The SafeFutures Initiative

omprehensive community initiatives are intended to bring about systems reform.

The SafeFutures initiative is the result of a concerted Federal effort to link research findings about risk and protective factors for youth with state-of-the-art knowledge about promising approaches to preventing and controlling juvenile delinquency. The initiative embraces many of the most important innovations being suggested by practitioners and researchers (see, for example, Connell, Aber, and Walker, 1995). A central feature of SafeFutures is its emphasis on using comprehensive community strategies to combat the segmentation and fragmentation of social, health, educational, and juvenile justice services that often result in missed opportunities to help at-risk youth and their families before problems escalate to monumental proportions (Morrill and Gerry, 1990; Burt, Resnick, and Matheson, 1992). Comprehensive community initiatives are intended to bring about systems reform; they provide public and private entities with both the opportunity and the challenge to implement more effective policies and practices (e.g., pooling resources, sharing information). SafeFutures encourages community collaboratives to tailor prevention, intervention, treatment, and graduated sanctions strategies to local needs and capacities.

Goals of the Demonstration Programs

• Prevention and control of juvenile violence and delinquency through (1) reducing risk factors and increasing protective factors for delinquency, (2) providing a continuum of services for youth at risk of delinquency and for juvenile offenders, and (3) developing a full range of graduated sanctions designed to hold delinquent youth accountable to their victim(s) and community, ensure community safety, and provide appropriate treatment and rehabilitation services.

• Implementation of enhanced service delivery systems for at-risk youth and their families. As envisioned by OJJDP, the service delivery system should constitute a multidisciplinary system of care that offers comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, and coordinated child and family services oriented to promoting healthy youth development and reducing delinquency and victimization. Implicit in this vision is the expectation that each community should be capable of responding in an efficient, effective, and timely fashion to individual and family needs at any point of entry into the continuum of care.

• Institutionalization of each community’s capacity to sustain its continuum of care by engaging the support of key leaders in government and community-based organizations, implementing strategic planning, and expanding and diversifying funding sources.

• Incorporation of accountability mechanisms that determine the success of SafeFutures’ implementation and the outcomes achieved, including whether a comprehensive strategy involving community-based efforts and program resources concentrated on providing a continuum of care has succeeded in preventing and reducing juvenile violence and delinquency.

he SafeFutures initiative is largely a manifestation of OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders.

The SafeFutures initiative is largely a manifestation of OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Wilson and Howell, 1993), which combines research findings about the etiology and development of delinquency with principles articulated by Hawkins and Catalano in 1992 on the concept of risk and protective factors. The Comprehensive Strategy focuses on two distinct populations of juveniles: (1) youth who are at high risk of future delinquent behavior and (2) youthful offenders who have already exhibited delinquent behavior and are at risk of, or already are, engaging in serious, violent, or chronic law breaking.

At its heart, the Comprehensive Strategy suggests an integrated model for community action that marries two components: (1) a range of prevention/intervention activities and (2) enhanced juvenile justice system responses in the form of graduated sanctions and a continuum of treatment alternatives such as restitution, community service, and aftercare (Howell, 1995). This approach takes into account the following hypotheses:

• Family life profoundly affects criminality (McCord, 1991a, 1991b).

• There are varying paths to delinquency (Huizinga, Esbensen, and Weiher, 1991).

• Reciprocal, not unidirectional, relationships exist between delinquency, school, and family/community bonds (Thornberry et al., 1991).

• The initiation, continuance, and desistance of delinquency have different patterns, causes, and correlates (Elliott, 1994; Smith and Brame, 1994).

elinquency can be delayed or prevented by reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors.

Research has repeatedly identified risk factors associated with adolescent problem behaviors, such as failure to complete high school, teen pregnancy and parenting, and law breaking (Tolan and Guerra, 1994; Reiss and Roth, 1993; Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller, 1992; Dryfoos, 1990). The approach popularized by Hawkins and Catalano (Developmental Research and Programs, Inc., 1993) identifies a number of critical risk and protective factors in various domains. Ostensibly, the more risk factors to which a child is exposed, the greater the chance of the child’s developing delinquent behavior and the greater the likelihood that the child’s law-breaking behavior will become serious. However, delinquency can be delayed or prevented by reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors such as positive social orientation, prosocial bonding, and clear and positive standards of behavior (Howell, 1995). Communities can improve chances for youth to lead healthy, productive, crime-free lives by reducing economic and social privation and mitigating individual risk factors (e.g., poor family functioning, academic failure), while promoting youth’s abilities to (1) bond with peers, family members, and mentors, (2) be productive in school, sports, and work, and (3) successfully navigate the various rules and socially accepted routines required in a variety of settings (Hawkins and Catalano, 1992; Connell, Aber, and Walker, 1995). Implicit in this perspective is the recognition that prevention programming must address risk factors at the appropriate developmental stage and as early as possible.

