Some Juvenile Crime Statistics Are Down

A recent report on juvenile arrests (Snyder, 1997) brings welcome news of a decrease between 1995 and 1996 in several indicators of juvenile crime, including:

• a 9% decrease in the juvenile violent crime arrest rate;

• a 14% reduction in the number of juveniles arrested for murder;

• 9% and 10% reductions respectively in weapons related arrests and motor vehicle theft; and

• an 8% reduction in the number of juveniles arrested for robbery.

This was the second year in a row these numbers reflected an overall decline in juvenile violent crime. These are reassuring data, but there is still much to be done.

Juvenile crime remains unacceptably high. Youth involvement with gangs and associated gang related criminal activities continues to be a problem for many of our communities. Use of drugs, especially alcohol, prevents many young people from meeting their full potential. Our national high school dropout rate of approximately 10% (Kids Count, 1998) results in too many young people entering adulthood without the necessary skills and resources to maintain productive adult lives. Members of our neighborhoods still do not feel safe. The projection of further growth of our juvenile population indicates that we must enhance prevention efforts to continue the progress we have seen in the past few years.

Justice Focus on Prevention Strategies

In response to juvenile crime and violence, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has initiated a wide range of coordinated programs to address the needs indicated by these statistics. OJJDP's Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Wilson and Howell, 1993) and its companion Guide to Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Howell, Ed., 1995) provide a comprehensive framework for establishing a continuum of care system—from prevention to early intervention to graduated sanctions for juveniles who enter the juvenile justice system—in communities across the country. The National Juvenile Justice Action Plan established by the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (1996), provides further guidance to communities. The Comprehensive Strategy and the Action Plan are dedicated to supporting healthy youth development and the primary prevention of juvenile crime. They recognize, however, that some youth still will enter the juvenile justice system, and these youth must be held accountable for their actions. Through a system of graduated sanctions, treatment and rehabilitation services, and aftercare services, they provide the tools needed to reduce the rates and seriousness of repeat offenses.

To ensure that our efforts address the complexity of factors influencing today’s youth, OJJDP has developed a blueprint for a Juvenile Justice System for the 21st Century (Bilchik, 1998) that is grounded in the knowledge that effective prevention must both reduce factors that increase risk and enhance protective factors that buffer children from risk. Such "risk-focused prevention" strategies identify risk factors and introduce protective factors at the earliest possible time to reduce and counter those risks (Hawkins & Catalano, 1992).

Provision of a mentor offers youth a protective factor to counter some of the many risks they face in their daily lives.

The legislation authorizing the JUMP program focuses on providing an intervention for youth at risk of entering or reentering the juvenile justice system. The intervention—provision of a mentor—offers youth a protective factor to counter the risks they face in their daily lives. The ultimate goal is to support the development of a population of healthy youth that will become a part of the solution to the Nation’s juvenile crime problem—a solution evidenced by reductions in juvenile delinquency and gang participation, improved academic performance, and a decrease in school dropout rates.

Mentoring is Not New

Although the exact nature and application of mentoring has varied over time, it generally is defined as a one-to-one relationship between a pair of unrelated individuals, usually of different ages. Within this relationship, one individual (the mentor) supports, teaches, counsels, and assists another (the mentee) on a regular basis over an extended period of time (DHHS, in press; Saito, 1994). As a concept, mentoring is not new. Examples can be found as far back as the late 19th century when the Friendly Visiting campaign, supported by charitable societies, recruited hundreds of middle-class women to work with poor and immigrant communities (Freedman, 1993). These women were charged with "raising the character" and "elevating the moral nature" of the poor families with the hope of smoothing class tensions.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters (BB/BS) of America, founded in 1904, is a well known successor to the Friendly Visiting campaigns. BB/BS primarily connects middle-class adults with disadvantaged youth. Although nearly as unstructured as the Friendly Visiting movement in its early years, the BB/BS program has become more defined, with the mentoring relationships more closely supervised.

Historically, the notion of one individual providing caring support and guidance to another individual has been reflected in a variety of arenas. In the clinical mental health field, we talk about bonding and the importance of a child feeling connected to a nurturing adult in the early years of life. In the adoption field, we talk about need for attachment. In schools, tutors help support successful educational experiences. In juvenile and family court, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA’s) provide support and advocacy for children in need of assistance. In the substance abuse field, we make use of sponsors to support sobriety. In the business field, we create teams to ensure that new employees have the support they need to be successful in the corporate organizational system. Currently, there are many types of formal mentoring programs generally distinguishable by the goals of their sponsoring organization. Most youth oriented programs recognize the importance of ensuring that each child they serve has at least one significant adult in his/her own life that can be friend, role model, guide, and teacher of values. If that person is not available in the child’s family, mentors can help fill the critical gap.

