Strategies for Youth Newsletters
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Dear Friends:
We hope you had an enjoyable summer and were able to avoid the wrath of the recent weather.
Today we report on the newly released findings of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) survey on juvenile justice and youth training issues.
The IACP’s survey, the “2011 Juvenile Justice Training Needs Assessment,” found that police chiefs want training but lack funding and agency resources to provide it to their officers. More than half the chiefs reported a decrease or abolition of training programs in the last five years.
The IACP survey found that the top 5 areas in which chiefs want training for their officers are: 1) substance abuse, 2) physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse, 3) dealing with chronic juvenile offenders, 4) bullying/cyber-bullying, and 5) gangs. Other topics included internet offending, runaways, and school safety.
The results of the survey support Strategies for Youth’s view that American police are not getting the skills they need to work effectively with youth. They are not trained in best practices or the most effective methods for de-escalating youth and regulating their behavior. Lack of departmental capacity and resources is one reason; the IACP confirms another conclusion of SFY, namely that this training is not included or given priority in police academy curricula.
The mission of Strategies for Youth is to rectify these deficits, to support officers with the training and skills they need to work effectively with youth, and to build departments’ capacity to deal with youth issues using best practices and local expertise.
This is all the more necessary because offficers routinely deal with children and youth, and arguably do so more now than ever. Social program cuts, the increased placement of officers in schools, and the common reaction of calling the police for any youth-related issue, combine to make police the first responders to incidents involving youth. Yet officers, who deal with youth in the course of some of the most traumatic situations of young people’s lives, are not trained to recognize signs of trauma or anxiety in youth, or the best practices for dealing with youth who have been traumatized. Click here to read Why Police Need to Understand Youth and Trauma.
The federal government needs to step into the breach. The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) is best positioned to fill this void, albeit the least well-funded, to make this a national policy priority and goal.
Training officers how to work with youth: It’s what chiefs say they want, it’s what science shows works, and it’s what kids need.
We look forward to emphasizing these views to further the mission of SFY.
Respectfully,
Lisa H. Thurau,
Executive Director
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We are pleased to report we are fielding an increasing number of calls and inquiries for support, program development and training. With your support we can do even more. Please consider making a donation to Strategies for Youth today!
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September, 2011 e-Newsletter!