The Communities That Care model (Developmental Research and Programs, Inc., 1993) presents a “blueprint for action” that is consistent with risk-focused prevention. The model suggests that communities undertake comprehensive strategic planning to utilize existing resources and programs and to develop a coordinated response tailored to local needs. The recommended process involves a planning phase that includes assessment of the community’s resources, activities designed to mobilize the community, strategic planning to identify local priorities for strengthening existing resources/services, and development of evaluation mechanisms to monitor the success of community-based efforts. The initial planning phase also entails formation of a community prevention board, composed of key leaders, as a permanent institution to facilitate long-term continuity. The implementation phase includes ongoing risk and resource assessments and program evaluations to tailor the risk prevention and protective components of community-based programs to the changing needs of the local environment (Howell, 1995).

mplicit in this model is the view that most juvenile offenders can be rehabilitated using community-based programs and services, rather than more resource-intensive and restrictive institutional facilities.

Graduated Sanctions for Youthful Offenders

The conceptualization of a communitywide system of graduated sanctions is intended to achieve balanced and restorative justice—accountability, public safety, and competency development—based on the assumption that a well-designed system of treatment and punishment options can offer more than “bad choices between sending kids to jail or sending them to the beach” (Bazemore and Day, 1996, p. 3). Wilson and Howell (1993, in Howell, 1995) describe the potential to combine fair, humane, and appropriate sanctions with treatment and rehabilitation in a continuum of care composed of diverse programs that include:

• Immediate sanctions for first-time, nonviolent offenders.

• Intermediate sanctions in the community for more serious offenses.

• Secure care (residential) programs reserved for the relatively small fraction of juvenile offenders who commit serious or violent crimes.

Implicit in this model is the view that most juvenile offenders can be rehabilitated using community-based programs and services, rather than more resource-intensive and restrictive institutional facilities. The graduated sanctions approach permits the justice system to respond more effectively to a juvenile’s criminal behavior through increased monitoring, identification, and evaluation of this behavior and by improving the juvenile justice system’s responsiveness, effectiveness, accountability, and responsibility. The approach is consistent with research on juvenile offenders that has demonstrated that community-based sanctions can reduce recidivism at lower cost to the community and with greater effect than incarceration (Howell, 1995).

he approach is consistent with research on juvenile offenders that has demonstrated that community-based sanctions can reduce recidivism at lower cost to the community and with greater effect than incarceration.

Ideally, graduated sanctions should be structured as a continuum through which law-breaking youth move based on a risk-focused classification structure that guides juvenile placement decisions. For each level of offense (roughly classified as minor, serious, or violent), a set of programs would be designated as the appropriate option to meet the needs of the offender and the community. For example, mentoring, restitution with an employability skills and job placement component, or teen court might be options for immediate sanctions in a particular community setting, while boot camp or some form of residential confinement might be designated as options for secure care. Placement decisions would weigh the severity of each juvenile’s history of offenses and the presence of risk factors that indicate a potential threat to the community. The assessment process also would entail the development of customized treatment plans tailored to meet the individual needs of each juvenile offender. This type of assessment might result in assigning a juvenile with a high risk level who committed a less serious offense to the same intermediate sanctioning program as a violent offender with a low risk level (Howell, 1995).

ourteen States using risk-focused classification systems had been effective in making consistently appropriate offender placements.

Thus far, no community is known to have implemented a fully operational graduated sanctions system. However, a study by Krisberg et al. (1995) demonstrated that 14 States using risk-focused classification systems had been effective in making consistently appropriate offender placements. Recidivism rates in the study were shown to be more a function of risk level than offense severity. The study also found that States using this model had demonstrated consistent cost savings by reducing the use of secure-care residential placements. However, the use of different types of risk assessment instruments resulted in very different numbers of offenders recommended for placement at each risk level (Krisberg et al., 1995).

ites have the flexibility to implement programs and blend funds across categories, enabling them to address local needs and manage resources.

SafeFutures seeks to help participating communities to expand collaborative efforts directed at reducing juvenile delinquency and violence. A major assumption underlying the program is that communities can accomplish such objectives by improving their delivery systems for youth and family services. The model calls for the creation of a continuum of care that is a multidisciplinary system capable of timely, effective, and appropriate responses to individual or family needs for prevention, intervention, treatment, or corrections services. Key elements envisioned by program planners include the following:

• A range of services appropriate to diverse client needs, from prenatal stages through adulthood.

