substantiated as victims (Wiese andDara, 1995).

◆ Homicide is the leading cause of deathamong African American males ages 15to 24 (Hawkins, Crosby, and Hammett,1994).

◆ A survey of inner-city high school stu-dents revealed that 45 percent hadbeen threatened with a gun, or shot at,and one in three had been beaten upon their way to school (Sheley andWright, 1993).

In addition, an alarming number ofchildren who are not the direct victims ofphysical assault become potential psy-chological casualties as they witness vio-lence both at home and in the broadercommunity. For example:

◆ In a study conducted at Boston CityHospital, 1 out of every 10 childrenseen in their primary care clinic hadwitnessed a shooting or a stabbing be-fore the age of 6—50 percent in thehome and 50 percent in the streets.The average age of these children was2.7 years (Taylor et al., 1992).

◆ In a study of New Haven 6th, 8th, and10th grade students, 40 percent re-ported witnessing at least one violentcrime in the previous year (New HavenPublic Schools, 1992).

◆ In a survey of fifth and sixth grade stu-dents in Washington, D.C., 31 percentreported having witnessed a shooting;

Child Development–CommunityPolicing: Partnership in aClimate of ViolenceSteven Marans, M.S.W., Ph.D.

The New Haven Department of PoliceServices and the Child Study Center atthe Yale University School of Medicinehave developed a unique collaborativeprogram to address the psychologicalimpact of the chronic exposure to com-munity violence on children and families.The Child Development–CommunityPolicing (CD–CP) program brings policeofficers and mental health professionalstogether to provide each other with train-ing, consultation, and support, and toprovide direct interdisciplinary interven-tion to children who are victims, wit-nesses, or perpetrators of violent crime.The New Haven program serves as a na-tional model for police-mental healthpartnerships across the country.

Children’s Exposureto Violence

The experience of victimization by vio-lence is far too common among childrenin America, as evidenced below:

◆ In 1994, almost 2.6 million youth ages12 to 17 were victims of crime—simpleand aggravated assaults, rape, androbbery (Bureau of Justice Statistics,“National Crime Victimization Survey.”Unpublished table.).

◆ In 1994, an estimated 3.1 million chil-dren were reported to public welfareagencies for abuse or neglect. Morethan 1 million of those children were

From the Administrator

Too many of our Nation’s children arefalling victim to pervasive violence.Even young people who do not bearthe physical scars of domestic andsocietal violence are often emotionalcasualties.

The tragic consequences to childrenof chronic exposure to violence areconsiderable. They include depres-sion, anxiety, stress, and anger. Alco-hol abuse, academic failure, and theincreased likelihood of acting out in aviolent manner are part of the costlylegacy left by a climate of violence.

With the support of the Office of Juve-nile Justice and Delinquency Preven-tion, the New Haven Department ofPolice Services and the Yale UniversityChild Study Center have establisheda program that addresses the adverseimpact of continuing exposure to vio-lence on children and their families,and attempts to interrupt the cycle ofviolence impacting so many of ourchildren.

Reflecting New Haven’s commendablecommitment to community policing,the Child Development–CommunityPolicing Program brings law enforce-ment and mental health professionalstogether to help children who are vic-tims, witnesses, and even perpetratorsof violent acts.

I am pleased to present this promisingmodel of professional partnership foryour consideration.

Shay BilchikAdministrator

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ARTMENT OF JUSTICE

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U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice ProgramsOffice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Miriam Berkman, J.D., M.S.W.

J U V E N I L E J U S T I C E B U L L E T I N

Shay Bilchik, Administrator March 1997

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17 percent had witnessed a murder;and 23 percent had seen a dead body(Richters and Martinez, 1993).

◆ Among males in some high schools asmany as 21 percent reported seeing aperson sexually assaulted; 82 percenthad witnessed a beating or mugging inschool; 46 percent had seen a personattacked or stabbed with a knife; and62 percent had witnessed a shooting(Singer et al., 1995).

Children’s exposure to violence andmaltreatment is significantly associatedwith increased depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, anger, greater alcoholuse, and lower school attainment(Garbarino et al., 1992; Martinez andRichters, 1993; Singer et al., 1995;Cicchetti and Carlson, 1989).

Richters and Martinez (1993) producedsubstantial evidence that parents tendto significantly underestimate theirchildren’s exposure to community vio-lence as well as associated stress symp-toms. Recognition of and verbal dialogregarding children’s experience with vio-lent events were seen as the most likelyways to mitigate the formation of stresssymptoms.

