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Introduction: Richard F. Catalano, Ph.D., Rolf Loeber, Ph.D., and Kay C. McKinney Recent research indicates that children exposed to certain risk factors in their families, at school, among their peers, and in their communities are at greater risk of becoming serious violent juvenile (SVJ) offenders. Multiple rather than single factors place children at risk of becoming SVJ offenders. Therefore, intervention efforts directed toward any single source of influence (e.g., family, school, or peers) are unlikely to be successful. Rather, to be effective, programs must target several risk factors in a variety of settings. According to the Study Group on Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders—a group of 22 researchers convened by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to study the population of SVJ offenders—implementing family, school, and community interventions is the best way to prevent children from developing into SVJ offenders. Interventions include strategies that prevent problem behavior or that intervene to reduce future problem behavior. The Study Group also concluded that programs similar in philosophy to public health approaches (i.e., those that both address risk factors and introduce protective factors) are the most promising prevention and early intervention programs for SVJ offenders. Many schools and communities have designed interventions to prevent or reduce risk factors for SVJ offending and drug abuse. The Study Group reviewed a number of such programs that have shown promising results in preventing adolescent antisocial behavior. Its findings, summarized in this Bulletin, are set forth in greater detail in the group's final report, Never Too Early, Never Too Late: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions for Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders (Loeber and Farrington, 1997).1 The chapter of the final report summarized in this Bulletin, which focuses on comprehensive school and community interventions to prevent serious and violent juvenile offending, was researched and written by Richard F. Catalano, Michael W. Arthur, J. David Hawkins, Lisa Berglund, and Jeffrey J. Olson. While few of the interventions described in this Bulletin have been evaluated to measure their impact on SVJ offending, all address multiple risk factors in a variety of settings, an approach that may be one of the most effective at preventing problem behaviors from developing. The Study Group examined five types of school interventions: structured playground activities, behavioral consultation, behavioral monitoring and reinforcement, metal detectors, and schoolwide reorganization. These interventions varied in effectiveness. Programs that monitored student behavior and reinforced attendance and academic progress increased positive school behavior and academic achievement and decreased delinquency. While metal detectors reduced the number of weapons brought into schools, they did not seem to decrease weapon carrying or violence outside schools. The Study Group also examined eight types of community interventions: citizen mobilization, situational prevention, comprehensive citizen intervention, mentoring, afterschool recreation programs, policing strategies, policy changes, and mass media interventions. Several of these interventions showed positive results in reducing risk and enhancing protective factors, and in studies with long-term followup, certain programs were effective in reducing juvenile crime and substance abuse.
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