2013 · Study · English
Transforming prevention systems in the United States and the Netherlands using Communities That Care
Steketee, M., Oesterle, S., Jonkman, H., Hawkins, J. D., Haggerty, K. P., & Aussems, C.
Steketee, M., Oesterle, S., Jonkman, H., Hawkins, J. D., Haggerty, K. P., & Aussems, C. (2013). Transforming prevention systems in the United States and the Netherlands using Communities That Care. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 19(2), 99–116. doi.org/10.1007/s10610-012-9194-y
Summary
Comparative paper written in memory of Josine Junger-Tas, who introduced Communities That Care to the Netherlands as a promising response to rising youth violence and delinquency. Drawing on the randomised Community Youth Development Study in the United States and a quasi-experimental study in the Netherlands, the authors compare the implementation of CTC in 12 US communities with that in five Dutch neighbourhoods. In both countries CTC communities reached higher stages of a science-based approach to prevention than their control communities, confirming that the system's core process transfers across contexts. Full implementation in the Netherlands, however, was hampered by the scarcity of prevention programmes that had been tested and shown effective in the Dutch context, so coalitions had fewer proven options to choose from. The paper is an early and candid account of the main structural obstacle to CTC in Europe: a coalition can only be as evidence-based as the programme menu available to it.