption agency,

a local university, and several other volunteers living in

the community, is implementing a plan to ensure that runaway and thrownaway children are housed at night in safe

places—preferably in the homes of families in their own

neighborhood.

More comprehensive services for street children include

a “head-start type program” for the babies and toddlers

of homeless teens. School “classes” for small groups of

teens meet during regular school hours. Parenting classes

and recreational activities are provided for the teens in

nonschool hours. These are all held in a downtown building where meals are provided for both the teens and their

babies.

• Neighborhood-based teams of youth-serving organizations, public agencies concerned with youth, and

neighborhood volunteers. These are extending grassroots

collaboration throughout the city, with the Spokane Police Department as the central coordinating agency for 14

neighborhood coalitions. Although Family Focus classes

were limited to the West Central community at the time

of the onsite study, the WSU community resource coordinator was working throughout the city and, as of the

date of this report, Family Focus activities are being carried out in nine neighborhoods.

Spokane Benefits From a Spectrum of YouthServing Organizations That Provide a Range of

Programs for Meeting the Comprehensive Needs

of Many Children in the City

Some of the organizations that help Spokane are independent providers; others are affiliated with national organizations participating in this study as well as equally fine organizations such as Camp Fire Boys and Girls and the YWCA.

Many of the nationally affiliated organizations are independently serving their more traditional constituencies. For example, the downtown YMCA provides many programs found

in “Y” branches around the country for individual and family members ranging from infants to seniors. Personal fitness activities include an aquatics program and “Adventure

Club” programs in the hours before and after school in six

elementary schools.

As previously described, the West Central Community Center offers Girl Scout and 4–H activities and a range of opportunities provided by other independent organizations. These

choices are also available in Spokane schools providing

afterschool programs. The coordination that occurs among

youth organizations in a single location is perhaps exemplified best by the 9-day Spokane KidsWeek held each summer
Partnerships With Police 39

in one of Spokane’s largest parks. More than 20 youth-activity providers—public and private, commercial and not-forprofit—join forces to celebrate Spokane’s children and “to

recognize our youth and let them know they are valued.”

The effort is funded by city agencies and private businesses,

which sponsor an extensive set of age-graded activities from

“music and movement for toddlers” to “blood and guts” science workshops for early adolescents to midnight bowling

and miniature golf for older teens. The reason for this collaboration is captured by the KidsWeek motto . . .“Because

Kids are an Important Community Resource.”

Endnotes

1. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1994, Active

Firearm Licenses: License Type by District Statistics,

Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

2. Teske, Raymond, Jr., ed., 1995, Crime and Justice in

Texas, Huntsville, Texas: Sam Houston Press.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. City of Arlington, Texas, 1993, City of Arlington Crime

Prevention Action Plan, Arlington, Texas: City of Arlington, p. 6.

6. The Boys and Girls Clubs of Arlington also has a camp

facility on the shore of a lake. Since this study focused

on safe places in the nonschool hours in urban settings,

this facility was not included.

7. Arlington [Texas] Police Department, 1994, Administrative Services Bureau School Services Unit Standard Operating Procedures, Arlington, Texas: Arlington Police

Department, p. 1.

8. Cormany, Gerrit, and Carol Wendle, 1990, Making the

Grade: A Report Card on Spokane Area Youth, Spokane,

Washington: Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce. As

suggested by the Caring Community Model, the statistics for Spokane were compared with national trends and

trends in other cities; these comparisons are not presented

in this report since the intent is to compare issues identified across the three study sites.

9. Information provided by John Newkirk, Chair, Spokane

County Cooperative Extension Office, Washington State

University, 222 Havana, Spokane, Washington 99202.

10. Thurman, Quint, and Phil Bogen, 1994, A Final Report

to the Spokane Police Department: An Implementation

and Short-Term Impact Assessment of the 1993 Neighborhood Resource Officer Demonstration Project, Spokane, Washington: Washington State Institute for Community-Oriented Policing.

