-
The Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression
The Gang Violence Reduction Program
Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders
Klein (1995a:153) makes the case that communities need to organize themselves to deal with youth gangs:
Street gangs are by-products of partially incapacitated communities. Until we dedicate the state and federal resources necessary to alter these community structures, gangs will continue to emerge despite value transformation, suppression, or other community efforts. I'm talking about the most obvious resources—jobs, better schools, social services, health programs, family support, training in community organization skills, and support for resident empowerment. That's easy to say but obviously not easy to do.
A more comprehensive approach, combining program elements such as social services, crisis intervention, gang suppression, and community involvement, might be more effective than a one-dimensional approach. For evaluation results that suggest this, see Spergel and Grossman (1997) and Spergel, Grossman, and Wa (1998). Three communitybased and coordinated approaches designed to deal comprehensively with the youth gang problem are detailed here.
The Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression
OJJDP's Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression program is designed to implement and test a comprehensive model for reducing youth gang violence. In 1999, after funding the demonstration and testing sites for 4 years, OJJDP decided to continue supporting two of the five sites based on their strong prospects for sustaining the approach, program performance, preliminary evaluation data, and evidence of the development of promising strategies. Although Bloomington, IL; Tucson, AZ; and San Antonio, TX, served as promising demonstration sites, Riverside, CA, and Mesa, AZ, were chosen to receive the additional support. The program utilizes the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model, or the Spergel model, as it is often called, to engage communities in a systematic gang assessment, consensus building, and program development process. The model involves delivering the following five core strategies through an integrated and team-oriented problem-solving approach:14- Community mobilization, including citizens, youth, community groups, and agencies.
- Provision of academic, economic, and social opportunities. Special school training and job programs are especially critical for older gang members who are not in school but may be ready to leave the gang or decrease participation in criminal gang activity for many reasons, including maturation and the need to provide for family.
- Social intervention, using street outreach workers to engage gang-involved youth.
- Gang suppression, including formal and informal social control procedures of the juvenile and criminal justice systems and community agencies and groups. Community-based agencies and local groups must collaborate with juvenile and criminal justice agencies in the surveillance and sharing of information under conditions that protect the community and the civil liberties of youth.
- Organizational change and development, that is, the appropriate organization and integration of the above strategies and potential reallocation of resources among involved agencies.
Technical assistance manuals (Spergel et al., 1992b) that guide implementation of each of these components are available.15 The model and its strategies should be designed and targeted based on a strategic problem assessment and implemented through a sequenced, empirically driven process. A steering committee comprising key community leaders and agency staff must provide overall direction and support for the implementation of the five strategies.
The OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model embraces the concept of effective use of the social controls inherent in various social institutions. As part of this approach, individuals, families, the community as a whole, agencies, and organizations—both formal and informal—are reminded that they have a stake in supporting positive behaviors and in taking a firm stance against illegal activities, including gang crime and violence, substance abuse, and illegitimate behaviors. In practice, this means that family members, adolescents, community residents, and agency workers (including police and probation officers) must work collaboratively while carrying out their distinctive functions to ensure positive adolescent behaviors. A summary of the five demonstration sites originally chosen to implement the model follows (Burch and Kane, 1999).
The Mesa Gang Intervention Project (Mesa, AZ). The target area for the Mesa Gang Intervention Project (MGIP) is an area of the city served by Mesa and Powell Junior High Schools. Within the target area, 18 gangs with an estimated 650 members have been identified by the Mesa Police Department. The project has targeted 125 youth who are involved in gangs or at high risk for gang involvement and who either reside in or are known to be active within the target area. Key collaborators in the project, which is overseen by a steering committee made up of agency and grassroots executives, are the city of Mesa, the Mesa Police Department, Maricopa County Adult and Juvenile Probation Departments, Prehab of Arizona, the Mesa Boys & Girls Club, Arizona State University, the United Way, and others.
