MENU TITLE: GENERAL COMMUNITY DESIGN MODEL. Series: OJJDP Published: DRAFT 2/91 61 pages 129,900 bytes Irving Spergel with Candice Kane, Ron Chance, Alba Alexander, Tom Regulus and Sandra Oh National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Program School of Social Service Administration University of Chicago Distributed by: Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse Box 6000 Rockville, MD 20850 1-800-638-8736 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION SPECIFICS OF THE PROBLEM DEFINITIONS OF THE PROBLEM Response to the Problem Responses That Don't Work Responses That May Work Elements of the Model Community Mobilization Opportunities Provision Social Intervention Suppression Organizational Change and Development POLICIES AND PROCEDURES Assessing the Problem: Recognition and Consensus Organization and Development of Youth Gang Policy Managing the Collaborative Process Related Policy Issues Goals and Objectives Long and Short-Term Goals and Objectives Sustained Effort Targeting Specific Problem or Vulnerable Groups Relevant Programming COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES Coordination and Community Participation Consistency Within Organizations Development of Broad Community Support Proactive Leadership Youth Accountability and Specific Situational Opportunities Staffing the Community Mobilization Process Staff Education and Training RESEARCH AND EVALUATION FUNDING PRIORITIES REFERENCES APPENDIX RESEARCH PARADIGM General Model TRADITIONAL MODEL COMPONENTS Community Model A (Suppression/Intervention) INNOVATIVE MODEL COMPONENTS Community Model B (Community Mobilization) INTRODUCTION A model for dealing with the youth gang problem should be based on valid ideas about the causes of youth gangs and related criminal activity and the existing means for reducing, if not preventing, them. Unfortunately, research has produced little information on the important characteristics of the problem -- especially as it has been manifested in recent years -- and even less on effective methods of intervention or suppression. We do know from recent surveys of criminal justice agencies and community-based organizations that the problem has grown more serious, become more complex, and is spreading to medium- and small-sized cities as well as to suburban areas. It is a problem that is predominantly located in old and newly developed inner-city and ghettoized communities, primarily African-American and Latino. It is an extremely serious problem in some correctional institutions and around some public schools. In many cities, drug trafficking has come to be viewed as interconnected to, and interdependent on, an increasingly mobile gang problem. Our model of youth gang suppression and intervention assumes that such basic conditions as population movement, poverty, social disorganization, drug market opportunities, social isolation, and cultural misadaptation all influence the establishment and growth of youth gangs. Institutional racism, changing economic conditions, and deficiencies in national social policy also significantly contribute to the problem. Youth gangs or street gangs may be regarded as the extreme manifestation of larger social problems, including youth unemployment, school dropout, delinquency, and alienation in socially disadvantaged communities. We believe that social disorganization or the failure of specific institutions -- family, school, and employment as well as individual personality -- to properly mesh, provides basic pressure in the generation of the youth gang problem. Social disorganization, however, is not sufficient to explain the character and seriousness of the problem that develops. Poverty or the lack of opportunities -- legitimate and/or criminal -- is an important conditional and interactive factor. Furthermore, specific circumstances or cultural characteristics and institutional racism may influence, respectively, the character of opportunities or determine the lack thereof. Although the causes of the problem are complex and are generated by forces outside of high gang-crime communities, we propose that much can be done by a network of local organizations and citizens, along with city, State, and national resources, to reduce the problem. While no "sure-fire" policies and programs exist, certain promising approaches have been identified; all of which, however, require rigorous testing and evaluation. At this time we know more about what does not work in terms of strategy, organizational approach, and program activities than what does work. Our purpose is to approach the resolution or mitigation of the youth gang problem mainly at institutional and community levels. In essence, we believe that the problem of youth gangs and related criminal behavior, including extreme violence and drug trafficking, is a function of two central interacting conditions -- poverty and social disorganization -- which manifest themselves, but can be controlled only partially, at the local community level. Our general design for addressing the youth gang problem focuses primarily on local conditions. It emphasizes the critical importance of having adequate local resources in certain communities for targeting youth most vulnerable to becoming gang members and those already engaged in violent and serious gang-related crime. It stresses the mobilization of criminal justice and local community agencies, as well as local citizens and representatives of business and industry in a collaborative effort to deal with the complex and interacting causes of the problem. SPECIFICS OF THE PROBLEM Youth gangs have presented a problem in many parts of the world for a long time. They exist in socialist, free market, and developing societies. Youth gang problems were identified in England in the 17th century and in the United States as early as the 18th century. They were restricted to a few large urban centers and, until recently, not considered either a serious or a growing problem. Youth gang members of an earlier period were predominantly white and/or of recent immigrant origin. These youth and their families were not confined to ghetto areas for long periods of time and were more