Butts, Jeffrey A., Kathleen Tomberg, Douglas Evans, Rhoda Ramdeen, Caterina Roman, and Caitlin Taylor (2012). Interim Report 1: National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention. New York, NY: Research and Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.

The National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention is designed to promote greater coordination and effectiveness in violence prevention efforts across community and organizational systems, including law enforcement, juvenile and criminal courts, schools, social services, mental health, and a wide variety of neighborhood and community-based organizations. The federal partners involved in the National Forum began the initiative in 2010 by recruiting six cities to participate in the effort and by sponsoring a series of meetings and workshops attended by inter-agency and cross-sector leadership teams from each city.

This first report from the Implementation Assessment of the National Forum includes information collected through interviews and site visits to each participating city and from online surveys of individuals involved in each city’s youth violence prevention network. The first round of surveys was administered beginning in June 2011, and the second was launched in February 2012. This report describes the changes perceived by respondents during the first eight months of implementation.