Could After School Programs Help Crime Prevention?

The recent news on February 15th about the gunman who shot 18 students from a stage before killing himself at Northern Illinois University (NIU) is devastating, and deserves our thoughts, prayers and condolences. Yet many of us dig deeper and wonder how could this have been prevented?

In the charity work that I do at Brooklyn, New York-based Children of the City, we are no strangers to how crime and violence affect children every day. But we also see how a community can help. Perhaps if there were more programs nationwide like this, tragedies like the one at NIU would have been prevented.

It is interesting that violent and property crime rates at our country's schools during the year 2005 were statistically unchanged from the year 2004 versus 2005.

According to a report released a year ago on December 2, 2007 by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics violent and property crime rates remained about the same in the year 2005 compared to 2004. They measured crimes such as rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault and also theft. Here are some of the highlighted statistics:

-- Older students, of the ages 15 to 18, were less likely than younger students, of the ages 12 to 14, to be victims of crime at school during 2005.
-- Older students were more likely than younger students to be victims of crime away from school.
-- Other serious violent victimizations were lower at school than away from school for every survey year from 1992 through the year 2005.
-- During the year 2005, 99 percent of the students aged from 12 to 18 observed at least one of selected security measures at their school; the percentage of students who observed the use of security cameras at their school increased from 39 percent in 2001 to 58 percent during 2005.
-- Of the students in grades 9 through 12 an estimated 43 percent reported drinking alcohol anywhere and four percent reported drinking at school during the 30 days prior to the 2005 survey.

The charity's programs including its FutureSafe program, which is is a collaborative monthly event attended by an average of 500 children. It's like a neighborhood block party, complete with food, games, singing, crafts, and other fun activities for children. Children are picked up from their homes and brought to a community center where they participate in this event. Children of the City provides a much-needed preventative element designed to deter children from drug abuse, delinquency, gang involvement, teen pregnancies, as well as teach them on important issues such as health and education.

Stay tuned for more information on this topic. Or check out my Rocco Basile Charity website.

The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) provides federal leadership in developing the nation’s capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice and assist victims. More information can be found at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/.