readily able to move into conventional or mainstream society. Current law enforcement and media reports indicate that youth gangs are found in almost all fifty States, with varying degrees of concentration and seriousness of criminal behavior. However, youth or street gangs have been present in certain cities, mainly large centers, and in some low- income smaller cities or suburban areas for decades. In such cities or communities, the gang problem has become traditional, characterized by serious, sometimes extreme, violence, and organized criminal behavior, including more recently drug trafficking by older or former gang members. In emerging gang-problem communities, mainly smaller cities, such factors as population movement, i.e., rapid change or increase of low-income minority or immigrant groups, deteriorating economic conditions, and increased social and cultural isolation has encouraged the development of gang- related phenomena, usually of an acute character which can become serious very quickly through gang violence and drug trafficking. A lack of consensus exists, however, on what constitutes a youth gang problem and there is a tendency for some middle class, particularly suburban, communities to exaggerate the scope and seriousness of the problem. Current reports suggest that several factors distinguish youth gangs of the 1980's from those studied and described by researchers in the 1960's and earlier. Specifically, contemporary youth gangs are characterized by use of more sophisticated weaponry, older members including many in their 20's and some even older, various forms of drug trafficking, greater mobility, better organization, larger membership, and extraordinarily high rates of participation in violent behavior. Some important characteristics of gang members are the following. The age of youth gang members ordinarily range from about 10 years to 24 years, with most committed gang members in the 14- to 20-year-old range. However, relatively more gang members are in the 20- through 30-year-old range than in an earlier period. The predominant proportion of gang members, at least those processed through the justice system, are male. It is unclear whether the proportion of females offenders arrested for gang offenses, cited as 5% to 10% in some studies, has increased in recent years or whether female gang-related violence and criminality has grown more serious in both relative and absolute terms. Gang members represent a variety of types of youth in terms of intelligence, emotional stability, and degrees of commitment to various activities of the gang. Youth gangs still tend to be rather diffuse structures. Gang members may be leaders, core or regulars, associates, recruits, or wannabes, often shifting positions with age being only a partially determining factor. Variables of class, culture, race, or ethnicity usually interact with community factors such as poverty, population movement, social instability, and/or social isolation to account for the variety of youth gang problems that have developed. Currently, major youth gang problems are found mainly in urban areas or suburban communities where low-income black, Hispanic, and increasingly Asian populations are concentrated. A recent survey of 45 law enforcement agencies with anti-gang programs found that approximately 80 percent of gang members were African-American or Hispanic. Communities with traditional or chronic youth gang problems tend to be characterized by a predominance of Hispanic or African-American gangs. Communities with emerging youth gang drug trafficking problems tend often to have relatively more mobile African- American gangs or gang members, with roots in older established inner-city areas. Asian gangs -- especially Vietnamese, Hong Kong Chinese, and Korean -- are frequently connected to adult crime groups and appear to be developing with some rapidity on the East and West Coasts. White youth gangs are less often found in inner-city areas or identified as problematic. They may be found in certain stable white ethnic areas, integrated into lower or middle class communities and culture. They tend to occur in a variety of forms and can be committed to group or culturally related violence or sophisticated criminal behavior. Examples include Stoners, Neo-Nazi Skinheads, Satanic groups, and motorcycle gangs. There are also reports of an increase in interethnic and interracial youth gang composition in various parts of the country, especially the west coast. Youth gang structures, behaviors, and problems vary according to community, race and culture, membership age, criminal opportunities, proximity to other youth gangs, and other factors. In general, black gangs seem to be relatively larger and more involved in drug trafficking; Hispanic gangs are relatively more engaged in physical turf-related battling and high rates of distinctively gang-related violence; Asian gangs are smaller and more mobile concentrating on a variety of property crimes; and white gangs participate relatively, more often, in organized crime, vandalism, or hate group activities. Youth gang intimidation and violence, the primary source of the general community's concern, however, remains largely intraethnic or intraracial. Family factors per se -- such as the presence of a single-parent, family conflict or a father, uncle, or brother who is a gang member -- are important but they may not alone be sufficient to explain why a youth becomes a gang member. Other pressures or inducements may be required to produce gang behavior, including the youth's personal interests, problems at school, his social needs or developmental problems, and the presence of youth gangs in the neighborhood or at school. Gang members appear not to be especially rebellious or hostile to parents or family members, with the possible exception of white gang members. Some families may condone gang membership, particularly if the youth provides economic support for the family through drug trafficking. School Factors. Police data indicate that youth gang problems are usually more serious outside than inside school, occurring mostly when the youth travels through "hostile" gang territory on the