What strategies have been used to combat gang problems?
Comprehensive Gang Model The model takes a comprehensive approach to reduce and prevent youth gang violence using five core strategies: Community Mobilization, Opportunities Provision, Social Intervention, Suppression and Organizational Change and Development.
What are some intervention strategies and how do they help the response to gang activity?
Spergel and Curry (1993) identified five basic gang intervention strategies, based on survey responses from 254 law enforcement and social service agencies. These strategies include suppression, social intervention, organizational change, community mobilization, and social opportunities provision.
What is a gang intervention?
Gang Intervention is a two-prong approach that provides hardcore, specialized, street-based mediation and mitigation to stop or prevent violence between gangs and the concurrent redirection of individual gang members and their families in ways that bring progress to themselves and their communities.
What strategies and programs would you propose to reduce gang involvement?
To prevent youth from joining gangs, communities must strengthen families and schools, improve community supervision, train teachers and parents to manage disruptive youth, and teach students interpersonal skills.
What is a personal choice someone might make to avoid gang violence?
Join an after-school sports group. Which is a personal choice that someone might make to avoid gang violence? Stop being a bully.
Which of the following is a gang prevention program?
California Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention (CalGRIP) Program.
Are gang prevention programs effective?
In sum, the Comprehensive Gang Model has demonstrated evidence of its effectiveness in reducing gang violence when implemented with good program fidelity.
How can we prevent youth violence?
Adopt policies and practices that create safe and supportive environments. Teach teens skills to navigate social and emotional challenges. Connect students to health and mental health services. Build strong bonds between staff and students to improve connectedness to school.
How can community mobilization prevent gang development?
Community mobilization holds the promise of investing every local resident in solving what is truly a shared goal -- to help young people grow up to maximize their potential and reduce their likelihood of involvement in violence and delinquency.
When can a civil gang injunction be an effective way to keep a gang from becoming a public nuisance?
Gang injunctions are effective tools, but only if the gang engages in the behavior covered by California Civil Code 3479. If the gang expert cannot articulate how the gang's behavior and activities fit the definition of a public nuisance, then the gang is not a good subject for a gang injunction.
Which criminal activity is reported the most?
Regularly Record Any Criminal Offense as “Gang-Related”Agencies With Reporting ProcedureDrug Sales30.4%Robbery30.8%Burglary/Breaking and Entering22.8%Motor Vehicle Theft21.5%3 more rows
What is a personal risk factor for wanting to join a gang?
School-related problems such as academic failure, low educational aspirations, negative labeling, and trouble at school are key risk factors for gang joining among girls, and these may be more influential for them than for boys (Peterson, 2012; Thornberry, et al., 2003).
How does the graph explain the risk associated with gang involvement?
How does this graph explain the risk associated with gang involvement? The longer someone is in a gang the more crimes committed. The longer someone is in a gang, the harder it is to leave the group. Individuals in a gang for one year have a hard time leaving the group.
What is intervention in gangs?
Intervention seeks to draw gang members and close associates away from the gang lifestyle. Many programs involve law enforcement coordination with community- or faith-based organizations to offer education, job training and community service opportunities as incentives to quit the gang while still holding those receiving services accountable for continued delinquent or criminal activity.
How to make anti-gang strategies successful?
To make anti-gang strategies most successful, an important first step involves conducting an assessment of the problem. An up-front assessment of a problem helps leaders understand the problem in as much detail as possible.
What is gang prevention?
Prevention refers to services, programs or activities designed to prevent people from joining gangs. Prevention often focuses on young persons. Situational gang crime prevention focuses more on the situational causes of crime and less on the dispositional traits of specific offenders and often addresses the environmental ...
What is gang crime?
Suppression, or gang crime enforcement, encompasses a broad range of criminal justice activities in which law enforcement, prosecution, probation and parole focus their resources to limit and assure accountability for the criminal activity of gangs and gang members . Suppression tactics may include:
How to assess a situation?
