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Youth Crime Watch of America, Inc., based in Miami, Florida, is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to establishing Youth Crime Watches across the United States and other countries. Sponsored in part by the US Department of Justice, OJJDP, it is a youth-led crime prevention/leadership program..
Youth Crime Watch developed initially in 1979 as an outgrowth of Citizen's Crime Watch of Miami-Dade County, Florida as a direct result of an outraged neighborhood coming together against injustice following the rape of a 12-year-old girl on Halloween night.
The successful pilot Youth Crime Watch program was located in North Miami Beach Senior High School, where it saw much success. In the first year of the program's implementation, students helped to reduce their school's drug problem by more than half by pinpointing drug pushers. In addition, chain snatchings, a prevalent problem at the time, were decreased by seventy-five percent. Equally important was the change in the students' attitudes: they were learning they could make a positive difference in their schools and in their communities. Students were reporting crime, saw positive results and enjoyed significantly improved morale and school spirit.
Youth Crime Watch went national in 1986 with the establishment of Youth Crime Watch of America, Inc. (YCWA), a non-profit organization. [1]
Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. The term delinquent usually refers to juvenile delinquency, and is also generalised to refer to a young person who behaves an unacceptable way.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth". Adult volunteers are matched with children from age 5 to young adulthood. It was founded by Irvin Ferdinand Westheimer.
Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., is an education program that tries to prevent use of controlled drugs, membership in gangs, and violent behavior. It was founded in Los Angeles in 1983 as a joint initiative of then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates and the Los Angeles Unified School District as a demand-side drug control strategy of the American War on Drugs.
In criminal justice systems, a youth detention center, known as a juvenile detention center (JDC), juvenile detention, juvenile jail, juvenile hall, or more colloquially as juvie/juvy, also sometimes referred to as observation home or remand home is a prison for people under the age of majority, to which they have been sentenced and committed for a period of time, or detained on a short-term basis while awaiting trial or placement in a long-term care program. Juveniles go through a separate court system, the juvenile court, which sentences or commits juveniles to a certain program or facility.
Alcohol education is the practice of disseminating information about the effects of alcohol on health, as well as society and the family unit. It was introduced into the public schools by temperance organizations such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the late 19th century. Initially, alcohol education focused on how the consumption of alcoholic beverages affected society, as well as the family unit. In the 1930s, this came to also incorporate education pertaining to alcohol's effects on health. For example, even light and moderate alcohol consumption increases cancer risk in individuals. Organizations such as the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the United States were founded to promulgate alcohol education alongside those of the temperance movement, such as the American Council on Alcohol Problems.
Drug education is the planned provision of information, guidelines, resources, and skills relevant to living in a world where psychoactive substances are widely available and commonly used for a variety of both medical and non-medical purposes, some of which may lead to harms such as overdose, injury, infectious disease, or addiction.
The American juvenile justice system is the primary system used to handle minors who are convicted of criminal offenses. The system is composed of a federal and many separate state, territorial, and local jurisdictions, with states and the federal government sharing sovereign police power under the common authority of the United States Constitution. The juvenile justice system intervenes in delinquent behavior through police, court, and correctional involvement, with the goal of rehabilitation. Youth and their guardians can face a variety of consequences including probation, community service, youth court, youth incarceration and alternative schooling. The juvenile justice system, similar to the adult system, operates from a belief that intervening early in delinquent behavior will deter adolescents from engaging in criminal behavior as adults.
John J. Dilulio Jr. is an American political scientist. He currently serves as the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Citizen Corps is a program under the Department of Homeland Security that provides training for the population of the United States to assist in the recovery after a disaster or terrorist attack. Each local Citizen Corps Council partners with organizations, volunteers and businesses to organize responders, volunteers and professional first responders for an efficient response so efforts are not wasted by being duplicated. By training in Incident Command, volunteers know whom to report to and how the incident is organized. This prevents sites from being inundated by untrained and unprepared personnel preventing operation. Citizen Corps also works in conjunction with the Corporation for National and Community Service in promoting national service opportunities for promoting homeland security needs.
