Evaluation of a Court-Ordered Violence Prevention Program for Gun-involved Youths

As youth gun violence continues to plague marginalized US communities, knowledge about “what works” to prevent injury and illegal gun activity within this population remains a contentious and pressing issue. This study investigates the impacts of Project Life—an education-based youth gun violence prevention program—on recidivism outcomes for a sample of 368 youths in Indianapolis, Indiana, between 2015 and 2019. We conducted retrospective outcome analyses to compare youths who completed the program (83%) to youths who did not complete the program. We find that youths who completed the program were significantly less likely to recidivate with a gun violence offense within an average follow-up period of 1.5 years following enrollment in the program. Youths who spent more time incarcerated and had a parent who was incarcerated were at higher recidivism risk when controlling for prior history of offending and other key risk factors. These nonexperimental findings show short-term promise for education-based violence prevention programming for youths at risk with fewer concerns of widening the net of carceral punishment.