Racial differences in police contacts are not de facto evidence of bias, but monitoring could help guard equity.
Racial differences in police contacts are not de facto evidence of bias, but monitoring could help guard equity.
The Research and Evaluation Center is developing a policy analysis and review about the Thrive Academy in Maryland, an effort to prevent youth gun violence in partnership with the State’s Department of Juvenile Justice and a multi-government agency and community stakeholder program known as the Community Investment Initiative (CII).
“The best way to understand evaluation research and the development of evidence in youth justice today is to view it as a contentious and evolving process constantly affected by theoretical differences, political ideology, financial interest, bureaucratic dysfunction, and the practical concerns of measurement and data collection.”
New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development implemented three potentially effective programs to prevent violence, reduce crime, and support resident well-being. Effective evaluations rely on detailed frameworks that guide data collection, data analysis, and the interpretation of results. To design reliable evaluations of complex programs, researchers collaborate with policymakers, agency leaders, program staff, and community residents to create detailed evaluation frameworks, revising them as necessary to account for changes in policy and practice. The evaluation frameworks presented here are draft versions offered as starting points for efforts to employ evidence-based public safety strategies in New York City.
My contributions to a discussion at Yale Law School stressed the need to build community violence prevention with credible evidence rather than progressive rhetoric.
Grassroots efforts to reduce violence could be called Community Violence Interventions at the Roots (or CVI-R).