Regina B. Schofield is a former United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs.
Reclaiming Futures is a non-profit organization aimed at assisting teenagers out of trouble with drugs, alcohol and crime. It began in 2001 with $21 million from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As of 2010 it operates with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. As of 2010 the group is based at the Regional Research Institute for Human Services of the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University in the United States, and operates in 26 communities across the U.S.
Established in 1981, the Eisenhower Foundation serves as a non-governmental organization that builds upon the work of two Presidential Commissions. These commissions include the bipartisan National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which operated from 1967 to 1968 and examined the civil unrest in major cities such as Detroit, Newark, and Los Angeles. The second commission, the bipartisan National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, was active from 1968 to 1969 and focused on addressing the causes and prevention of violence following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The Eisenhower Foundation carries forward the objectives and initiatives of these commissions in the private sector.
After-school activities, also known as after-school programs or after-school care, started in the early 1900s mainly just as supervision of students after the final school bell. Today, after-school programs do much more. There is a focus on helping students with school work but can be beneficial to students in other ways. An after-school program, today, will not limit its focus on academics but with a holistic sense of helping the student population. An after-school activity is any organized program that youth or adult learner voluntary can participate in outside of the traditional school day. Some programs are run by a primary or secondary school, while others are run by externally funded non-profit or commercial organizations. After-school youth programs can occur inside a school building or elsewhere in the community, for instance at a community center, church, library, or park. After-school activities are a cornerstone of concerted cultivation, which is a style of parenting that emphasizes children gaining leadership experience and social skills through participating in organized activities. Such children are believed by proponents to be more successful in later life, while others consider too many activities to indicate overparenting. While some research has shown that structured after-school programs can lead to better test scores, improved homework completion, and higher grades, further research has questioned the effectiveness of after-school programs at improving youth outcomes such as externalizing behavior and school attendance. Additionally, certain activities or programs have made strides in closing the achievement gap, or the gap in academic performance between white students and students of color as measured by standardized tests. Though the existence of after-school activities is relatively universal, different countries implement after-school activities differently, causing after-school activities to vary on a global scale.
The Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by former US Ambassador Mel Sembler, his wife Betty Sembler (née Schlesinger), and Joseph Zappala as Straight, Inc., renamed The Straight Foundation, Inc. in 1985 and Drug Free America Foundation in 1995.
Juvenile delinquency in the United States refers to crimes committed by children or young people, particularly those under the age of eighteen.
The United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, which reflects the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2010, approximately 70,800 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone. As of 2006, approximately 500,000 youth were brought to detention centers in a given year. This data does not reflect juveniles tried as adults. As of 2013, around 40% were incarcerated in privatized, for-profit facilities.
Switchboard of Miami, Inc., commonly referred to as Switchboard, was a private, nonprofit and registered 501(c)(3) organization located in Miami, Florida, United States that provided Miami-Dade County with comprehensive telephone counseling and referral services to thousands of social service programs beginning in 1968. The organization also offered counseling services and prevention programs, such as initiatives aimed at assisting high-risk youth and their families through partnerships with local schools. Since 1968, these services have been offered to the community at no charge. Callers can seek advice confidentially, as no information is needed by the company in order to receive the services. Switchboard shut down in 2016 following a "major financial emergency".
The Florida Network of Youth and Family Services is a non-profit statewide association and contract management entity, of 31 agencies dealing with runaway, truant, ungovernable and other troubled youth and their families.
Incarceration prevention refers to a variety of methods aimed at reducing prison populations and costs while fostering enhanced social structures. Due to the nature of incarceration in the United States today caused by issues leading to increased incarceration rates, there are methods aimed at preventing the incarceration of at-risk populations.
Community crime prevention relates to interventions designed to bring reform to the social conditions that influence, and encourage, offending in residential communities. Community crime prevention has a focus on both the social and local institutions found within communities which can influence crime rates, specifically juvenile delinquency.