DEFUND THE POLICE
Youth violence prevention program shown to reduce arrests by up to 75%
Development of a “violence prevention infrastructure” led to sharp declines in arrests for murder, assault and other youth crimes in Denver
University of Colorado at Boulder
A CU Boulder-led initiative to reduce youth violence in hard-hit Denver neighborhoods was associated with a 75% decline in arrests for murder, assault, robbery and other youth crimes in recent years, new research shows.
“We now have concrete data to show that when communities come together and mobilize, we can prevent youth violence, even in urban settings with a very high burden,” said senior author Beverly Kingston, director of CU’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV).
The study, published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice, assesses the efficacy of the Youth Violence Prevention Center - Denver (YVPC-Denver), one of five university-community partnerships established by the Centers for Disease Control after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
The centers have remained one of the only long-term federally funded efforts to address what the agency has termed the “serious public health issue” of youth violence.
Homicide is the third leading cause of death for youth ages 10 to 24 and the leading cause of death among Black youth, according to the CDC.
A ‘violence prevention infrastructure’
In 2011, YVPC-Denver began working with community organizations in the Montbello and Park Hill neighborhoods of Denver to get at the root cause of youth violence plaguing the neighborhoods and come up with and implement solutions. They used a framework called Communities That Care which hinges on two things: science-backed interventions and community involvement.
“It’s all about building a violence prevention infrastructure,” said Kingston. “Just like we have roads and bridges that we put money toward, we need to build an infrastructure that supports violence prevention throughout the life-course.”
In partnership with elementary schools, after-school programs, and faith and sports organizations, the program provided more than 3,000 youth ages 6 to 18 with training on how to handle anger and peacefully resolve conflict.
The initiative also worked with pediatricians to develop screenings for kids and get them help if they seemed at high risk of committing violence, and provided mini grants to local groups matching positive adult role models with teens.
Perhaps the most visible outgrowth of the program has been the Power of One Campaign, a sweeping youth-led effort in which dozens of youth, known as the Game Changers, use social media, podcasts, neighborhood block parties and more to send a message to their peers that violence is not normal.
One group of Game Changers produced a documentary film “Breaking the Cycle: Stories of Strength and Survival of Gun Violence.”
Others recently rolled out an app which connects youth with peers for help handling food insecurity, mental health issues or gang violence.
“Sometimes the people who are causing the violence are just youth having trouble at home and having a hard time getting the help they need,” said Game Changer Annecya Lawson, who joined the program after a friend was fatally shot her sophomore year in high school. “When these kids see somebody their age, who looks like them, doing stuff for the community, it can have a big impact. They’re more likely to think before they act.”
Crunching the numbers
For the study, CU Boulder researchers analyzed arrest data from the Denver Police Department for the five years prior (2012 – 2016) and five years after (2017 — 2021) Communities that Care was implemented in Park Hill.
They found that arrests fell 75%—from 1,086 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 276 per 100,000 in 2021. Further statistical analyses found that similar communities across the Denver area did not see declines as sharp during the study period. (Collectively, across 74 Denver neighborhoods, youth arrests fell 18% on average).
Montbello, which had implemented Communities that Care several years before Park Hill, maintained stable, lower arrest rates throughout the study period even as they climbed sharply elsewhere amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This suggests that the infrastructure set up by the program had lasting impacts, said Kingston.
Kingston recently got word that the final year of funding for their current five-year grant cycle is at significant risk of being revoked. Loss of the $1.2 million would jeopardize the existence of the Game Changers and make it impossible for the YVPC – Denver to continue its work.
“Losing this funding would be devastating,” said Kingston. “Not just for Denver but for communities nationwide looking to replicate this success.”
Journal
American Journal of Criminal Justice
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Effects of the Communities that Care (CTC) Prevention System on Youth Violence Outcomes in Two Violence-Impacted Denver Communities
ADHD medication linked to reduced risk of suicide, drug abuse, transport accidents and criminal behaviour
Findings should help inform clinical practice and the debate on ADHD drug treatment
BMJ Group
Drug treatment for people with newly diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with significantly reduced risks of suicidal behaviours, substance misuse, transport accidents, and criminality, finds a study published by The BMJ today.
