child care - Digital Library Collections

CHILDREN, VIOLENCE, AND CRIME
additional increase to $200 million in Fiscal Year
1999. This initiative will give grants to local middle
and elementary schools in rural and urban areas to
provide after-school opportunities, including education
and recreation. Nonetheless, much more is
needed to sustain this and other after-school and
summer programs held at both schools and community-based
organizations.
Effective Local Initiatives
Anumber of localities are pursuing balanced approaches
to youth violence that are keeping
their communities and their children safer.
These approaches merit study and emulation.
Boston: Collaborating to save children's lives.
Boston's comprehensive violence prevention plan
has had extraordinary success. This broad-based
community effort resulted in a 65 percent drop in
arrests ofjuveniles for violent crimes between 1993
and 1995. Furthermore, not a single child died
from gunfue between July 1995 and December
1997 (when a 16-year-old was shot and killed).
Boston's program involves all segments of the
community in keeping young people safe. Police,
probation officers, judges, and federal and state
prosecutors collaborate across jurisdictional lines
to focus on "hot spots" ofguns and violence. With
funding provided in part by federal prevention dollars,
youth workers keep schools open after-hours
and staff community centers to provide young people
with mentoring, tutoring, counseling, and other
positive activities. Businesses offer summer job opportunities.
Religious organizations, including the
ecumenical 10 Point Coalition, sponsor programs
whereby congregations "adopt" young gang members
or support neighborhood crime watches. In
these myriad ways, the community lets children at
risk know they are cared for and there are consequences
for their actions. As a result, all the people
ofBoston are safer.
Nashville: Handling probation and truancy in
innovative ways. Through the leadership ofJuvenile
Court Judge Andy Shookhoff, the Davidson
County Juvenile Court is working hard to protect
the safety of children and the Nashville community.
One focus has been probation, the fust sanction
for many juvenile delinquents. Over the past
few years the court has opened 25 neighborhood
probation offices in housing developments,
schools, and community centers. Because the offices
are centrally located, the probation officers
become part ofthe community, making them more
accessible and more effective. They are able not
only to reach out to the children whose cases they
monitor, but also to join a community-wide effort
to keep children from getting in trouble in the first
place. Furthermore, the neighborhood probation
offices are multipurpose resources: they serve as
"suspension schools" where suspended students do
supervised school work instead of watching TV at
home or roaming the streets, and they offer tutoring,
mentoring, computer labs, incentive programs,
after-school activities, and parenting classes.
Another feature of Nashville's program is the
Immediate Response Early Truancy Program.
Every morning of every school day, court staff
receive from 22 elementary and middle schools a
list ofchildren who are not in school. A staff member
then goes to the home ofeach student to investigate.
If there is no good reason for the absence,
the child is taken to school and the parent is taken
to court. Truancy at such a young age is often a
result of problems at home, in many cases related
to parental drug or alcohol use, mental illness, or
child neglect and abuse. Addressing these problems
early helps reduce the likelihood of later
school dropout, substance abuse, teen pregnancy,
and juvenile crime and violence.
Nashville, like many other cities across the nation,
has learned the value of partnership. Government
officials have increased their collaboration
with community agencies and their involvement
with volunteers. By working with programs and
service providers already established within the
community, Davidson County Juvenile Court is
creating a unified web to protect all children.
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: Emphasizing
both law enforcement and crime prevention. The city
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