By Laura DeKoven Waxman
October 13, 2008

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak was in Washington October 8 to brief police chiefs on his city’s efforts to reduce youth violence through a public health approach. Rybak also used the occasion to provide them with copies of the Conference of Mayors’ National Action Agenda on Crime for the Next President of the United States.

Rybak told the participants at the National Violent Crime Summit convened by the Police Executive Research Forum that his city embarked on its Blueprint to Prevent Youth Violence last January in response to escalating youth violence, especially homicides in which young people were the victims. The Blueprint contains four key goals, each of which is supported by specific recommendations for action:

• Surround every young person with a trusted adult;

• Intervene at the first sight of at-risk behavior;

• Restore young people who have gone down the wrong path; don’t throw them away; and

• Attack the culture of violence; help kids to unlearn it.

Joining Rybak in the presentation was Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan, who stressed the need to balance tough enforcement directed at violent juvenile crimes with a tough curfew and truancy effort in which police try to reconnect young people with their schools and families. The city has established a center to which the police can take young people who are truant or violating the city’s age-based curfew. The city has found the effort to be quite effective, with 83 percent of the young people who are brought to the center never returning to it.

Rybak suggested that the next Administration coordinate its youth violence prevention efforts through an interagency effort similar to the federal interagency council on homelessness, and that the federal government support local efforts to develop plans and leverage youth violence prevention funding. Both the interagency proposal and key elements of the Minneapolis Blueprint are included in the Conference’s National Action Agenda on Crime.