Youth who are repeatedly exposed tomultiple risk factors—for example, so-cially isolated, impoverished, violence-ridden neighborhoods—require the most“intensive integrated, sustained, coordi-nated, and comprehensive intervention”according to the recommendations of aconsensus of professionals in the field(Carnegie Council on Adolescent Develop-ment, 1992a; Citizens Committee for Chil-dren, 1993; Greene, 1996; Palmer, 1983;Schorr, 1989).

In addition, as indicated by the follow-ing figures, children who experience vio-lence either as victims or as witnesses areat increased risk of becoming violentthemselves:

◆ In an OJJDP-funded study of children inRochester, New York, children who hadbeen victims of violence within theirfamilies were 24 percent more likely toreport violent behavior as adolescentsthan those who had not been mal-treated in childhood. Adolescents whowere not themselves victimized butwho had grown up in families wherepartner violence occurred were 21 per-cent more likely to report violent delin-quency than those not so exposed.

Overall, children exposed to multipleforms of family violence reported twicethe rate of youth violence as thosefrom nonviolent families (Thornberry,1994).

◆ In a survey of 30 incarcerated delin-quent adolescents in Connecticut, 83percent reported previously witnessinga shooting, 67 percent reported wit-nessing a stabbing, and 53 percent re-ported witnessing a killing. Sixty-threepercent of the respondents reportedhaving been shot at and 50 percent re-ported having been stabbed (Vitulanoet al., 1996).

◆ In a survey of New York City’s juveniledetention facility, 79 percent had seena person stabbed or shot; 58 percenthad a family member who had beenshot or stabbed; and 38 percent hadbeen shot or stabbed themselves (Cityof New York, 1993).

These children are of particular con-cern to law enforcement as they perpetu-ate the cycle of violence into the nextgeneration.

Police officers, as the first responderson scenes of violence and tragedy, havefrequent contact with the children andfamilies most at risk as a result of theirexposure to violence. However, officersordinarily do not have the training, thepractical support, or the time to deal ef-fectively with the psychological aftermathof children’s experiences with violence.While mental health professionals may beequipped to intervene to ameliorate thepsychological consequences of children’sexposure to violence, traditional, clinic-based therapists often have no opportu-nity to treat these children until monthsor years later, when they are presentedwith entrenched symptoms such asschool failure or dangerous, disruptive,and violent behavior. The CD–CP pro-gram, developed in New Haven, Connecti-cut, brings police and mental healthprofessionals together to develop new,collaborative approaches to problemsthat are beyond the reach of either pro-fession when working in isolation. Thisopportunity is especially clear in the con-text of the New Haven model of commu-nity policing, which places officers onpermanent assignment in neighborhoods,expands their role in building relation-ships with community residents, andencourages their regular contact withchildren and families in a range of non-confrontational settings.

Community PoliceResponses

At best, police can provide childrenand families with a sense of security andsafety through rapid, authoritative, andeffective responses at times of danger.Often, however, children’s contacts withpolice officers arouse more negative feel-ings. For example, the arrival of officersafter a violent event can reinforce achild’s sense of being unprotected andthe feeling that those in charge providetoo little, too late. For many children, par-ticularly those in impoverished inner cit-ies, the police are seen as representativesof a dominant, insensitive culture andquickly become targets of children’s an-ger toward a hostile and uncaring society.

Community policing provides officerswith opportunities to minimize thesenegative experiences and instead offerchildren positive models for identifica-tion. Police officers who take on a consis-tent, authoritative presence in theirneighborhoods are potential heroes foryoung people for whom there are all toofew prosocial adult models. As commu-nity policing places individual officers onlong-term assignments in specific neigh-borhoods and encourages them to workwith community residents to analyze andsolve problems before they erupt in lethalviolence, children and families come incontact with officers in a wide variety ofhelping roles well beyond the context ofsuch traditional police functions as mak-ing arrests or executing search warrants.As community policing integrates officerswithin their communities they becomeknown as individuals, rather than by role,and they come to know the people theyserve as individuals. These strategies al-low officers to develop relationships andassume roles in children’s lives thatwould not be possible in a more imper-sonal, incident-driven policing system.

For example, following a child’s expo-sure to a serious incident of violence,regular contact with a familiar beat officercan serve to increase the child’s sense ofsecurity, provide a prosocial adult modelfor identification, and support the child’sfamily to obtain needed mental health orother social services. Similarly, regular,nonconfrontational contact with a neigh-borhood officer may help some youngdelinquents to control their impulses toengage in criminal activity and to abideby court-imposed restrictions. As figuresof authority, police officers are also in aposition to broker services for families

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psychological burdens of violence onchildren and families, community mem-bers, and mental health professionalsthemselves. The CD–CP program isclosely related to and dependent on thereorientation of the New Haven police toa community-based policing philosophy.Through the application of principles ofchild development and human function-ing to the daily work of neighborhoodpolice officers, the program providesofficers with an expanded frame of refer-ence and more varied options for inter-vening in the lives of children and fami-lies exposed to violence. Similarly,through a reorientation of the traditionalrelationships between mental health clini-cians and police professionals, the pro-gram extends the roles that mental healthclinicians play in the lives of the samechildren and families (Marans and Cohen,1993; Marans et al., 1995; Marans,Berkman, and Cohen, 1996).

