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Another common goal of after-school programs is to improve the behavior or social skills of youth partici-pants.
A 1992 study of Boys and Girls Clubs in public housing developments considered the programs’ short-term im-pact
on the behavior of young people.9 Those researchers compared the substance abuse and other problem behavior
rates of youth who lived in a development with a Boys and Girls Club to the rates of youth who lived in developments
without a Boys and Girls Club. The researchers concluded that the Boys and Girls Clubs helped young people in these
developments refrain from inappropriate behavior.10 In addition, they found that the presence of a Boys and Girls Club
fostered more positive interaction between parents and their children. In another study, the Southwest Regional Labo-ratory
conducted a year-long evaluation of the 4-H After-School Activity Program in Los Angeles, California.11 After
interviewing parents, teachers, and participants, the researchers reported that the program improved youth participants’
ability to solve problems and to cooperate with their peers.12
Posner and Vandell also considered the behavioral characteristics of young people from low-income families
by reviewing school conduct reports and by surveying parents and teachers about their behavior. They found that
young peoples’ school conduct grades were positively associated with the amount of time spent on one-on-one aca-demic
work with adults, which is a common program component of after-school programs.13 Posner and Vandell also
noted that the more time that young people are without adult supervision the more likely they are to engage in antiso-cial
behavior.14
· Delinquency reduction
For more than a decade, national and North Carolina crime
statistics have shown that the frequency of delinquency and juvenile
violence peaks during after-school hours. In 1997, the Office of Ju-venile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s analysis of FBI data
found that 57 percent of violent juvenile crime occurred on school
days and that 20 percent of violent juvenile crime occurred between
2:00 and 6:00 pm.15 Similarly, a recent analysis of FBI’s National
Incident Based Reporting System data found that juveniles were
more likely to commit violent crimes on school days between 2:00
and 6:00 pm than on non-school days.16 The peak in juvenile delin-quency
after school has also been documented in North Carolina.
The Winston-Salem Police Department conducted an analysis of the
department’s crime records for the school months (9/95-4/96) and
found that 53 percent of all juvenile suspects and victims made con-tact
with officers after school between 2:00 and 8:00 pm, and 78 per-cent
of all juvenile suspects and victims made contact with officers
during out-of-school hours.17
Studies have also noted several other disturbing trends for
young people after school.18 One study found that older children are
more likely than younger children to lack adult supervision after
school. In addition, unsupervised youth are more likely to perform
poorly in school and to engage in such risk-taking activities as drug
use19 or sexual intercourse 20
“ I think one of the outcomes, for
instance, when we opened the club
in Ayden. We opened it right next
to a [public] housing project. The
Police Chief said that once the [club] was
opened, the next two consecutive years
crime was down in the area of 20 percent.
I think that shows what the Boys and Girls
Clubs of Pitt County can do. It’s not 100
percent attributable to the Boys and Girls
Clubs but it certainly had a lot to do with
it.”
-- John Coffman, Co-President of
Coffman’s Menswear, Boys and Girls
Clubs of Pitt County Board Member