way to and from school. Nevertheless, gang recruitment and intimidation do occur and gang conflicts may be planned at school, but carried out after class. Youth gang problems in many inner-city schools and in changing neighborhoods are generally perceived as more serious by students than school staff. Students in the middle-school grades in certain low-income gang areas appear to be at special risk of gang membership and related criminal activity, if they do not perform well in their studies and cannot obtain status and satisfaction at school or through constructive neighborhood activities. Extreme gang-related violence is most characteristic of older, school dropout teens and young adults and may be due to a variety of factors. Because of the changing structure of the economy, older gang members are increasingly less qualified to obtain desirable jobs and less inclined to leave the gang, which provides substitute satisfactions and, in recent years, greater illegal opportunities for income. Also an accumulation of personal, home, school, and work failures as well as jail or prison experience may contribute to higher levels of frustration and more violent aggression among older than younger gang members. Organized Crime. Currently, the relative increase of older youth and young adults in youth gangs and the expanded street-level drug market also suggest greater integration of gang violence and criminal gain activity than in recent decades. A closer relationship may now exist between youth gang members or delinquent street corner groups and organized adult crime in certain communities than in an earlier period. The gang member's "smartness," knowledge of the streets, aggressiveness, and violence skills are useful in local, unstable, and competitive adult criminal enterprises. Some gangs (more often cliques within gangs and former gang youth) may be considered part of organized crime when they regularly engage in drug distribution, "contract" violence, car theft, business, extortion, burglary, pandering, and other crimes primarily committed for economic gain. DEFINITIONS OF THE PROBLEM The definition of a youth gang and gang incident are critical to identification of the scope and seriousness of the problem and the approach selected to deal with it. The terms youth gang or street gang incident are essentially determined by law enforcement, but reflect local values, public, political, and organizational interests. The definitions may be all-inclusive or quite limited in scope. Usually the broader the definition, the more likely it will include a broad array of illegal activities committed by the gang member, whether directly a function of gang activity or not. Focus is on the identified gang member when he participates in any illegal situation. The narrow definitional approach emphasizes a delimited set of illegal activities, particularly of a violent character, that grow out of distinctive gang interests, situations, functions, or age considerations. The broader the definition of gang and gang incident, the more likely the assumption that gang membership per se predisposes an individual to a wide range of criminal activities. The narrower definition tends to focus on gang subculture and a limited set of activities particularly relevant to an adolescent period of development. The broader or more inclusive the definition by law enforcement, the larger the relative number of gangs and gang members identified and the higher the incarceration rate for gang members. The narrower the definition, the smaller the relative number of gangs and gang members are identified, and the lower the incarceration rate of individuals for strictly gang-related activity. Rates of overall youth violence may not depend on whether there is a defined gang problem present in a jurisdiction. The context and form of such violence, however, may vary significantly. The prevalence of gangs may indeed vary across large cities, not only because of differences in definition but factors that we do not yet fully understand. Definitions of the problem also influence the nature of the response to it. Suppression strategies appear to be relatively more dominant in those jurisdictions with a broad definition. Social intervention strategies are probably relatively more dominant in those jurisdictions with a narrow definition of the gang, gang incident, and therefore the gang problem. Our view regarding a definition is that it be narrow rather than broad and that the definition of gang and gang incident be viewed in functional terms, but that the ability to identify the gang youth's non-gang-motivated criminal activity not be lost in a police information system. Concentrating attention on repeat youth gang offenders would be of special value, particularly in emerging gang-problem cities. For criminal justice system purposes, this model defines a youth gang as a group mainly of young people, often males, engaged in violent and other serious criminal activity, whose goal is not primarily criminal gain, but status achievement, socialization, excitement, and protection. It exists as a residual or surrogate institution where family, school, and legitimate employment no longer function adequately. Youth gangs, furthermore, may be identified by name, sign, symbol, dress code, and specific location. They engage in a variety of consumption-oriented activities, including partying, hanging out, and extensive alcohol and drug use. Some cliques, individuals, or former gang members may be engaged in street sale and mid-level distribution of drugs, although in most cases such activity is related to individual gang members rather than gang interest and organization per se. The narrow definition will provide for better targeting of key or high-profile violent youth gangs, their leaders, and repeat offenders. It will not exaggerate the problem and will contribute to a delimited suppression strategy. The youth gang problem should be analyzed in local community structural terms, especially in regard to a breakdown of specific socializing and opportunity providing institutions that affect certain youth more than others. Community mobilization and the reinvigoration of local