Program Profile: Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI) (Massachusetts)

This secondary violence prevention program targets young men most likely to commit or be victim of gang or gun crime to reduce their incarceration and victimization from violent crime. The program is rated Promising. SSYI youths were statistically significantly less likely to be incarcerated compared with comparison group youths. SSYI–funded cities had statistically significant reductions in all measured city-level crime victimization rates, compared with comparison cities.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

Program Goals/Target Population

The Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI) is a state-funded, community-based secondary violence prevention program that launched in 2011 that is now in 13 Massachusetts cities (Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, Fall River, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, New Bedford, Pittsfield, Springfield, and Worcester) to address serious youth violence, particularly gun violence. SSYI is a comprehensive public health approach that does not rely on suppression, arrest, or incarceration of young men who have already committed a gun- or gang-related crime or have been a victim of such crime. Instead, the program offers an array of services—including case management, outreach, and direct services (e.g., subsidized employment, behavioral health)—to young men ages 17 to 24 (originally, the targeted age group was 14 to 24, but the state changed this in 2016) who are believed to be at “proven risk” for becoming involved in firearm violence.

The goal of SSYI is to serve young men who are most likely to commit or fall victim to gang or gun crime to reduce their incarceration and victimization from violent and nonviolent crime, and promote their healthy development and outcomes.

Program Components/Key Personnel

To identify eligible youth, the first step of SSYI is the list creation process, in which local police departments in each of the 13 SSYI cities use crime data to identify youth with one or more of the “proven risk” characteristics. In this context, “proven risk” describes young men who have committed a violent crime using a gun or knife, who have been victimized by violent crime and may be prone to retaliation, or those who are known gang members. Police, program staff, and service partners all review these data to identify youths for SSYI participation, and then youths are invited to participate in the program.

Each site implements the program with slight variations based on the needs and context of each SSYI community, but there are some components that are mandatory and must be included in each local SSYI program:

• Specific identification of young men, ages 17–24, who are considered to be at proven risk based on a review of local police data
• Use of street outreach workers to engage these proven-risk young men in programming and to serve as informal mentors
• Implementation of a comprehensive, individualized case management approach to assess current needs, link youth with needed services and supports, and monitor and reinforce progress

Once engaged in the program, each participant’s education history, work history, family situation, and mental health needs are assessed to create individual service plans, which are implemented through case management in close collaboration with mental health clinicians. Behavioral health services such as trauma treatment and cognitive behavioral therapy are also available through SSYI, to address youths’ underlying problems tied to their histories of involvement in violence, which can include substance misuse, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder. Young men in SSYI have access to both traditional and nontraditional education services, including high school enrollment or GED attainment, vocational training, or certification programs. Workforce development is another service through SSYI that provides soft and hard skills training, including on-the-job training, to develop a participant’s necessary professional work skills for success.

SSYI is a cross-system, multi-agency approach that concentrates on affecting a young man’s individual capacities (build skills, address needs, etc.), relational experiences (including role models and opportunities for prosocial development), and situational environment (for example, employment and routine activities). The initiative does not have a specified end date; case management and outreach can continue until the young men age out of program eligibility.

Program Theory

Each component of SSYI is implemented based on the program’s theory of change that includes numerous mediators and moderators needed ultimately to reduce gun violence perpetrated by youth. It begins with outreach workers, program engagement, individualized assessment, receipt of quality services, and case management support with progressive outcomes monitoring. Through outreach comes mutuality, trust, empathy, and creating new networks. Receiving quality services leads to success in education, stable employment, and mental health treatment. And case management provides skills for reflective thinking and identity development. All of this is mediated by peer, family, and community well-being to lead to improvements in a youth’s financial, social, emotional, psychological, and physical well-being. In this theory of change, interpersonal history, social competencies, developmental stage, relationship quality with outreach mentors, the fidelity of case management implementation, the level of service engagement, and community norms all contribute as moderating factors (Campie et al. 2017).

Study

Campie and colleagues (2014) used a quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching to assess the effectiveness of the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI) on incarceration status in the 2-year period after the program began in 2011. For the period of Jan. 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2013, SSYI police partners pulled crime data on all young men 14 to 24 years old with at least one of the program’s proven risk characteristics, representing the entire population eligible for the program. Police provided SSYI sites with the offending histories of these young men, and SSYI program staff recorded each individual’s number and offense type across the 3 years, his current incarceration status, his enrollment status in and service engagement with SSYI, and his risk and protective factors and basic demographic information. The final sample consisted of 2,198 youths, with 843 youths who were currently in or had been in SSYI and 1,355 youths who were placed in the comparison group because they had never been in SSYI. All youths were statistically matched through propensity scores created for everyone in the comparison group and the SSYI treatment group. The comparison and SSYI treatment groups were considered nearly identical regarding their propensity to engage in violent offending; the only statistically significant difference between the groups was whether they participated in the SSYI program.

