Youth violence prevention program shown to reduce arrests by up to 75%

A CU Boulder-led initiative to reduce youth violence in hard-hit Denver neighborhoods was associated with a 75% decline in arrests for murder, assault, robbery and other youth crimes in recent years, new research shows.

“We now have concrete data to show that when communities come together and mobilize, we can prevent youth violence, even in urban settings with a very high burden,” said senior author Beverly Kingston, director of CU’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV). 

The study, published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice, assesses the efficacy of the Youth Violence Prevention Center - Denver (YVPC-Denver), one of five university-community partnerships established by the Centers for Disease Control after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. 

The centers have remained one of the only long-term federally funded efforts to address what the agency has termed the “serious public health issue” of youth violence. 

Homicide is the third leading cause of death for youth ages 10 to 24 and the leading cause of death among Black youth, according to the CDC.

A ‘violence prevention infrastructure’ 

In 2011, YVPC-Denver began working with community organizations in the Montbello and Park Hill neighborhoods of Denver to get at the root cause of youth violence plaguing the neighborhoods and come up with and implement solutions. They used a framework called Communities That Care which hinges on two things: science-backed interventions and community involvement.

“It’s all about building a violence prevention infrastructure,” said Kingston. “Just like we have roads and bridges that we put money toward, we need to build an infrastructure that supports violence prevention throughout the life-course.”

In partnership with elementary schools, after-school programs, and faith and sports organizations, the program provided more than 3,000 youth ages 6 to 18 with training on how to handle anger and peacefully resolve conflict.  

The initiative also worked with pediatricians to develop screenings for kids and get them help if they seemed at high risk of committing violence, and provided mini grants to local groups matching positive adult role models with teens.

Perhaps the most visible outgrowth of the program has been the Power of One Campaign, a sweeping youth-led effort in which dozens of youth, known as the Game Changers, use social media, podcasts, neighborhood block parties and more to send a message to their peers that violence is not normal.

One group of Game Changers produced a documentary film “Breaking the Cycle: Stories of Strength and  Survival of Gun Violence.” 

Others recently rolled out an app which connects youth with peers for help handling food insecurity, mental health issues or gang violence. 

“Sometimes the people who are causing the violence are just youth having trouble at home and having a hard time getting the help they need,” said Game Changer Annecya Lawson, who joined the program after a friend was fatally shot her sophomore year in high school. “When these kids see somebody their age, who looks like them, doing stuff for the community, it can have a big impact. They’re more likely to think before they act.”

Crunching the numbers

For the study, CU Boulder researchers analyzed arrest data from the Denver Police Department for the five years prior (2012 – 2016) and five years after (2017 — 2021) Communities that Care was implemented in Park Hill.

They found that arrests fell 75%—from 1,086 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 276 per 100,000 in 2021. Further statistical analyses found that similar communities across the Denver area did not see declines as sharp during the study period. (Collectively, across 74 Denver neighborhoods, youth arrests fell 18% on average).

Montbello, which had implemented Communities that Care several years before Park Hill, maintained stable, lower arrest rates throughout the study period even as they climbed sharply elsewhere amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This suggests that the infrastructure set up by the program had lasting impacts, said Kingston.

Kingston recently got word that the final year of funding for their current five-year grant cycle is at significant risk of being revoked. Loss of the $1.2 million would jeopardize the existence of the Game Changers and make it impossible for the YVPC – Denver to continue its work.

“Losing this funding would be devastating,” said Kingston. “Not just for Denver but for communities nationwide looking to replicate this success.”