institutions targeting certain highly at risk youth should become the focus of action strategies. The youth gang problem thereby becomes somewhat more manageable and some moderate success is possible, given the availability of limited resources. Response to the Problem Various strategies, policies, and procedures have evolved for dealing with the youth gang problem in recent decades. Some of the approaches appear to be promising based on experience, limited research and evaluation, and theoretical considerations. For the most part, however, these approaches have been developed in response to earlier, more traditional, and less serious youth delinquency or gang problems. Approaches to youth gangs whose members are currently involved in somewhat more organized gang activity, extreme violence, or drug trafficking are relatively undeveloped and unevaluated. A great deal of research on gangs and program evaluation is required to determine whether current approaches are effective. Therefore, the approach and policies suggested as promising in this document require extensive testing. Responses That Don't Work. Based on research and expert observations of earlier and some current programs, the following approaches appear not to work (see Spergel, et al 1990). 1. Recreation. Athletics, team sports, social activities and programs simply to keep youth busy and diverted, generally do not reduce delinquent gang activity. On the one hand, many gang youth are neither interested in nor "good" at athletics and thus avoid competitive sports. On the other, such activities may themselves provide opportunities for gang recruitment and increased antagonism between opposing groups. A simple recreational approach serves neither to prevent, rehabilitate, nor suppress gang activity. Recreation and athletic activities can be useful, if not essential, as a point of contact, for development of relationships with positive role models, and in conjunction with other activities such as remedial education, job training or placement, and highly skilled counseling. 2. Social Intervention. (counseling group work, street club work, mediation) Individuals strongly committed to gang norms and behaviors seem not to respond positively to individual psychotherapeutic efforts. Social group or group therapeutic efforts with formed gangs also give no evidence of success in reducing delinquent gang behavior. Outreach or street gang efforts may serve to cohere gangs and increase rates of gang delinquency. Mediation efforts, including peace treaties sometimes have short-run success; but sooner, rather than later, the resumption of violent intergang attacks may be expected. Some efforts at prevention of gang activity through educational programs seem to have some success in attitudinal change of younger youth; but it is not clear that behavior of the more gang-committed youth is affected. It is also uncertain whether most preadolescents or early adolescents are genuinely at risk of gang membership, even in high gang crime communities. 3. Gang Structure - Community-Based Agency Efforts. The gang structure, itself, at times has been used as a basis for controlling and redirecting gang activities. Gang leaders have been employed by social agencies as part of agency youth service programs and used by law enforcement because of their influence over other gang members in efforts to maintain order and protect property at local festivals or during times of riot. These efforts at best produce weak or ephemeral effects. At worst, they result in manipulation, fraud, and racketeering by gang leaders. They may also contribute to increased interagency and community conflict. 4. Simple and Non-Targeted Deterrent Approaches. The exclusive reliance of a community on law enforcement to deal with the youth or street gang problem may result in high rates of arrest, prosecution, and transfer of the problem to correctional institutions, contributing to further development of the problem when gang members return to the community. Arrest of youth who may not be committed gang members or who are not involved in serious gang activity often results in quick release from court and detention and may simply enhance the visibility and reputation of certain gang-prone youth. Seemingly effective suppression of gang activity may also be associated with conversion of the gang to more criminal gain- oriented activity such as drug trafficking. This is not to deny that hardcore gang leaders should be targeted for arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment, but even this strategy may have limited success, unless accompanied by other strategies. 5. Non-targeted Community Organizing. Occasional efforts to deal with the youth gang problem through improved interagency service coordination or even mobilizing local citizenry around problems of general inner-city concern, e.g., improved housing, health, youth employment development, afterschool programs for youth, and social services in the neighborhood, have not produced measurable positive results with respect to the youth gang problem. At times they have contributed to general community improvement and local citizen empowerment, but with no evidence available of impact on the gang problem. 6. Non-Targeted Structural Approaches. (To provide opportunities and reduce institutional racism) There is evidence that efforts at the provision of more or better educational, training, and job opportunities for low-income or minority youth may not "trickle down" to gang youth. Special educational initiatives generally do not reach out to attract and sustain gang youth in their program. Youth manpower development programs (e.g., Job Corps), while successful in many respects, tend to screen out gang youth. Needed special support or control services are not built into such programs. Efforts to deal with issues of institutional racism not targeted at gang youth, e.g., opening up unions to minorities or desegregating schools, have also not demonstrated success in reducing gang crime. Social movement and militant change efforts have involved few gang youth and have not contributed to measurable reduction in violent gang activity. More recent busing of minority youth from low-income ghettoes to other communities has often resulted in increased tension and conflict among youth from different gangs and neighborhoods now thrown together in a strange new school. Such busing is reported to weaken local neighborhood ties and other social controls that may have existed. Busing, unless adequately implemented with special services, may have "gang spread" effect as youth become anxious and organize for defensive or protective purposes. 