The police data did not consistently report race and ethnicity, but in instances where this was known the study sample included 697 Black youths, 634 White youths, 71 Asian youths, and 1 Native American youth. Forty-six percent of youths whose ethnicity was known were reported to be of Hispanic/Latino origin. The majority of the sample was in the 21- to 24-year-old age group (43 percent of the SSYI treatment group, and 57 percent of the comparison group). The most common aspect across SSYI treatment and comparison youth was gang membership (1,319 youths were in gangs, which was 56 percent of the SSYI treatment group and 44 percent of the comparison group). Forty-nine percent of the SSYI treatment group and 51 percent of the comparison group had a police-documented incident of gun crime; 59 percent of the SSYI treatment group and 41 percent of the comparison group had a violent act with a dangerous object; 48 percent of the SSYI treatment group and 52 percent of the comparison group had an incident of shooting (in this context, discharging a firearm in targeting a victim); 39 percent of the SSYI treatment group and 61 percent of the comparison group had a stabbing incident (with a knife or other object); and 26 percent of the SSYI treatment group were victims of shooting or stabbing, compared with 74 percent of the comparison group.

Logistic regression analyses were used to examine the outcome of interest, current incarceration status. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

Study

Petrosino and colleagues (2014) employed a quasi-experimental interrupted time series (ITS) design with two comparison groups to evaluate the impact of SSYI on monthly city-level violent crime, homicide, aggravated assault, and nonviolent crime victimization rates for the target population.

Data from January 2009 through December 2013 were obtained from the victim file of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) that is reported to the Massachusetts State Police. These data included monthly victimization rates for individuals 14 to 24 years old in each city in the study sample, which were the 11 cities that received SSYI funding and the next 23 cities in the state that reported the highest number of violent crime incidents in 2010. Not all police departments reported to NIBRS; thus, SSYI sites Framingham and Salem were dropped from the analysis, and Boston and Lawrence data were obtained from local police. The data file included monthly crime victimization rates for young men ages 14 to 24 for the eight Group A offenses including homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape, robbery, simple assault, burglary and breaking and entering, all other larceny, and motor vehicle theft.

The treatment group comprised the 11 cities that received SSYI funding and implemented the program, and their victimization rate trends were compared with two comparison groups: 1) the Total Comparison Group, which was the next 23 cities in reported violent crime incidents in 2010; and 2) nonfunded cities in Massachusetts. These were six cities in the Total Comparison Group that did not receive SSYI or Shannon Community Safety Initiative funding (which was another Massachusetts state grant program to support regional and multidisciplinary approaches to combat gang violence through prevention and intervention) and that reported sufficient data to NIBRS. The six cities were Barnstable, Marlborough, Waltham, Wareham, West Springfield, and Weymouth. The CrimeSolutions review of this study focused on the comparisons between the treatment group and both comparison groups.

Two variables were used to control for preexisting differences between individuals in SSYI cities and the two comparison groups, since the 11 cities that received SSYI funding were dealing with more challenging circumstances regarding the amount of the population living in poverty and the number of youths who completed high school. The percentage of persons living in poverty in the jurisdiction was added to the model to help reduce the influence of poverty when examining the data on victimization. As many SSYI youths do not complete high school, this was considered an important variable in the analysis, and the percentage of high school completers from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was also included.

A key part of the design was conducting the analysis with two “interruption points,” which were the SSYI start dates of January 2011 and January 2012 to account for any variation in implementation timelines between sites. For the Jan. 1, 2011, interruption point, the follow-up period of analysis was 3 years; for the Jan. 1, 2012, interruption point, there was a 2-year follow-up. Analyses were conducted using the ITS design to assess whether the observed period after the interruption varied from the predicted trend.

Outcomes of interest were victimization rates for violent crimes and nonviolent crimes. A victimization rate per 10,000 persons was used to standardize data across all cities in the study sample. Violent crime included homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape, robbery, and simple assault, with homicide and aggravated assault analyzed separately. Nonviolent crimes included the remaining three Group A offenses reported to the police (burglary and breaking and entering; all other larceny incidents; and motor vehicle thefts). No subgroup analysis was conducted.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Bradham, Douglas D., Patricia E. Campie, and Anthony Petrosino. 2014. Massachusetts Safe and Successful Youth Initiative. Benefit-to-Cost Analysis of Springfield and Boston Sites. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

Campie, Patricia E., Nicholas W. Read, Trevor Fronius, Garima Siwach, Kevin Kamto, Sarah Guckenburg, Olivia Briggs, Hannah Persson, and Anthony Petrosino. 2019. Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI) Evaluation: 2018–19 Final Programmatic Report. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Reducing Gun Violence

Reducing gun violence is a persistent public policy concern for communities, policymakers and leaders. To reduce gun violence, several strategies have been deployed including public health approaches (e.g., training and safe gun storage); gun buy-back programs; gun laws; and law enforcement strategies. The practice is rated Promising for reducing violent gun offenses.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Violent offenses

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?