Formal mentoring programs such as JUMP address the needs of at-risk youth by structuring relationships that might not otherwise happen.

Mentoring can take place in two ways—informally (naturally), and through direct formal programming (Bernard, 1992; Brown, 1996; Crockett & Smink, 1991; Freedman, 1993). Informal, natural mentoring occurs as a result of frequent, unstructured contacts over an extended period of time. While some children are fortunate to be part of large social networks where they are exposed to numerous positive adult influences, many other children have fewer such natural resources. For at-risk youth, the extra attention, affection, and guidance afforded by relatives, neighbors, and others in their community often is not available. Formal mentoring projects have been established in communities across the country to address the needs of these at-risk youth by structuring onetoone relationships that might not otherwise happen.

Mentoring Addresses Risk Factors

Youth today face a world that is vastly different from the one in which children grew up even a few years ago. A confluence of events and circumstances has resulted in an environment that hosts a substantially different social and familial landscape. Generally recognized risk factors for youth exist in several domains including community, family, school, and personal/peer (Hawkins, Catalano & Miller, 1992; Catalano & Hawkins, 1995; Howell, 1995). Risk factors within these domains include poverty, availability of drugs, family conflict, academic failure, peers who are engaged in delinquent behaviors, and inability to gain positive attention and engage in healthy relationships. The risk factors are influenced further by the fact that:

• family members no longer routinely remain in the communities in which they grew up—families often are isolated;

• fathers, mothers, and older children frequently work outside of the home creating an increased need for alternative child care for younger children, and a higher incidence of unsupervised youth in the absence of such alternative care;

• the increases in both rates of divorce and rates of births to single teens during the early 1990’s resulted in more families being headed by one rather than two parents—further exacerbating parental isolation;

• increases in gang crime and domestic violence and other violent behaviors have diverted scarce community resources from family support services to criminal investigations and prosecutions;

• prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse has led to both family and community upheaval, and to physically, mentally, and emotionally damaged youth who must struggle to function effectively and productively; and

• ready availability of guns increases the likelihood that crimes will be increasingly lethal.

Each of these influences adds to the growing number of risks that must be navigated by today’s youth. Alone or in combination, these risks can make it difficult for families to ensure that their children develop the knowledge, skills, and positive life values needed to achieve success and avoid problems later in life. While any one risk factor increases the likelihood of negative life outcomes, at least one researcher (Rutter, 1979) concluded that the presence of two or three risk factors interacting together have a negative impact that is even greater than double or triple the original risk.

Several studies address the issue of lack of supervision, showing that in single-parent households and in households where both parents work, alcohol and drug use among young people is higher (Buckhalt, Halpin, Noel, & Meadows, 1992; Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1992; Dornbusch et al., 1985; Richardson et al., 1989; Stanton, 1979; VanNelson, Thompson, Rice, & Cooley, 1991). Lack of parental supervision may have more acute consequences among youth from low-income backgrounds because they have fewer options for supervision (Austin & Bickel, in press).

The very presence of a mentor in a youth’s life can help to reduce isolation and provide needed supervision and support.

Mentoring can directly address the lack of parental supervision. The very presence of a mentor in a youth’s life can help to reduce isolation and provide needed supervision and support. A positive adult role model offers new perspectives to youth who live in situations rife with substance abuse and violence. The tutoring and other school support a mentor offers may open an opportunity for academic and future career success that is not otherwise available.

Mentoring Supports and Enhances Protective Factors

Within this same social context, protective factors buffer the negative impact of identified risks, allowing one child to succeed while another child flounders (Resnick, 1997). Some of the frequently noted categories of protective factors are related to the categories of risk factors addressing environmental or community supports, family conditions, school, and personal/peer factors. Exhibit 1:1 provides examples of risk and protective factors in each of these four categories.

One comprehensive review of literature and research on the development of competence of children in both favorable and unfavorable environments (Masten and Coatsworth, 1998) points to key "systems for competence" that appear to be essential for healthy development. One of these key systems is the capacity, ability, and opportunity to build relationships with caring adults. The JUMP program addresses the opportunity for building healthy relationships with caring adults by providing a mentor.

