Geoffrey Canada, left, head of Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) and the Promise Academy, talks to a participant in the HCZ Summer Olympics, Aug. 18, 2004 in New York.

On a hot summer weekday in downtown Newark, it’s business as usual. Modest traffic is generated by Saint Michael’s Medical Center. Students move between classes on the streets around Rutgers University’s Newark campus. Residents and commuters line the streets, adding life to this New Jersey city that has stutter-stepped into something of a 21st-century revival.

But last summer was different. The city attracted national attention when three young adults between 18 and 20 were lined up and shot dead, with a fourth left critically injured. That same downtown hosted billboards that read “HELP WANTED: Stop the Killings in Newark Now!” Despite a drop in overall violent crime, the city had seen its murder rate rise 50 percent since 1998, and the summer 2007 shootings of Natasha Aeriel, Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey, and Iofemi Hightower sent Newark into panic mode. What was particularly troubling was that the four were not associated with any crime or gang, and by all accounts stayed out of trouble.

At the time, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine called the shootings representative of a “problem that has been in the making for decades,” but also told The Star-Ledger that looking beyond Newark was the only way to begin making a dent in addressing that problem.

“One has to stop thinking about this in a single community context. We have a problem where guns are shipped across state lines, we have poor border control with regard to the importation of drugs and they end up fueling violence on the local street. And so on the national level, on the state level, on the local level, we are all going to have to work together,” Corzine said.

Earlier this year in Chicago, volunteer groups were being organized in response to breathtakingly frightening murder statistics. The New York Times reported 32 killings of Chicago public school students in the 2006-2007 academic year. None was killed on school grounds, but incidents often occurred en route to or from school. The Times report quoted Arne Duncan, chief executive of the Chicago public schools, who called the city’s youth violence “brutal, absolutely horrible.”

In response, Chicago police now have access to and monitor school security cameras, as the school authorities and city police will likely become partners in fighting gangs. And Chicago has now become the 11th city to receive $2 million in federal funding for anti-gang initiatives—money from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative. The funding follows a summertime spike in gang violence that prompted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to offer Mayor Daley the assistance of the National Guard.

The DOJ’s initiative, which has already granted crime-fighting funding to Detroit, Los Angeles, Tampa, Cleveland, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Milwaukee, a Pennsylvania expanse stretching from Easton to Lancaster, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Rochester, N.Y., and Raleigh/Durham, N.C., has garnered largely positive reviews. It addresses family and community factors that can contribute to gang involvement, supports local law-enforcement efforts, and establishes assistance programs with community- and faith-based organizations that offer job training, transitional housing, and prisoner re-entry assistance related to substance abuse and mental health.

The federal effort is a response to a growing problem in cities across the country, where youth violence has become commonplace and anticipated. Just weeks ago, Hartford, Conn. joined the growing list of communities imposing a teen curfew. Anyone under the age of 18 will be required to be indoors by 9 p.m. amid worries of drive-by shootings and 11 incidents of gun violence during a single August weekend.

Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, himself a former gang member, has described the curfew as a means of helping young people, saying it should not be viewed as a punitive measure.

A similar curfew is in effect in Helena-West Helena, Ark., where police, following a series of gun-related incidents, now patrol a 10-block area with M-16 rifles, shotguns, and night-vision goggles. Mayor James Valley told the local paper that the area was “under siege,” and even likened the patrol to martial law.

The responses in Hartford and Helena follow the traditional law-enforcement model for combating youth violence: more policing and incarceration for those who commit the crimes. But more innovative approaches to youth violence prevention are being adopted by not-for-profit groups whose mission is to provide kids with alternatives to the culture of the street through job training, academic challenges, and enrichment in the arts.