The assessment process generally consists of three steps: [2] 1 Laying the groundwork and identifying people who can oversee the entire process and provide direction for data collection efforts. 2 Collecting data, analyzing and interpreting it using a range of indicators in multiple domains. 3 Preparing reports, findings and final reports that explain in detail the nature and extent of the situation.
What is the Comprehensive Gang Model?
The Comprehensive Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Model (referred to herein as the Comprehensive Gang Model) is based on a nationwide assessment of youth gang problems and programs, funded by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Conducted in the late 1980s, this study identified ...
What is social intervention?
Social Intervention: Involving youth-serving agencies, schools, grassroots groups, faith-based organizations, law enforcement, and other juvenile/criminal justice organizations in “reaching out” to gang-involved youth and their families and linking them with the conventional world and needed services.
What is community mobilization?
Community Mobilization: Involvement of local citizens—including former gang youth, community groups, and agencies—and the coordination of programs and staff functions within and across agencies.
What are the best ways to prevent gangs?
According to the National Youth Gang Center, “the most effective response to youth gangs is a combination of interdependent prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies, selected by a community to target its emerging or chronic gang problems, which have been identified by a comprehensive, systematic assessment.” To assist law enforcement and their partners in identifying and addressing gang crime, the COPS Office has developed a variety of tools and resources including this guidebook, Strategies to Address Gang Crime: A Guidebook for Local Law Enforcement. Widely regarded in the field for his research on gang activity, author Dr. Scott H. Decker, Professor and Director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Arizona State University, offers sensible information for law enforcement to use in developing responses to their gang problem. A central premise of this guidebook is that gang problems are local and solutions must be based on improving understanding of the nature of those problems and the immediate underlying conditions that give rise to them. Dr. Decker provides practical guidance on using the SARA problem-solving model process (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment) to help in the development of appropriate responses to gang problems. We know that the danger of modern gangs is rooted in community-level activity. The gang problem of today is markedly different from what it was 10 years ago, and what it will be 10 years from now. Understanding the factors that contribute to your gang problem will help you frame your own analysis to determine useful and effective measures, recognize key intervention points, and select appropriate responses to make your community safer. It is our goal that this guidebook will help in these efforts. Carl R. Peed Director
Why is it important to understand the areas of crime that are related to gang crime, particularly gun violence?
The police understand better than anyone that many crimes have an intricate series of connections to other crimes, individuals, locations, and circumstances. The more this context of crime is understood, the better a comprehensive response can be crafted. In this context, it is also important to understand the areas of crime that are related to gang crime, particularly gun violence. An excellent resource is the COPS Office Problem-Oriented Guide for Police (POP Guide), Gun Violence Among Serious Young Offenders(Braga, 2007). Much gang violence has a retaliatory character, and if the police understand the nature of an earlier shooting, they may more readily be able to prevent a subsequent retaliatory shooting.
How to address gang crime?
Strategies to Address Gang Crime: A Guidebook for Local Law Enforcement provides information about developing and enhancing local law enforcement responses to gangs in their jurisdictions. The focus of the guidebook is on the use of problem-solving strategies to help agencies select the interventions most appropriate for their jurisdictions. In particular, the guidebook describes the SARA model (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment), a strategic problem-solving process that local law enforcement can apply to its local gang problem. Growing evidence (Dalton, 2004) shows that applying the SARA model will greatly improve the law enforcement response to gangs and will lead to safer communities.
What is law enforcement data?
Law enforcement data will provide a picture of the most criminally active part of the gang problem and may miss a larger group of individuals who are just beginning their involvement with gangs and may be appropriate targets for prevention or intervention . When law enforcement data are used for this purpose (whether from computer aided dispatch [CAD], RMS, or detective notes) it is important to assess the validity of those identifications and whether they accurately and reliably reflect gang membership. It may be appropriate to work with schools, juvenile court, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (OJJDP, 1999), recreation centers, and other groups that serve youths to obtain a fuller picture of the local gang problem. If the only data source used comes from law enforcement, it is likely that responses crafted from that information will have a suppression orientation and ignore many important prevention or intervention components. For example, as Curry and Decker (2003) show, law enforcement estimates of the number of girls in gangs is much lower than that obtained when students are sampled. To use only one source of data—law enforcement in this instance—would be to miss a substantial part of the overall gang problem. Many projects have obtained useful information by interviewing active gang members, a practice described by Decker (2005) in the COPS Oce POP Guide,
Why is it important to identify the data to use in the analysis step?
