Ben Struhl, Executive Director of the University of Pennsylvania Crime and Justice Policy Lab, will serve as a panelist at Youth Advocate Programs (YAP®), Inc.’s Nov. 6 50th Anniversary YAP® Making Change Happen Summit in Philadelphia. The Crime and Justice Policy Lab is a national and international organization working across the US and Latin America and the Caribbean. Struhl’s work involves promoting research and research-backed policies that can make communities safer and healthier.
Struhl led the team that designed and helped deliver the City of Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy, which reduced violence in the city’s Western District by 30%, while not increasing arrests. Several years into UPenn’s partnership with the City of Baltimore, the city achieved its lowest violence periods on record over the last 50 years.
Founded in Harrisburg, PA in 1975 by Tom Jeffers, YAP® is a national nonprofit that delivers a unique unconditional caring “no reject; no eject” evidence-based service model as an alternative to incarcerating or placing young people in trouble, in crisis, or otherwise facing complex challenges in residential facilities. Neighborhood-based Advocates, outreach workers, life coaches, mental health, and other staff deliver individual and family rehabilitative and restorative services that help program participants see and nurture their strengths and connect them to individualized economic, educational, and emotional needs tools. YAP® partners with youth justice, child welfare, education, and in the past decade, public safety systems to help improve outcomes and safety and save taxpayer dollars. YAP® is one of the two City of Baltimore Group Violence Reduction Strategy nonprofit service delivery partners.
In addition to his City of Baltimore work, Struhl collaborates with a range of public safety partners in the City of Philadelphia, in an effort to use research, data, and management practices to build the capacities necessary for Philadelphia to sustain and extend the city’s violence reduction progress. Aside from Baltimore and Philadelphia, Struhl has provided advice to government leaders or conducted research studies in over twenty cities and states and in ten other countries.
Learn more about YAP® and its 50th anniversary events at YAPInc.org.