DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37180
title: Chicago Public Schools "Connect and Redirect to Respect" (CRR) Program, Illinois, 2015-2018
title: Archival Version

description: In 2014, Chicago Public Schools, looking to reduce the possibility of gun violence among school-aged youth, applied for a grant through the National Institute of Justice. CPS was awarded the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative grant and use said grant to establish the "Connect and Redirect to Respect" program. This program used student social media data to identify and intervene with students thought to be at higher risk for committing violence. At-risk behaviors included brandishing a weapon, instigating conflict online, signaling gang involvement, and threats towards others. Identified at-risk students would be contacted by a member of the CPS Network Safety Team or the Chicago Police Department's Gang School Safety Team, depending on the risk level of the behavior. To evaluate the efficacy of CRR, the University of Chicago Crime Lab compared outcomes for students enrolled in schools that received the program to outcomes for students enrolled in comparison schools, which did not receive the program. 32 schools were selected for the study, with a total of 44,503 students. Demographic variables included age, race, sex, and ethnicity. Misconduct and academic variables included arrest history, in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, GPA, and attendance days.
description: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of non-punitive pre-incident interventions for Chicago Public Schools students identified to be at-risk for violent behavior in and out of school.
description: 31 schools were split between the treatment group (receiving "Connect and Redirect to Respect" (CRR) interventions) and control group (receiving no CRR interventions). The control group could still implement their own traditional referral mechanisms. The two groups were similar in age, number of suspensions, involvement with the justice system, and academic performance. Analysis and comparison was done between all students of each group. This was to eliminate the need for a control group that had attended a CRR-participating school but had not themselves received an intervention.
description: Demographic variables included race, age, sex, ethnicity, and presence of disability. Study-specific variables included arrest history, suspension history, misconduct history, GPA, and attendance days.
description: To evaluate the CRR program, the investigators relied on a partially randomized matched school comparison research design. During Year 1 of the program, 16 schools belonged to the treatment group and 16 schools belonged to the comparison group. Among the 16 schools in the treatment group, nine were identified by the Office of Safety and Security (OSS) as being high-need (and thus asked to participate in "Connect and Redirect to Respect" (CRR)), while the remaining seven were randomly chosen from a group of 23 high-need schools identified by the University of Chicago Crime Lab. By including the nine OSS-identified treatment group schools in the analysis, we depart from a pure randomized controlled trial research design. However, in the judgment of the research team, because excluding these schools would substantially reduce the size of the analytic sample, and because the characteristics of students in the comparison group schools are very similar, these nine schools remain part of the study.
description: Datasets: DS1: Chicago Public Schools "Connect and Redirect to Respect" (CRR) Program, Illinois, 2015-2018
description: Smallest Geographic Unit: City
description: For additional information on the Chicago Public Schools "Connect and Redirect to Respect" (CRR) Program, please visit the Chicago Public Schools "Connect and Redirect to Respect" (CRR) Program website.