The CD–CP program has become afoundation for officers to broaden theirroles as problem solvers. The process ofconsultation and collaboration with men-tal health and allied professionals breaksdown barriers to the idea that complexproblems require multiple solutions thatinvolve new partners. As the burden andproblem-solving tasks are shared, officersexperience a greater sense of effective-ness and are increasingly able to sustaintheir engagement in the lives of children.When problems can be assessed in thecontext of the CD–CP partnership, inter-vention can not only take place in a moretimely fashion but also without the frag-mentation of services that so often leadsto a squandering of limited resources.

Program OutlineThe CD–CP program model consists of

interrelated training and consultativecomponents that aim at sharing knowl-edge and developing ongoing collegialrelationships between police officers andmental health professionals.

1. Child Development Fellowships forPolice Supervisors

Child Development Fellowships helpprovide supervisory officers with the spe-cial psychological expertise they need tolead a cohesive team of community-basedofficers in a wide variety of crime preven-tion, early intervention, and relationship-building activities involving children,families, and community agencies in theirindividual neighborhoods. Child Develop-ment Fellows spend 3 to 4 hours per week

over the course of 3 to 4 months in theChild Study Center. Fellows participate ina range of activities and observations thatfamiliarize them with developmental con-cepts, patterns of psychological distur-bance, methods of clinical intervention,and settings for treatment and care. Po-lice supervisors involved in the fellow-ship also provide basic knowledge aboutpolice practice to their mental health col-leagues. A major goal of the fellowship isto establish relationships between thefellows and the child mental health pro-fessionals with whom they will be collabo-rating in the future.

2. Police Fellowships for Clinicians

The Police Fellowship provides clini-cians with opportunities to spend timewith police colleagues in squad cars, inpolice stations, and in the streets observ-ing and learning directly from officersabout their day-to-day activities. This ex-posure assists clinicians in understandingthe environment to which children andfamilies are exposed, the relationshipsbetween members of the community andthe police, and the various uses of policeauthority in daily interactions with com-munity residents. Observing the realitiesof officers’ interactions with children pro-vides a framework for understanding theroles that officers play in the psychologi-cal lives of children and families and pre-pares mental health professionals tointervene collaboratively with police part-ners in cases referred through the consul-tation service. Extended contact withpolice colleagues through the fellowshipalso provides the basis for trust in theongoing working relationships on whichthe program depends.

3. Seminar on Child Development,Human Functioning, and PolicingStrategies

The CD–CP seminar on child develop-ment, human functioning, and policingstrategies is a course for police officers,mental health clinicians, and related pro-fessionals (e.g., probation officers) that isco-led by a team of clinical faculty mem-bers and a police supervisor experiencedin the CD–CP program. The seminarmeets each week for 1.5 hours over aperiod of 10 weeks. Using case scenariosdrawn from the experiences of the semi-nar members and group leaders, theseminar applies principles of child devel-opment to the daily work of police offic-ers to provide officers and clinicians withknowledge and a sense of personal em-powerment to intervene positively with

and to coordinate the responses of otherinstitutions. The assumption of such ex-panded roles in the lives of children alsoimposes new burdens on police officersand requires new modes of training andoperational support.

The CD–CP program reflects and con-tributes to a more general change in theapproach to policing in New Haven. Inthis model of community policing, theestablishment and maintenance of rela-tionships between community-basedofficers and community residents is ofcentral importance. As New Haven offic-ers have become part of the social land-scape of the neighborhoods they serve,they no longer represent an anonymoustarget for the pent-up frustration and ragefelt by underserved and disadvantagedcommunity residents. Consequently, boththe physical risk to officers and officers’feelings of apprehension in the commu-nity have diminished.

The central focus on relationships be-tween police and community membershas also resulted in other markers of lawenforcement success. When officers knowthe community, they recognize that themajority of citizens are law abiding andrepresent potential partners for a betterneighborhood. This frees officers to focusmore effective enforcement efforts onthe small number of career and violentoffenders. For example, after the 1991 in-ception of community-based policing inNew Haven, four major drug gangs weretargeted by a joint Federal/State taskforce on drug enforcement. Relationshipsbetween community patrol officers andresidents in neighborhoods most affectedby drugs and associated violence led toextensive intelligence that was invaluableto the effective Federal prosecution andlong-term incarceration of high-level lead-ers in all four gangs. Similarly, the NewHaven police focus on personal relation-ships as the core of community policinghas resulted in a 95-percent closure rateof all homicide investigations.