7. Superficial, Short-Term Crisis Approaches. Most programs for dealing with the youth gang problem have been of a patchwork, ill- defined, or poorly implemented character and are mainly responsive to severe gang crises. Such youth agency crisis programs tend to be nominal efforts sustained for a short period, sometimes a year or two. Program models, assessment procedures, risk population, or appropriate service patterns are neither defined nor developed. The quality of implementation of those programs leaves much to be desired. 8. Organizational Opportunism and Community Conflict. The youth gang problem presents an opportunity for many local agencies, community, and political leaders to augment personal and organizational interests. Programs are supported that are not only simplistic and poorly designed, but serve narrow organizational interests uncoordinated with those of other agencies and organizations. When individual agencies assume and act on the basis that their perceptions and approaches are correct and should be exclusively or primarily supported, then interagency and community conflict are likely to arise. Not only is the community's approach fragmented but such fragmentation makes it opportune for gangs to survive and develop through manipulation of one program strategy so that it counters another. An inconsistent set of community strategies may contribute to increase rather than decrease the problem. Responses That May Work. Much that seems to have been effective in reducing or controlling the youth gang problem is based on the idea of mobilizing community energies to target a youth gang or delinquent group problem. None of these efforts, however, has been systematically tested and evaluated. It is possible that the earliest such coordinated local community and interagency approaches date from the Chicago Area Projects, developed by Clifford Shaw in the 1930's and 1940's. Programs that have held promise in recent years have been based at least partially on this tradition. 1. Crisis Intervention Network Approaches (combining social intervention, suppression, and community mobilization strategies). Probably the most promising recent example of this combined set of strategies was the Philadelphia Crisis Intervention Network (CIN) which was on a 24-hour- a-day gang crisis intervention, mediation, and surveillance program using streetwise, highly mobile workers. A probation unit, focussed on control of older gang youth and young adult influentials, was integrated into the approach. Local parent groups and resident councils supported the agency's efforts. They engaged directly in supervision of youth and related community development activities. Another key aspect of the program was close cooperation with police, schools, recreations, and other agencies as well as strong support from the Mayor's office. A solid consensus was developed about the nature of the problem and what each needed to do reciprocally to address it. A sharp drop in gang homicides and violent gang activity accompanied the implementation of the project over a 14-year period. However, in recent years a sharp increase in drug-related trafficking has occurred along with the decrease in gang violence. In other cities, particularly Los Angeles and Chicago, crisis intervention network projects have not been associated with a decline in the gang problem. 2. Comprehensive Community-Based Approaches. These approaches also assume that various criminal justice agencies, community-based agencies, and grassroots organizations must collaborate and be held accountable to each other in targeting the gang problem over a sustained period of time. Probation, parole, the police, youth agencies, schools, as well as local groups, including churches, mother's groups, businesses, fraternal homes or organizations, and even former gang leaders become involved in a series of collective efforts to control and reduce the problem. A significant aspect of the approach is the development of trust among the different components of the community system, e.g., mother's groups relate closely to probation officers to support each other in dealing with the problem. An organic or comprehensive approach simultaneously targets older and younger gang youth for supervision and improved access to significant opportunities. Gang associates and parents may also receive various services. Such a comprehensive approach may be under the auspices of public or private agencies. In at least two instances, there is evidence of a substantial decline of the gang problem over a 10- to 15-year period. In one case, the decline is still sustained. 3. Stable Criminal Opportunity Approaches. Gang violence also appears to have been somewhat controlled or reduced in certain low-income communities when organized criminal activities develop and become integrated into local community life. Gang activities seem to be more rational and less turbulent. In fact, a transition to organized crime occurs, for example, through sale and distribution of narcotics, and other criminal and quasi-criminal enterprises. A variety of local business, professional, and governmental leaders are coopted. Illegal activities are regularized to meet "illicit" community needs and to maximize profits. In the process, gang violence is reduced, except when competition or conflict between criminal organizations arises. It is possible to argue that the reduction of gang violence in certain cities (e.g., New York, Philadelphia and, more recently, Columbus, Fort Wayne, and Miami) has followed this pattern. Youth gang members have been recruited into adult criminal organizations, or the youth gang itself has been transformed into a criminal organization. In