Identifying the data to use in the analysis step is important once questions about local gangs have been created by the scanning process. Such data need to be linked closely to the questions raised above. Possible sources of information could include data from the following groups:
What is the goal of prevention?
Prevention has been a component of responses to gangs for at least a century. The goal of prevention is to stop youths from joining gangs. Prevention responses, therefore, are targeted at the largest segment of the problem: youths at risk for gang membership and youths in the general population, often in elementary or middle schools.
What are the elements of a gang?
Some definitions of a gang specify the minimum number of members who meet a number of other criteria. The second element in defining gangs is the use of symbols . Gang symbols can take a number of forms, including hand signs, tattoos, clothes, and certain ways of wearing clothes. Communication can take place through the use of such symbols. The National Gang Targeting, Enforcement & Coordination Center (GangTECC) (www.usdoj.gov/criminal/gangtecc) and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC)(www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/is/ncic.htm), can assist local law enforcement agencies in identifying their specific gang problem.
What is intervention in gangs?
Intervention programs and strategies provide sanctions and services for younger youth who are actively involved in gangs to push them away from gangs. Law enforcement suppression strategies and intensive services target and rehabilitate the most violent gangs and older, criminally active gang members.
How can we prevent youth from joining gangs?
To prevent youth from joining gangs, communities must strengthen families and schools, improve community supervision, train teachers and parents to manage disruptive youth, and teach students interpersonal skills. No programs have been developed specifically to prevent gangs from emerging.
What is gang awareness training?
Providing interpersonal skills training to students to help resolve conflicts. Providing a center for youth recreation and referrals for services. Providing gang awareness training for school personnel, parents, and students. Teaching students that gangs can be dangerous.
Why is prevention important?
Prevention programs target youth at risk of gang involvement and help reduce the number of youth who join gangs.
Why do youth join gangs?
Youth join gangs for protection, enjoyment, respect, money, or because a friend is in a gang. Youth are at higher risk of joining a gang if they engage in delinquent behaviors, are aggressive or violent, experience multiple caretaker transitions, have many problems at school, associate with other gang-involved youth, ...
How many states have gang violence?
Since the mid-20th century, gang violence in this country has become widespread—all 50 states and the District of Columbia report gang problems, and reports have increased for 5 of the past 7 years.
Can gangs be prevented?
No programs have been developed specifically to prevent gangs from emerging. In the meantime, to prevent youth from joining gangs, communities must employ multiple strategies and services, including:
What is intervention team?
Within the framework of the Model, the Intervention Team is the primary mechanism for delivering intervention services. These intervention strategies are delivered in a comprehensive way to a certain number of individuals identified based on the data collected during the assessment. Services that the Intervention Team should plan to provide include:
What are the two levels of prevention?
Two levels of prevention strategies should be considered in conjunction with the Model: primary and secondary prevention . Primary prevention strategies focus on the entire population of high-crime, high-risk communities. Programs that effectively reduce community risk factors or provide protective factors for community members are considered primary prevention. Secondary prevention strategies are activities and services targeting young people, primarily between the ages of 7–14, who are at high risk of joining gangs. Selected prevention strategies should have a direct connection to the problems identified in the assessment process and should be specific to gang issues.
What is the second function of the tool?
After a user has answered the questions above, a second function of the tool permits the user to access a database containing descriptions of numerous gang prevention, intervention, and suppression programs, strategies, and activities, as well as juvenile delinquency prevention and intervention programs. Programs in the database were reviewed using several criteria and designated as effective or promising. The user is offered options, cross-referenced by age of the intended target population and linked to risk factors in five domains. These programs, strategies, and practices can be selected to fill gaps in service coverage.