CollaborativeResponses

The CD–CP program is a partnershipthat developed out of the shared con-cerns of New Haven police and mentalhealth professionals regarding the experi-ences of children and adolescents ex-posed to and involved in community vio-lence. The program aims to coordinatethe efforts of community police officersand mental health clinicians to reduce the

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children and families. Exposure to devel-opmental principles introduces officersto the importance of thinking aboutchildren’s development and their owninfluence on children. Exposure to policeperspectives on children, families, vio-lence, and crime expands clinicians’ un-derstanding of the children they workwith and the role of legal authority in con-taining children’s responses to violence.

4. Consultation Service

As community-based police officersbecome more active and visible withintheir neighborhoods, they establish morefrequent contact with children and fami-lies who are in danger or distress, includ-ing victims or witnesses of violence,truants from school, and teens involvedwith gang activity. These neighborhoodofficers need a resource to turn to fordiscussion, guidance, and an immediateclinical response, especially when thechild is in great distress, as happens sooften following exposure to serious vio-lence. The CD–CP consultation serviceallows police officers to make referralsand to obtain immediate clinical guid-ance, especially in the aftermath ofchildren’s traumatic experiences. Consul-tation service clinicians and police super-visors experienced in the program are oncall 24 hours a day to discuss difficultsituations involving children and adoles-cents. When a direct clinical response isnecessitated by the urgency of a child’sdistress (e.g., a child who has just wit-nessed the murder of a relative), a clini-cian will respond immediately and maysee the child and family at the clinic, thepolice station, or the child’s home. Lessurgent clinical meetings, referrals to otherservices, coordination with other agen-cies, and regular followup by both policeand clinicians are also arranged.

5. Program Conference

Police officers and clinicians who staffthe CD–CP program meet weekly to dis-cuss difficult and perplexing cases thatarise from officers’ direct experiences intheir neighborhoods and from the consul-tation service. The case discussions pro-vide a forum for police, clinicians, andallied professionals to examine casesfrom a variety of perspectives in order tounderstand better the experience of chil-dren and families exposed to violence, toexplore the limits of current interventionstrategies, and to develop improvedmethods of collaboration and response.The conference also provides a regularforum for planning and evaluation of pro-

gram activities and for examining sys-temic, institutional, and administrativeissues. Police supervisors representing allsectors of the city participate in the pro-gram conference and bring to the discus-sion the various concerns of communityresidents in their districts.

Juvenile JusticeResponse

Many of the children and adolescentsabout whom police officers and cliniciansare most concerned are those who haveexperienced chronic exposure to violenceand who are now becoming involved indelinquent activities. To respond to thesechildren and adolescents, the CD–CP col-laboration has expanded to include repre-sentatives of the juvenile justice system.In addition, the team’s approaches to in-tervention with this group of childrenhave expanded the use of legal authorityto provide external structure where inter-nal and family structures are lacking.

As a result of the placement of juvenileprobation officers in several New Havenneighborhoods, with offices in the localcommunity substations, police officers,clinicians, and juvenile probation officershave more closely coordinated their workwith young delinquents. In this context,the CD–CP training and weekly confer-ence has provided a central forum forexamining comprehensive approachesto programmatic innovation as well ascase planning for individual juveniles. Asa result of this planning process, neigh-borhood police officers and juvenileprobation officers collaborate in the su-pervision of young offenders by regularlysharing information about children andadolescents on probation and assigningpolice officers to supervise some commu-nity service projects. In addition, CD–CPclinicians provide regular consultation tojuvenile probation officers and the localjuvenile detention center regarding themental health needs of children and ado-lescents involved in the juvenile justicesystem.

Results of the CD–CPProgram’s First 5 Years

The expected outcomes of the CD–CPprogram can be generally stated as broad-ening the frames of references that gov-ern the work of the police, mental healthprofessionals, and additional collabora-tors and that contribute to an increasingarray of coordinated responses to thewitnesses of community violence and to

youth involved in the perpetration of vio-lence and other gateway criminal activi-ties that may involve or lead to violentcrimes. These outcomes may be indicatedby:

1. Organizational changes in the pro-vision of police and mental healthservices.

2. Development of protocols and proce-dures for responding to youth exposedto or involved in violent and other at-risk, criminal activities.

