The most widely used school-based substance abuse prevention program in the United States is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program, which is funded by a variety of sources, including private, federal, and other public entities. DAREs primary mission is to provide children with the information and skills they need to live drug- and…

Discovering why adolescents take sexual risks, despite knowledge of consequences, is a vital first step in combating the problem. Optimistic bias, the misperception that one is less likely than others to experience negative consequences from health behaviors, offers a promising explanation for adolescents' sexual risk-taking. Unfortunately,…

To debunk the myth that evaluation is a process better left to people with a PhD, this guide describes how organizations and coalitions can develop and utilize an evaluation strategy to make underage drinking prevention programs successful and effective. This booklet first describes the purpose of evaluation as well as the myths and facts about…

Many federal agencies actively address the problem of violence in schools by acquiring and disseminating information about school violence and supporting strategies that work to reduce violence. This document provides an inventory of federal activities addressing violence in schools. It was designed to facilitate coordination of federal school…

Assigning law enforcement officers to cover schools full-time as their beats proactively addresses concerns about juvenile crime and violence. The Center for the Prevention of School Violence trains School Resource Officers (SROs) and implements and evaluates SRO programs. In 1996, it developed a profile of officers serving North Carolina schools,…

The popular conception of illegal drug use as inevitably pushing users toward compulsive drug abuse, and the ideological stance that drug use is a moral weakness, are offered by many as justification for punitive drug control. Challenging this view are the research on "set and setting" as determinants of the consequences of drug use, and…

In 1995, Alabama joined many other states in passing mandatory character education as a response to violence in schools. Although the "Virtue of the Week" program had been implemented in Alabama schools for several years, little evaluation has been done to measure its effectiveness. In spring 2001, a study was carried out to analyze the…

Every day in virtually every school, students and staff suffer the pain and indignity of being a target for harassment ranging from written or verbal abuse to physical violence, which, in some cases, causes serious injury or death. This guide addresses the more comprehensive issue of school-based harassment by capturing similarities in cause of,…

This digest in Spanish describes several technologies that can be used to control access to, and improve surveillance of, school grounds. Access can be controlled by using "smart" cards to control keyed entries. Many schools have problems with multiple copies of keys, and these card systems are integrated with computer software that…

This is an investigation of the impact that a volunteer-based violence prevention program is having in a large urban school district located in the Midwest. The program addresses behavioral and violence prevention issues in the school setting with the hopes of reducing the factors that might put a student at-risk for school failure. The long-term…

Guides in this series summarize knowledge about how police can reduce the harm caused by specific crime and disorder problems. They are guides to prevention, not to investigating offenses of handling incidents. This guide focuses on rape of college students by acquaintances. It is estimated that almost 25% of college women have been victims of…

This resource guide, noting that October is crime prevention month, calls upon everyone to commit to working on at least one of three levels--family, neighborhood, or community--to drive drugs and violence from the world. Ways in which individuals can fight crime are presented, as well as materials for publicizing crime prevention month. The…

Finding that violent crimes perpetrated by juvenile offenders has increased dramatically in this century, the Committee on the Judiciary recommended and forwarded this bill for enaction by the Senate. The bill revises federal court procedures, addresses the problem of violent crime and controlled substance offenses by youth gangs, and encourages…

This compendium contains 15 reports in a review of the research literature supporting law-related education (LRE) in the schools. Historical research and current findings are presented. The first part of this compendium is organized into three sections. Section 1 focuses on the research that has provided the foundation for the vision of LRE…

This report presents findings of a study that explored issues related to juvenile delinquency by examined the most recent data on juvenile arrests and the delinquency cases processed by U.S. juvenile courts. The study compared the characteristics of young offenders arrested in recent years with those arrested in 1980 and analyzed the responses of…