uide for Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious ...

Part II: Preventing Serious, Violent, and
Chronic Delinquency and Crime
Part II summarizes the review of preventive intervention
strategies. Twenty-five effective and promising
interventions are grouped into two categories: conception
to age 6 (9 specific programs) and childhood
through adolescence (16 program areas). Approaches
to prevention that seek to reduce identified risk factors
and, at the same time, enhance protective factors
are likely to provide the strongest form of prevention.
Effective Early Interventions
Reducing youth violence and crime requires a multifaceted,
coordinated approach in which early intervention
is a critical first step (General Accounting
Office, March 31, l992). Several researchers (Hawkins
and Catalano, 1992; Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller,
1992; Institute of Medicine, 1994; Olds and Kitzman,
1993; and Yoshikawa, 1994) have reviewed well-designed
evaluations of preventive interventions targeting
risk factors for delinquency, violence, and
substance abuse. These sources should be consulted
for more complete descriptions of the programs and
their effects than can be presented in this Guide.
The programs described here have been found to
reduce risks and enhance protective factors against
crime, violence, and substance abuse. Some have
demonstrated long-term preventive effects as well.
Only programs that provide direct services to individuals
and/or their families are included in this consideration
of early interventions.
As the child reaches school age and moves beyond
the world of home and family, the community begins
to play a more active role in the youth’s development.
Thus, community action, development, and policing;
changes in laws or regulations; and other communitywide
interventions aimed at affecting broad community
risks are discussed later in this part in the review
of the period from childhood to adolescence.
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The preventive interventions described below have
been tested extensively with children born to single
(often teenage) mothers living in poverty. Preventive
initiatives using these early intervention strategies
should reach those children at risk because of low
birthweight or preterm birth or because their mothers
were unwed, poor, or teenagers. The interventions are
organized developmentally from the prenatal period
through age 6.
Approaches to prevention that seek
to reduce identified risk factors and,
at the same time, enhance protective
factors are likely to provide the
strongest form of prevention.
Pre- and Perinatal/Early Education
The Prenatal/Early Infancy Project is an example of a
comprehensive program that includes many of the
intervention components from both the pre-/perinatal
period and the birth to age 4 developmental stage
(Olds, Henderson, Tatelbaum, and Chamberlin, 1986;
Olds, Henderson, Chamberlin, and Tatelbaum, 1986).
The program targeted a geographical area with high
rates of poverty and child abuse in the semirural
Appalachian region of New York State. Most of the
mothers in the sample were unmarried and from the
lowest socioeconomic group; nearly half were teenagers.
In the full implementation of the program,
home visits by a nurse began during pregnancy and
continued until children were 2 years old. The nurses
provided mothers with health and parent education,
job and education counseling, health and social service
linkage through referral and advocacy, and emotional
and social support. The nurses also encouraged