Connecting youth & law enforcement through Photovoice
The opportunity
Back of the Napkin was brought on to help Boys & Girls Clubs across Maryland implement a statewide grant to accomplish the following:
Improve law enforcement’s understanding of young people’s perspectives on the impact of police behavior in their communities.
Increase the opportunities for young people to engage with law enforcement statewide.
Increase opportunities to improve young people’s thoughts about interacting with law enforcement.
Evaluate Clubs’ ability to accomplish grant outcomes.
Youth experiences and interactions with law enforcement vary greatly between differences in race, gender, ethnicity, and MD zip code. For some Club members discussing police and community, let alone speaking with community members and law enforcement, would be difficult and even traumatic.
The goals
Design a program, staff training, and participatory evaluation protocol that safeguards young people’s emotional safety and elevates their voices.
Empower young people to photography as a tool for storytelling and perspective amplification.
Design a culminating event where photographs drive conversations between young people and law enforcement.
The work
Young people decide on a topic about which they want law enforcement to understand.
Participants learn about and practice incorporating photography principles in pictures.
From there, participants took pictures that represented the topic from their perspective, gave feedback to each other on the images, and created a description of what their image(s) depicted.
At the same time, Club staff engaged law enforcement to put themselves into the shoes of young people, and understand how teen actions align with brain development.
Then, under the safety and guidance of the Club, young people discuss their pictures with law enforcement.
The result
Our evaluation of Photovoice: Through Our Lens found it effective for improving youth willingness to work with law enforcement and their willingness to approach law enforcement if they were in danger.
The program made law enforcement officers more willing to talk with young people. Participants realized the importance of youth perspectives to understand communities better, and many shared their learnings with other colleagues.
For the Maryland Clubs, the program facilitated a deeper platform for the personal expression of members. We’re proud to say that clubs are running this program on their own over a year later, and many have asked to be retrained.