other words, criminal opportunities have served to integrate and stabilize community structure by providing alternate, compatible routes to successful status in American society. Legitimate business and the local citizenry come to tolerate and depend on these more rational illegal enterprises. Elements of the Model We identify certain policies and procedures as elements of a prototype design. Five strategies have historically emerged. They include: 1) community mobilization, i.e., networking among organizations and grassroots participation; 2) social intervention, i.e., focussing on crisis intervention, counseling, or recreation to change gang youth norms and values; 3) opportunities provision, particularly improving the means to remedial education, training, and relevant job placement; 4) suppression, i.e., arrest, incarceration, and close supervision of gang youth; and finally 5) organizational development, i.e., the creation of new or special mechanisms to facilitate any of the above four basic strategies. Notions of prevention, intervention, supervision, and rehabilitation as well as ideas of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention may also be employed, particularly as they cut across the four basic strategies we have identified. Usually all four basic strategies -- community mobilization, social intervention, opportunities provision, and suppression -- are used by a range of agencies and community groups in those cities where the problem is chronic and at times acute and a variety of gang and gang-prone youth are present. A more limited range of options is usually employed in those cities or communities where the problem has recently emerged, is less serious, and seems to affect mainly younger youth. Our survey of youth gang programs in 45 cities found that strategies of community mobilization and provision of opportunities were interactively highly predictive of perceived (and actual) effectiveness in lowering the youth gang problem, especially in chronic problem contexts. A strategy primarily of community mobilization seemed best to account for a reduction in the gang problems in emerging problem cities. Based on our field observations, however, these two strategies must also be integrated with the three other strategies: suppression, social intervention, and organizational development. Organizations tend to subscribe mainly to particular strategies for their own distinctive mission and resource interest purposes. Therefore, conflicts between and among criminal justice agencies, community-based agencies, and grassroots organizations as well as issues of coordination among funding agencies, especially at the Federal level must be successfully managed if a community is to be effectively organized to deal with the youth gang problem. Community Mobilization. If a key problem contributing to the development of youth gangs is the weakness of existing legitimate institutions, such as home, school, employment, and fragmentation of community service delivery, then the most important thing is for the community to be mobilized to do something about these structural problems. A variety of key local community groups or organizations must integrate their strategies and programs and be involved on a daily basis in targeting the youth gang problem. Certain community functions must be enhanced such as socialization, social support, social control, leadership, and resource development. These functions must be appropriate to the nature and level of the problem in a particular community, and specifically addressed to the distinctive needs of different categories of gang youth. Both local and external community resources must be mobilized to stimulate the development of collaborative and interagency activities directed at control of the youth gang problem, whether through resource incentives, moral or political pressures, as well as local citizen participation. At a minimum, public and community-based agencies must hold each other accountable for what they agree to do about the youth gang problem. Key community and agency individuals and groups should be mobilized to develop or better carry out socialization activities. For example, parents, grassroots organizations, youth agencies, schools, and police should be involved in the education of parents with younger or gang-prone youth, the development of parent support groups, and afterschool parent patrols. Neighborhood influentials of stable and good character should become actively engaged in contacting, supervising, and controlling gang youth. It may be possible at times to convince gangs and their members to resolve conflicts, control violent and criminal behavior, and disband in order to participate in communitywide economic and social development activities. Opportunities Provision. The provision of social opportunities, i.e., a variety of targeted educational, training, and employment programs, is the second most important overall component over the long term for the prevention and reduction of the youth gang problem. School learning opportunities must be developed for younger youth to stay out of gangs by assisting them to find status and self-esteem through achievement in their academic programs and in their relationships with teachers. The schools need to provide intensive, sustained remediation and supervision for gang- prone youth to overcome their earlier socialization deficits and to counter current community gang influences. School administrators and teachers must be able to reach out to parents and solicit the aid of community service agencies to facilitate and enhance the provision of basic educational opportunities to targeted gang-prone youth, particularly during early adolescence. Training and jobs are especially critical resources for older youth who are still in gangs but may be at "positive risk" at a certain point in their development for leaving the gangs or for decreased participation in criminal gang activity. Youth who are committed to gang norms and engaged in criminal activity, but have suffered injury, arrest, and imprisonment may suddenly "get smart" and "grow up." They may come under pressure from girlfriends and families