Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Austin youth re-entry program has 15% recidivism rate, compared to 75% nationwide

    Jail to Jobs pays youth while they get trained for jobs in construction, manufacturing, landscaping, and cooking. The youth come from youth detention, the streets, probation, and foster care and their trainers are formerly incarcerated. Jail to Jobs, with four locations in Austin, has helped more than 600 young people find employment despite their pasts. Only 15% of its graduates have been jailed afterward, a lower-than-average recidivism rate.

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  • What Do Police Know About Teenagers? Not Enough.

    "Policing the teen brain" is a training regimen devised by Strategies for Youth that teaches police officers to de-escalate conflicts with adolescents to avoid unnecessary incarceration. Youth detention has dropped significantly since Tippecanoe County put most of its officers through the training. Police learn how to account for teens' lowered impulse control and undeveloped problem solving skills. The county decided to pay for the expensive training because detention, which hits Black youth hardest, can be even more costly – and leave lasting damage in the lives of young people.

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  • How emergency workers are combating gun violence: 'We have to invest'

    Bridging the Gap is a violence prevention program at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center that emphasizes treating more than the physical wounds of gunshot victims. Starting in the hospital and continuing afterward, the program gives victims case managers and mentors to link them to services that will change their life's trajectory, including job opportunities. The aim is to interrupt the cycles in which the same people get injured repeatedly, sometimes leading to their deaths. Since the program started in 2007, people it has helped experience far fewer repeat injuries.

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  • He's 11. By his mom's count, he's had 30+ interactions with armed officers at school.

    Denver's school board responded to the 2020 racial justice protests by removing the police officers who were stationed in certain middle and high schools. But the police or the district's growing force of armed guards get called thousands of times per year to the schools, including "child in crisis" calls. Their response can escalate tensions and unnecessarily criminalize behavioral problems that could be helped through other means. The schools are exploring ways to use the money they saved on "school resource officers" to improve counseling services and give teachers realistic alternatives.

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  • Some youth avoid detention and rehabilitate at Central Oregon ranch

    Youth in Oregon who get court-ordered rehabilitation as an alternative to youth detention might end up at the J Bar J Ranch, which despite its name is less a working ranch than a boarding school with individual counseling aimed at helping troubled young people change themselves. Success takes many forms – high school diplomas, reconnecting with family, setting and meeting personal goals – but first the youth must earn a place at the ranch, which can only take 28 at a time.

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  • Manchester parents form grassroots tutoring initiative to help kids rise to educational challenges

    Parents, educators, and other members of the community have formed a volunteer tutoring service for children of black, brown, and immigrant families. Extra resources and educational support are necessary for the 46 percent of the Manchester school district students who come from communities of color. In the aftermath of the pandemic, parents were left seeking additional academic support and worked together to provide the solution for their children.

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  • The career where it helps to have a criminal past

    All people between the ages of 14 and 21 in Washington, D.C., who are placed on probation for criminal convictions get assigned a probation officer, social worker, and a "credible messenger" – a mentor, usually with his or her own criminal past, who is paid by the city Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to help ensure a successful probationary period. The cost is far lower than youth detention and is associated with a much lower rate of re-offending. The work is so intense that the highly trained messengers often need their own counseling to cope with the stress of turning lives around.

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  • Safe Streets celebrates a year with no homicides in a South Baltimore area they serve, with hope for rest of the city

    South Baltimore's Cherry Hill neighborhood enjoyed its third homicide-free year since the violence intervention program Safe Streets began operation. While a formal evaluation of the program's nine neighborhood sites is yet to be completed, community members credit it with lowering violence by putting "violence interrupters" on the scene of conflict or in hospitals to counsel gunshot victims against retaliation. Safe Streets mediated more than 400 disputes in Cherry Hill in the past year, most of them involving people armed with guns and likely to commit violence. Violence citywide has remained high.

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  • A cure for violence

    In the Boston area, the Roca organization intervenes before young men commit violence. Its "relentless outreach" approach is based on cognitive behavioral therapy, an approach that helps people recognize and change their destructive behavior and learn new skills to cope with conflict and stress – essential to keeping impulsive young men, many the victims of violent trauma, from committing violence. Researchers see evidence that the program, which has spread throughout the metro area and to Baltimore, makes people less likely to get arrested and more likely to get a job.

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  • How some college counselors are fighting back against pandemic-induced enrollment decline

    Riverside County launched College Comeback to address the COVID-19 related decline in graduating high school students going to college. Six counselors each spend 25 hours a week reaching out to the high school class of 2020 and holding one-on-one appointments to help students navigate application deadlines, financial aid, and California Dream Act forms, as well as provide information about technical programs and military service. Counselors’ stipends come from money previously allotted for travel, and since they are also trained mental health professionals, counselors provide emotional support as well.

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