Rainier Beach Campus Safety Continuum

• NCJ Number: 308396
• Date Published: March 2023
• Author(s): Charlotte Gill; Madeline McPherson; Xiaotian Zheng; Claudia Gross Shader
• Length: 103 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2016-CK-BX-0005
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Annotation

 This publication discusses and assesses the Rainier Beach Campus Safety Continuum (RBCSC).

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate the Rainier Beach Campus Safety Continuum (RBCSC), a community-led, place-based, evidence-informed approach to addressing school and community safety and reducing racial disparity in school discipline and police contact through non-punitive approaches in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The RBCSC was envisaged as an integrated school-community prevention approach that combined evidence-informed educational practices and community-based crime prevention strategies to provide a continuum of support, in which both young people and adults were encouraged to participate in a positive culture both inside and outside of school. The development and design of the RBCSC weaves together several conceptual threads from criminology and education research, presenting an innovative combination of a number of evidence-informed strategies within a strong place-based approach. One aim of the RBCSC was to address this gap in the literature and to influence school-based officials and community members to think of the needs of local young people comprehensively, involving both schools and community institutions. Young people in historically marginalized communities like Rainier Beach are at risk of academic failure, dropout, juvenile justice system involvement, and victimization due to a range of risk factors that stem from both the schools they attend and the communities in which they live. The RBCSC sought to address these issues by building on existing evidence-informed practices and combining promising approaches from a range of community settings to improve the adult-run systems that impact outcomes for young people.