NCJ Number
161711
Editor(s)
J E O'Neil
Date Published
Unknown
Length
34 pages
Annotation
The Teens, Crime, and the Community (TCC) Program is featured as one solution to the rise in rural crime, a program that actively involves teenagers and adults in a partnership to reduce teenager victimization and engage young people as change agents to make their schools and communities safer.
Abstract
Through its curriculum and service projects, the TCC program offers promising results in the fight against rural crime. The TCC curriculum strives to reduce teenager victimization through education and uses many different teaching methodologies. Service projects provide avenues to positive recognition, meaningful work, and a sense of connection with the community. Students are educated in crime prevention for themselves and begin to reduce or eliminate a specific crime problem in their school or community. Teenagers like the TCC program because it provides a vehicle for them to be part of the crime prevention solution. Teachers and administrators support the TCC program because it actively engages teenagers in the classroom, encourages bonding between students and the community, meets educational mandates including performance-based assessment and cooperative learning, and increases prosocial attitudes. Guidelines are presented for implementing the TCC program. The scope of rural crime and teenager victimization and contributing stress factors are examined, the foundation for involving teenagers in the crime prevention solution is established, and the TCC program framework is overviewed. Implementation strategies from successful TCC programs and results and implications of a third-party evaluation of TCC in rural schools are discussed. 30 notes