Rainier Beach Campus Safety Continuum: A Comprehensive Place-based Approach, Seattle, Washington, 2016-2019

The Rainier Beach Campus Safety Continuum (RBCSC), funded by the National Institute of Justice's FY 2016 Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, was a community-led, place-based, evidence-informed approach to addressing school and community safety and reducing racial disparity in school discipline and police contact in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The initiative built upon two existing local initiatives, Rainier Beach: A Beautiful Safe Place for Youth, a community-led place-based approach to addressing youth crime and victimization at hot spots, and Rainier Beach: Beautiful!, an application of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) that extends from the schools into community facilities and businesses.
The goal of the project was to examine whether PBIS can be successfully combined with school-based restorative justice (RJ) to increase student support and reduce racial disparity and, furthermore, whether this integrated PBIS-RJ program could also be extended into wider community and place-based approaches to change social norms and improve overall rates of youth crime and community safety.
The overall project ran from 2017 to 2022. The evaluation examines the effects of the program on crime, academic performance and school discipline, student perceptions of school climate, and community perceptions of neighborhood safety in Rainier Beach, several comparison schools, and neighborhoods.
Behavioral variables from the police offense reports and police calls for service included offense details and classifications. Demographic variables from the community survey, school climate data, and school administrative data included gender and race/ethnicity.