Addressing Violence by Advancing Equity

Young people deserve to have a say in the decisions that shape their future. With research demonstrating links between adverse childhood experiences and negative health, well-being, and safety outcomes that reach far beyond their present, cross-generational conversations must happen to create spaces, programs, and policies that uplift children and families. The New Orleans Youth Master Plan is facilitated by the New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board (CYPB), the New Orleans Youth Alliance (NOYA), and the Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families (OYF) with co-direction and co-authorship by New Orleans youth, including the Youth Advisory Board of CYPB, the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council (MYAC), and NOYA Youth Leadership Fellows. The Youth Master Plan lays out 30 solutions within six Youth Master Plan areas and centers on five developmental stages from birth to 24.

Research has found that positive adult connection is a protective factor for adolescents, especially those in low-resource neighborhoods. Caring adult relationships have a positive impact on school performance and mental health and reduces the risk of substance use, suicide, and exposure to violence. Several youth-serving organizations incorporate positive adult relationships into their offerings and values. Community members can also act as mentors with these organizations or interact with and support the young people in their own neighborhoods. Leaders and politicians can enact programs and policies that increase support for parents, guardians, and caregivers.

Culyba, A. J., Ginsburg, K. R., Fein, J. A., Branas, C. C., Richmond, T. S., & Wiebe, D. J. (2016). Protective Effects of Adolescent–Adult Connection on Male Youth in Urban Environments. Journal of Adolescent Health, 58(2), 237-240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.10.247. 

The National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence encouraged art creation as a means of advocating for gun violence prevention. Activities that connected youth’s intrinsic interests in art with work toward a cause strengthened their affinity toward sociopolitical engagement. Given the disproportionate affect gun violence has on young people, supporting their existing interests in visual and performing arts like art, music, theater, etc. can uplift their voices and creativity in advocacy and social change.

Samuels, J. T. (2020). Interest-driven sociopolitical youth engagement: Art and gun violence prevention. The Journal of Media Literacy Education, 12(2), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2020-12-2-7.

EQ is an individual’s ability to perceive, manage, and evaluate emotions, whether those are their own or someone else’s. When people can name emotions, they are able to recognize them as behavior in themselves and in others. This can make them able to identify negative or aggressive feelings or actions to hopefully prevent or mitigate harm. Higher EQ can lead to fewer violent behaviors, especially in dating relationships, and an increased ability to identify behaviors as aggressive or violent. This is particularly important to develop in children and young people so that they can discover earlier rather than later in life the potential harm of certain actions and when their feelings or the feelings of others are leading toward harmful behavior. Research has defined this connection by demonstrating that being the aggressor in adolescent dating relationships is related to obtaining lower EQ scores, and that being able to identify violent behaviors as aggressive is related to higher scores in EQ.

Estevez-Casellas, C., Gómez-Medina, M. D., & Sitges, E. (2021). Relationship between emotional intelligence and violence exerted, received and perceived in teen dating relationships. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(5), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052284.

Social norms are the informal rules of groups and society that govern behavior. In the same way that social norms can perpetuate violence, changing them can reduce and prevent violence in communities. Youth should be included in the co-creation and promotion of social norms that say “violence is not the answer.” Youth can and should be part of the transformative change needed in their communities. The University of Louisville Youth Violence Prevention Research Center (YVPRC) implemented a community-wide social norms campaign called “Pride, Peace, Prevention” to cultivate positive racial identity and inspire leadership and community engagement.  Recognizing the need to shift community dialogue to address the root causes of youth violence (such as patterns of inequity, economic disparities, and discrimination) in a meaningful way, the goal of the Pride, Peace, Prevention campaign is to provide knowledge about Black history and shift the dominant narratives of what it means to be Black in the United States. It promotes cultural/racial pride and strives for a nonviolent peaceful community to prevent youth violence.

As they are developing their peer groups and social relationships, preteens and teens may need help distinguishing between caring attitudes and behaviors and those that are controlling, manipulative, or abusive. Knowing this difference can prevent dating violence. Safe Dates is an engaging, interactive, school-based program designed to change harmful attitudes and behaviors so that young people understand what a caring relationship looks and feels like. The curriculum is developmentally appropriate and is an evidence-based intervention to implement as a standalone program or within a health class.

Safe Dates may also help prevent other types of violence.

