Positive Ticket For Our Youth

My community, like so many others, struggled with the number of calls for youth disturbances and crime. The reactive approach to solving this problem was not working. Kids saw us as the 'hunters.' With that mindset, the good kids shy away from us, and the marginal kids turned it into a game of 'cat and mouse' to see how much they could get away with before getting caught. So I thought, what if we flipped things around? What if we catch and reward kids for doing good things instead of focusing on only the negative things? What if we start handing out Positive Tickets instead of only violations or warnings? It totally went against the old reactive, post-incident, corrective policing model. The results of the Positive Tickets program have been remarkable. Positive tickets are a great way for officers (or community people) to interact with children in a positive way. It encourages good, law-abiding behavior in youth; it steers them toward activities that promote health and positive social interactions; and most importantly, it helps them form trusting relationships with adults who care. 'Positive Tickets' can truly make a difference in the life of a child. Therefore, creating opportunities to catch our youth doing something right, rather than catching them doing something wrong, allows us to develop positive relationships with our youth that will encourage them to do the right things for the right reasons. Indeed, any leader can do this, truly speaks louder than their words. In the end, it seems that kids behave about as well as we expect and reward them too. The purpose of Positive Tickets is simple building relationships with youth in your community by catching them doing something good and rewarding them for it.