• Collaborations across institutional domains (e.g., collaborations involving human services, juvenile justice, and educational systems).

• Public-private partnerships to mobilize the community and to leverage the resources needed to institutionalize the continuum of care.

In a sense, SafeFutures implements the Comprehensive Strategy by pooling Federal and local funds from nine broad program areas, referred to as program components, to support the demonstration communities’ development or enhancement of their continuum of services for youth and to contribute to meeting the overall goals of the initiative. Implementation of activities or services to meet the objectives of the categoric components is one of the key responsibilities of the local initiatives, in addition to developing or enhancing the collaborative and organizational framework for the initiative and introducing or continuing systems reform efforts.

The nine components that constitute SafeFutures are (1) afterschool programs (Pathways to Success), (2) juvenile mentoring programs (JUMP), (3) family strengthening and support services, (4) mental health services for at-risk and adjudicated youth, (5) delinquency prevention programs, (6) comprehensive communitywide approaches to gang-free schools and communities, (7) community-based day treatment programs—Bethesda Day Treatment Center model, (8) continuum-of-care services for at-risk and delinquent girls, and (9) serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offender (SVCJO) programs (with an emphasis on enhancing graduated sanctions).³ This table summarizes key elements of each component.

Under SafeFutures, sites have the flexibility to implement programs and blend funds across categories, enabling them to address local needs and manage resources. For example, both Contra Costa County and Seattle blended funding for the JUMP and at-risk and delinquent girls components to engineer mentoring activities targeted to females. Similarly, the Boys & Girls Club in Boston was funded to provide mentoring, afterschool, and delinquency prevention (court diversion) services during the second year of the initiative, although only prevention activities were continued the following year.

As a result of the local autonomy and flexibility built into the initiative, the services provided under specific components vary considerably in the six sites. Variation among the sites also is due to their having emphasized different components. The sites’ ability to make services available also varied across sites. The demonstration sites received their awards at slightly different times, and different lengths of time were needed both within and across jurisdictions to reach the point of actually serving youth under the various components. Across the six communities, some components are provided by agencies that were fully operational and already providing the same, or similar, services anticipated for SafeFutures clients. By contrast, service delivery under other components could not begin until staff were hired and other startup activities completed. Implementation efforts were hindered in some cases by unexpected challenges or barriers.

ervice configurations, partnerships, and other aspects of systems reform are emerging over time, as local leaders and program managers identify new opportunities or successfully resolve existing difficulties.

SafeFutures initiatives are evolving. Like other comprehensive community initiatives, SafeFutures efforts involve a high degree of complexity, from building or expanding effective collaborations through developing and fine-tuning services and multidisciplinary delivery mechanisms. Service configurations, partnerships, and other aspects of systems reform are emerging over time, as local leaders and program managers identify new opportunities or successfully resolve existing difficulties. During the first 3 years of the demonstration, some communities experienced turnover in providers for one or more services—which, in effect, required them to start from scratch with a new provider. Change in some areas also occurred in response to increasingly specific guidance from OJJDP (and more focused training and technical assistance, usually directly or indirectly provided by OJJDP) that identified program expectations, recommended procedures, and anticipated activities.

Of the six SafeFutures sites, three are multijurisdictional or large scale in their geographical scope: Contra Costa County, Fort Belknap, and Imperial County. The remaining demonstrations target relatively circumscribed neighborhoods.^4. Although not required to do so, virtually all of the initiatives have focused their efforts on minority youth and families, which is likely to underscore the importance of developing culturally appropriate responses to critical youth needs or risk factors. The following is a brief description of the SafeFutures communities and their target areas.⁵

Boston, MA. Boston SafeFutures targets an area consisting of three neighborhoods—Grove Hall, Franklin Hill/Franklin Field, and Mattapan—known as the Blue Hill Avenue Corridor. The Corridor has approximately 56,000 residents, 31 percent of whom are younger than 18 years of age. The neighborhoods are historically linked into one community through transit, housing, and commerce. The Corridor typifies inner-city decline: vacant lots and boarded-up buildings abound, and few residents use parks and open areas. It contains three large public housing developments and a number of “granites,” scattered apartment buildings managed by the State housing finance agency through private for-profit companies. The Corridor is characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty: 26 percent of the population in the target area fall below the poverty level. Almost 87 percent of the area’s residents are African American (including Caribbean American), and the remaining population is 9.2 percent Latino, 2.8 percent Caucasian, and 1.3 percent other non-Hispanics. The past 20 years have seen an influx of Caribbean Americans to the Corridor, and service providers cite a large gap in culturally specific services available to meet the needs of this population.

