III. The Shifting Landscape:
      Creating Community Change

Juvenile delinquency and crime are complex problems necessitating multifaceted, integrated and long-term solutions. As discussed in Chapter I, the Title V Community Prevention Grants Program requires a comprehensive, community-based approach to delinquency prevention that is focused on reducing identified risk factors in the environments in which a child interacts (family, school, peer group, and community), while also building protective factors that contribute to healthy behaviors. Moreover, the Community Prevention Grants Program represents the initial steps of a long-term investment in sustained community change.

With its emphasis on building comprehensive prevention plans around data-driven risk and resource assessments, the Community Prevention Grants Program requires communities to make a significant paradigm shift—a shift in how they think about prevention, planning, and bringing about community change. In its sixth year, there is evidence that the Community Prevention Grants Program is changing community norms across the Nation. This Chapter outlines the experiences of communities that have integrated the basic principles of the Community Prevention Grants Program into their community planning and systems and are now beginning to see the positive impact and benefits of the initiative. Specifically, the following three key principles of the Community Prevention Grants Program will be examined within the context of community change:

  • Involvement of "non-traditional players" in prevention activities.

  • Creation of broad, community-level systems change.

  • Leveraging of additional resources to institutionalize prevention activities.

The sections that follow describe a few key changes communities report nationwide as a result of their participation in the Community Prevention Grants Program. The first section details how "non-traditional players" help to broaden communities' collective perspectives and increase access to local and outside resource pools. The second section describes how Title V facilitates systems-level change and provides examples of key community systems change strategies. The final section reports on communities' efforts to successfully obtain additional funds to sustain and expand activities begun under the Community Prevention Grants Program.


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Title V Incentive Grants for Local Delinquency Prevention Programs OJJDP 1999 Report to Congress