Solve Violence

Strategic Plan to Reduce Young Adult Violence and Gangs in Newport News, Virginia: P.I.E.R. Strategy

APPENDIX VII: Know At-Risk Kids by Name

The City of Minneapolis has done a more concise job of cleanly articulating their violence prevention goals than any other community in America.

Their Blueprint for Action, designed to prevent youth violence, approaches the problem from a public health perspective. Formally launched in January 2008, the Blueprint has four main goals, all center on knowing the youth personally, by name, and dealing with these young people one person at a time:

Place a trusted adult in the life of every child,

Intervene at the first sign of risk,

Restore youth who have been in the juvenile justice system, and

Unlearn the culture of violence.

This program has received national recognition from the National League of Cities.

Juvenile-related homicides were at the lowest levels in 2009 since 2001. In addition, violent crime in the Fourth precinct (which includes four neighborhoods in the Blueprint) decreased 35 percent from 2007. Moreover, arrests for violent crimes in the same geographic neighborhoods were down 35 percent from 2007.

In January 2011, the active identification of specific at- risk kids was deployed with two grants each geared toward identifying and helping youth in Northumberland who might be prone to violence.

MacDonald, Valerie Ontario Northumberland Today, 19 January 2011http://www.northumberlandtoday.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2935960

A little more than $48,000 came in the form of a provincial grant given to local police and school boards and just over $118,000 in Ontario Trillium Foundation funding was awarded to two agencies working with at-risk youth and families covering ages 12 to 25.

Both groups have engaged the participation of scores of community agencies that will assist in the individual programs.

Organizers had confidence that the identifying protocol will hopefully address the kids they see "falling through" the system.

Bermuda understands the nature of “knowing the children at at-risk.”

In December 2010, Former Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith was in the news noting that the gang culture “is becoming engrained in Bermudian society.”

He encouraged Government to pursue a major cross-Ministry initiative aimed at both identifying at-risk young people and preventing them from drifting into crime.

“We have one significant advantage in Bermuda over the research done elsewhere. Every high-risk boy between, for example, the ages of 8-10 – and younger – is known – by first name, last name and nickname. We know where each boy goes to school, we know which junior football team he might be on, where he lives and many of these boys will already be ‘known to the system’ somewhere and exist in the database of one Ministry or another. It’s my view that we must execute, with laser precision, suitable prevention programmes to deliberately target those families and individuals at the highest risk and then measure the success of that intervention over time.”

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/dhfs/yv.asp

No COLORS: 100 Ways To Stop Gangs From Taking Away Our Communities

APPENDIX VII: Know At-Risk Kids by Name