Contra Costa County, CA. Contra Costa County is located on the northeastern shore of the San Francisco Bay. The SafeFutures demonstration focuses its efforts on two levels. Most of the prevention and gang intervention activities are concentrated in several neighborhoods in Richmond (located in the western section of the county), known as the Iron Triangle area, where approximately 73 percent of the population is African American, 11 percent is Caucasian, 10 percent is Latino, 6 percent is Asian/Pacific Islander, and 2 percent is Native American. Graduated sanctions and aftercare case management programs are countywide in scope and target seriously emotionally disturbed juvenile offenders, female offenders, and juveniles returning to the community from the Orrin Allen Youth Rehabilitation Facility.

ort Belknap Indian Reservation is one of two SafeFutures sites in rural settings and the only site in an American Indian setting.

Fort Belknap, MT. Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is one of two SafeFutures sites in rural settings and the only site in an American Indian setting. The reservation, located in the north central part of Montana, is isolated from major service areas. The closest big cities, Great Falls and Billings, are each 2–3 hours’ driving distance from Fort Belknap. The nearest towns are quite small, severely limiting the availability of social services. Fort Belknap has a tribal enrollment of 5,232 individuals from two different tribes; approximately 3,800 individuals reside on or adjacent to the reservation. The reservation includes four distinct communities that are isolated from each other by distance and cultural differences associated with different tribes. Approximately 45 percent of the reservation’s residents live in poverty, and unemployment is high (68 to 72 percent). Alcoholism is reported to be a major problem. The primary population targeted for the SafeFutures demonstration is the nearly 1,370 Gros Ventre and Assiniboine youth (ages 6 to 18 and roughly 51 percent male) living on or adjacent to the reservation.

Imperial County, CA. Imperial County, located in the southeastern corner of California near the Mexican border, is another multijurisdictional demonstration and the other rural SafeFutures community. The county comprises roughly 4,300 square miles, contains approximately 100,000 people, and includes the largest percentage of Latinos of any county in the State. Approximately 31 percent of Imperial County’s youth live in poverty, and 24 percent of county residents have incomes that are at or below the poverty level. The targeted area for SafeFutures services includes the county’s north end communities of Brawley, Calipatria, Niland, and Westmoreland. These communities are isolated from other services by distance and topography (i.e., mountains and desert) and have few activities or supportive programs for youth. Most services are located in the county seat, El Centro, which is approximately 30–60 minutes’ driving distance from the north end.

Seattle, WA. Seattle’s initial target area included four distinct low-income neighborhoods: the Central Area, International District, Delridge, and Southeast Seattle communities. Poverty and unemployment rates are triple the citywide average in these areas, which contain all of the city’s low-income public housing. These areas have experienced some of the highest crime rates in the city and are focal points for gang-related violence. The population in these four areas is racially and ethnically diverse, and many of the residents are recent immigrants or are “linguistically isolated.” Seattle has modified its focus to target at-risk populations citywide, specifically Asian/Pacific Islander youth (especially individuals of Vietnamese and Cambodian origin), at-risk and delinquent girls, gang-affiliated youth, and youth already in the juvenile justice system.

St. Louis, MO. St. Louis SafeFutures chose three neighborhood areas known for high levels of socioeconomic risk, juvenile crime, gang participation, and drug activity. The selected neighborhoods had community-based resources to support the planned initiative, including three schools refashioned as Community Education Centers (CEC’s) jointly established by the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis public schools. The schools redesigned as CEC’s are Carver and Sherman (elementary schools) and Williams (middle school). The service area has approximately 58,000 residents; in the Carver and Williams CEC catchment areas, African Americans account for 91 percent and 99 percent of the population, respectively, while 47 percent of the population in the Sherman CEC area is African American. Virtually half of the children in these neighborhoods are living in poverty, and nearly one-quarter of 16- to 19-year-olds in the neighborhoods are high school dropouts.

*Funding amounts are the maximum available to each site from OJJDP.

SafeFutures Local Administration

lthough the six SafeFutures sites vary in the number and types of participating entities, most tend to have a core organizational structure.

Although the six SafeFutures sites vary in the number and types of participating entities, most tend to have a core organizational structure composed of an administering entity (fiscal agent or grantee), a policy advisory group responsible for providing oversight and direction to the initiative, and a management team responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the grant.