3. An increase in the number of cases inwhich consultation and coordinatedinterventions occur.

4. An increase in the number of collabo-rations with schools, child welfare,probation, etc., for primary preventionand intervention.

5. Police officers’ greater knowledge ofthe experience of children and greaterappreciation for the potential benefitsof collaborative intervention.

6. Clinicians’ increased knowledge ofpolicing strategies and practices andgreater appreciation of the potentialtherapeutic value of police authority.

7. Implementation of a protocol for regu-lar tracking and monitoring of childrenreferred to the consultation serviceacross a variety of domains, includingexposure to additional violent inci-dents, involvement in delinquentactivities, and experience of post-traumatic symptoms.

TrainingSince the CD–CP program began formal

operation in January 1992, the entire de-partment has received orientation andtraining regarding program goals and utili-zation of on-call and referral services; arange of inservice training related to CD–CP principles and practice has been pre-sented; approximately 250 officers havecompleted the 10-week CD–CP seminar;the assistant chief of police and 39 super-visory sergeants and lieutenants havecompleted the Child Development Fellow-ship and continue to attend the weeklyProgram Conference; 8 Child Study Centerfaculty members have completed the Po-lice Fellowship; and an elective for mentalhealth professionals in training has beendeveloped.

Referrals and ConsultationsThe Consultation Service has received

approximately 350 referrals regarding

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more than 600 children. Calls to the Con-sultation Service have concerned childrenof all ages who have been involved in avariety of violent incidents as victims,witnesses, or perpetrators, both in theirfamilies and in the larger community. Chil-dren who have been referred have beenseen both individually and in groups intheir homes, police stations, hospitals,schools, and the Child Study Center. Inaddition, formal protocols have been de-veloped regarding such practices as noti-fication of the Consultation Service incritical incidents involving children asvictims, witnesses, or perpetrators; distri-bution of informational pamphlets de-scribing the psychological impact onchildren of their exposure to violence andthe availability of assistance through theCD–CP program; and routine followup byneighborhood officers to ensure the secu-rity and stability of families exposed toviolence.

The results of the CD–CP program canalso be seen in the following representa-tive examples of cases referred by policeto the Consultation Service:

◆ A mother and two children, ages 2 and10, were present when a relative wasshot to death through the door of theirapartment. The district supervisor, aCD–CP fellow, offered a referral formental health services and also pro-vided the mother with his beepernumber. The supervisory sergeantaccepted daily calls from the mother,during which he provided her with in-formation regarding the family’s pro-tection from reprisal and reminded herthat clinical support was available.With the ongoing support of the ser-geant, the mother was able to acceptthe mental health referral for herselfand her children. After intensive treat-ment, both children are functioningwell in school and the mother was ableto relocate her family to a safer neigh-borhood.

◆ A woman was stabbed to death by herestranged boyfriend in the presence ofher eight children. CD–CP cliniciansresponded to the scene, providedacute clinical assessments of the chil-dren, and consulted with relatives andpolice as to how to tell the childrentheir mother was dead. Police con-ducted followup visits to the family,providing practical recommendationsfor the security of the home and infor-mation regarding the status of theprosecution. The efforts of police,mental health, child welfare, and home-

based support professionals, coordi-nated by the CD–CP team, allowed thechildren to remain together ratherthan be dispersed to multiple fosterhomes. CD–CP clinicians evaluatedeach of the children and engaged sev-eral members of the family in long-term psychotherapy. All of the childrenare currently attending school. Symp-toms of anxiety, depression, and ag-gressive behavior have diminished.

◆ A 15-year-old boy was robbed at gun-point by two men. In the immediateaftermath of the robbery, he was tooshaken to say anything to police aboutwhat had happened. Officers referredhim for an urgent clinical evaluation,which took place at the local hospital.During the course of the clinical inter-view, the boy reported wanting to geta gun and take revenge. By the end ofthe interview, however, he had recov-ered sufficient memory of the events tobecome an effective aid to investigat-ing detectives, who were then able toarrest the robbers. Local community-based officers established regular con-tact with the boy, supporting him inthe maintenance of his good schoolrecord and deterring an early-stageinvolvement with neighborhood drugdealers.

◆ A 14-year-old boy was involved in lead-ing a group of other teens in a series ofbeatings and criminal mischief thatterrorized his neighborhood. Althoughpolice officers were aware of his activi-ties, they were unable to obtain suffi-cient evidence to arrest him. CD–CPofficers and clinicians convened a se-ries of meetings regarding communitysafety, which were attended by localofficers, school officials, juvenile pro-bation, clinical consultants, and com-munity leaders. As a result of the meet-ings, police obtained more effectivecooperation from the communityand eventually arrested the boy. TheCD–CP program conference provided aforum for case planning, and the col-laborative group recommended closeprobation supervision to the court.Under strict supervision, the boy’scriminal activities were curtailed, andhe returned to school. Throughout hisprobation, police and probation offic-ers maintained close contact to moni-tor his behavior.