Foshee, V. A., Reyes, L. M., Agnew-Brune, C. B., Simon, T. R., Vagi, K. J., Lee, R. D., & Suchindran, C. (2014). The Effects of the Evidence-Based Safe Dates Dating Abuse Prevention Program on Other Youth Violence Outcomes. Prevention Science, 15(6), 907-916. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11121-014-0472-4.

A higher risk of violence exists for LGBTQ+ communities, especially for young people. It comes in multiple forms, can happen in multiple places including home, school, and neighborhood, and often occurs multiple times, compounding the harm and creating lifelong difficulties. Everyone can support intervening in and preventing this violence. Victim service providers, school personnel, and members of the public can intervene and make a huge difference, and a guide from the National Resource Center for Reaching Victims (NRC) and FORGE offers ways to do that. Simple and effective ways of preventing violence against LGBTQ+ youth include creating safe, stable, and nurturing relationships, providing connection and affirmation, increasing public conversations, using social media for education and support, and advocating for policy changes.

Leveraging their strengths, youth benefit by engaging within their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, and families. Through youth development programs, they can gain opportunities, relationships, and support to pursue their own goals and enhance their leadership ability. Involvement as an equal partner in these types of programs will help strengthen their protective factors against exposure to violence. Youth.gov offers a robust set of resources on youth development programs, including how to start one in your community.

Experiencing events or environments that undermine a sense of safety, stability, and bonding in childhood can have negative impacts into adulthood. Understanding the risk and protective factors around violence and providing support for safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for all children and families can help prevent ACEs. Prevention and intervention approaches can occur on multiple levels – individual, relational, community, and societal. Everyone from neighbors to policymakers can act with information about ACEs from the CDC.

Recognizing child abuse is the first step in keeping children safe. The Child Welfare Information Gateway has several resources to help identify different types of maltreatment and how to get them the resources they need.

Caregivers help children learn and grow through their relationships, and this involves caring, teaching, guiding, communicating, and providing for their needs. Anyone with children in their lives can engage in positive interactions that support their development and their parents. Resources from the CDC provide more information about child development, positive parenting, safety, and health at each life stage.

Everyone benefits when families have what they need to support themselves and the healthy development of their children. But not all families, particularly those in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and inequity, face barriers getting what they need and require greater support. The Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention (CCYVP) developed and evaluated two programs that provide opportunities for information exchange, knowledge and skill building, and practice.

SAFE Children is a family-focused, school-based preventive intervention designed to aid children and families in the transition to school by increasing children’s reading achievement, encouraging parent involvement in education, and improving parenting practices and family relationships. During weekly sessions, families discuss issues of parenting, family relations, and parental involvement and investment in their child’s schooling.

The GREAT Schools and Families program is designed to reduce school violence by decreasing aggression, promoting children’s academic and social competence, and improving parental skills, support, and involvement with schools. GREAT delivers multiple-family group activities that integrate parenting skills, family management, developmental education, and family support to strengthen youth protective factors.

Researchers have frequently studied the relationship between self-control and violence and the way parenting impacts a child’s development of self-control. Failure to develop sufficient self-control can increase an individual’s risk for negative health, mental health, and societal outcomes far into the future. As a means of addressing and preventing violence, schools, agencies, and nonprofit organizations can offer children and parents programs that proactively support self-control development or intervene in behavioral issues. One such program is SNAP® (Stop Now And Plan), an evidence-based cognitive behavioral model that provides a framework for teaching children struggling with behavior issues, and their parents, effective emotional regulation, self-control, and problem-solving skills. Its goal is to help children stop and think before they act.

Children with parents who are incarcerated are at risk of several negative health, well-being, and safety outcomes and exposure to violence. To improve and maintain familial relationships, carceral systems do better to provide opportunities and interventions. Research suggests better coordination between the foster care and carceral systems, increasing availability of child-friendly areas for visitation, reducing exorbitant rates for calls from prison, increase educational opportunities and interventions for parents, and several others.

Poehlmann, J., Dallaire, D., Loper, A. B., & Shear, L.D. (2010). Children’s Contact With Their Incarcerated Parents: Research Findings and Recommendations. The American Psychologist, 65 (6). https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0020279.

Employment not only engages young people when they aren’t in school, but it also provides valuable career and life skills. Research studies on summer employment indicate that it can reduce violent crime. Beyond the benefit of income precluding the need to commit certain types of crime, the mentoring, conflict resolution, and self-regulation learned through working with others speaks to the opportunity for prosocial behavior change. Further research into to why these programs work as violence prevention is needed so that they can be focused on the most effective practices and increased in both number and length.

