Knife crime: Glasgow, Scotland

Saturday Night Lights is run by the DA’s office and aims to reduce gun violence by providing organized sports for school-aged kids on weekend nights, when crime often goes up. Active in 20 locations across the city, SNL has served over 20,000 kids in 10 years. Partners must open on Saturday nights, for at least 46 weeks per year, and provide high quality coaching. There is no formal sign-up process or eligibility requirements apart from age and participants can join on any given night. As a response to surging crime rates in 2020, the mayor’s office has committed $5 million a year to expand to 100 locations.

In its four years of community outreach, Cure Violence’s New York City chapter has been accepted and welcomed by both neighborhoods and police. The program now works in 17 police precincts, providing direct violence intervention, legal and mental health resources, and improving police/community relations.

The approach of some state detention directors to juvenile justice has evolved at Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center. Research shows that traditional detention is simply not working as a deterrent to youth crime—and can actually increase it. Administrators, county and special-interest groups have chipped away at antiquated practices to make room for rehabilitation and therapy. These efforts attempt to address the core issues that culminate in youth crime, delinquency and recidivism.

If juveniles in the Hinds County youth-court system, whose families tend to have limited resources, cannot get sustained, meaningful help at the center, they do not have many other options. But, thanks to a lawsuit on behalf of the juveniles in the facility, the county is starting to address the lack of mental-health services - whether in facilities or starting at home with the family.

The Volunteers of America's Face Forward 2 program offers a second chance to youth offenders by focusing on education and employment. Destyni Iverson believes the program potentially changed the trajectory of life. She said she felt hopeless when she enrolled, and was on the verge of becoming a high school dropout. Now she is enrolled as a nursing student at Cuyahoga Community College and believes she has a bright future.

Programs run by the Volunteers of America and Ohio Means Jobs|Cleveland-Cuyahoga County focus on employment, not only as a workforce issue, but also as a way to keep young people out of trouble and lower youth violence. Such programs have the research to back them up. An analysis done for The Plain Dealer by Case Western Reserve University shows a correlation between the youth idle rate, based on teens who are neither in school nor working, and youth violence.

Should police be law enforcers or social responders? Some leaders say "guardian" duty is at least important as purely law enforcement tasks, sometimes known as "warrior" work. That idea is rooted in centuries-old principles of policing.

Adolescent Opportunity Programs (AOPs) are a pre-intervention method for curtailing juvenile delinquency that have proven vital in the Mississippi state's criminal-justice system - they have the power to prevent young people from entering the system in the first place and save taxpayer costs in the long-term. But federal funding is threatening to run out.

A program in Baltimore bring youths together with volunteer second “families” to help guide them through turbulent times.

Marking a departure from other countries in the Caribbean and Central and South America, Jamaica has seen its crime rate fall after many years of lawlessness. A combination of factors helped bring this about, including putting resources toward combatting corruption, fostering community policing and also seeking help from outsiders to strengthen institutions. Progress may be tenuous if drug trafficking is pushed out elsewhere and lands in Jamaica, however many are optimistic permanent change has taken root.