Information and Demand

It's no surprise that youth crime is a problem. Even when it's not obvious, most of the time it's still happening. There are a lot of causes to this issue including peer pressure, which lots of kids succumb to without even realizing it. Another cause of this issue is lack of education, kids do not understand the great severity of the punishment that can come from bad decisions. There are some other causes like mental health issues, economic issues, and drug/alcohol use. The two main reasons that we focus on is lack of education and peer pressure. These two can both be solved with one move, education. Education around criminal justice solves the problem of peer pressure due to the fact that you can simply teach the results of peer pressure and ways to avoid it. We want to specifically target early middle school, because that when kids begin to gain independence, but are in in the developmental stage for their brain. Youth education and introduction has been proven to be incredibly effective for the kids, “Early intervention prevents the onset of delinquent behavior and supports the development of a youth’s assets and resilience. It also decreases rates of  recidivism* by a significant 16 percent when youth do go on to engage with the justice system” (Youth.gov).

*Recidivism - The action of re-committing a crime after being released from incarceration.

Right now, we are currently striving to incorporate education about this topic into the CPSD curriculum. But because we're "just 8th graders" we do need some help, which is why we have created a petition that you can find the link for on the How You Can Help page of  the website. Additionally, a lot of work goes into creating a curriculum for schools. This is work that we can't do because even with all of the research we have done, we still don't know enough about the field to confidently put together a curriculum. So, we decided to reach out to a local nonprofit organization.