Community Interventions

Many recent community interventions— particularly those that target risk factors and introduce protective factors to prevent antisocial behavior—have been heavily influenced by public health approaches (Hyndman et al., 1992; Perry, Klepp, and Sillers, 1989). While many of the programs reviewed by the Study Group did not specifically target SVJ offenders, they nonetheless suggest that comprehensive prevention strategies that involve more than one entity (e.g., police and neighborhoods), take place in a variety of settings (e.g., home and school), and are maintained for several years have the potential to positively affect that population. This is especially true for communitywide programs targeting risk and protective factors for alcohol, tobacco, and drug use. Examples of the following eight types of community interventions are described below: citizen mobilization, situational prevention, comprehensive community interventions, mentoring, afterschool recreation programs, policing strategies, policy change interventions, and media interventions.

Protective Factors Peer groups, schools, and communities that emphasize positive social norms. Warm, supportive relationships and bonding with adults. Opportunities to become involved in positive activities. Recognition and support for participating in positive activities. Cognitive, social, and emotional competence.

The eight types of communitywide interventions examined by the Study Group focused on several risk factors, including easy access to firearms and drugs, community disorganization, and community norms or attitudes favoring antisocial behavior. The interventions also focused on such protective factors as social bonding and clear community norms against antisocial behavior. According to the studies and evaluations of these interventions examined by the Study Group, prevention strategies that cross multiple domains and that are mutually reinforcing and maintained for several years produce the greatest impact.

Citizen Mobilization

Programs that mobilize citizens to prevent crime and violence have the potential to reduce serious juvenile crime because they often address risk factors and offer the protective factors necessary to deter or intervene with serious juvenile offenders. The most common citizen mobilization programs are neighborhood block watch programs and citizen patrols.

Neighborhood block watch programs are based on the premise that residents are in the best position to monitor suspicious activities and individuals in their neighborhoods. Evaluations of three such programs, however, found little evidence that the programs have a significant effect on neighborhood crime. An evaluation of a citizen patrol program similarly found no significant effect on crime. Specific community mobilization programs are described below.

• Seattle, WA, and Chicago, IL, neighborhood watch programs. A neighborhood watch program in Seattle, initiated by professional community organizers affiliated with the city police department, focused on neighborhood burglary problems (Lindsay and McGillis, 1986). Following recruitment, organizers of the program held planning meetings in which they discussed prevention techniques, distributed information about home security, inspected participating residents' homes for security, and had residents select block watch captains and exchange phone numbers. While the number of burglaries in the program area declined, the reductions were not statistically significant. A similar neighborhood watch program in middle-class and lower middle-class neighborhoods in Chicago did not produce any consistent changes in residents' crime prevention activities or neighborhood social cohesion, according to evaluators (Rosenbaum, Lewis, and Grant, 1986). Nor did the program have an effect on victimization or perceived disorder.

• Police-initiated program in Houston, TX. Evaluation findings were similar for a program in Houston that was initiated by police (Wycoff et al., 1985b). Assisted by local police officers and an urban planner who organized community meetings, a neighborhood task force sponsored a drug information seminar, designated "safe houses" where children could go for assistance, organized a trash and junk cleanup effort, and promoted property marking and resident ride-alongs with police officers. Although a survey found that residents in the program area perceived a decrease in crime and social disorder and an increase in police service, actual victimization did not decrease and satisfaction among residents in the program area did not improve (Wycoff et al., 1985b).

• Guardian Angels. Another popular community mobilization strategy uses citizens who are not sworn law enforcement officers to patrol neighborhoods. One of the most well-known programs using this strategy is the Guardian Angels, a racially diverse group of unarmed individuals who patrol neighborhoods by foot. The group, which operates in cities across the Nation, specifically seeks to prevent crimes involving force or personal injury. Evaluators who compared two areas in San Diego, CA, one that was patrolled by Guardian Angels and one that was not, found that crime rates in the two areas did not differ (Pennell et al., 1989).