11. Dusik, Harmony, 1994, Girl Scout Gold Award Project

Form—Appendix G–5: Nevawood Junior Volunteer Update, Spokane, Washington: Harmony Dusik.

Exemplary Partnerships Between Police and Youth Organizations 41

In any business—retail or manufacturing, service or

government—the people in the trenches are the best

sources of ideas on how to do their jobs better. They

see the daily needs of their customers and conceive

ways of improving services or the delivery of services.

Any business that ignores this rich source of practical

help does so at its peril. . . We have encouraged our

employees—uniformed and civilian, paid and volunteer—to find ways to bring our citizens into this partnership.1 Terry Mangan, Chief of Police, Spokane

Police chiefs, other police department managers, officers,

and civilian staff interviewed for this report were acutely

aware of the serious risks faced by children and adolescents

in their communities. Rather than placing blame on the children themselves or on their families, they recognized that

ongoing attention, both to conditions that place children at

risk and to supports that help them succeed, are very much

part of their responsibility as professionals and as civicminded individuals.

Across the three cities that were the subjects of the case studies, police at all ranks were carrying out a spectrum of activities for responding to the needs of youth organizations

and for supporting their efforts to provide safe and productive undertakings for school-age children. These included:

• Chiefs and other top-ranking police actively participating on youth organizations’ advisory boards.

• Chiefs and other top administrators publicly honoring

youth for community service and encouraging and acknowledging officers who voluntarily provided leadership

for school-age children in their off-duty hours.

• Officers of all ranks leading traditional youth programs—

frequently for older youth living in inner-city areas who

ordinarily would not care to participate or, if they did, would

not meet qualifications for participation.

Chapter 4

Exemplary Partnerships Between Police

and Youth Organizations

• Officers and civilian staff serving on juvenile review

boards and helping select and divert young offenders from

the juvenile justice system to productive community service assignments.

• Officers helping to identify other youth in need of youth

services and helping ensure provision of such services,

including afterschool activities that help build social and

academic skills.

• Officers actively working with other service providers to

identify and better serve abused and neglected youth.

• Patrol officers regularly dropping by centers and other

youth program sites to watch and cheer activities.

• Neighborhood and community police officers regularly

participating in neighborhood organization meetings to

help assess the needs of children. They also play a key

role in helping community members realize that programs

involving at-risk adolescents are more a boon than a threat

to neighborhood safety.

• Neighborhood and community police officers routinely

involving children and teens in playing a major role in

keeping their communities safe. Rather than viewing the

kids as the source of the problem, they make them part of

the solution.

Police Activities at the Three

Exemplary Sites Took Many Forms

The Bristol, Arlington, and Spokane case studies presented

in the preceding chapter illustrate in detail the specific forms

of police activity that contributed to the exemplary nature of

the partnerships between police and youth organizations in

these three sites. Cities and communities that are experiencing the same challenges that Bristol, Arlington, and Spokane

faced may be able to benefit from these sites’ experiences.

Highlights of the activities discussed in the case studies are

presented below.
42 Kids, COPS, and Communities

In Bristol, Connecticut, participation in the city’s Juvenile

Diversion Program and other such collaborative efforts gives

officers the opportunity to better serve youth at risk or those

that may have been abused. Police have a strong commitment to “walk-and-talk” community policing, whereby on a

daily basis they interact positively with citizens of all ages,

including children at the Family Center. More specifically:

• As they participate in projects sponsored by the youth

organizations, such as the creation of posters against drugs,

police work directly with children in neighborhoods where

they appear to be especially at risk.

• In their interactions with children, police officers learn

about family situations that can be ameliorated through

referrals to specialized community agencies, and occasionally they may learn about activities, such as child abuse

and drug offense activities, that require law enforcement

action.

• Police officers provide special training for youth organization participants to help them deal with gangs, safety,

and other issues.

• Police have turned Neighborhood Watch from complaint

sessions about crime into positive citizen participation in

monitoring of gang and drug activity and in provision of

block parties and other wholesome activities for children.

• Police devote many hours in the selection and monitoring process and in juvenile review board meetings where

appropriate placement for each juvenile is arrived at

jointly.

