Assessing the Effectiveness of Toronto Police Services Board’s Youth Initiatives

This report was published by York Centre for Education and Community.

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS REPORT:

This project investigates four programs that received financial support from the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB): the Youth in Policing Initiative (YIPI); Native Child and Family Services of Toronto’s Youth Action; Tropicana Community Services’ Success through Aggression Replacement Training (START); and the Youth Association of Academics, Athletics and Character Education (YAAACE). We sought to examine the effectiveness of these initiatives with the goal of understanding: 1. the responsiveness of the initiatives to the needs of youth and the extent to which the stated goals have been achieved; 2. the youths perceptions, experiences, and attitudes towards the police, noting in the case of YIPI, the initial and subsequent perceptions after taking part in this initiative; 3. the level of access and interactions marginalized youth have had with these initiatives,and to police through the initiatives;4. the impact that these initiatives have had on individuals and communities, as well as on police-community relations within Toronto.

We explored the perceptions that youth and police have of each other, and the extent to which the TPSB’s involvement in these programs have helped to establish or enhance rapport among police, youth, and communities. In this report, we assess the extent to which current and past programs supported by the TPSB have been responsive to the needs of youth, as well as the effects these programs might have had on police-community relations. Part A of the report focuses on the Youth in Policing initiative (YIPI) and Part B on the experiences of youth in the three TPSB-funded initiatives. YIPI is unique in that it is the only program in our study that operates within and is administered by the Toronto Police Services.

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Categorised in: Report