August 2005

Faced with an alarming number of youth homicides – 144 in 1998 alone - Philadelphia responded with an aggressive program to curb the violence and create a brighter future for those young people most likely to kill or be killed.

Now, the program’s own future is at risk.

The Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP) is a collaboration of more than a dozen public and private agencies and organizations that targets at-risk youth with intense and coordinated intervention involving police, probation officers, the district attorney’s office and street workers. Formed in 1999, the YVRP has depended on a patchwork of funding sources to sustain its efforts. However, that quilt is starting to come unraveled, putting expansion – and even continuation – of the highly successful program in doubt.

“We’ve spent our time doing the work, not touting the work, and that has hurt us a little,” said John Delaney, deputy district attorney with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and co-chair of the YVRP Steering Committee.

That is changing, though. As one of the coordinating agencies for the YVRP, Philadelphia Safe and Sound (PSS) is making a strong case for sustained support of the program – including preparing a report for members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of Mayor John Street. “That just shows the enormous amount of respect Philadelphia Safe and Sound has gained for the work it has done over the years to advance best-practices programs,” said Naomi Post, former PSS president/CEO and co-chair of the YVRP Steering Committee.

The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), held a field hearing in Philadelphia earlier this summer to review programs targeting youth violence and to determine which ones deserve continued federal support – including money from the steadily shrinking Juvenile Accountability Block Grant (JABG) program.

Jo Ann Lawer, current PSS president/CEO, delivered written testimony to the committee about the success of the YVRP and its funding needs. Built around intense monitoring of at-risk youth, which requires dramatically lower caseloads, the program costs about $3.5 million per year to operate - $4.6 million if expanded to serve more youth and offer more services. “It is a costly program,” said Lawer, “but it has been proven to save lives.”

PSS is one of five Urban Health Initiative campaigns around the country supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – all aimed at promoting strategies that measurably improve the well-being of youth on a widespread scale. The YVRP is one of the most successful – and enduring – examples.

“Anyone can start a program, but sustaining it takes a little luck and a lot of skill,” said Delaney, a UHI fellow. “The fact that we’ve survived several significant personnel changes within our partner organizations indicates that we’re truly reforming the system because the reforms are outlasting the personnel.”

Operating in three of Philadelphia’s most violent police districts, the YVRP can be linked to dramatic reductions in the murder rate among youth ages 7-24. A study conducted by Public/Private Ventures, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the effectiveness of social policies and programs, shows that in the first district where the program started in 1999, murders have decreased 62 percent, dropping from 11 in 1998 to an average of 4.2 per year. When the program was introduced in a second district in 2000, murders there fell 52 percent from 25 in 1999 to an average of 11.3 per year. In the third district, murders dropped 32 percent from 14 in 2002 to an average of 9.5 per year.

With youth homicide rates in non-YVRP districts dropping only 6 percent between 1999-2004, the case in favor of the program is strong. “After several years of operation, we can document the YVRP’s effectiveness,” said Lawer. “Now, we need to help Pennsylvania’s state and federal officials understand that this is a best-practices model.”

Three important findings inspired the YVRP model.

• A disproportionate number of Philadelphia homicides involve people younger than 25.
• A small percentage of young chronic offenders commit a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes.
• Most offenders and their victims have histories of arrest for serious offenses or have been involved in gunshot incidents as victims or perpetrators.

Those findings told Philadelphia it could identify many of the relatively small number of young people most likely to be involved in a homicide and, through aggressive intervention, prevent many of those homicides. And so, with leadership from partners like PSS, the YVRP was born. Since the program’s inception, it has worked with 1,400 at-risk young people – a.k.a “youth partners” – and in that time only 10 have lost their lives to homicide, said Paul Fink, a psychiatrist and consultant to the Philadelphia School District who serves on the program’s Steering Committee.

A key to the YVRP’s success is the diligence of the partner agencies and organizations, noted Fink. It starts with a Steering Committee that meets every other month to discuss policy issues and major strategic concerns. A Management Committee meets monthly to monitor progress and address service concerns. Finally, an Operations Committee meets weekly to deal with day-to-day issues, including reviewing criminal and delinquency records to select candidates for the program.

The heart and soul of the YVRP, however, are the police, probation officers and street workers who team up in ways they never did before to constantly monitor the program’s youth partners in their homes, schools and neighborhoods through random home visits, patrols of known trouble spots and frequent drug testing. “Many of those folks had no history of cooperating with each other,” said Delaney. “The teamwork and dedication of the people in the field has been incredible.”

The YVRP takes a carrot-and-stick approach, applying graduated sanctions to youth partners who fail drug tests, miss curfew or commit other violations, but also offering drug treatment, job training/placement, educational assistance and – perhaps most importantly – proof that someone cares about their future. “At first, their reaction is often very negative,” said Fink, “but most of them come around because we are relentless and they eventually decide that having a job is better than being back on the street dealing drugs.”

Delaney likes to tell the story of a meeting he attended in which a judge explained to a group of youth partners targeted by YVRP and their parents what to expect from the program. When the judge finished, he asked for questions, and the mother of a youth partner raised her hand. Delaney thought for sure she was going to ask why her son was being singled out. Instead, recalled Delaney, she said, “Judge, why did it take the city so long to do this?”

For more articles on this website about youth violence reduction, click here.  For more information on this website about Philadelphia Safe and Sound, click here.