According to data from the Kansas City Police Department, more than a quarter of homicide suspects from 2023 were under the age of 24.
Youth uniting as one, image by Hannah Busing
A nonprofit in Kansas City works with kids and young adults and focuses on attacking the root of criminal thinking.
According to data from the Kansas City Police Department, more than a quarter of homicide suspects from 2023 were under the age of 24. The same pattern applies for 2022.
With his nonprofit Lyrik’s Institution, Kyle Hollins is working to lower that number.
“We work with some of the young adults that most people don’t work with,” he said. “We get the young adults that have shot up the Hy-Vee Arena, that shoot up the plaza. Those are the young adults that we that we work with.”
His focus lies on people aged 13 to 25 with adverse backgrounds and those who are generally involved in crime and violence.
“There’s nobody else on this side of the demographic that serves these kids the way that we do — that specifically targets shooters, that specifically targets criminality from 13 to 25,” he said.
Their mission is to reduce the crime rate and violent nature in our youth through cognitive behavior modification — essentially getting to the root of criminal thinking.
“We work on the thought process, we identify how our thoughts are created, how they’re formed, how they’re reinforced,” Hollins said.
Then, they work on challenging those thought processes and reworking them into productive behaviors.
“We all have the ability to be violent, but not everybody has the ability to walk up and kill somebody, to up a gun in a public place and shoot somebody,” he said.
Now more than ever, his work is proving essential.
“Violence in any shape or form is a big deal. But when we’re talking about like how do we impact, you know, violence in Kansas City, we have to think about targeting a specific demographic,” he said.
Last year, the nonprofit served more than 1,300 people.
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