◆ A 12-year-old boy was arrested 8 timesfor auto theft. He had been truant fromschool more days than not over a2-year period. When the boy’s cases

were finally adjudicated, he was re-ferred to a pilot project, developed andcoordinated by the CD–CP program, inwhich strict probation supervision issupplemented by community service,home-based case management, recre-ational activities, and group therapy.The boy returned to school and hasnot been rearrested in 4 months.Friends from his neighborhood ask tocome with him to group activities.

◆ Following the shooting death of a 17-year-old gang member, there was goodreason for concern about retaliationand further bloodshed. In the days thatfollowed the death, grieving gang mem-bers congregated on the corner wherethe shooting had taken place. Efforts atincreased presence and containmenttook the form of police, neighborhood-based probation officers, and clini-cians spending time on the corner lis-tening to gang members’ express theirgrief. As one senior police officer putit, “We could show our concern fortheir trauma by being with them, lend-ing an adult ear to their misery. Alter-natively, we could put more officers onthe street, show them who’s boss, andwith a show of force, sweep them offthe corner as often as necessary. . . .Wecould then offer them an additionalenemy and wait for them to explode.”At this crucial moment, the police didnot assume the role of enemy. They didnot serve as a target for displaced rageor, in confrontation, offer an easy anti-dote to sadness and helplessness.Rather than exacting “payback” inblood, the typical gang response, thegang discreetly assisted the police inmaking a swift arrest in the shooting.As one gang member, the brother ofthe victim, put it to a neighborhoodcop, “You were there for us; thathelped. . . .”

Juvenile Justice ResponsesBecause of their powerful and positive

experience with the addition of juvenileprobation to the CD–CP program, thegroup has also developed a pilot interven-tion project that applies the program’scollaborative principles to community-based work with adolescents who arebeginning to engage in delinquent activi-ties. This Gateway Offenders Programbrings together community-based policeofficers, community-based probation of-ficers, CD–CP clinicians, school officials,and case managers to provide coordi-nated, comprehensive, and structured

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assessment and intervention for a smallgroup of juvenile offenders who are athigh risk of escalating criminal involve-ment and removal from the community.Probation and police officers provide theexternal authority necessary to containprogram participants through intensivesupervision, frequent monitoring, and theimposition of variable sanctions for viola-tions. In close collaboration with thesefigures of authority, clinicians, educators,and case managers provide a range ofeducational, therapeutic, and recreationalinterventions, including life skills andconflict resolution training, communityservice projects, afterschool activities,wilderness experiences, group psycho-therapy, and coordination with partici-pants’ parents. In this context, clinicalevaluations and treatment are not seenas an alternative to judicial action but aspart of a coordinated response. In the first4 months of the project, only 1 of 15 par-ticipants has been rearrested for newcriminal behavior (Juvenile Services Unit,New Haven Department of Police Services).

Since the implementation of the CD–CPprogram, there have been significantchanges in police approaches to juveniledelinquency and corresponding changesin results. Based on community officers’familiarity with New Haven neighbor-hoods and the coordination of their ef-forts with community-based juvenileprobation officers, there are no outstand-ing warrants for the arrest of juvenilesin New Haven (Juvenile Probation Divi-sion, New Haven County). In addition,while New Haven currently refers twicethe number of juvenile offenders to thejuvenile justice system, it sends only halfthe number of juveniles to correctionalfacilities as Hartford, and three timesfewer than Bridgeport. This suggests that,in the community in which the collabora-tion was developed, alternatives to incar-ceration have increased significantly.

Truancy InterventionThe CD–CP program has also had an

impact on rates of truancy in New Haven.As an outgrowth of the police-mentalhealth collaboration, police have increasedtheir involvement with the New Havenpublic schools. Teams of community-based officers and dropout preventionworkers canvass New Haven neighbor-hoods during school hours, approachingsuspected truants, identifying them, takingthem to school, and contacting schoolpersonnel and parents about their atten-dance and other school-related problems