Heller, S. Pollack, H. A., & Davis, J. M. V. (2017). The effects of summer jobs on youth violence. National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Office of Justice Programs. https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/library/publications/effects-summer-jobs-youth-violence.

Davis, J. & Heller, S. B. (2020). Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 102(4), 664-677. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00850. 

Schools bring children together to learn and create environments for collaboration, connection, and community. No matter the age, wherever people come together becomes a space to hear diverse perspectives, develop empathy, and get social and emotional support. Relationships and understanding cultivated in the classroom, through peer groups, during school activities, and between caring adults and children can be harnessed to prevent and respond to violence inside and outside of school. School-based violence prevention programs offer an opportunity to educate students and school staff about violence to change the way young people think and feel about violence and enhance interpersonal and emotional skills such as communication, problem-solving, and conflict management. The World Health Organization has developed a practical handbook to provide guidance for school officials and education authorities to embed violence prevention within school activities and across the interactions schools have with children, parents, and community members.

Supporting school systems in dealing with disciplinary infractions, restorative justice provides an alternative to ineffective zero-tolerance policies. Research into this area reports positive outcomes, including improved social relationships and reductions in office discipline referrals, both of which help schools to be safer for everyone and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. School administrators can investigate and implement a variety of restorative justice approaches and evaluate their outcomes within their out systems.

Katic, B., Alba, L. A., and Johnson, A. H. (2020). A Systematic Evaluation of Restorative Justice Practices: School Violence Prevention and Response, Journal of School Violence, 19(4). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15388220.2020.1783670. 

Researchers in a variety of fields have confirmed that education lowers criminality and exposure to violence. Positive school environments are places for children and young people to gain the cognitive skills to weigh consequences, develop social skills and cohesion to meet the human need for belonging, and increase their employment and income opportunities far into the future. A recent study examined the long-term relationship between crime and school district spending, finding increasing education funding has the capacity to reduce crime and thus violence. Legislators at both the state and federal level have the opportunity to implement policies and develop budgets that would increase school funding, make funding more equitable, and enhance the protective factor that schools and education can provide far into a person’s future.

Ades, J. & Mishra, J. (2021). Education and Crime across America: Inequity’s Cost. Social Sciences (Basel), 10(8). https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10080283. 

School connectedness occurs when students believe the adults in their schools care about both what and how they learn as well as who they are. Children and teens want to feel that the people in their school care about them as individuals. In addition to supporting educational outcomes, research has found that school connectedness is a protective factor against violence as well as substance use and unintentional injury. School administrators, staff, and teachers can employ a number of strategies as recommended by the CDC to improve school connectedness, including: proactively facilitate student, family, and community engagement, promote open communication, use effective classroom management and teaching methods to foster a positive learning environment, and provide professional development and support for teachers and staff which enables them to meet students’ diverse cognitive, emotional, and social needs. 

The places where a child lives, plays, and learns can have physical, mental, and emotional impacts far into adulthood. That’s why preventing their exposure to violence – not just at home but everywhere children are – is critical to a thriving future. Nurturing relationships, strong social networks, and community connectedness are protective factors and promote pro-social norms and positive social-emotional development. School administrators and policymakers at all levels can support this as well as equitable opportunity by building an early education to employment pipeline that reduces or eliminates suspensions and expulsions in early learning settings, provides mental health supports in early learning settings, improves access to affordable, high-quality early care and education programs, and makes restorative justice an organizational practice in education settings. 

Beyond school, young people need enrichment and activities that build their confidence and skills and provide them opportunities to interact with peers and adults. Every community has a variety of organizations, and some even focus on interests like running, filmmaking, coding, or being outdoors. Share your interest and knowledge with young people by finding an organization in your area to support with your time, in-kind donation, or financial contribution. In the New Orleans area, the New Orleans Youth Alliance has a directory of programs on its website. You can search it to find a program for a young person you know or an organization with which you can volunteer. 

The intent of the juvenile justice system is to help young people avoid further involvement in the system, yet it does include detention and incarceration as part of its process. Reports of violence and maltreatment in these facilities are common, negating any possible outcomes and increasing negative ones. Research shows juvenile incarceration is a disruption in young people’s development and results in substantially lower high school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates.

Aizer, A. & Doyle, J. J. (2015). Juvenile incarceration, human capital, and future crime: Evidence from randomly assigned judges. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(2), 759-803. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/130/2/759/2330376?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

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