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Seattle Study Encouraging
Recently released findings from the Seattle Social Development Project emphasize even further that implementing school-based interventions when children are young can help reduce violent behavior during their adolescent years. The project provided social competence training for children and taught teachers and parents how to encourage young children's interest in school and help them learn to interact with others. The interventions took place in elementary schools (grades 1 to 6) in Seattle's most crime-ridden neighborhoods.
A study of the long-term effects of the project found improved academic achievement, greater commitment and attachment to school, and reduced school misbehavior among participants 6 years after the interventions. The project appeared particularly effective with poor children. Researchers also found that the interventions successfully reduced violent behavior, heavy drinking, and sexual activity among adolescents who had participated in the program (Hawkins et al., 1999).
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The Study Group's review of school- and community-based interventions offers viable examples of the types of programs necessary to tackle the troubling issue of SVJ offending. Results of many of the interventions are encouraging. Programs adapted from the public health model—one that has traditionally addressed risk factors while also enhancing protective factors—can make a difference.
According to the Study Group, the following interventions have shown positive effects in reducing risk and enhancing protection against adolescent antisocial behavior:
- Behavioral consultation for schools.
- Schoolwide mentoring.
- Behavioral modification and reinforcement of prosocial behavior, good attendance, and strong academic performance.
- School organization interventions.
- Situational crime prevention.
- Comprehensive community intervention that incorporates community mobilization, parent involvement and education, and classroom-based social and behavioral skills curriculums.
- Policing strategies including community policing and intensive police patrolling, especially in "hot spots."
- Policy and law changes that affect the availability and use of guns, tobacco, and alcoholic beverages.
- Mandatory sentencing laws for crimes involving firearms.
- Media interventions to change public attitudes and enhance the effects of other community- and school-based prevention strategies.
However, in order to be more useful to communities, intervention research needs to focus less on "what works" and more on determining "what works for whom" and "under what circumstances and in what settings." As discussed above, multiple risk factors—rather than any single factor—place children at risk of becoming SVJ offenders. Given the multitude of risk factors, the differential impacts of these factors at different developmental stages, and the widely varying social contexts that children are exposed to, it is difficult to identify the specific effects of interventions. Effects, in fact, are highly likely to be the result of interactions among a variety of factors and conditions—rather than a single isolated change. It is now up to school and community leaders, policymakers, and concerned citizens to design and implement their own interventions targeting SVJ offending. The most effective way to reduce SVJ offending is to begin prevention efforts as early as possible with high-risk youth and to intervene aggressively with those who are already SVJ offenders, regardless of how old they are or how long they have been offending. |
