Youth PROMISE Act
(Youth Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education Act)
H.R. 1064 (U.S. House) / S. 435 (U.S. Senate)
What is the Youth Promise Act?
The Youth PROMISE Act is a landmark bipartisan federal bill that supports the implementation of measurable, evidence-based, locally-driven prevention and intervention practices proven to reduce youth violence, crime and delinquency. All credible research indicates that this bill will also save money by lowering incarceration and criminal justice enforcement costs. The legislation has strong bipartisan support in the U.S. House (more than enough co-sponsors to pass the House), and has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Robert Casey (D-PA) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
Read more about the bill here.
- We need you to write a Letter to the Editor urging your U.S. Senator to support the Youth Promise Act, (Senate bill S. 435), and requesting that they signal their support by signing on as a co-sponsor of the legislation
Tips on Writing Letters to the Editor
- To get published, it’s essential that you frame your letter as a direct response to an article or editorial that appeared in the target publication, typically within the past 48 hours. Refer to the article by title and date. (i.e. I am saddened to read about the recent school violence in our community, ("Title of Article," date), but I am encouraged by the opportunity we have to do something about it: passing the Youth Promise Act…)
- To find articles relevant to your letter, visit the website of your target publication and search the following key words (within the last 48 hours): youth violence, gangs, prisons, incarceration, violence prevention, at-risk youth
- Keep it short, simple, punchy, conversational and top-loaded (100-200 Words). And consider a catchy first line: You may have 5 seconds to hook a reader, and publications often edit by cutting from the bottom up.
- Add a local angle, if you can, and consider including a glaring statistic or personal story that shows how the issue could affect the reader or the community. Appealing to a person’s self-interest resonates better than abstract points or raw data.
- Coordinate: The more letters a paper receives on a topic, the more likely it is to run at least one, or to include the topic in its news/editorial coverage.
See more tips on writing Letters to the Editor here.
Talking Points:
The Youth Promise Act:
- Implements measurable, evidence-based practices, proven to prevent and reduce youth violence, crime and delinquency
- Is such commonsense legislation that even in a bitterly divided Congress, it has strong bipartisan support, with 200 Democrats and 40 Republicans signed on as co-sponsors
- Stems violence through use of prevention and intervention before kids get into trouble
- Saves critical money: All credible research shows that use of prevention and early intervention for at-risk youth saves far more than it costs by reducing expensive law enforcement and incarceration costs (It costs $80,000-$100,000/year to incarcerate a youth, plus court, law enforcement, health and social services costs.)
- Empowers local planning, decision-making and oversight from a wide range of community stakeholders, including law enforcement, courts, schools, social services, community groups, and health services.
- Holds each community accountable for its funding through continual measurement of cost, savings and effectiveness
- Bottom line: We must shift focus from reacting to violence to preventing violence, allowing us to save billions of dollars and countless lives each year
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