The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) funded K–12 educational communities across the country to support their efforts to address youth violence by identifying needs and implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention efforts. In collaboration with our partner and lead organization, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the JPRC (and teammates from WestEd’s Resilient and Health Schools and Communities) will provide direct technical assistance to a selected number of these grantees. Our team will support grantees in their planning and implementation of specific programs and strategies to prevent youth violence. We will lead several broader tasks, including providing webinars and other group learning opportunities, and creating tools and other resources for the field.
Violence Prevention
Providing Technical Assistance to Enhance School Capacity to Prevent Youth Violence
Regression Discontinuity Design: A Method to Rigorously Evaluate Interventions to Reduce Crime and Improve the Justice System
To address challenges within traditional research designs for crime reduction and justice system improvement, this brief provides information about the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) method.
The brief shares a comprehensive overview of the RDD method that emphasizes its significance and efficacy in evaluating interventions in real-world scenarios. It advocates for increased RDD adoption, highlighting ethical advantages and its potential for accurate and applicable research outcomes.
Researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking ethical, practical, and data-driven approaches to intervention evaluation will also find practical guidance for employing RDD.
The PA Peace Alliance Website
The JPRC serves as the technical assistance provider to organizations receiving violence prevention funding from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). To better serve the grantees and the PCCD, the JPRC and WestEd’s Communications Department developed the PA Peace Alliance website. The site provides opportunities to connect with and learn from peers and subject matter experts, access to live training opportunities, and includes a robust digital library.
Re-imagining Community Safety in Greenville South Carolina’s Nicholtown Neighborhood
The JPRC has been awarded a grant from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) under its Reimagining Justice: Testing a New Model of Community Safety funding. This award provides the JPRC the opportunity to work in partnership with leaders in Greenville, South Carolina, to test an innovative approach to improving community safety for neighborhoods experiencing high rates of less serious and low-level criminal offenses. The JPRC will work in partnership with the mayor’s office, the police department, the local NAACP chapter, and the Sterling School for the next 3 years to lead the implementation of Voices of Informed Community Engagement for Safety (VOICES). This project will engage the community to assess needs and to enhance and evaluate a new community safety strategy in the Nicholtown neighborhood of Greenville.
Five Misconceptions About School Shootings
School shootings are the subject of debate in the media and in communities across the United States, and there is much discussion about prevention and the root causes of such attacks. But what does research say about these tragic events and their perpetrators? Do all shooters fit a specific profile? And what meaningful steps can schools and communities take to reduce the likelihood of these events?
In concise, clear language, this research brief describes and refutes five common misconceptions about school shootings and suggests an evidence-based strategy to reduce the probability of attacks.
The authors conclude that schools and communities are better served when presented with a balanced perspective informed by the wealth of available research about perpetrators, their varying motivations, and pre-attack behaviors.