In Arlington, Texas, preventing crime involving children

ranks among the highest police department priorities, as was

made evident by tributes from youth organization staff interviewed for this project and by the large number of civilian

and sworn staff, including the chief, who showed up at a

meeting to learn about police crime prevention efforts. These

efforts involved a wide spectrum of independent crime prevention programs implemented by the police department, approaches carried out as part of the City of Arlington Crime

Prevention Action Plan, formal support to youth organizations, and volunteer activities by officers at every rank in the

department. Following is a sample of their efforts:

• Police officers conduct 25 short, age-appropriate youth

education programs for children from kindergarten

through sixth grade.

• To familiarize the children with police, the officers distribute trading cards with officers’ pictures, their descriptions, and safety tips.

• The police School Resource Officer Program provides a

liaison officer between schools and the police department.

School Resource Officers regularly stop at youth centers

and maintain contacts with and refer children to other

community agencies providing services for children. Some

become Boy Scout leaders.

• Police allayed citizens’ fears that a teen center would bring

gangs and juvenile delinquents into their neighborhoods.

They promised an enhanced police presence in the area

surrounding the center. Residents now welcome the teen

center and the increased police visibility it has brought to

the neighborhood.

In Spokane, Washington, The police chief motivated his

officers to develop and participate in a host of creative activities that put officers side by side with other community

members in channeling youthful energy into crime prevention and other positive activities. Partnerships with Girls

Scouts, Boy Scouts, and other organizations devoted to youth

development are key features of police activity in this city.

Following are some of their activities:

• The “Every 15 Minutes” approach involves high school

seniors in several days of intensive planning and activities culminating in their own multimedia presentation that

graphically shows the grave consequences of drunk driving and has virtually eliminated drunk-driving fatalities

on prom night.

• Police sponsor an August COPS-N-Kids truck and car

event that enlists the participation of auto-related businesses to teach kids vehicle maintenance and keep teen

“cruising” trouble free.

• Thanks to partnership with police, youth organization participants can do “real” policing by helping prevent crime.

Nevawood COPS Youth Volunteers are midteen Girl

Scouts and other girls and boys who report graffiti, trash,

and broken lights and conduct summer campouts in the

park for neighborhood children.
Exemplary Partnerships Between Police and Youth Organizations 43

• A police officer leads a Boy Scout Explorer Post specially

created to recruit adolescents with no previous opportunity for community leadership. Interested boys and girls

participate in an intensive training program involving not

only physical exercise but exercises to increase their communication, teamwork, and leadership skills.

Coalitions Among Police, Local

Officials, Community Leaders, and

Youth Organizations Develop

Strategies

Partnerships that include a spectrum of community institutions and organizations promote comprehensiveness of services that endure over the long term; experience in all three

sites bears this out. In developing and implementing Bristol’s

approach to providing safe places for youth, for instance,

Bristol Youth Services drew on information gathered by the

police department, schools, and community agencies as well

as on the joint efforts of local officials, community and business leaders, and directors of public and private agencies and

service organizations that constituted the Greater Bristol

Community Leadership Team.

Arlington, particularly, undertook a long period of coalition

building to ensure that the approach chosen met the real needs

of the community to be served. The local United Way’s Priorities Committee ranked problems and made recommendations, and a committee representing not only youth organizations but also the police department, the mayor’s office,

the public library, the recreation department, and civic, religious, and business groups expanded perspectives even further to come up with an action plan that culminated in the

establishment of centers of safety for children and teens in

the afterschool hours.

In Spokane, collaborative efforts have long been a hallmark

in the city’s history. Spearheaded by Spokane’s Youth Commission, interdisciplinary teams have addressed such issues

as teen pregnancy and developed community service and

recreational projects for youth. Their efforts have spawned

numerous coalitions of public agencies and private youth

organizations to supply more supports for more teens and

children, such as runaways, street children, and teen parents.

In addition, the Spokane Police Department coordinates the

work of 14 neighborhood coalitions of public and private

organizations serving youth and neighborhood volunteers.

