Youth ‘Thrive’ in new Maryland violence reduction initiative | GUEST COMMENTARY

In early 2023 an increase in serious crime by young people was creating panic in Baltimore and throughout Maryland. While the hysteria may have been somewhat exaggerated, data from the first quarter of the year did show a significant uptick in some kinds of youth crime, including serious offenses like juvenile-involved shootings and armed robberies.

Around that same time, the state’s juvenile justice system was getting a new, reform-minded secretary of the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS), Vincent Schiraldi. Secretary Schiradli responded to the moment by launching an innovative program that sought to reduce gun violence among justice-involved youth. It is critically important that state residents know about and understand this program, which is part of an increasingly successful, multi-faceted effort to increase public safety in Baltimore and across Maryland.

The new program, called the Thrive Academy, is a data-informed, youth development and violence intervention program that provides intensive community-based services to DJS-supervised youth who are at very high risk of being involved in gun violence.  Whenever a youth under DJS supervision is flagged as being at very high risk of being a victim or perpetrator of gun violence, they are enrolled in Thrive and quickly assigned a Case Management Specialist from DJS and paired with a Life Coach from the community-based organization We Our Us.

Most Thrive Coaches have lived experiences similar to those of the youth they are serving. They are from the same neighborhoods. Some have been previously incarcerated and turned their lives around, and they now serve as examples, guides and mentors who intensively engage with the youth, their families and their schools. Their work includes daily communication, multiple in-person engagements every week, school check-ins and home visits — all to develop positive and trusting relationships that can help young people make choices that do not involve guns. The process also includes the development of a comprehensive Life Plan that identifies needed services and supports intended to help participants see and pursue a more promising path for themselves.

My organization, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR), played a key role in this process by conducting a comprehensive assessment of youth involved in gun violence throughout the state and of all youth known to DJS who were victims or suspects in shootings in the past three to five years. Our study found that:

• Nearly two-thirds of youth who are involved in shootings had previously been charged with a felony crime of violence;
• Many had clear and immediate risk factors for violence, such as recent physical confrontations with other youth and/or family members, or involvement in a violent crew or gang conflict;
• Most were unable to attend traditional schools due to learning disabilities and/or school discipline;
• And perhaps most importantly, lengthy delays in court processing resulted in months or even years passing between when youth were arrested and when they received any type of direct services.

DJS and NICJR used these findings to develop a screening tool and expedited process for enrolling youth in Thrive. 

Today, the Thrive Academy is being implemented in four Maryland jurisdictions: Baltimore City and Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. It is part of a growing ecosystem of gun violence intervention that is succeeding in making our streets safer. Baltimore and all of Maryland ended 2023 with a decline in homicides and injury shootings. Thrive was somewhat modeled after the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, a program that NICJR is also a part of that was credited with helping to drive down violence in the city’s Western District. And one of the neighborhoods in Baltimore’s flagship violence prevention program, Safe Streets, achieved a full year without a single homicide.

Too many people continue to get shot in Baltimore and throughout Maryland.  And too many youths are part of that number, even if they constitute a small portion of the overall victims. Because even one life lost to gun violence is too many, we must continue to expand and improve our efforts to prevent gun violence. But we must also recognize the tremendous progress that has been made — not only so we can continue building upon this progress, but so that the residents of Baltimore and all of Maryland know what is being done to protect them and begin to feel justifiable optimism about a safer future for themselves, their community and their entire state.

David Muhammad (info@nicjr.org) is the executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, a technical assistance and training partner to the Maryland Thrive Academy and Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy.