Approximately 775,000 youth in America are involved in gangs. According to Kids Play USA Foundation, adolescents who don't have adult supervision at least three days a week are twice as likely to hang out with gang members and three times as likely to be engaged in criminal behavior. Laureus Sport for Good Foundation USA supports sport organizations that target at-risk youth in under-resourced communities, using sport as a tool for social and community cohesion. There are two ways we can address youth violence and crimes: prevention and reducing recidivism, which is the tendency to relapse into criminal behavior. By harnessing the power of sport and providing youth sport programs with strong mentors, the sport for development sector can strongly impact the lives of youth and environments in communities to help prevent youth violence and reduce recidivism. While many sport for development programs exist that are successful in touching the lives of these children before they go down the road of crime, there needs to be more programs that are dedicated to rehabilitating delinquent youth so recidivism does not occur.
[For more of this story, written by Edwin Moses, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...-addr_b_8465822.html]
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