Situational Prevention

Risk Factors for Health and Behavior Problems Community Availability of drugs. Availability of firearms. Community laws and norms favorable toward drug use, firearms, and crime. Media portrayals of violence. Transitions and mobility. Low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization. Extreme economic deprivation. Family Family history of problem behavior. Family management problems. Family conflict. Favorable parental attitudes and involvement in the problem behavior. School Early and persistent antisocial behavior. Academic failure beginning in late elementary school. Lack of commitment to school. Individual/Peer Alienation and rebelliousness. Friends who engage in the problem behavior. Favorable attitudes toward the problem behavior. Early initiation of the problem behavior. Constitutional factors. Source: Catalano, R., and J.D. Hawkins. 1995. Communities That Care: Risk-Focused Prevention Using the Social Development Strategy. Seattle, WA: Developmental Research and Programs, Inc., p. 10. Reprinted with the permission of the authors and of Developmental Research and Programs, Inc. Many police agencies and communities attempt to reduce antisocial and criminal behavior by making it more difficult for an offense to occur and easier for an offender to get caught. Such situational prevention efforts, which may include a variety of different strategies, have been shown to be effective (Clarke, 1995; Farrington, 1995). One such strategy, target hardening, reduces the opportunity for crime to occur by implementing physical barriers such as steering locks. Studies in West Germany found that the country's rate of car thefts declined substantially after the locks were introduced there (Webb, 1994; Webb and Laycock, 1992). Another situational prevention strategy, access control, uses sophisticated computer technology, such as electronic personal identification numbers (PIN's), to control and limit access to buildings or other areas. Vandalism and thefts decreased significantly in a London public housing project when a combination of access controls, including entry phones, strategic fencing, and electronic garage access, was introduced (Poyner and Webb, 1987). Another effective situational prevention strategy attempts to deter offenders by channeling their behavior in socially appropriate directions, thereby minimizing the potential for violent behavior. Examples of this technique include separating rival soccer fans into different enclosures in sports stadiums (Clarke, 1983) and controlling crowds in amusement parks through pavement markings, signs, physical barriers, or vocal directions from park staff (Shearing and Stenning, 1984). Programs that screen or track individuals' entry and exit from buildings are another type of situational prevention intervention used to prevent crime. Retail stores use numerous surveillance techniques, such as merchandise tagging, that prevent shoppers from leaving without paying for merchandise (Hope, 1991). Other screening techniques include formal surveillance by police or security personnel, surveillance by employees in specific business settings, and natural surveillance in which an area is designed to have few isolated spots where crimes could be committed without detection by people going about their daily business (Meredith and Paquette, 1992). Making crime targets less accessible is another effective situational prevention technique. When locked safes, for example, were installed in Australian betting shops, the number of robberies dropped substantially (Clarke and McGrath, 1990). The New York Transit Authority has found that its policy of immediately removing graffiti from subway cars is an effective prevention tool because it removes the inducement for further illegal activity (Sloan-Howitt and Kelling, 1990). While researchers found that some of these strategies work well in certain conditions, they still need to determine which measures work best, in which combination, against which kind of crime, and under what conditions. Although altering features of the physical environment has been the major focus of situational prevention strategies, a number of researchers are emphasizing the need to focus on "resident dynamics" (i.e., individual characteristics and social interaction) as the key mediator of the environment-crime link. Comprehensive Community Interventions Comprehensive community interventions hold promise for preventing SVJ offending because they address multiple risk factors in the community, schools, family, and the media by mounting a coordinated set of mutually reinforcing preventive interventions throughout the community. Given the scarcity of evaluations completed in this area, the only comprehensive community programs summarized in the Study Group's report are ones that have focused on reducing alcohol and substance abuse, including smoking. Three