A team of two gang detectives, one adult and two juvenile probation officers, a youth intervention specialist, and two full-time and two part-time street outreach workers works with and monitors the youth on a daily basis. The team is located in a storefront office within the target community. The MGIP gang detectives and probation officers provide monitoring and surveillance of youth in the program while supporting street outreach workers and staff from other community-based agencies. These staff ensure delivery of necessary services such as counseling, job referrals, drug and alcohol treatment, and other social services. The MGIP team uses a team problem-solving approach to ensure that progress is made with each youth in the program. The team also provides community assistance, including educating residents about local gang problems and hearing their concerns regarding the neighborhood. Gang education is also provided to community members through various professional, neighborhood, and civic groups within the target area. A computer literacy lab was recently added to the MGIP office, through the support of the Arizona Superior Court. The State of Arizona recently provided additional support to the city of Mesa and MGIP for a mentoring component, and MGIP is supporting a Gang Prevention Through Targeted Outreach program at the Mesa Boys & Girls Club. Other services provided include a cognitive restructuring class for gang-involved youth; parenting classes; services for gang-involved girls; an arts program; summer camp programming focusing on cultural diversity; and tattoo removal services following community service, an educational session, and an agreement not to get any new tattoos for 2 years. Looking toward the prospect of sustaining local support for project activities, the Mesa Police Department has shifted administrative oversight of the project to the police department's gang unit. Tucson Gang Project (OUR Town Family Center, Tucson, AZ). The Tucson Gang Project focused on the Vistas neighborhoods on the south side of Tucson, which have approximately 4 main gangs with an estimated 350 gang members. The project served more than 100 youth. Its outreach component operated out of the local Boys & Girls Club in the target area. The primary partners in the project included the Tucson Police Department, Pima County juvenile probation and parole, the Tucson Unified School District, the Tucson Boys & Girls Club, Quail Enterprises (a research and evaluation firm), and a treatment agency known as La Fontera. The project collaborated with, received referrals from, and made referrals to a number of other local agencies. Street outreach workers, probation officers, a police gang unit officer, and others worked to provide services and opportunities on a daily basis to youth targeted by the project and held them accountable for their negative behavior using a range of graduated sanctions. Weekly staff meetings with other agency representatives were supplemented by weekly meetings among project team members to review client and community progress and needs. A community mobilizer on the project staff worked with community agencies and residents of the target neighborhood to keep attention focused on gang issues and completed a community member survey on the gang problem. The Gang Prevention Through Targeted Outreach program was integrated into the project's overall strategy and focused on younger at-risk youth. Where possible, staff from other programs joined gang project staff meetings to share information and coordinate efforts. Project staffing was supplemented by the use of AmeriCorps volunteers. Although Federal funding for this project has ended, project partners including OUR Town, Quail Enterprises, and the Pima County Juvenile Probation Department are continuing their collaboration and are providing services to project youth through local and other Federal support. Riverside's Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression (Riverside, CA, Police Department). The Riverside project is focused on two communities known to be high gang-crime areas. Twenty-one gangs with approximately 1,230 members exist in these communities. Currently, more than 150 gang-involved and high-risk youth are targeted by the project. The project is guided by a steering committee comprising local agencies and organizations, including the Riverside County Juvenile Court, the Riverside County District Attorney's Office,16 the Riverside County and Alvord Unified School Districts, the Youth Service Center, and other agency and community leaders. Although the lead agency is the Riverside Police Department, key support is provided by Riverside County Probation, the Youth Service Center, the City of Riverside Human Resources Department, the University of California at Riverside, and many other local agencies. Outreach workers and area social service agencies aid project youth daily, and police and probation officers work to keep youth from becoming involved in criminal or delinquent activities. Outreach workers and other service agencies discuss service needs during weekly meetings, and area safety, gang activities, and accountability issues during biweekly meetings with police and probation officers. Youth are encouraged to attend these meetings, are supported in attending school, and are provided job training, opportunities for regular employment, and social services. Probation officers and police carry out home visits, area surveillance, arrests, and other controls. The project has been enhanced by the probation department's development of youth accountability boards in Riverside and by a new school-based outreach program that will provide services to youth at risk of gang involvement. The Riverside gang project also involves a job training component conducted by the city's Human Resources Department. If youth cannot be placed immediately into ongoing employment programs in the city, they are eligible for the project's 40-hour job training program. The program consists of job readiness training (covering issues such as résumé/application writing, proper attitudes, leadership skills, communication, and cultural differences) and a job stipend for completing on-the-job training through temporary employment with local agencies and companies. The program gives youth the skills they need to seek job opportunities, apply, and be selected. It gives employers a chance to give back to the community while they gain subsidized staff. The program also works to place youth into permanent employment and provides followup once they are employed. Bloomington/Normal's Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression (Project OZ, Inc., Bloomington, IL). Although all of Bloomington and Normal, IL, were included in its target area, in which 8 gangs with 640 members were known to exist, this project dealt mainly with youth from the City of Bloomington. Along with the Bloomington and Normal Police Departments, the McLean County Juvenile Court, juvenile probation, the Bloomington and Normal schools, the Western Avenue Community Center, the Bloomington Boys & Girls Club, the McLean County State's Attorney, and other agencies focused on gang-involved and at-risk youth in Bloomington and Normal by providing support, suppression, and intervention services and opportunities such as job training and placement. Regular staff meetings for outreach workers were supplemented with biweekly meetings with the Bloomington Police Department's proactive unit, adult and juvenile probation, juvenile parole, and a school resource officer to review the progress of project youth, special problems in the cities, and overall gang activities. Outreach workers assisted project youth who were in the community and project youth who were incarcerated but expected to be released in the near future. The project was enhanced by an OJJDP mentoring grant that provided services to community youth at risk of gang membership and by a local business owned and operated by the project's steering committee that served as a job training site and the project's job development office. State Farm Insurance, which is headquartered in Bloomington, also provided tremendous support to the project, and the Boys & Girls Clubs' Gang Prevention Through Targeted Outreach program was integrated into the project and focused on youth at high risk for gang involvement. Although OJJDP support has ended, aspects of the project are continuing through other Federal, State, and local support. San Antonio's Gang Rehabilitation, Assessment, and Services Program (San Antonio, TX, Police Department). The Gang Rehabilitation, Assessment, and Services Program's (GRAASP's) target community was located on the southwest side of San Antonio. The program identified a target population of 100 gang-involved youth from the area's 15 gangs and 1,664 gang members. In addition to the San Antonio Police Department, key partners in GRAASP included the Bexar County Department of Probation, the Texas Youth Commission (TYC), the San Antonio Unified School District, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Cellular On Patrol (COP—a citizens' crime watch group), and other community agencies and grassroots groups. Street-based outreach workers employed by the city of San Antonio worked together with other social service agencies, a job developer, probation officers, city police officers assigned to community policing and tactical units, TYC staff, and others. Coordination and case management meetings were held regularly with outreach workers. Police and probation officers were included if issues arose, although communication between police, probation, and other GRAASP staff also took place outside of regular meetings. The project coordinator, outreach staff, and job developer worked together in an office near the target area. The project supported graffiti paint-outs (i.e., graffiti cleanup), community health fairs, recreational opportunities for project youth, and other community development activities in conjunction with local neighborhood associations. As OJJDP funding has ended, local political leaders from the target area have been working with project agencies to determine ways of sustaining some of the project's strategies and services. Many lessons have been learned in each of these sites that are expected to greatly enhance the Nation's knowledge about responding to chronic and emerging youth gang problems in both large and small communities. A University of Chicago evaluation of the demonstration effort is expected to shed light on what did and did not work in each site. In addition, the evaluation will inform OJJDP and the field as to how promising the Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression may be in dealing with youth gang crime and violence. While final results are not expected until 2001, anecdotal and preliminary outcome data suggest that these projects have been successful in reducing gang crime and increasing prosocial opportunities such as special school training and job programs.The Gang Violence Reduction Program
A variation of the comprehensive model Spergel and his colleagues designed was implemented in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, a low-income and working-class community that is approximately 90 percent Mexican American (Spergel and Grossman, 1997). Called the Gang Violence Reduction Program, it was administered by the Chicago Police Department. The program targeted mainly older members (ages 17 to 24) of two of the area's most violent Hispanic gangs, the Latin Kings and the Two Six. It is important to note that the program targeted and provided services to youth involved with these two gangs, rather than to the gangs as groups. These two gangs accounted for about 70 percent of serious gang violence in the Little Village community.
Ebb and Flow of Gang Violence
Decker (1996) delineates a seven-step process
that accounts for the peaks and valleys in levels of gang violence. The process begins with a loosely organized gang:
|
The Gang Violence Reduction Program consisted mainly of two coordinated strategies: (1) targeted control of violent or potentially violent youth gang offenders in the form of increased supervision and suppression by the probation department and police and (2) provision of a wide range of social services and opportunities for targeted youth to encourage their transition to legitimate behavior through education, jobs, job training, family support, and brief counseling. The program was staffed by tactical police officers, probation officers, community youth workers from the target neighborhood, and workers in Neighbors Against Gang Violence, a community organization established to support the project. This organization was composed of representatives from local churches, a job placement agency, youth service agencies, other community groups, the alderman's office, and local citizens. The program incorporated a comprehensive set of integrated and coordinated strategies: suppression, social intervention, opportunities provision, and community mobilization. Evaluation results, covering 3 out of 5 years of program operations, were positive (Spergel and Grossman, 1997; Spergel, Grossman, and Wa, 1998; Thornberry and Burch, 1997). Favorable results included a lower level of serious gang violence among the targeted gang members than among members of comparable gangs in the area, who had been exposed to a traditional approach based mainly on suppression. Specifically, there were fewer arrests for serious gang crimes (especially aggravated batteries and aggravated assaults) involving members of targeted gangs in comparison with a control group of youth from the same gangs and members of other gangs in Little Village. It appears that the coordinated project approach, using a combination of various social interventions involving youth outreach workers17 and suppression tactics, was more effective with more violent youth, while the sole use of youth workers was more effective with less violent youth. Social interventions included counseling, crisis intervention, gang homicide intervention, job placement, and family, school, and special education programs and services. There also was notable improvement in residents' perceptions of gang crime and police effectiveness in dealing with that crime. The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (1999:4) concluded that "the project appears to have been a success" and that "the cohesive team approach was probably at the heart of the project's success in reducing gang crime, particularly gang violence."
Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders
Gang membership is one of the strongest predictors of individual violence in adolescence (Hawkins et al., 1998). In the Rochester site of OJJDP's Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency, gang members committed nearly twice as many delinquent acts as nonmembers (see figure 1), and two-thirds of chronic violent offenders were gang members for a time (Thornberry, Huizinga, and Loeber, 1995). OJJDP's Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (see Wilson and Howell, 1993) provides a framework for strategic community planning and program development targeting serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders. Given the overlap of risk factors for gang participation with those for nongang serious and violent offending (Howell, 1998b), the Comprehensive Strategy offers an effective community mobilization and planning model for responding to the problem of gang activity.18 The OJJDP Comprehensive Strategy organizes programs in a framework composed of three main components: prevention, early intervention, and graduated sanctions. The graduated sanctions component consists of a system of sanctions, including arrest, adjudication, intensive probation, incarceration, and aftercare for juvenile offenders, along with a continuum of rehabilitation options. One such option is found in the use of multisystemic therapy, which has been shown to be highly effective with serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders (Henggeler, 1997). It is currently being tested in Galveston, TX, in the Second Chance program, which targets gang-involved youth (Thomas, 1996). Two other programs illustrate how graduated sanctions may be effective with gang members. In its Early Intervention Program, the Orange County (CA) Probation Department targets potential (under age 15) serious, violent, and chronic offenders, for whom gang involvement is one risk factor. Preliminary results show a 50-percent reduction in recidivism as a result of using probation and other sanctions with a wide range of treatment interventions for both offenders and their families (Schumacher and Kurz, 2000).19 Intensive probation and other more restrictive suppression measures, including criminal prosecution, are used with older, hardcore gang members in the TARGET program described earlier in this Summary. The Early Intervention Program uses a continuum of sanctions and service options for the potential serious and violent offenders it targets. The Baton Rouge, LA, Partnership for the Prevention of Juvenile Gun Violence (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1999) is an excellent example of a community-based program that uses the OJJDP Comprehensive Strategy framework to prevent and reduce adolescent violence. This strategy quite likely would be effective in preventing and reducing gang problems as well. Although gangs were not targeted in this program (because Baton Rouge did not have a gang problem at the time of implementation), other communities that are experiencing gang problems could replicate the steps taken in Baton Rouge. The partnership targeted multiple-offender youth up to age 21 from two high-crime ZIP code areas. The partnership designed a comprehensive strategy with the following components:- A multiagency law enforcement (suppression) strategy to reduce gun-related and other violent crimes by juveniles and older youth (ages 17 to 20).
- An intensive intervention program to reduce the risk factors for the highest risk youth, their families, and the community.
- A high-intensity probation and parole program that targets an identified group of chronic young violent offenders.
- Grassroots community mobilization to address the problems of hard-to-reach families and the highest risk youth.
- A long-range prevention program that identifies, links, and strengthens existing resources to serve youth who may be at risk.
14 See Spergel et al., 1992a; Spergel et al., 1992b; Spergel, Chance, et al., 1994; Spergel, Curry, et al., 1994; see also Spergel and Curry, 1990, 1993. 15 These manuals are available from the Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse by calling 800–638–8736. 16 The prosecution component of this program is described in Johnson, Webster, and Conners, 1995.
17 Six requirements guided outreach workers' daily activities: operate as part of a team structure, continually assess the gang and gang member situation in the community, focus on social intervention and social opportunities provision, work with the community to achieve gang violence reduction, deal with police harassment of gang members, and cope with outreach performance tasks (Spergel, 1999).
18 The Guide for Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Howell, 1995) is a resource for carrying out the OJJDP Comprehensive Strategy. 19 The California legislature recently appropriated funds for replication and testing of the program in six other counties within the State. In addition, it is being replicated in McLean County, IL, in a collaborative project involving the Illinois Attorney General's Gang Crime Prevention Center and the county's Department of Court Services. 20 Yvonne L. Day, Baton Rouge Partnership for the Prevention of Juvenile Gun Violence, personal communication, October 15, 1999.| Previous |
| Youth
Gang Programs and Strategies OJJDP Summary |
August 2000 |