Center For Applied Research-
Effective Police Interaction with Youth

Funded by the State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management (OPM), Effective Police Interactions with Youth project involves evaluation of a training curriculum that aims to reduce negative police-youth interactions, in general, and unequal treatment of ethnic minority youth, in particular. Specifically, the training curriculum provides patrol officers with information on adolescent development and ethnic minority youth's involvement in the Juvenile Justice System, and it teaches officers strategies for interacting with youth in positive ways. As part of this project, Center staff have developed a questionnaire for assessing officers' knowledge of youth development and disproportionate minority contact (DMC) and for assessing officers' attitudes toward youth. Additionally, Center staff have been working on entering and statistically analyzing pre-, post-, and follow-up data completed by patrol officers who attended the training and by a comparison group consisting of patrol officers who did not attend the training.

For questions regarding the evaluation:

Primary research contact- Jessica Sanderson, M.A.
Email- jessica.sanderson@uconn.edu  
Phone- (860) 486-6223

Research contact- Iva Kosutic, M.A.
Email- iva.kosutic@uconn.edu
Phone- (860) 486-6223

Evaluation Director- Stephen Anderson , Ph.D.
Email- stephen.anderson@uconn.edu  
Phone- (860) 486-6223

For questions about the grant and funding:
OPM website- www.ct.gov/opm/cwp/view.asp?a=2974&q=383632