Testing a Behavior Change Approach to Counter Criminal Youth Recruitment

Each year, roughly one million children across Latin America are recruited into organized crime, contributing to a region-wide crisis of gang violence.

Gangs are responsible for half of the homicides in the region, and their presence impacts urban communities in numerous ways, from reducing perceptions of safety to stifling investment. In Colombia, gang recruitment has escalated in recent years, including in Medelln. The Parceritos program is a cognitive behavioral intervention that seeks to address gang recruitment in Medelln.

The program combines behavioral change techniques with information on the economic and social benefits from education to shift high-risk adolescent boys toward more productive futures.

The approach is informed by growing evidence that cognitive behavioral interventions can reduce criminality, as well as two years of targeted interviews with over 8,500 teenage boys in Colombia, and a successful small-scale pilot.

Funding from this contract will support a randomized controlled trial to rigorously evaluate the Parceritos programs impact on gang membership and engagement with the criminal justice system, as well as school completion, occupational choice, and earnings.

This contract will also support the dissemination of results and preparation to scale to other urban areas should the evaluation find positive results.

If Parceritos proves successful, it could help to prevent youth involvement in organized crime in Latin America and beyond.