of them are described below. Midwestern Prevention Project. The Midwestern Prevention Project was a community intervention program designed to prevent substance abuse in 42 public middle and junior high schools in the Kansas City area (in both Kansas and Missouri) (Pentz et al., 1989c). The project included a media campaign, education curriculums, parent education, community organization, and changes in local health policy to support the goals of the intervention. These components were introduced sequentially into communities over a period of 4 years (Pentz et al., 1989a). For evaluation purposes, researchers introduced both the media campaign and the school-based intervention in some schools the first year, and only the media intervention in other schools that year. Results indicate that the comprehensive approach was more effective than the media intervention alone at preventing the onset of substance abuse among both high-risk and general population students (Pentz et al., 1989b; Johnson et al., 1990). Class of 1989 study. A comprehensive community intervention to prevent adolescent smoking and alcohol use in Minnesota also was successful (Perry et al., 1992, 1993, 1996; Williams et al., in press). The Class of 1989 study was part of the Minnesota Heart Health Program (MHHP), a research and demonstration project carried out between 1980 and 1993 that was designed to reduce cardiovascular disease in three communities. A study examining this intervention evaluated the combined impact of a classroom-based smoking prevention curriculum delivered to the students in the class of 1989 during sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and the communitywide heart health activities of MHHP (Luepker et al., 1994; Perry et al., 1992). At the end of the 7-year period, when the students were high school seniors, 14.6 percent of those in the intervention program smoked, compared with 24.1 percent of the students in the reference community (who received neither the classroom-based nor the community-wide intervention) (Perry et al., 1992). The finding suggests that the combined school and community interventions produced a significant reduction in smoking among middle and high school youth. Project Northland. Project Northland used a similar combination of community-based and classroom interventions, along with a parent intervention component, to prevent alcohol use among adolescents in six northeastern Minnesota counties (Perry et al., 1993). The program, which began when students were in sixth grade, included a social-behavioral classroom-based curriculum, peer leadership, parent involvement, and communitywide task force activities. After 3 years, students who received the intervention scored lower on a tendency-to-use-alcohol scale and showed a considerably lower rate of monthly and weekly alcohol use. Significant differences in risk factors for drug use also were found. Survey measures of peer influences to use alcohol, perceived norms regarding teen alcohol use, parents' communication of sanctions for alcohol use, and reasons for teens not to use alcohol also demonstrated a lower likelihood of using alcohol among Project Northland students. These positive effects on alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors are noteworthy given the prevalence of alcohol use among adolescents. Mentoring Many communities have initiated mentoring programs in which adult mentors spend time with and act as role models for individual youth. Mentoring interventions may address several risk factors (including alienation, academic failure, low commitment to school, and association with delinquent and violent peers), while introducing protective factors (including opportunities for pro-social involvement and development of skills for and recognition of prosocial involvement, bonds with adults, healthy beliefs, and clear standards for behavior). Evidence from 10 evaluations of mentoring programs consistently indicates that noncontingent, supportive mentoring relationships have not had the desired effect on academic achievement, school attendance, decisions to drop out, various aspects of child behavior (including misconduct), and employment (Dicken, Bryson, and Kass, 1977; Goodman, 1972; Green, 1980; McPartland and Nettles, 1991; Poorkaj and Bockelman, 1973; Rowland, 1991; Slicker and Palmer, 1993; Stanwyck and Anson, 1989). The outcome of these programs is the same, evaluations have found, regardless of whether mentors are paid or unpaid and regardless of whether mentors are college students, community volunteers, members of the business community, or school personnel.1 Notwithstanding these evaluations, one study found that when mentors used behavior management techniques, students' school attendance improved (Fo and O'Donnell, 1975). The Buddy System mentoring program implemented in two Hawaiian cities, for example, assigned ethnically