The independent missions of the entities charged with administrative responsibility for the SafeFutures grant vary substantially; some have broad, flexible mandates, while others operate within more limited confines. SafeFutures grants are administered by the following entities:

• Boston, MA: The Office of Community Partnerships, a department in Boston’s Human Services Cabinet.

• Contra Costa County, CA: The County Administrator’s Office.

• Fort Belknap, MT: Fort Belknap Community College, a tribally operated college.

• Imperial County, CA: The County Office of Education.

• Seattle, WA: The Department of Human Services,⁶ a city agency.

• St. Louis, MO: The Mayor’s Office of Youth Development.

In all sites, the project director is a staff member of the lead administrative entity responsible for the grant. However, the scope of the project directors’ responsibilities varies across sites. In some sites, day-to-day management responsibility for the initiative is either shared with or has been assigned to a project coordinator. In these instances, the project director retains overall administrative responsibility. This type of arrangement exists in Boston, Fort Belknap, and St. Louis (although in the first, the “coordinator” position has the title of “project director”).

Fort Belknap, Imperial County, and Seattle differ from the others in that some service delivery staff are directly employed by the SafeFutures initiative and report to the individual who has direct management responsibilities at those sites (such as the project coordinator and project director). In effect, these sites have hired direct service delivery staff in addition to relying on local partnerships or instead of contracting for services delivered by independent providers. In Fort Belknap, direct service delivery staff were hired primarily because of the relative lack of existing service delivery agencies that could provide SafeFutures services. In Seattle, SafeFutures initially hired staff for the SafeFutures Youth Center as employees of the Department of Human Services (the agency administering SafeFutures) because it believed that the facility would become operational more expeditiously than it would have if subcontracting were used.

he concept of a SafeFutures management team was introduced by OJJDP and adopted to varying degrees by the sites.

The concept of a SafeFutures management team was introduced by OJJDP and adopted to varying degrees by the sites. The team generally includes the project director or project coordinator and two or three supporting positions. St. Louis is the only site that includes local evaluators as part of its management team, although the local evaluators in Boston began attending management team meetings during year 2. In some sites (such as Contra Costa County and Imperial County), representatives of key partner agencies are part of the management team. In addition to the management team, several sites periodically convene representatives of partner agencies in various forums. St. Louis is one such site.

St. Louis, MO. St. Louis began holding monthly meetings of partner agencies in the first year of program implementation to focus on broad issues related to the initiative. Separate monthly meetings of Caring Adults (staff in partner agencies responsible for overseeing case management of SafeFutures youth) were added later to share information related to cases and discuss general issues related to services (e.g., gaps, available resources, new programs).

ndividual sites exhibit considerable variation in models for involving key leaders and community representatives in the policy role.

The second organizational unit involved in SafeFutures administration and implementation is a local policy advisory board. The responsibilities of policy boards range from general oversight and coordination to strategic planning to achieve systems change. Although each site’s organizational structure includes a policy board, or functional equivalent, individual sites exhibit considerable variation in models for involving key leaders and community representatives in the policy role. Characteristics of policy boards vary by composition, size, breadth, and scope of advisory responsibility and by whether responsibilities are overlapping or shared with other local policymaking bodies. (A detailed discussion of policy boards is provided in Rossman et al., 1998.)

In addition to management teams and policy boards, several sites have convened a variety of task forces to strategize and support the implementation of activities that transcend individual agency boundaries. Imperial County is one of the sites that has used this approach.

Imperial County, CA. The Imperial County Interagency Steering Committee formed a workgroup focused on budget issues and fiscal strategies. Leaders of county departments serving youth (such as the Office of Education, Mental Health, Probation, and Social Services) work together to set funding priorities, share resources, blend funds, and plan for sustainable financing. For example, the group decided to blend funds from Social Services and Probation to support probation officers working in school and community locations. The group is working with a systems improvement technical assistance consultant to develop long-range fiscal strategies.

The following sections briefly describe each of the program components and highlight selected research that suggests such efforts can foster desired results.⁷ Given the large number of programs implemented under these components across sites and the changes in those programs during the first 3 years of the initiative, it would be unwieldy to provide a complete listing of SafeFutures programming. Instead, brief descriptions of the type and range of programs implemented under each component are provided, along with selected examples from various sites. Due to the fluid nature of local efforts, these examples provide “snapshots” of programs in place at a particular time and may not accurately describe subsequent configurations.

Some programs provide services associated with multiple components, and there is no clear-cut way to classify these multifocused programs when using them as examples. Whenever possible, examples have been placed under the component to which they appear most closely linked.

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Comprehensive Responses to Youth At Risk: Interim Findings From the SafeFutures Initiative

OJJDP Summary • November 2000