KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City, Missouri, city council approved $30 million last year for violence reduction programs.
KSHB 41 News reporter Megan Abundis found out that for the first time, a part of the $30 million will be used for an evaluation component to really see what programs are working, along with tracking and assessing the programs that hope to lower crime rates in Kansas City.
It’s something that hasn’t been done before in the city's history.
The cost is $1.3 million for Univerity of Missouri-Kansas City teams to assess and track the crime reduction programs.
Marijana Kotlaja, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of Missouri-Kansas City, says the evaluation team is all about accountability.
“For me it’s like, 'OK, let’s see some data,” she said.
Kotlaja believes the $30 million brings together people with different views of our city’s crime problem and different ideas to fix the problem.
“You have the mayor, officers, police, courts, correction, neighborhoods, academics, people that would never be in the same spot,” she said.
The city says it’s to work on neighborhood enhancement, youth summer programs, violence prevention, hotline awareness, supporting people after they finish their prison sentences, re-engagement efforts, and mental health.
WHO IS YOUR TEAM?
Maja’s team estimates they’ll evaluate and track 24 programs to see what’s driving crime and if the programs work.
“My team consists of five PhD’s, two computer engineers, and a number of UMKC students working together,” Kotlaja said. “My hope for the next few months is to create a really powerful system, a data system hub, so we can pull measures for our city, and CDC data, to really be able to look at crime holistically."
WHAT GOES INTO TRACKING?
A new crime reduction program is funded and approved by the city council.
The Kansas City Health Department distributes the money to the program.
Kotlaja’s team gets together with the program and works through the following steps:
1. Initial meeting (what the program is aiming to do)
2. Logic model (identifying the outcomes)
3. Kotlaja's team gives their input on the program’s logic model
One example is studying a program focused on re-entry.
“We can look at if there were fewer arrests, jail time," Kotlaja said. "It’s a lower cost to taxpayers as well given that programming that was put in place. Short term medium- and long-term outcomes we want to track. The input would be like, ‘Hey, you’re doing this really well, what about try this? Let’s see if we have better outcomes with that, evidence-based research.'”
Another technique is to use feedback from participants in programs.
“Let’s say we measure attitudes of youth programs in the summer and they are really bummed because they’re getting in trouble for missing their program, but transportation was an issue,” she said. “Our team could come in and say, ‘Hey, why don’t you try and provide vouchers for transportation, and let’s see if these numbers go up, and let’s see if youth participation also reduces those negative outcomes.'”
WHY IS IT BENEFICIAL?
“You have a mechanism where you have that accountability for taxpayer dollars,” she said. “If we have programs, we can see if they are working or not. We don’t want programs to fail. We want them to get better. This is nice because it brings everyone together. That’s how we're effectively going to have interventions. They will be placed into pockets that are the highest crime-ridden.”
WHY HASN’T THIS BEEN DONE BEFORE?
“Because it costs money, and it costs time,” she said. “I wish it would have been done before. I think every program should have an evaluator. I think there’s tremendous power in assessing something to say, ‘Hey this works, this doesn’t. One evaluation is typically around $60,000-80,000 and that’s on the cheap end to evaluate a program.”
TIMELINE
“Crime has a lag effect, it takes some time to see effects, and we won’t see changes overnight,” he said. “We are looking at a five to 10-year time frame. I ask everyone to be patient, patience is going to be really important.”
WHAT’S TO COME?
Kotlaja says they’re designing an online data portal, that’s half-public, half-private, so Kansas Citians can see what effect the programs are having.
The private area of the portal will answer whether there are specific demographic characteristics and specific socioeconomic drivers.