and socioeconomically diverse mentors from a different socioeconomic level to work with youth who had behavior management problems. The mentors were paid to make weekly contact with youth, submit data about the youth's behavior, complete weekly assignments with the youth, submit weekly log sheets, and attend biweekly meetings. Buddy System mentors received 18 hours of training before the program began and biweekly training sessions on behavior management throughout the program. The evaluation showed a reduction in truancy when mentoring relationships included several different types of reinforcement based on appropriate behavior, but no such reduction when mentoring relationships did not reward good behavior (Fo and O'Donnell, 1975). Afterschool Recreation Programs Programs that provide supervised recreation after school address the SVJ risk factors of alienation and association with delinquent or violent peers and introduce several protective factors, including skills for leisure activities and opportunities to become involved with prosocial youth and adults. An evaluation of an afterschool recreation program in Ottawa, Ontario, indicated that this type of program may be a promising intervention for preventing delinquency and violence (Jones and Offord, 1989). The program actively recruited children ages 5 to 15 from low-income families who lived in an Ontario public housing project to participate in structured afterschool courses designed to improve students' skills in sports and in music, dance, scouting, and other nonathletic areas. After the children reached a certain skill level, they were encouraged to participate in ongoing leagues or other competitive activities in the community. The number of arrests for juveniles participating in the program was significantly lower than the number of arrests for the same number of juveniles 2 years before the intervention and for the same number of juveniles in a different housing project. The number of security reports on juveniles in the program also declined significantly after the intervention began. However, when the program was discontinued, these positive changes in neighborhood rates of crime diminished significantly, demonstrating that some prevention programs may require continuous operation to remain effective. Policing Strategies Police departments around the country are trying innovative new policies to reduce crime. Many address the risk factors of community disorganization, low neighborhood attachment, and neighborhood tolerance of crime and violence. Others introduce protective factors, including healthy beliefs, clear behavior standards, and citizen involvement with police. Evaluations of three policing strategies show mixed results. One strategy, intensifying the use of marked police cars, appears to prevent certain types of serious crime in high-crime areas during high-crime periods (Kelling et al., 1974). Some jurisdictions use another technique known as field interrogation in which police officers stop persons they believe to be suspicious based on "reasonable cause," question them about their activities, and sometimes search the individuals and their vehicles. These tactics often are considered controversial because it is hard to define "reasonable cause" and sometimes have been challenged as unconstitutional (Skolnick and Bayley, 1988). An evaluation of a program in San Diego, CA, however, indicates that field interrogation is a potentially promising crime prevention tactic, especially when carried out in a respectful manner (Boydstun, 1975). The evaluation found that reported crime increased significantly when police discontinued field interrogation and decreased significantly when the tactic was reintroduced. Evaluations of these two strategies suggest that increased police presence must be directed judiciously (in terms of times, areas, and people targeted) to deter crime. Simply increasing the number of police is not likely to prevent crime (Wycoff, 1982). Community policing is a third popular policing strategy. In this approach, police departments, other government agencies, and members of the community work together to solve crime issues. Three studies of community policing have shown a reduction in physical and social disorder; two of these reported positive effects on resident satisfaction in areas using community policing (Pate et al., 1985; Skogan and Wycoff, 1986; Wycoff et al., 1985a). Only one of the three studies, however, showed a reduction in victimization rates as a result of community policing. In general, community policing programs result in a decrease in residents' perceptions of and fear of crime and, in many cases, result in more positive evaluations of police by residents. Crime reductions reported in these studies are based on differences in all reported crime, and the portion of crime reductions that is due to juveniles is unknown.