to leave the gang. They may decide to strive for satisfying adult roles and self-respect through training or a job. Supportive counseling and supervision as well as meaningful training and jobs are required for this social transitional process to be successful. Innovative cooperative justice, employment, and community agency processes must be developed to ensure not only that the gang youth has access to, but can make adequate use of social opportunities (i.e., academic, training, and job) under conditions that provide both support and constraint. Focus on strategies of community mobilization and social opportunities does not mean denial of the importance of suppression, social intervention, and innovative organizational approaches. It means a broadening of approach by law enforcement, social service agencies, and other organizations so that they more openly communicate and fully collaborate with each other and understand the importance of schools, business, grassroots organizations, and others in also targeting the problem. Most important, criminal justice and community-based agencies must come to view their purposes in such a way that social opportunities and community development are extremely important strategies, contributing both to the social development of gang youth as well as the protection of the community. Social Intervention. Socialization agencies, such as youth-serving and family treatment organizations, should provide crisis and long-term, preventive and remedial services both to identified gang youth and to those at risk of membership in youth gangs. These agencies need to target gang- prone, alienated, and hostile youth in a variety of contexts, i.e., on the streets, in schools, and correctional facilities, in order to change norms and values. They must act as a necessary link to each other's services, enforce social controls and most importantly provide access to critical social and economic opportunities. They serve as front- line forces to connect alienated youth to the legitimate adult world. These agencies must be able to advocate for and voice concern and interest on behalf of such youth as well as educate and guide youth and their families to meet significant human needs in socially approved ways. They must provide both access to meaningful roles and jobs and a certain degree of supervision and social control, often through crisis intervention. Of special importance is counseling and guidance to gang-active teenage parents in chronic problem cities and neighborhoods, and outreach social development activities to gang-prone youth in emerging problem cities and neighborhoods. Providing access services to opportunities is insufficient, however, unless the opportunities for an education and jobs are also present. These social service programs must be part of a larger coordinated effort to deal with the problem. A great deal more commitment by community-based agencies is required than is traditional among such agencies to integrate their efforts with schools, police, and other criminal justice agencies. In certain instances, community-based agencies may need to exercise leadership and responsibility in initiating community mobilization efforts, and even developing training, jobs, and business enterprises to employ gang youth. Suppression. Social control organizations, particularly justice system agencies, are an essential component of the community for dealing with the youth gang problem, especially through the appropriate use of suppression procedures and supervision of offenders. Hardcore gang leaders, i.e., those who are leaders or influentials, and others who have been repeatedly arrested and sometimes convicted for serious gang-related violence and criminal behavior, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Specialized police and probation gang units in chronic problem contexts must target problem areas and gangs and develop special investigation, intelligence, and enforcement procedures to maximize efficiency. Law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies should participate in formal communitywide task force and coordinating structures and provide access to information to other criminal justice and community-based agencies and organizations on how best to identify and cope with the problem. Special advisory committees, including representatives of local community groups and community-based agencies, should also be established to advise criminal justice agencies, not so much on suppression strategies as on secondary strategies of social intervention and opportunities provision essential to the prevention and control of youth gang crime, especially in chronic gang-problem cities. In communities with less serious or emerging youth gang problems, relatively informal law enforcement, and other criminal justice agency collaboration with schools, community-based agencies, and grassroots groups may be adequate to deal with the problem. What is required, however, is knowledge about key gangs and gang leaders; the specific gang crimes that have been committed; the procedures for collection, analysis, and use of such data; and methods for neutralizing different types of gang-related activity through appropriate collaboration with other justice and non-justice agencies and communities groups, depending on the nature and level of the problem. In both chronic and emerging gang-problem cities, the pro-active leadership of the police chief or other principal criminal justice leaders, and support from key political or governmental authorities is required. A suppression strategy must be embedded in a community-oriented approach that utilizes local community support, such as citizen patrols, mothers' groups, community meetings, and various interagency information exchange mechanisms. A forceful but rational and community-sensitive approach to gang suppression will not only calm outraged or frightened citizens and community leaders, but will permit and encourage a variety of agencies to develop appropriate social intervention and opportunity providing programs targeted to gang youth. Both long- and short-term protection of community residentsmust be ensured. Organizational