ASSESSMENT ACTION PLAN

Assessment action plan

Assessment action plan

Introduction

Enactment of a youth development vision requires a communitywide collaborative effort among public officials, current service providers, primary institutions (such as churches, recreational facilities, libraries, and schools), and citizens (including youths themselves). In the past few years, several "comprehensive community initiatives" have begun across the country. This paper discusses several of these. Although they have not existed long enough to amass conclusive evaluation results, their attempts to forge collaborative relationships can provide lessons for other communities.

Assessment action Plan

Risk factors for Youth Leadership substance abuse exist at both the environmental and individual levels (Hawkins, Catalano, & Associates, 1992; Hawkins, Catalano, & Miller, 1992). These include economic and social deprivation, low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization, transitions and mobility, community norms, attitudes favorable toward drug use, drug and alcohol availability, family history of alcoholism or drug use, poor family management practices, academic failure, low commitment to school, early antisocial behavior and aggressiveness, association with drug-using peers, favorable attitudes toward drug and alcohol use, and early first use of drugs. Protective factors, which have been shown to prevent delinquency and violence, include strong attachments to adults, school, positive peers, and the community (Hawkins, Catalano, & Associates, 1992).

Interventions aimed at changing youths' attitudes toward drugs and enhancing their social skills to make them more resistant to peer pressure have not achieved a sustained reduction in the use of drugs and alcohol (Hawkins, Catalano, & Associates, 1992). Multifaceted interventions that address the full range of risk and protective factors at the community level appear necessary. The "communities that care" (Hawkins, Catalano, & Associates, 1992) approach is one such community mobilization strategy that encompasses promising approaches at several levels: prenatal and infancy programs, early childhood education, parent training, school organization and management, instructional improvement in schools, drug and alcohol prevention curricula, community and school drug use policies, and media mobilization.

Although the overall rates of juvenile crime may not be increasing, the rate of violent juvenile crime has risen sharply in the past few years (Snyder, 1994). Since 1988 the arrest rates of juveniles for serious violent crimes including aggravated assault, robbery, and murder have increased by 50 percent. Many attribute this rise to the increased availability of firearms (Howell, 1995).

A variety of studies have shown that the large majority of adolescents, perhaps as many as 80 percent, engage occasionally in some form of (usually minor) delinquent behavior. Only a relatively small proportion of juveniles (about 5 percent to 10 percent), however, account for the vast majority (60 percent to 80 percent) of the serious and violent crimes committed by juveniles (Elliott, 1994; Hamparian, Schuster, Dinitz, & Conrad, 1978; Shannon, 1991; Tracy, Wolfgang, & Figlio, 1990; Wolfgang, Figlio, & Sellin, 1972). Moreover, this small percentage of serious offenders also accounts for a great deal (about half) of all crimes committed by juveniles.

Recent reviews of existing research have identified a list of predictors of delinquent behavior. Factors that predict delinquent involvement include poverty, biological disabilities, poor parenting, difficult temperament, cognitive deficits, ...