Why Municipal Leaders Make Youth Safety a City Priority

No challenge facing cities and towns is more urgent than protecting our children and youth.  Ensuring children's safety at home, keeping them out of harm's way on the streets and at school, and shielding young people from influences that can draw them into acts of crime and violence - these steps are essential to the well being of our communities.

The lives of young people in our cities and towns are at stake, and municipal leaders know it.  But this is about more than young people themselves; entire communities pay a price when the health and safety of children are threatened. As families in violence-plagued neighborhoods lose their sense of security, property values erode and middle-class residents move out. Gone with them is some of the economic vitality essential to a community's success.

Mayors and councilmembers are uniquely positioned to put children's safety on the public agenda.