Today, kids have a lot to be worried about. One thing we don’t want them to be afraid of is interactions with police. That’s why SFY takes a two-pronged approach: training law enforcement on best practices for interacting with youth and providing youth with vital information and the support they need.
SFY’s signature program for police, Policing the Teen Brain™, trains law enforcement officers in strategies for interacting effectively with youth. It orients them to view arrests as the least effective intervention for low-level offending, one that should be used as a last resort.
Juvenile Justice Jeopardy™ is the cornerstone of our youth education programming. Agencies, schools and community organizations use this interactive game tool to teach youth how to navigate interactions with peers and police and be aware of the consequences of arrest and court involvement.
The success of Policing the Teen Brain™ has led us to develop a version of the program for parents, called Parenting the Teen Brain™. This training teaches parents how to better understand and communicate with their teens.
SFY actively engages police, youth, and youth-serving community-based organizations, using an interdisciplinary approach to reach out to and educate all three constituencies, constantly evaluating, refining, and strengthening its programs.
SFY’s signature program for police—Policing the Teen Brain—and our complementary program for youth—Juvenile Justice Jeopardy—are effective as stand-alone interventions, but are most powerful when put to work in tandem.
While SFY changes police and youth relations one jurisdiction at a time, it simultaneously builds evidence and the case for system-wide change and policy reform locally and nationally. SFY’s model, both cost effective and sustainable, is designed to become a permanent part of the training structure of law enforcement agencies.
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