by Josh Janney and Gavin Stone
Staff Writers
Virginian-Pilot
June 30, 2024

… Teens with a Purpose, founded in 1996 in Norfolk, focuses on providing at-risk youth with a safe place for creative pursuits. It tries to connect them with mentors and trained professionals and give them constructive, prosocial ways of earning money. It also incorporates mindfulness, meditation, healing circles and yoga as a way to teach a healthy lifestyle.

… The Hopeful Hampton Divergent program is a 12-week intensive plan focused on teenagers and young adults who are likely to be involved in gun violence. The city-run program pairs youth with mentors who have had similar experiences. The program is small, working with six to nine people at a time, and costs about $51,000 per 12-week session to run. Young people involved in the program are either using guns or have used them. Some are referred by the courts, law enforcement, schools or other community partners. Several have been ordered by the court to participate.

… Jeffrey Butts, a research professor with John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a member of the Rockefeller Institute of Government Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, said the two programs have based their approach to addressing gun violence on a “scientifically informed theory” about why young people sometimes act aggressively against others.

“And that theory is that when people grow up in an environment that exposes them to trauma, and family pain, and lack of opportunity, they start to feel like society’s rules don’t make sense for them,” Butts said. “And ‘Why should I bother to behave the way other people are telling me when the whole system is set up against me and I have to protect myself first?’”

However, Butts noted it’s complicated to determine the effectiveness of individual programs because they aren’t implemented on a large scale.

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