Youth L.I.F.E. Support Network: An ethnographic study of violence and crime in the city of Schenectady through the Youth L.I.F.E. violence interrupter organization.

The city of Schenectady faces many challenges including high rates of violent crime, poverty, unemployment, and an overall lack of opportunity for inner-city youth as a result of structural factors such as deindustrialization and mass incarceration that have significantly changed the urban socio-economic structure. Youth L.I.F.E. Support Network is a local organization that aims to connect at-risk members of the community affected by these issues to local networks by ensuring that they have access to the services and skills needed to be successful members of the community, especially after incarceration. Due to its widespread reach within the networks that exist in the city of Schenectady and unique model, the offices of Youth L.I.F.E. offered an interesting field site to qualitatively study the causes and impact of violence and crime within inner-cities. The ethnographic research that was conducted analyzed the day to day operations of Youth L.I.F.E. as a new and innovative institutional response to violence in the context of Schenectady in a way that helps provide a framework for future policy making. Methods that were employed included participant observation of the offices and attendance of two local summits for teenagers and parents. The research revealed that there are both actor-related and structural-related causes of participation in violence and crime. Correlations were identified between population loss during deindustrialization, decline in median household incomes, increase in incarceration rates, and breakdown of the traditional nuclear family unit through the emergence of single-mother households. Through an epidemiological approach to violence intervention, Youth L.I.F.E. treats these issues on the ground-level by interacting with local youth to change behavior and prevent future cycles of violence. However, Youth L.I.F.E. will not be able to treat the structural issues that Schenectady, as well as many other urban cities within the Rust Belt region, currently face. Thus, this research has significant relevancy to future city policymaking in regards to where resources should be allocated to treat the violence epidemic within the city of Schenectady.