(e.g., fighting, drug or gang involvement,etc.). Responding to reports from the day-time team, evening shift officers follow upwith visits to the children’s homes, dis-cussing truancy issues with both the stu-dent and his or her parents. For many par-ents, these visits mark the first time thatthey become fully aware of the extent of achild’s truancy. The first visit is followedby others if the student continues to missschool and contingencies are developedwith parents, school officials, mentalhealth professionals, probation officers,and social service workers who are al-ready involved or may need to be in-volved with the youngster and his or herfamily. With a mixture of authority, psy-chological sophistication, and persis-tence, officers involved in the truancy re-duction efforts have been enormouslysuccessful. In the first 6 months of opera-tion, the truancy initiative accounted for areduction of 20,000 unexcused absences.In one urban middle school, daily unex-cused absences have decreased frommore than 120 to fewer than 70 (New Ha-ven Schools). It is anticipated that the de-crease in truancy will, in turn, result in areduction in criminal activity in New Ha-ven, where police have estimated that ju-veniles were responsible for 60 percent ofauto thefts (Juvenile Services Unit, NewHaven Department of Police Services).

Program EvaluationResearch

The nature of the collaboration, andthe clinical, consultative, and specializedpolice work that occurs within the col-laboration, is a challenge to documentreliably and consistently. CD–CP researchstaff have developed a comprehensiveelectronic case and activity recordingsystem that is the centerpiece of datacollection. This system allows programpersonnel to enter detailed informationdescribing the nature of each case andthe response to that case, information re-garding the event and the roles of childrenwith regard to that event (e.g., witness,victim, perpetrator, etc.), characteristicsof the home and school of childrenserved, diagnostic and evaluation data,intervention data, functional outcomemeasurement, and other clinical and po-lice activities. An interview protocol hasbeen developed for a retrospective studyof children seen in the first 4 years of theconsultation service, which will investi-gate children’s general developmental sta-tus, posttraumatic responses, exposure toadditional episodes of violence, and sub-

jective experience of the CD–CP interven-tion. In addition, surveys have been devel-oped to measure changes in the attitudesand practices of police officers and men-tal health professionals as a result of theirinvolvement in the collaborative program.

Program ReplicationThe CD–CP program is a national

model that is now being replicated underan OJJDP grant in four cities: Buffalo, NewYork; Charlotte, North Carolina; Nashville,Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon. Addi-tional, privately funded program replica-tion efforts are under way in Baltimore,Maryland; Framingham, Massachusetts;and Newark, New Jersey. A CD–CP pro-gram manual, The Police Mental HealthPartnership: A Community-Based Responseto Urban Violence (Marans et al., 1995),has also been developed with OJJDPsupport.

The Program ReplicationProcess

While each police-mental health part-nership will develop its own unique at-tributes based on the specific needs andresources of the community in which itoperates, the CD–CP program modelassumes that each new collaborative pro-gram will adopt the basic program ele-ments described in this bulletin. CD–CPprogram staff have been intensively in-volved in providing training, consultation,and technical assistance to developingprograms. The following points highlightthe requirements for effective implemen-tation of the program model, based on theexperience of the program’s developers.

1. Institutional Investment

Because the CD–CP program seeks toachieve fundamental change in the opera-tions and the climate of the police depart-ment and a collaborating mental healthagency, the leadership of both institutionsmust commit themselves to a process ofquestioning and modifying traditionalpractices and be prepared to supporttheir respective staffs in the implementa-tion of collaborative approaches tointervention with children and familiesexposed to and involved in violence intheir community. Issues of time, money,staffing, program expectations, and evalu-ation should be identified and addressedat the outset. In many of the communitiescurrently involved in the replicationproject, a single sector of the city hasbeen selected to begin a program pilot.

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2. Participating Police Department

The CD–CP program model builds onthe philosophy of community policing andtherefore requires that the participatingpolice department have implemented com-munity policing strategies or be engaged inthe process of their implementing, particu-larly with regard to children, adolescents,and families. The program also requiresthat the policing agency be committed to(a) allowing sufficient time for supervisorsand rank and file officers to participate inCD–CP training (approximately 15–20hours for each seminar and 40 hours forCD–CP Fellowship training); (b) allowingtime for supervisors centrally involved inthe program to act as seminar leaders andto maintain participation in a weekly pro-gram conference; and (c) providing obser-vation and training experiences for mentalhealth professionals involved in the pro-gram (e.g., ride alongs, short courses inpolicing practice).

3. Participating Mental Health Agency

The CD–CP program requires a mentalhealth collaborator with staff who are (a)experienced in the evaluation and treat-ment of children, adolescents, and fami-lies, including individuals exposed tocriminal violence and other traumaticevents; and (b) experienced in teachingand training other professionals in childdevelopment principles. The program re-quires the mental health agency to pro-vide opportunities for police officers toobserve children in different clinical set-tings. The mental health institution alsomust provide partial salary support forparticipating staff (three or four cliniciansto start) to spend sufficient time observ-ing and meeting with police colleagues,responding to emergency calls from thepolice for consultation, and co-leading theCD–CP seminar. Funding is not requiredfor ongoing mental health treatment; pub-lic benefits, private insurance and/or out-of-pocket payment should be available.

