10th Annual EUDL Conference OJJDP/SRAD National Conference Youth Gang Symposium Tribal Training Conference Upcoming Conferences CSEC Training Session New Publications Coordinating Council Advisory Committee OJJDP Staff News Home

The 2008 OJJDP National Youth Gang Symposium was held June 23–26 in Atlanta, GA. The conference offered innovative and successful gang prevention and intervention programs and strategies and provided the latest information on youth gang activities and trends from top national experts. OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores presided over the symposium's main events. Cosponsors of the event included Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) and OJJDP's National Youth Gang Center.

This year's theme was "Partnering to Prevent Youth Gang Violence: From Faith-Based and Community Organizations to Law Enforcement." A day of presymposium workshops was offered on June 23, followed by the formal start of the conference on June 24. In his keynote address, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey noted the successes of various comprehensive anti-gang programs around the country. He praised the partnership between OJJDP and BGCA for successfully deterring gang participation:

Each year, dozens of new gang prevention sites, gang intervention sites, and "targeted reintegration" sites are added to the many existing programs implementing these strategies across the country. A study found that the Clubs were successful in reaching an underserved, high-risk population through direct outreach and activities to build referral networks.

Youth participants attend a symposium session. Judge Andrew Valdez, one of the symposium speakers, receives a gift of art from the BGCA. From left: OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores, Judge Valdez, and Joe Mollner, Senior Director of Prevention at Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

The release of the new OJJDP publication, Best Practices To Address Community Gang Problems: OJJDP's Comprehensive Gang Model, also was announced. Written to provide communities with critical information to guide their gang prevention efforts, Best Practices describes the research that produced the comprehensive gang model; outlines best practices obtained from practitioners with years of experience in planning, implementing, and overseeing variations of the model in their communities; and presents essential findings from evaluations of several programs demonstrating the model in a variety of environments. The model was designed to provide a framework to enhance coordination of local, State, and Federal resources in support of community partnerships implementing the following anti-gang strategies: primary prevention, secondary prevention, intervention, suppression, and reentry.

For more information on Best Practices To Address Community Gang Problems: OJJDP's Comprehensive Gang Model, see the New Publications page of this OJJDP News @ a Glance.

Attorney General Mukasey also praised the efforts of OJJDP's Gang Reduction Program (GRP), launched as a demonstration project in 2003 in four communities: Los Angeles, CA; Milwaukee, WI; North Miami Beach, FL; and Richmond, VA. Interim evaluation results by the Urban Institute suggest positive accomplishments in terms of coordination and improved response to gang issues in sites, and preliminary results show a decrease in gang-related offenses in several of the GRP sites since the beginning of the effort.

In his comments, Administrator Flores noted that the program's accomplishments and impacts have exceeded initial expectations.

When we started the GRP, the evidence was strong that we would succeed at least at the start. I could not have envisioned the success that these four communities have attained and, where progress was not as sure, we learned important lessons.

More than 1,200 people attended the conference, including school personnel, law enforcement personnel, researchers, prosecutors, youth leaders, elected officials and government agency personnel, community-based organizations staff, and others who are involved in addressing the nation's youth gang issues. Sessions covered a variety of topics such as school-based prevention and intervention programs, female gangs, gangs in Indian Country, alternatives to incarceration, "gangsta rap," and targeted reentry.