INITIATIVE
TO REDUCE
CRIME
BY STRENGTHENING FAMILIES
Dear Community Leader,
We can help your community reduce
crime by building more functional families. And, this Initiative
to Reduce Crime is not expensive.
You can save a lot of money by doing
more to prevent crime. You can stop adding police and treatment
programs if you do more to prevent people from breaking the law.
The Initiative to
Reduce Crime by Strengthening Families is a preventive approach
to crime with a powerful double-punch. (1) It helps families communicate
more to bulid better relationships which prevents crime in a number
of ways. (2) It gives kids critical skills for lifetime success,
also preventing a lot crime.
No community is doing enough. People
are fed up with crime. They are tired of paying more and more
for safety and for ineffective rehabilitation of criminals. Enough
is enough! Your citizens want less crime.
Violent crimes are most often perpetrated
by people raised in impersonal or neglectful families. These people
have never been shown how important people are. Interpersonal
closeness has not been a part of their daily life. Life taught
them that people are to be used, stolen from, or treated roughly
to get their needs met.
The strategy is to
saturate your community with a lot of resources to get families
using fun dialogue to build more loving relationships through increased
communication. Everywhere people go (see below), they will see that
your community is fed up with crime and is strengthening families
to combat it. This assault on crime will benefit everyone.
This program is
a strong attempt to add value to family relationships so that
society doesn't just keep producing people who break the law.
Short term should see reductions in poor school performance, juvenile
delinquency, child and spousal abuse, molestation, teen suicide,
and drug and alcohol abuse. Long term results should yield a reduction
in serious crimes, like armed robbery.
Law enforcement services and the court system
are bogged down with family crimes like child abuse and sexual
molestation, alcohol and drug-related crimes, and traffic violations.
These can be reduced when families teach the value of people to
their children and teens.
This program
has been designed to reach as many families as possible in your
community, with a strategy to reach the unmotivated, neglectful,
and abusive parents. It is designed to reach the hard-to-find
dysfunctional families that produce so much crime and cut off
the chance of success for so many kids. This is not a prevention
program that just reaches motivated parents which will yield
disappointing results.
Strong, healthy families produce law-abiding people.
This approach penetrates your city to reach the families that
are most troubled while still helping families at every level.
Implementing The Initiative to Reduce
Crime by Strengthening Families is not difficult. Management of
the Initiative can be delegated to a governmental department or
a respected community agency or service club.
RESOURCES
DISTRIBUTED FOR 6 MONTHS
#1
FAMILIES HELPING FAMILIES
Media coverage of the Initiative recruits
motivated, more functional families to help other families.
They help families they know through their neighborhood,
activities, organizations and workplaces.
These motivated families (called Initiative
Families) obtain a package of Families Helping Families
Leadership Materials from the Initiative.
This contains 4 Family-Building Dialogue Kits. The package
is either free or very inexpensive, depending upon the decision
of your community's Initiative Sponsor.
Each Family-Building Dialogue Kit has 26
weekly Family Treasure Cards for helping families for a
half year. Each Treasure Card contains 10 fun and educational
dialogue starters for each week.
Initiative Families use one Family-Building
Dialogue Kit for enhancing their own family. They use the
other three sets to reach out to help three other families.
All they do is get these 3 other families to agree to receive
one Dialogue Treasure Card a week. The Set is given out
only one card at a time to intentionally encourage the parent
receiving the Treasure Card weekly over a period of time
to use it to build his or her family. This is the strategy
to reach down into the corners of your community to reach
the most dysfunctional families.
Information and wonderful resources are
not very effective without person-to-person help. Encouragement
each week when a new Treasure Card is handed out is the
secret ingredient for successfully building your community's
families. This can reduce crime now and for years to come.
Kids love talking. The 26 Family Dialogue
Treasure Cards (up to 260 conversations) teach social, verbal,
problem-solving, and thinking skills, plus positive attitudes
and values.
#2
GROCERY STORES
Participating Grocery stores give out a
different free Dialogue or Family Activity Grid every two
weeks for half a year (13 more family-building resources).
#3
RETAIL STORES
Participating Retail Stores give out different
Dialogue or Family Activity Grids changing the free handout
once a month. There are at least 6 different packages of
six family resource items for stores to choose from (36
more family-building resources).
Those stores not selling
family products can instead choose Dialogue Grids for Couples
to strengthen these human relationships (12 more resources).
#4
DRUG STORES
Participating Drug stores give out Family
Fun Activity Grids, a different family-building resource
every month (6 more items).
#5
PHARMACIES
Participating Pharmacies give out Grandparent
Impact Cards for grandparents to use to promote lifetime
skills and build relationships with their grandchildren.
These change every 2 weeks. (13 more family-building resources)
#6
RESTAURANTS & FAST FOOD
Participating Restaurants place different
Treasure Cards on tables for family dialogue that builds
relationships. Fast food stores put Treasure Cards with
orders. These change weekly. (26 more family-building resources.)
#7
EMPLOYERS
Participating Employers hand out a monthly
Dialogue Adventure for fun family game-like dialogue. There
are 6 adventures for six months. In this way, employers
show their support for The Initiative. (6 more family-building
resources)
#8
HELPING ORGANIZATIONS
Participating Social service and religious
organizations hold Training Nights for Families using our
Great Family Conversations Tool Kit that was used statewide
for National Family Night 2005 by the Governor's Wife of
Wyoming.
#9
SCHOOLS
Participating Schools teach dialogue skills
to students so that they can go home and teach their parents.
Over a year testing in Wyoming showed that kids love being
allowed to talk in their families.
We have designed the Initiative to be simple
and thrifty so that any community can assault crime by building
families. We license the sponsoring organization in a community
to print the Kits locally to make them most affordable.
Stores purchase handout materials from us. We
keep the cost reasonable, but they can purchase a license to
be able to personalize the handout and perhaps offer a coupon
for something in their stores. Either with or without personalization,
the handouts should bring in extra business as families want
to get the different family-building items.
Although not necessary, there is a way that
the Initiative can turn a bit of a profit for the community
or sponsoring organization.
The licensee (your community's Initiative Sponsor)
pays for a license and the cost of producing the Kits. Local
advertising can help with or cover this cost, allowing you to
make the Kits free to Initiative Families. Or, you can charge
those families the publishing cost (or even more if a profit
is needed). We do not recommend it, but for much more cost,
we can supply the Kits.
There is no cost to you for all the other resources,
although it is your license that makes all of the other resources
available to your community. Businesses purchase the family-building
resources as advertising specialities and to support the Initiative.
They distribute them free to the city's families, grandparents
and children. Of course, businesses benefit from lower crime.
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