4. Other Participating Institutions

Developing collaborative programsmay wish to include other institutionsthat are centrally involved in addressingthe needs of children and families ex-posed to violence such as juvenile proba-tion, schools, or child welfare agencies.In considering expansion of the CD–CPmodel, program developers should takeinto account both the benefits to be de-rived from a broader coordination andthe difficulties associated with developingand maintaining a more complex set ofinstitutional and personal relationships.

5. Training, Consultation, andTechnical Assistance for DevelopingPrograms

Staff of the New Haven CD–CP programare available to provide a program oftraining and technical assistance to devel-oping programs. Consultation begins withthe heads of the participating agenciesdeveloping clear goals for the collabora-tive program. Agency leaders then iden-tify a small working group of communitypolicing supervisors and mental healthclinicians who will be responsible forimplementing the police-mental healthcollaboration in their community and whowill work closely with the CD–CP consult-ants. Members of the working group at-tend a series of intensive meetings andobservations, co-led by New Haven policesupervisors and Child Study Centerclinicians. These meetings provide a com-prehensive introduction to the CD–CPprogram and a forum for considering thesteps needed to adapt and implement theprogram in each replication site. Follow-ing the New Haven-based training andconsultation meetings, CD–CP consultantsprovide ongoing on- and off-site technicalassistance to guide and support the de-veloping new programs. In addition,CD–CP consultants teach and implementprocedures for standardized data collec-tion that serve the program evaluationresearch. A national network of CD–CPprograms facilitates sharing informationabout the process and results of the inter-disciplinary collaboration through confer-ences, newsletters, and other means.

6. Program Evaluation Research

To facilitate consistent data collectionacross the replication sites and to permitcomparisons among the sites, CD–CP con-sultants will provide personnel in eachdeveloping program with copies of thedata collection software and survey in-struments designed to evaluate the col-laborative program (described above).CD–CP staff will provide technical assis-tance in implementing the data collectionand will analyze and report survey re-sults.

One of the fundamental goals of theCD–CP program is to broaden and shiftthe perspective of officers and cliniciansparticipating in the collaboration. It isbelieved that officers develop greaterknowledge of child development, insightinto psychological contributions to hu-man behavior and the implications forpolicing, a capacity to reflect on andconsider a broader range of options, anawareness of the experience of children,

an understanding of and favorable atti-tude toward mental health personnel, andthe merits of interventions that empha-size structure, authority, and/or clinicalservice. Similarly, it is believed that clini-cians acquire knowledge of policing and agreater appreciation for the role of policeofficers in development and therapeuticintervention, the therapeutic value ofstructure, and the value of mental healthconsultation to law enforcement. It ischanges of this sort that make collabora-tion possible and presumably result inbenefits to children and families in thecommunity. In order to evaluate thesechanges, CD–CP staff have developedtwo surveys that provide a comprehen-sive assessment of officer and clinicianknowledge, attitudes, and assumptions asnoted above as well as overall satisfactionwith the program. Administration of thesurveys in the replication sites will allowthe program evaluators to follow the de-velopment of officers and clinicians overtime within each site and also to compareacross replication sites. Additional mea-sures of program replication outcomein the various sites will include changesin policing and mental health protocols,numbers of referrals, attendance at col-laborative meetings, participation incollaborative training seminars, andoutcome measurements related to thechildren served.

Further information about the CD–CPprogram can be obtained from:

Colleen Vadala, Administrative AssistantChild Development–Community Policing

ProgramYale Child Study Center47 College Street, Suite 212New Haven, CT 06510203–785–7047

OR

Bob Hubbard, Program ManagerOffice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

PreventionU.S. Department of Justice633 Indiana Avenue NW., Room 707Washington, DC 20531202–616–3567

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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delin-quency Prevention is a component of the Of-fice of Justice Programs, which also includesthe Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureauof Justice Statistics, the National Institute ofJustice, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

NCJ 164380

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This Bulletin was written by project staff ofthe Child Study Center, Yale University Schoolof Medicine. Steven Marans, M.S.W., Ph.D., isHarris Assistant Professor of Child Psycho-analysis, and Miriam Berkman, J.D., M.S.W., isan assistant clinical professor in social work.

It was prepared under grant number 95–JN–FX–0022 from the Office of Juvenile Justice andDelinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Depart-ment of Justice.

Points of view or opinions expressed in thisdocument are those of the authors and do notnecessarily represent the official position orpolicies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department ofJustice.