Mentoring Holds Promise

In recent years, much has been written about mentoring as an effective intervention, and anecdotal evidence points to the importance of mentor-like relationships in children’s successful development (Rak & Patterson, 1996; Bolig & Weddle, 1988; Garmezy, 1981; Hauser et al., 1985; Grossman & Garry, 1997). The fact that mentoring programs, both formal and informal, have been established in so many different arenas is further indication of the growing popularity and acceptance of mentoring as an effective tool for supporting healthy growth and development.

Despite a growing belief in the effectiveness of mentoring in helping children negotiate risks, there have been few research or evaluation studies that provide concrete and measurable evidence of mentoring effectiveness. One notable exception is a study of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters mentoring model (Tierney, Grossman & Resch, 1995) which compared data from youth actively enrolled in a mentoring program with those youth on a waiting list. The goal of the study, conducted by Public/Private Ventures (P/PV), was to determine whether participation in a BB/BS mentoring experience made a tangible difference in the lives of the young people involved. P/PV examined seven broad areas that mentoring might affect: antisocial activities, academic performance, attitudes and behaviors, relationships with family, relationships with friends, self-concept, and social and cultural enrichment.

Exhibit 1:1 Examples of Risk and Protective Factors

P/PV used two criteria to select eight local BB/BS agencies for the study—a caseload large enough to ensure sufficient youth for the research sample, and geographic diversity. The 959 youth included in the study were assigned randomly to either the mentor group or the wait list group. Findings were based on self-reported information gathered from baseline and followup interviews, or on information contained in forms completed by agency staff.

At the end of the 18 month study period several positive results were documented for those youth involved in the mentoring program. Although the study found few effects on social and cultural enrichment, self-concept, or relationships with friends, it did find that mentored youth who had not already initiated drug use, reported being 47% less likely to begin using drugs than their non-mentored counterparts. This finding primarily was based on minority youth. Of the minority youth who had not already initiated drug use, matched youth were 70% less likely to report having initiated drug use than similar minority youth on the waiting list. Among youth who reported no prior drinking behavior, matched youth were 27% less likely to report initiating alcohol use during the study period than non-mentored youth on the waiting list. In addition, mentored youth reported being less likely to hit someone, and reported skipping half as many days of school as the youth on the waiting list.

Another study (Turner and Scherman, 1996) of the impact of mentoring on self-concept and behavioral functioning of male youth in divorced families yielded mixed results. There was some evidence that having a mentor positively impacted the boys’self-concepts. While measures of behaviors indicated positive trends, there was no significant difference between the matched and the control groups.

Resilience research provides additional clues to possible reasons for mentoring’s success, and supports the assumption that appropriate, constructive adult guidance and supervision are key components in the development of resilient youth. For children, resilience is the capacity of those who are exposed to identifiable risk factors to overcome those risks and avoid long term negative outcomes such as delinquency or school problems (Rak and Patterson, 1996). Two factors that are frequently cited as predictors of a child’s resilience are a close bond with a caregiver during the first year of life and a personal temperament that elicits positive responses from both family members as well as strangers. In other words, both the presence of someone to relate to and the ability to generate that relationship are related to later success (Werner, 1984).

Beth Beth’s mother is a crack addict who is in and out of prison, leaving Beth to help her grandmother raise her three younger siblings. Before getting a mentor, Beth had poor school attendance and grade performance. She was suspended several times for fighting, and most of her friends were pregnant, dropping out of school, or both. Project staff interceded, matching Beth with a young, professional woman who has helped her set personal and academic goals, giving her direction. After a year together, Beth’s attendance and grades have soared, and she is beginning to thrive. - Cincinnati Youth Mentoring Program

In particular, Werner found that resilient children often had at least one significant person (not necessarily a family member) who accepted them unconditionally (Werner, 1985; Werner & Smith 1992). Other resiliency researchers also identified adult role models outside the family as potential buffers for at-risk children (Garmezy, 1985; Beardslee and Podorefsky, 1988; Dugan and Coles, 1989). They suggest that at-risk youth who are involved with at least one caring adult are more likely to withstand a range of negative influences, including poverty, parental addiction, family mental illness, and family discord than are their peers who are not involved in a similar relationship. These caring adults included teachers, coaches, clergy, neighbors and others. The researchers also found that resilient children often had a number of different significant adults who appeared to have served in mentoring roles throughout the child’s development (Anthony & Cohler, 1987; Brook, Whiteman, Gordon, Nomura, & Brook, 1986; Grossman et al., 1992; Rhodes, Gingiss & Smith, 1994).

