Few shootings, but some fresh offenses among first teen participants in Maryland’s Thrive Academy

The idea seems simple: Identify young people most at risk of involvement in gun violence. Then, prevent them from becoming shooters or being shot.

The Department of Juvenile Services launched Thrive Academy last September to pair life coaches with those young people, in the hopes of steering them toward a brighter future. Participants work toward short- and long-term goals, like graduating, getting a job, repairing relationships with family members or improving their own parenting skills, while receiving a stipend and peer support.

Early data show some positive, yet imperfect results.

None of the program participants were shot or killed between September and the end of June, but two have been wounded in shootings so far this month, one in Baltimore City and one in Prince George’s County, the Department of Juvenile Services said.

Nine of the 108 program participants have been charged with violent crimes since September, including two with first-degree murder, two with attempted first-degree murder, one with first-degree assault and four with armed carjackings, according to the department.

Eighteen total, or about 16.7% of participants, were charged with a new gun-related offense through the end of June, DJS said. The others included seven participants charged with firearm possession and two with motor vehicle theft.

Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi, who oversees the department , called the results “super hopeful,” while adding that he would look to reduce the arrest rate. When the agency launched Thrive, he said, “we were running towards the fire, not away from it.”

“We are heartened that gun violence has declined substantially among young people since we started Thrive, but we always knew we wouldn’t bat 1.000,” he said. “We continue to work hard to improve Thrive and drive down gun violence among youth in our care.”

Those 108 participants, who make up about 7% of the total DJS youth caseload not housed in detention centers, were drawn from the four counties in Maryland that see the majority of youth violence — Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Prince George’s counties. Baltimore City and Baltimore County’s programs began in September, followed by Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties. DJS plans to expand the program statewide within the next year and grow to serve roughly 425 young people.

In Baltimore, Ebony Harvin has seen results firsthand.

As a life coach with community organization We Our Us , she meets weekly with Thrive Academy participants, checks in by phone even more often and helps host group sessions every Wednesday. In addition to goals around school or work, Harvin said life coaches serve as mentors and make sure participants’ families have any food and housing they may need, and even relocation services.

“We can talk love. But when you show these young people love, it’s bigger,” Harvin said. “Love will make them stop doing some of the things they’ve been doing. Love and time.”

Senate President Bill Ferguson said in a statement that Thrive is off to a “good start,” with an “immediate positive impact,” but there’s work ahead.

“We never expected perfection, so understandably, there’s more work to do. That’s why the legislature included oversight of Thrive in the Juvenile Justice Reform Bill of 2024 ,” said Ferguson, a Democrat from Baltimore. “Over the next six months, leading up to our General Assembly session in 2025, we will continue to monitor the program’s results, focusing on improvements that will help achieve even better results.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, too, has praised Thrive Academy, which is a similar “focused deterrence” model of intervention to Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy. Both seek out the individuals most likely to drive violence and attempt to support them with targeted social services and resources.

In an interview last month about the city’s violent crime declines , Scott recalled meeting with Schiraldi last year in Ocean City about the potential of using lessons from GVRS for “focusing in on these young people that are most likely to be a victim or a perpetrator.” Data show crimes committed by young people make up a small fraction of overall crime in Maryland , but they have faced outsized attention amid a spike in shootings of teens and in stolen vehicles .

“Our young people are our most precious, precious, precious resource, and to see fewer of them be a victim of gun violence is important,” Scott said.

Both Baltimore and Maryland have seen reductions in overall gun homicides and in the fatal shootings of young people this year. In Baltimore City, young people under 20 years old were wounded or killed by gunfire 60% less often through June 24 than during the same period in 2023.

Two DJS-connected youth, who were not participating in Thrive Academy, were killed in Maryland through July 7. That’s a decline from five such young people killed during the same time last year.

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The department cited state data showing a 26.3% year-over-year drop in homicides of children younger than 18 years old in Maryland through the end of June. Baltimore City is seeing an even larger year-over-year drop in youth killings of 54.5% through the same time period, the department said.

Schiraldi stopped short of attributing some of the decline in youth violence to Thrive Academy, but said the data suggests it’s having a positive effect. Philanthropic donors are funding an independent study of the program and its effects by the University of Pennsylvania, which hasn’t yet begun, Schiraldi said.

“The fact that we put all this time into researching the factors that would suggest that kids would be involved in gun violence, and then very specifically targeted those kids for services, and then none of them were shot, is just super hopeful for me,” said Schiraldi, who recalled that one young person on DJS’ caseload was killed during his first week on the job.

Since its start, the Thrive model has been tweaked slightly to include transitional periods on either end of the active participation in the academy, which lasts six months. For up to three months before the young person is released, they can receive services while still in a DJS facility. Then, for three months afterward, they can receive some modified services to support the young person and family’s independence.

Schiraldi’s team also has worked to beef up the basic necessities available to participants’ families, after seeing the number facing eviction or whose fridges weren’t full.

“These kids are the highest-risk kids we have,” Schiraldi said. “If their lives get turned upside down, the chances that they’ll engage in the kinds of behavior we don’t want them to engage in go way up. These are not the kids you want in crisis.”

Already, Thrive is receiving accolades. The Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators plans to award the program with its Inspirational Achievement Award next month. The council called the program a “beacon of inspiration for others to reshape juvenile justice and improve the lives of justice-involved youth and their communities” in a statement.

Harvin said she’s also heard positive feedback from the families of young people.

One grandmother reached out to We Our Us, Harvin said, thanking them for reaching her grandson and getting him to care, after many other programs had tried without success.

He had lost both of his parents, Harvin recalled her saying, and Thrive helped him “to open up and start talking, and to know that he had more to live for.”

“We have to give Thrive a chance,” Harvin said. “We’re going to make sure young people in Thrive ‘be more’ in Baltimore City. They’ll be able to walk past their past, and be proud of themselves.”