Policy Change Interventions

OJJDP Study Group In 1995, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) convened a Study Group on Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders, a distinguished panel brought together to build a research base for policymakers and practitioners who deal with juveniles who engage in serious and violent conduct. The group, chaired by Drs. Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington, included 22 leading juvenile justice and criminology scholars selected on the basis of their expert knowledge of different aspects of serious and violent juvenile offenders. The OJJDP Study Group documented existing information about SVJ offenders, examined programs for SVJ offenders, evaluated the programs' performance, and recommended further research and evaluation efforts needed to prevent and control SVJ offending. The Study Group's final report, Never Too Early, Never Too Late: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions for Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders, was completed in 1997 under grant number 95-JD-FX-0018. The conclusions of the Study Group were subsequently set forth in a volume entitled Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions, edited by the Study Group's cochairs, Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington, and published by Sage Publications, Inc., in 1998. Chapter 11 of the book, "Comprehensive Community- and School-Based Interventions to Prevent Antisocial Behavior" (by Richard F. Catalano, Michael W. Arthur, J. David Hawkins, Lisa Berglund, and Jeffrey J. Olson), is the subject of this Bulletin. Many communities and States have changed policies and laws governing the sale and use of alcohol, cigarettes, and firearms. Although certain policy changes have shown evidence of preventing antisocial behavior by juveniles, results have been uneven. Policies governing the availability and legal use of tobacco and alcohol have had an impact on juveniles' use of these substances. Prevalence of alcohol use, for example, appears to decline when States raise their minimum drinking age to 21 (O'Malley and Wagenaar, 1991). Studies (Cook and Tauchen, 1982; Grossman, Coate, and Arluck, 1987; Levy and Sheflin, 1985) of taxes on alcohol and the licensing of establishments that sell alcohol (Holder and Blose, 1987; Wagenaar and Holder, 1991) also indicate that policies limiting the availability of alcohol reduce the consumption of alcohol and problems associated with alcohol use (George et al., 1989; O'Malley and Wagenaar, 1991). None of these studies, however, has examined the impact of policy changes on SVJ offending. Studies (Brewer et al., 1995) of laws regulating the purchase and sale of firearms have similarly revealed some positive results. Two studies comparing rates of violent crime (Sloan et al., 1988; Loftin et al., 1991), for example, suggest that laws restricting the sale and purchase of handguns prevent gun-related crime. Another study (McDowall, Lizotte, and Wiersema, 1991) reports no change in assault rates, but a significant decrease in the number of reported burglaries, as a result of these laws. A fourth study (Jung and Jason, 1988) found that firearm assaults decreased significantly in the days before new regulations went into effect but showed no change after the law became effective. The results of that study were attributed to intensive media coverage of the new law prior to enactment. Findings are similar for studies of laws governing where and in what manner firearms may be carried. These mixed findings suggest that local community support and enforcement of laws influence their effectiveness (Brewer et al., 1995). In contrast, mandatory sentencing laws for felonies involving firearms appear to prevent homicides involving firearms (McDowall, Loftin, and Wiersema, 1992; Loftin, McDowall, and Wiersema, 1993). Such laws may also prevent other types of violent crime involving firearms, but evaluations on this issue are not yet available. A study of the effects of New Jersey's 1981 Graves Act, which mandated a minimum prison sentence for anyone convicted of one of several serious crimes while using or carrying a firearm, found that the proportion of New Jersey homicides involving firearms decreased significantly between 1980 and 1986 (Fife and Abrams, 1989). Another study examined the impact of sentencing laws on homicides, aggravated assaults, and robberies in six cities (Loftin, Heumann, and McDowall, 1983; Loftin and McDowall, 1984). Gun homicides, the study found, decreased significantly in all six cities after mandatory sentencing laws were enacted. Assaults and armed robberies decreased somewhat in certain cities. Media Interventions A final community-based prevention strategy that has shown positive effects is the use of media campaigns that attempt to change public attitudes and standards, educate community residents, or support other community interventions. One of the best known media interventions is the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a national advertising campaign against drugs. One survey revealed the effectiveness of this campaign, showing that markets where the Partnership campaign was intensively waged saw significant increases in knowledge about the effects of marijuana and cocaine use, compared with other markets (Black, 1989). Media interventions have been used primarily (either alone or in combination with other strategies) to prevent and reduce the use of cigarettes and alcohol. Evaluations show that media interventions are especially effective when used in conjunction with school intervention curriculums to prevent smoking or other substance abuse (Flynn et al., 1992; Flynn et al., 1995; Goodstadt, 1989; Pentz et al., 1989a; Perry et al., 1992; Vartiainen et al., 1986, 1990). Although few evaluations of media interventions targeting delinquency or violence have been conducted, such interventions provide a promising direction for future research related to changing community antiviolence norms and behaviors.

1. OJJDP's 1998 Report to Congress: Juvenile Mentoring Program (JUMP) indicates that youth involved in mentoring programs are less likely to experiment with drugs, less likely to be physically aggressive, and less likely to skip school than those not involved in such programs (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1998).

School and Community Interventions To Prevent Serious and Violent Offending	Juvenile Justice Bulletin   ·  September 1999