Kid Futures, Inc.

Blueprint for Preventing Violence

Aug 29, 2001

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
July 2001
A Message From OJJDP
As communities seek to prevent and
control youth violence, they naturally
look to the growing number of effec-tive
violence reduction programs that
are being implemented across the
Nation. How can they accurately
assess the relative merits of these
competing programs and determine
the strategy best suited to meeting
their local needs?
Through the Blueprints for Violence
Prevention Initiative, OJJDP provides
information to communities on a
broad array of violence prevention
and intervention programs that have
been proven to be effective. This
Bulletin describes the demanding
criteria established by the Center for
the Study and Prevention of Violence
to designate model Blueprints pro-grams
and the activities of the 11
programs out of the more than 500
that have been reviewed to date and
found to meet those rigorous stan-dards.
Contact information is provided
for each program, and replication and
funding resources are discussed.
The most significant criterion used
in reviewing a program?’s effective-ness
is evidence of its deterrent effect
when using a strong research design.
The Blueprints programs featured
in this Bulletin have demonstrated
their effectiveness in reducing adoles-cent
violent crime, aggressive delin-quency,
substance abuse, and pre-delinquent
aggression and conduct
disorders. They merit our attention
and consideration.
meet a strict scientific standard of program
effectiveness. Program effectiveness is
based on an initial review by CSPV and a
final review by and recommendations from
an advisory board comprising six experts
in the field of violence prevention.2
The 11 model programs, or Blueprints,
have been proven to be effective in reduc-ing
adolescent violent crime, aggression,
delinquency, and substance abuse and
predelinquent childhood aggression and
conduct disorders. Another 19 programs
have been identified as promising. To
date, more than 500 programs have been
reviewed, and CSPV continues to look for
additional programs that meet the rigor-ous
selection criteria.
This Bulletin describes CSPV?’s selection
criteria in choosing model Blueprints pro-grams,
highlights the 11 model programs
chosen to date, and discusses replication
of Blueprints programs, their funding, and
lessons learned from the replication sites.
Blueprints for
Violence Prevention
Sharon Mihalic, Katherine Irwin, Delbert Elliott,
Abigail Fagan, and Diane Hansen
Communities often lack the best informa-tion
on how to assess local needs and
how to use an assessment to select a vio-lence
reduction/intervention program
that fits their needs. Despite strong public
pressure to implement programs with
proven results, without clear standards
and guidelines, communities can become
lost in the maze of programs that claim
effectiveness in deterring violence yet
have no factual information or evidence
supporting their effectiveness. The Blue-prints
for Violence Prevention Initiative
is a comprehensive effort to provide
communities with a set of programs
whose effectiveness has been scientifi-cally
demonstrated. With the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Preven-tion?’s
(OJJDP?’s) support, the Initiative
also provides the information necessary
for communities to begin replicating pro-grams
locally.
The Center for the Study and Preven-tion
of Violence (CSPV) at the University
of Colorado at Boulder designed and
launched the Blueprints for Violence Pre-vention
Initiative in 1996 to identify and
replicate effective youth violence preven-tion
programs across the Nation. The Ini-tiative,
which was at first funded by the
Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, the
Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion,
and the Pennsylvania Commission on
Crime and Delinquency,1 identified 11 pre-vention
and intervention programs that
1 Currently, a majority of the funding support comes
from OJJDP.
2 Advisory board members are Tom Cook, Ph.D.,
Northwestern University; Delbert Elliott, Ph.D.,
University of Colorado; Denise Gottfredson, Ph.D.,
University of Maryland; Hope Hill, Ph.D., Howard
University; Mark Lipsey, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University;
and Patrick Tolan, Ph.D., University of Illinois. Peter
Greenwood, Ph.D., The RAND Corporation, is a former
board member.