The strength of mentoring may come from the fact that mentoring can impact many different risk factors and can support many different protective factors at the same time. A mentor’s presence can provide a youth with personal connectedness, supervision and guidance, skills training, career or cultural enrichment opportunities, a knowledge of spirituality and values, a sense of self-worth, and perhaps most important, goals and hope for the future. The complex interrelationships among and between the risk and protective factors require prevention interventions that can take into account this complexity.

OJJDP’s Response to the Need

To build on the promise of mentoring as an effective prevention strategy, and add to the understanding of mentoring as a protective factor, OJJDP announced the availability of combined fiscal year (FY) 1994 and 1995 funds and competitively awarded grants of up to $180,000 each for a 3-year period to 41 recipients to implement juvenile mentoring projects (JUMP) for at-risk youth. Another 52 agencies were awarded grants of up to $190,000 with combined FY 1996 and 1997 funds for a total of 93 grant projects. In FY 1998, a third announcement of availability of funds was made, with an additional 23 to 26 grant projects to be funded. A complete list of funded Cohort I and Cohort II JUMP projects is included in Appendix A.

Additional funding for mentoring was provided through OJJDP’s SafeFutures initiative. OJJDP has awarded grants to each of six communities for a 5-year project period that began in FY 1995. The six communities that received competitively awarded SafeFutures grants are:

— Boston, Massachusetts, — Contra Costa County, California, — Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana,

— Imperial County, California, — Seattle, Washington, and — St. Louis, Missouri.

The SafeFutures long term goal is to prevent and control youth crime and victimization through the creation of a continuum of care that responds to the needs of youth at critical developmental stages in their lives. This continuum includes programs that provide appropriate prevention, intervention, treatment and sanctions for youth at risk of entering, or who already have entered, the juvenile justice system. Mentoring is one component of each SafeFuture projects.

In addition to providing JUMP and SafeFutures project grants, the JJDP Act funds support mentoring through the State Formula Grants program. Many projects funded through the Formula Grants program include mentoring as a part or all of their project activities. OJJDP also funds a variety of auxiliary services intended to support mentoring, including research and evaluation, training and technical assistance, and information and technology transfer.

Currently, two mentoring evaluation projects are underway. One, a national evaluation of SafeFutures, will measure the success of the SafeFutures initiative and record lessons learned at each of the six sites. One goal of this evaluation is to assess the extent to which each project has mobilized its community to develop and implement an integrated system of services. Outcomes are being tracked and analyzed in relation to service utilization data. Mentoring is one service component that is being tracked. The second, a national JUMP evaluation will assess the extent to which participation in a mentoring relationship changes youth behaviors that may be expected to impact the long term JUMP goals of reducing juvenile delinquency and gang participation, improving academic performance, and reducing drop-out rates.

OJJDP has committed training and technical assistance (T&TA) resources to both JUMP and SafeFutures through a full-time T&TA coordinator for SafeFutures, and through the National T&TA Center for JUMP. All lessons learned from the implementation of the projects and from the evaluations will be disseminated to the mentoring community through a variety of means.

JUMP program guidelines were published in July, 1994 to ensure adherence to the intent of the JUMP legislation and to provide the framework within which the grantee projects would operate. The guidelines emphasize:

• clearly defined collaborative relationships between community-based providers and local education agencies (LEA) with a focus on the goals of improving school performance, reducing school drop out rates, and reducing juvenile delinquency;

• thorough background checks for all volunteer mentors to establish a safe environment for each child;

• careful assessments of youth so appropriate matches that maximize opportunities for success are established;

• mentor and project activities designed to enrich and enhance youth opportunities and experiences; and

• procedures for gathering and routinely reporting programmatic data to support both internal self-evaluations and a national JUMP evaluation.

Within these parameters, grantees have developed models for their mentoring projects that most appropriately respond to the needs of their communities and the youth they are seeking to serve. The following chapter describes the JUMP grantee projects and the models of mentoring they have implemented.

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1998 Report to Congress: Juvenile Mentoring Program		OJJDP Report December 1998