GANG PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Gang Prevention Programs



Abstract

The growth of youth gang violence and the proliferation of youth gangs into smaller cities and rural areas in recent years have focused public attention on the youth gang problem and made it an increasingly significant social policy issue. The public's concern is understandable, with more than 800,000 gang members active in over 3,000 gangs according to the latest National Youth Gang Survey. This Summary also describes an OJJDP-sponsored nationwide assessment of youth gang prevention, intervention, and suppression programs; debunks prevalent stereotypes surrounding youth gang members; and provides research-based recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of youth gang programs and strategies.

Gang Prevention Programs

Youth gang difficulties have developed considerably in the past 25 years (Miller, in press). During this time span, both the number of towns with described youth gang difficulties and the number of gang constituents have expanded almost 7 times, while the approximated number of youth gangs has expanded more than 10 times. In the past couple of years, although, more latest reviews propose that the percentage of jurisdictions with hardworking youth gangs is declining somewhat, from 53 per hundred in 1996 to 51 per hundred in 1997 to 48 per hundred in 1998. Without a clear comprehending of why and how youth gangs pattern, stopping their formation is an elaborate and demanding task (Atkinson, 1996).

Gangs appear, augment, disintegrate, and go away for causes that are badly understood. This need of comprehending impedes efforts to avert gang emergence, disturb living gangs, and redirect youth from them. Youth gang study should extend to address how gangs pattern, how living gangs can be disturbed, and how youth can be redirected from connecting gangs.

Because each youth gang and each community is exclusive, finding alike assemblies and groups for evaluation is difficult. Measurement difficulties furthermore plague gang research. Because there is no routinely acknowledged delineation of “youth gang,” evaluation of study outcomes is problematic. Furthermore, because gang interventions are seldom founded on theoretical assumptions, estimation of what these programs are trying to complete is difficult. Most significant, very couple of rigorous technical evaluations have been attempted (Bjerregaard, 1993).

 

Programs and Strategies

In the parts that pursue, gang programs and schemes are recounted in seven foremost categories: avoidance, intervention, and suppression, programs utilising multiple methods, multiagency plans, comprehensive advances to gang difficulties, and legislative approaches. When accessible, evaluation outcomes are presented. Early in the Nation's annals, youth gang work emphasized prevention. These programs were pursued by interventions conceived to reintegrate specific gangs into accepted humanity utilising “detached workers” (agency representatives dispatched from their agencies to work exactly with gangs in the community).

Detached employees were dispatched out in automobiles to intervene in urgent position situations. A foremost move then appeared as programs, directed by the policeman, searched to stifle youth gangs, buttressed by increased legislative punishments for gang crime.

 

Prevention Programs

The annals of gang intervention in the United States displays that early programs emphasized prevention. Prevention programs normally try to avert youth from connecting gangs, but might furthermore request ...