Age range

Website: www.safepassages.org

Mission/Goals: Safe Passages makes and implements policies that help children in Oakland grow up safely and lead productive lives. It aligns community resources towards comprehensive strategies that support children and youth at critical times in their development (including: 1) if exposed to violent behavior at a very young age; 2) in middle school years when they may be more likely to get in trouble; and 3) if arrested as a teenager.) The program's affiliates include the City of Oakland, Alameda County, the Oakland Unified School District, the East Bay Community Foundation, Children's Hospital Oakland, and other community organizations.

Notes: Safe Passages is a multi-level initiative to reduce violence that focuses on both systems change and intervention in youths' lives at key stages of their development. Safe Passages is part of the Urban Health Initiative, a national youth violence reduction program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Safe Passages utilizes: 1) an early childhood strategy (to coordinate services for children ages 0-5 and their families who have been exposed to violence); 2) a middle school strategy (to create safe and supportive school environments by implementing a comprehensive delivery model at middle school sites); 3) a youth offender strategy titled Pathways to Change (to provide comprehensive services to decrease the incidents of repeat offenders in the local juvenile justice system); and 4) an afterschool strategy (which coordinates a team to develop partnerships between public agencies, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders to promote a city-wide network of afterschool programs and providers).

Source(s): urbanhealth.org/oakland.htm; www.safepassages.org

Type of Evaluation: Outcomes Monitoring

Objective: To examine the success of the Pathways to Change Program in decreasing recidivism (defined as a new referral to the Probation Department) among participants.

Impact/Outcomes: Overall results showed decreases in new referrals and the frequency of arrest at both the 6-month and 1 year follow-ups. There was a significant decrease in the proportion of sustained charges for violent crimes at both follow-ups. Specifically, at the 6-month follow-up the recidivism rate was 36% and at 1 year it was 49%, indicating decreases of 60% at 6-months and 45% at 12 months. There was also a significant decrease in the number of youth with 3 or more referrals to the probation department (from an average of 3.1 referrals at baseline to 1.6 at 6-months and 1.7 at 12-months). Prior to program participation, 67% of the youth had three or more referrals. At the 6-month follow-up this number dropped to 12.5% and at one year it fell to just 8.7%. The numbers of youth with sustained charges also dropped during the evaluation period. Prior to program participation, youth had an average of 2.1 sustained charges. At 6-months this fell to
an average of 1.5 charges and at 12-months it averaged 1.7 sustained charges (representing decreases of 29% and 19%). The proportion of violent crimes among program youth decreased by 32% at the 6-month follow-up and by 16% at the one year follow-up.

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