Evaluation of a Court-Ordered Violence Prevention Program for Gun-involved Youths

• Published date: 01 April 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15412040231216703
• Author: Natalie Kroovand Hipple,Theodore S. Lentz
• Date: 01 April 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

2024, Vol. 22(2) 108–124

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/15412040231216703

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Evaluation of a Court-Ordered

Violence Prevention Program

for Gun-involved Youths

Natalie Kroovand Hipple

1

and Theodore S. Lentz

2

Abstract

As youth gun violence continues to plague marginalized US communities, knowledge about “what

works”to prevent injury and illegal gun activity within this population remains a contentious and

pressing issue. This study investigates the impacts of Project Life—an education-ba sed youth gun

violence prevention program—on recidivism outcomes for a sample of 368 youths in Indianapolis,

Indiana, between 2015 and 2019. We conducted retrospective outcome analyses to compare

youths who completed the program (83%) to youths who did not complete the program. We f‌ind

that youths who completed the program were signif‌icantly less likely to recidivate with a gun

violence offense within an average follow-up period of 1.5 years following enrollment in the

program. Youths who spent more time incarcerated and had a parent who was incarcerated were

at higher recidivism risk when controlling for prior history of offending and other key risk factors.

These nonexperimental f‌indings show short-term promise for education-based violence pre-

vention programming for youths at risk with fewer concerns of widening the net of carceral

punishment.

Keywords

youth gun violence prevention, system-impacted youths, survival analysis, recidivism

Introduction

Gun violence continues to plague American cities. Most homicides are committed using a gun

although nonfatal shootings occur at much higher rates than gun homicides (Hipple et al., 2019,

2020). Homicides are the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 24

in the United States and the third leading cause of death for youths between the ages 10 and 14

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Community members in low-income urban

1

Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA

2

Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, University of Wisconsin –

Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Natalie Kroovand Hipple, Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University Bloomington, 1033 E Third Street, 346

Sycamore Hall, Bloomington, IN 47405-7000, USA.

Email: nkroovan@indiana.edu

areas continue to be the most common interpersonal gun violence victims, especially young Bl ack

males (Kalesan et al., 2014;National Research Council, 2013). However, there is little research

illuminating the causes of and effective responses to gun violence.

There is good reason that such gun violence research is lacking—there is very little federal

funding to support such work. The “Dickey Amendment,”f‌irst passed in 1996 and included by

Congress in annual appropriations legislation that funds the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC), prohibits the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control. Broadly

interpreted, the Dickey Amendment essentially made it challenging for the CDC (and, as of 2011,

the National Institutes of Health) to fund gun violence research (Rostron, 2018). The effects of the

Dickey Amendment and the resulting lack of funding have remained unchanged for more than

20 years despite the growing rate of gun-related deaths among children and adolescents beginning

in 2014 (Goldstick et al., 2022). Change came in 2019 when Congress allocated US$25 million

toward gun violence research, ending the federal funding drought. Meanwhile, one year later,

f‌irearm-related injuries surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for people

one to 19 years old (Goldstick et al., 2022). Thus, while even a small amoun t of funding for gun

violence research can only be seen as positive, we are still woefully behind in this area.

To help f‌ill this void, we present evaluation evidence for an education-based youth gun vi-

olence prevention program called Project Life implemented in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our sample

includes 368 youths between 11 and 17 years old who had been involved in gun- and/or violence-

related crime. Our results from survival and treatment effects analyses demonstrate a signif‌icant

reduction in recidivism risk among those youths who completed the Project Life program,

suggesting that this low-dosage court-ordered program may be a promising approach for pro-

tecting youths at high risk from continued involvement in gun violence. This research contributes

to the body of scholarship documenting what works, what is promising, and what is ineffective in

youth gun violence prevention.

Background

Legal attempts to reduce gun violence have sought to reduce gun ownership and possession,

especially among youths. A 1994 amendment to the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 made 18 the

national minimum age to possess or buy a handgun or handgun ammunition (§18 U.S. Code 922).

While gun laws vary from state to state, most states prohibit juveniles from possessing guns that an

adult would otherwise be allowed to possess. That is, gun carrying is illegal for people under the

age of 18 across the United States.

1

However, there is ample (but often dated) research suggesting that juveniles do indeed have

access to guns (Beardslee et al., 2021) and may even be more likely to carry and f‌ire a gun than

adults (Watkinset al., 2008). Sheley and Wright(1995) surveyed more than800 youths detained in

juvenile correctional facilities in the early 1990s. Eighty-six percent of respondents indicated they

had owned a gun at some point, with 83% indicating they owned a gun just prior to their

conf‌inement. Research from the same time period indicates that adolescents carry guns for

protection (Cook & Ludwig, 2004;Decker et al., 1997;Lizotte et al., 1994) although other work

disputes these f‌indings (Steinman & Zimmerman, 2003). In addition to protection, gun carrying

can be related to community violence levels (Cook & Ludwig, 2004;Molnar et al., 2004;Patchin

et al., 2006) as well as social inf‌luences (Beardslee et al., 2021) and drug involvement (Steinman

& Zimmerman, 2003). Lawmakers’attempts to curb gun violence through state legislation has

proven diff‌icult in that research demonstrates illicit gun markets can thrive even in states with the

strictest of gun control laws (Hureau & Braga, 2018).

While evidence regarding the impact of gun policy on gun violence remains inconclusive

(Branas et al., 2021;Morrall, 2018), alternative approaches for preventing youth gun violence

Hipple and Lentz 109