Kids who are incarcerated face a higher risk of not completing high school and are more likely to be incarcerated again as adults, according to research.
At the 2025 NCSL Legislative Summit in Boston, Logan Seacrest, a fellow at the R Street Institute, discussed strategies for keeping youth out of trouble. He emphasized the importance of “credible messengers” in reaching young people who have been involved with the justice system. “Trying to reach a kid who’s been in and out of detention, someone who’s maybe already lost friends to violence, he’s not going to trust someone in a suit, necessarily. Even the most powerful or well-crafted message is going to fall flat if the recipient doesn’t identify with the person delivering it,” Seacrest said.
Seacrest highlighted “Operation Ceasefire,” which ran from 1996-2000 in Boston as an example of an effective program. The initiative focused on those most at risk of involvement in gun violence and delivered its message through trusted community members. “That message was delivered by folks that those kids trusted,” he said.
According to Seacrest, this targeted approach led to a significant reduction in youth violence: “The result: a drop in youth violence of 65% over a two-year period.” He added that Operation Ceasefire concentrated efforts on those most at risk rather than trying to reach all young people: “Ceasefire didn’t try to reach all the youth in Boston. It focused on only a handful of young people really at risk, and it was really successful.”
He concluded that focusing resources can be more effective than broad approaches. “Instead of expanding government, let’s approach this problem in a smart way and expand the limited resources for maximum effect.”
Seacrest also mentioned another program based in Boston—the Cambridge Safety Net Collaborative—which brings together police, social services, and schools to address youth violence as a public health issue. He explained how this model treats violence like an infectious disease moving through communities: “Violence actually is transmitted almost like a virus. It moves through neighborhoods like a contagion. A single incident can lead to retribution, reprisals, even more violence in the same way cells become infected with a virus,” Seacrest said. He described how giving communities support can help reduce repeat offenses: “The goal of Cambridge is to give the community an immune system to try to protect them against that. They’ve been able to reduce recidivism very, very nicely over the years.”