The researchers say this is the first study of its kind to show beneficial effects of ADHD drug treatment on broader clinical outcomes for all ADHD patients and should help inform clinical practice.
ADHD affects around 5% of children and 2.5% of adults worldwide and is associated with adverse outcomes including suicidal behaviours, substance misuse, accidental injuries, transport accidents and criminality.
Although randomised trials have shown that ADHD medication alleviates core symptoms, evidence of its effects on these broader clinical outcomes are more limited.
To address this knowledge gap, researchers drew on data from Swedish national registers (2007-2020) to examine the effects of ADHD drug treatment in 148,581 individuals aged 6-64 years with a new diagnosis of ADHD.
Using a technique called target trial emulation, which applies the design principles of randomised trials to observational data, they assessed first and recurrent events for five outcomes (suicidal behaviours, substance misuse, accidental injuries, transport accidents, and criminality) over two years after diagnosis.
Of the 148,581 individuals with ADHD (average age 17 years; 41% female), 84,282 (57%) started drug treatment for ADHD, with methylphenidate being the most commonly prescribed (88.4%).
After accounting for factors including age, sex, education level, psychiatric diagnoses and medical history, ADHD medication was associated with reduced rates of a first occurrence of four of the five outcomes: a 17% reduction for suicidal behaviour, 15% for substance misuse, 12% for transport accidents, and 13% for criminality.
The reduction was not statistically significant for a first-time accidental injury (88.5 v 90 per 1000 person years).
However, amongst people with recurrent events, the rate reductions associated with ADHD medication were seen for all five outcomes: a 15% reduction for suicidal attempts, 25% for substance misuse, 4% for accidental injuries, 16% for transport accidents, and 25% for criminality.
Possible explanations include reduced impulsivity, which might lower criminality by curbing aggressive behaviour, and enhanced attention, which might decrease the risk of transport accidents by minimising distractions, suggest the authors.
They acknowledge several limitations, such as being unable to assess data on non-drug treatments or the impact of drug dosage. And while target trial emulation is one of the most rigorous approaches for analysing observational data, they can’t rule out the possibility that other factors, such as ADHD severity, genetic predispositions, and lifestyle factors, may have affected their results, so no definitive causal conclusions can be drawn.
However, this was a large study based on national registry data and findings were similar after further sensitivity analyses, suggesting they are relevant to people with ADHD in real-world clinical settings.
As such, they conclude: “These results provide evidence on the effects of ADHD drug treatment on important health related and social outcomes that should inform clinical practice and the debate on the drug treatment of ADHD.”
Journal
BMJ
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
ADHD drug treatment and risk of suicidal behaviours, substance misuse, accidental injuries, transport accidents, and criminality: emulation of target trials
Article Publication Date
13-Aug-2025
COI Statement
All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at https://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/ and declare: support from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare; the Swedish Research Council, ìShizu Matsumuraîs Donation, KI Research Grants, the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, the Söderström König Foundation, Fredrik och Ingrid Thurings Stiftelse, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the National Institute for Health and the Care Research, and the European Research Executive Agency; HL has received grants from Shire Pharmaceuticals, personal fees from, and has served as a speaker for, Medici, Shire/Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and Evolan Pharma AB, and sponsorship for a conference on ADHD from Shire/ Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Evolan Pharma AB, all outside the submitted work; SC has received reimbursement for travel and accommodation expenses from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH) in relation to lectures delivered for ACAMH, the Canadian ADHD Alliance Resource, the British Association of Psychopharmacology, and the Healthcare Convention and CCM Group team for educational activity on ADHD; SC has also received honorariums from Medice and serves as chair of the European ADHD Guidelines Group, all outside the submitted work; ZC has received speaker fees from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, outside the submitted work; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.
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