Comprehensive, sustained, and creative partnerships are integral to community oriented policing services, as amply

shown in Spokane’s COPS West ministation, which depends

for its existence on the efforts of volunteers, many drawn

from participants in Washington State University’s Family

Focus program, and representatives of the Office of the District Attorney and Adult and Juvenile Probation and Parole.

Indeed, the driving force behind community policing is police participation in the community on an ongoing basis to

further crime prevention, neighborhood problem solving, and

community-based solutions to crime and juvenile delinquency. The close bonds needed between citizens and police

were forged in joint celebrations, coalition meetings, and dayto-day contacts with youth wherever they congregated.

While the organizations in Bristol support each other’s efforts, and organizations in Arlington cooperatively divide up

areas of the city to be served, Spokane is remarkable for the

coordination that brings multiple organizations into the same

location in the nonschool hours. Enduring neighborhoodbased partnerships between city agencies and organizations

are being generated and sustained by the COPS programs

organized by the Spokane Police Department. By physically

housing neighborhood volunteers and representatives from

key city agencies in COPS ministations in a growing number of Spokane neighborhoods, agencies are able to coordinate services and activities on a minute-by-minute basis. And

by routinely involving COPS Youth Volunteers and participants in other youth organizations in COPS ministation meetings and activities, both neighborhood adults and professionals have the opportunity to stay tuned in to the real concerns

of neighborhood children and to respond quickly to their

ongoing and emerging needs.

The most comprehensive partnerships can have major payoffs, as shown in Spokane, where they have led to neighborhood revitalization and the development of youth as active

community participants and leaders. The ultimate result

should be a reduction of crime, as has already happened in

Spokane’s West Central neighborhood.

“The payoffs for giving our young people the right

stuff are all around us: better community leadership,

informed citizenship, and increased vocational skills.

Personal health is improved and family life is stronger. A solid, secure next generation can mean less

delinquency, fewer family breakups, fewer problems

with alcohol and other drugs, and a happier, more vibrant community.” Washington State University Cooperative Extension2
44 Kids, COPS, and Communities

What You Can Do to Provide Safe,

Constructive Activities for At-Risk

Youth

The essential measures taken in Arlington, Bristol, and

Spokane are similar. Leaders in each city gathered information needed to assess the status of their youth. They faced

hard problems head on and came up with action plans to

address multiple factors that were endangering kids’ lives.

Rather than reinventing ways to prevent violence and promote wholesome development, they figured out who in the

community already had approaches likely to be most effective. This included the police, directors of nationally affiliated youth organizations, and other public youth-serving

agencies—schools (administrators, counselors, and teachers),

social services, health and treatment organizations, and juvenile justice practitioners including judges, district attorneys, and probation officers.

Your city may already have carried out some of the steps

described in this report. However, because violence involving youth has multiple causes, cities that carry out multiple

concerted actions are more likely than others to bring youth

problems under sustained control. The following steps carried out in the case study sites are offered as a checklist to

consider actions your city might take.

Police chiefs and other law enforcement executives can:

• Get to know the directors of youth-serving agencies and

be willing to sit on their advisory boards and on community coalitions addressing youth issues.

• Encourage officers to volunteer at youth organizations in

the community and publicly reward them for their efforts.

• Incorporate joint activities between police and youth- serving organizations into the day-to-day operation of the

department.

Directors of youth organizations and agencies can:

• Introduce themselves and their organizations to the police chief and welcome a police presence on and around

their premises.

• Invite police to put on prevention programs with the children and adolescents they serve and to participate in recreational activities for youth.

• Participate in city task forces that deal with youth issues,

in neighborhood coalitions to advocate for safe activities

for youth, and in community antidrug, anticrime efforts.

• Work with police and child protection agencies to identify and provide services to youth who may be perpetrators or victims of crime.

• Work with police and community leaders in offering their

centers as places where troubled teens can perform community service.

• Advocate for youth among local officials and legislative

bodies and teach young participants to be advocates.

