top of page

Crime Prevention in Tegucigalpa: Hotspots Interventions in Schools


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This project will intervene in educational centers located in the most dangerous neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa to prevent students from engaging in criminal or high-risk activities. The Prosecutor’s Office recognizes the importance of crime prevention, especially the need to work with youth in conflict zones to avoid involvement with gangs or in criminal acts. For this reason, the project contemplates the development of a georeferenced data mapping system of high-impact crimes (e.g. homicides, human trafficking, sexual abuse, among others) to identify the hotspots where the Prosecutors Office should concentrate its intervention efforts. After developing hotspots maps, a set of high-crime neighborhoods will be randomly selected to receive a crime prevention intervention targeting schools.

The intervention will consist of forming an inter-institutional group of approximately 100 trainers to give lectures to students on the following topics: comprehensive care of victims and witnesses, comprehensive care of vulnerable groups, gang approaches, drug use, and self-esteem. The Ministerio Público will also offer trainers more information on the specific safety issues that exist in the area where the school is located. The project will have a monitoring and evaluation strategy designed to isolate the causal effect of the intervention. It is expected that at the end of the project, the hotspots where there was an intervention will have a lower incidence of crime around them, and that students in schools that received the intervention will demonstrate lower levels of antisocial behavior, less drug use, and thereby lower truancy and dropout rates.

To find out more about this project, click here

Comments


bottom of page