Early intervention

In the weeks following the murder of her son, Dylan, in his first-grade classroom, Nicole Hockley co-founded Sandy Hook Promise with a mission to end school shootings. The research-informed Know The Signs programs she helped develop and launch have since taught more than 12 million people how to prevent violence and self-harm. Through these no-cost programs, Sandy Hook Promise has averted multiple school shooting plots, teen suicides, and countless other acts of violence.

On February 16-18, 2021, the National Institute of Justice hosted the Virtual Conference on School Safety: Bridging Research to Practice to Safeguard Our Schools. This video includes the following presentations:

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development – Social Development Study (ABCD-SD) is a longitudinal study on the relationship between the developing brain and delinquency and victimization. Supplementing ABCD brain and cognitive development measures, ABCD-SD protocol measures a wide array of delinquency- and victimization-related risks, protective factors and outcomes. These presentations will describe early adolescent findings from ABCD-SD on delinquency and victimization.

David Olds, founder of the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, describes the programs long-term impact on mothers and babies who began participating in the program more than 19 years ago. The Nurse-Family Partnership maternal health program introduces vulnerable first-time parents to maternal and child health nurses. It allows nurses to deliver the support first-time moms need to have a healthy pregnancy, become knowledgeable and responsible parents, and provide their babies and later children and young adults with the best possible start in life.

How do we decide how to allocate criminal justice resources in a way that minimizes the social harms from both crime and policy efforts to control crime? How, for that matter, do we decide how much to spend on the criminal justice system and crime control generally, versus other pressing needs? These questions are at the heart of benefit-cost analysis.