Schools and teen violence: Black male teen sits sullenly in classroom chair listening to Black male teacher both in front of green chalkboard

School interventions offer best shot at reducing youth violence

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Black youth show up in emergency rooms with gunshot wounds or other violent injuries at an alarming and disproportionate rate in the United States. Some hospitals have violence interventions that can be effective in keeping these kids safer after they are treated, but in most cases victims are sent back into the world to continue their struggles. What if, years earlier, we could identify factors that predict which children are most likely to head down paths to violence?

Police in Chicago, where homicides have soared recently, as they investigated a fatal shooting in May 2014 of a man in the 5700 block of South LaSalle Street.

A Pistol Bought in Mississippi Killed a Teen in Chicago

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Malcolm Stuckey was pulling up in a burgundy Pontiac Grand Prix to his friend’s birthday party in Chicago’s once-prosperous Englewood neighborhood when a bullet fired from a gun, bought 840 miles away in Mississippi, tore into his brain. His killing in 2014 placed the 19-year-old college student, college basketball player and museum janitor among 2,581 people shot in Chicago, which recorded 4,133 shootings in 2020. The city has counted more than 1,100 shootings already this year.

Anger Management and the Code of the Street

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The room was stuffy and hot, the scent of stale snack foods hung in the air and the boys in the anger management group in this locked facility were distracted.

Screaming Headlines, Hype and PR Stunts Cloud Picture of Youth Violence in Chicago

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By Eric Ferkenhoff and Maryam Jameel 

Tallying Chicago’s violence during the first half of 2012, including a 39 percent jump in murders, it can be difficult to get what criminologist Tracy Siska is talking about. True, the streets are bloodied by gang warfare, said Siska, head of the Chicago Justice Project, an independent, non-profit research group that analyzes criminal justice data. The numbers don’t lie; there had been 260-plus murders through the end of June, up 72 over the same period last year. And overnight Tuesday, two girls 12, and 13, became the latest child victims of the gunfire here. Neither were thought to be intended targets, but rather were victims of errant gunfire just days after the release of a University of California Davis study showing the prevalence of stray-bullet victims.

But Siska has argued much of the media is playing the hype game, skewing reality for Chicagoans or observers by screaming with headlines about more city children getting murdered this public school year than any year since 2008 – the first full year of the recession – and countless stories of overnight mayhem suffered in many Chicago neighborhoods. There has been a parade of stories – ones Siska would agree should and must be told.

Violence Forum Unites Teens, Experts

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A scarlet red electric guitar would normally seem out of place at a youth violence forum, but Monday evening the bloodstained instrument served as a symbolic reminder of a young man’s life cut short. Eighteen-year-old Blake Jimerson clutched it in homage to his fallen friend Katerius “Terry” Moody throughout the “Just Squash It” Emergency Town Hall Meeting, an event prompted in part by the murder of the Benjamin E. Mays High School graduate on June 26th at an East Point block party. The 18-year-old crooner was fatally shot during an impromptu performance; four other teens were wounded. “This is the last thing Terry had on him before he died,” Jimerson, a recent Washington High School graduate, told the audience of more than 100 about his friend who had planned to enlist in the U.S. Marines next month. “The blood is still on it.”

The meeting at B.E.S.T. Academy, an all-male middle school in Northwest Atlanta, was touted as an opportunity for Metro Atlanta youth -- and those who work directly with them -- to come together to propose solutions.

Teen’s Murder Prompts Town Hall Meeting

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Eighteen-year-old Katerius Moody was in the midst of belting out a verse of the song he’d penned with fellow Polo Boys singing group members, when bullets peppered the crowd during their performance three weeks ago at an East Point block party. The young crooner, a recent Mays High School graduate, was gunned down and four other teens were wounded before he could finish the lyrics to “We Go.”

The June 26th tragedy, and others like it, have inspired an Atlanta community leader to call an emergency town hall meeting Monday, where she says “frontline” child services workers, local leaders and, more importantly, young people themselves, will get to suggest ways to curb youth violence in metro Atlanta. Atlanta Public Schools staffer Tanya Culbreth contends Moody’s death and a recent outbreak of teen violence during the popular Screen On The Green event at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park inspired her to coordinate the event. Culbreth says she wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of a similar town hall meeting Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed called following the Piedmont Park incident. “I applaud the mayor for calling an emergency meeting, but there wasn’t enough representation there from young people and those of us who work directly with young people every day,” contends Culbreth, the Home-School Parent Liaison for B.E.S.T. Academy, an all-male middle school  in Northwest Atlanta. “We’re the experts and more of our voices need to be heard.