• Work with other youth-serving organizations in joint ventures on a continuing basis.

• Get to know the educational and religious leaders in the

community and find ways to have fruitful working relationships or to plan comprehensive solutions to common

problems.

Community coalitions and collaborations can:

• Make sure they have a strong police, youth organization,

and at-risk youth presence.

• Talk to police and others to determine the scope of delinquency and the range of adolescent experiences that contribute to it.

• Find out what services are currently available for at-risk

kids.

• Assess the needs of youth for wholesome skill-building

activities that they find fun after school.

• Find or advocate for places that can house afterschool

programs where they are the most needed, operated by

organizations that have demonstrated experience in providing them.
Exemplary Partnerships Between Police and Youth Organizations 45

Local officials and other community leaders can:

• Find out from the organizations that work with kids what

kids’ greatest needs are.

• Find ways public agencies (such as youth-serving and public housing agencies) can collaborate to keep youth off

the streets and in safe activities.

• Help launch or participate in coalitions dedicated to this

goal.

• Wherever possible, promote a comprehensive approach

to delinquency prevention that involves both police and

youth-serving organizations with demonstrated experience

in serving teens.

This report has provided more complete descriptions of these

steps as taken by the organization leaders in the three case

study cities. Their actions represent an arduous undertaking,

and they willingly shared their experiences so that this report could be written. They are also prepared to provide advice and support to you. Their names and information for

contacting them are furnished in an appendix. They will be

glad to hear of your commitment to provide safe, productive

places for our Nation’s youth.

Endnotes

1. Spokane Police Department, 1995, Community Oriented

Policing Programs, Spokane, Washington: Spokane

Police Department.

2. Thomas, Robert E., 1989, Washington 4–H: Today and

Tomorrow, Pullman, Washington: Washington State

University Cooperative Extension.
46 Kids, COPS, and Communities
Appendix 47

Appendix

Information Resources

Contacts in National Youth

Organizations

James D. Cox

Vice President, Urban Services

Boys and Girls Clubs of America

1230 W. Peachtree Street

Atlanta, GA 30309

404–815–5781

jcox@bgca.org

Boy Scouts of America

National Office

1325 West Walnut Hill Lane

Irving, TX 75015

972–580–2000

Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.

Information and Referral Center

420 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10018–2798

800–GSUSA 4U (800–478–7248)

rosa.esposito@bbs.gsusa.org

Faedra Lazar Weiss

Research Associate

Girls Incorporated National Resource Center

441 W. Michigan Street

Indianapolis, IN 46202

317–634–7546

fweiss@girls-inc.org

Joseph Wilson

Executive Director

National Association of Police Athletic Leagues

618 U.S. Highway 1, Suite 201

North Palm Beach, FL 33408–4609

561–844–1823

CopNKid1@aol.com

Beverly Brown

Associate Director

Youth Development/Black Achievers

YMCA of the USA

101 North Wacker Drive

Chicago, IL 60606

800–872–9622, ex.122

brown@ymcausa.org

Cooperative State Research, Education, and

 Extension Service

U.S. Department of Agriculture

1400 Independence Avenue N.W., Mailstop 2225

Washington, DC 20250

202–720–2297

4h-usa@reeusda.gov
48 Kids, COPS, and Communities

Affiliates Whose Approaches Are

Described in This Report

Carolyn L. Thompson

Executive Director

The Family Center

47 Upson Street

Bristol, CT 06010

860–583–1679

famcen@esslink.com

Susan Herman

Executive Director

Arlington Youth Services, an affiliate of Girls Incorporated

600 New York Avenue

Arlington, TX 76010

817–275–2120

AYS1997@aol.com

Cheryl Steele

Program Coordinator

Spokane COPS

Spokane Police Department

North 901 Monroe, Suite 320

Spokane, WA 99201

509–625–3300

csteele@spokanecounty.org

Marilyn Trail

County Agent

WSU/Spokane County Community and Family Education

222 N. Havana

Spokane, WA 99202–4799

509–533–2048, ex. 105

trailm@wsu.edu