Change and Development. Finally, these strategies need to be appropriately organized in terms of the nature and scope of the problem and the mission of the particular organization participating in the community effort. In chronic, usually larger city, problem contexts, more specialized and formal efforts need to be established through such mechanisms as specialized police gang units, vertical or hardcore prosecution, specialized probation, multi- functional community-based agency outreach programs, and special school curricula or security arrangements. In emerging gang-problem contexts, such specialization and formalization may generally be inappropriate. However, some improved organizational means need to be developed to target those younger gang youth at greatest risk of gang involvement for more intensified attention by a variety of agencies and community groups. For example, within the police department this may mean centralized gang identification, analysis of repeat gang offenders, and some limited additional training for all police officers who deal with such youth. For other agencies and community groups, this should indicate a need to improve intelligence gathering and targeting of particular high-risk youth for additional attention and services. Organizational development and change require at the community level not only better mobilization and integration of available resources across individual agencies and community groups, but an expansion and better balance of strategies among those agencies and groups. Thus, criminal justice agencies need to emphasize to a somewhat greater degree, issues of social intervention and social opportunities, while community-based agencies should support or participate in the development of appropriate suppression strategies in relation to the youth gang problem. POLICIES AND PROCEDURES Specific policies and procedures must be designed to achieve the objectives of suppression and intervention and ultimately youth gang-problem reduction. The following prototype elements are developed as a part of a series of processes or steps essential to each agency or community group engaged in combating the problem. These processes may be categorized into six action areas: Assessing the Problem, Developing Youth Gang Policy, Creation of Goals and Objectives, Relevant Programming, Research Evaluation, and Funding Priorities. The intent of this section is to consider and recommend general policies and procedures. Specific considerations and priorities for particular organizations for policy and program development are provided in accompanying documents. Assessing the Problem: Recognition and Consensus The presence of a youth gang problem must be recognized before anything meaningful can be done to deal with it. Usually an incident occurs in which a group of youth is engaged in serious violent behavior. This can be a function of intergroup conflict, gang recruitment, injury to an innocent victim, or other criminal activity such as drug trafficking. The primary motivation for this kind of behavior is development of status, reputation, group defense, or the common interest of the gang as a whole, rather than simply individual gain. Protection of turf, use of colors, signs, symbols, and distinctive clothing are often components of gang behavior. The gang incident must be viewed as a threat by recognized moral, legal, political, economic, or social authority. The violent and criminal act(s) should also be viewed as a problem that requires organized community response. A gang situation or even a crisis may exist in a community, but if it is not recognized as a problem, it usually cannot bring about an agency or community response, and adequate policies or programs cannot be formulated. Usually, the police, news media, politicians, and/or local community groups are the first to perceive and alert the wider community to the presence of youth gang criminal activity. The problem tends to be defined both narrowly, in terms of specific gang incidents that emanate strictly from gang motivation, and broadly, based on the gang-relatedness or membership of the individual as he or she participates in any delinquent or criminal activity, whether strictly motivated by gang activity or not. A narrower definition is recommended in order to target the problem in some manageable and proportionate way while avoiding excessive labelling and extreme community reaction. The specific locations of gangs, membership size, demographics, patterns of criminal activity -- especially violence, intimidation, drug use and trafficking -- and other distinguishing characteristics must be reliably observed and recorded. Also important is clear community-specific identification of the causes or factors contributing to the problem, e.g., newcomer youth attending school or moving into the neighborhood, too little attention to certain pre-gang type youth activities, lack of recreational outlets, inadequate achievement of low-income youth at school, lack of alternative educational programs, insufficient job opportunities, presence of active criminal adult leadership, concentration of poverty and/or disorganized families in certain housing projects or sections of the community, and racism. In cities especially with chronic gang problems, it is not possible to adequately assessthe gang problem unless open communication exists with present and former gang members, concerned local citizens, and representatives from a cross- section of community agencies or organizations. Key decision-makers of the community who are able to influence the way the problem can be addressed must be involved. Community agencies and grassroots groups, including schools, churches, and businesses that are in some way connected to or impacted by the problem, should be included in describing its nature and causes and become part of its amelioration or solution. This should be done in a way that protects the community, does not unduly punish youth, and avoids giving legitimacy to gang structure or processes. Of critical importance is development of a consensus on key dimensions of the problem. The key issue may be not only how broadly or narrowly the problem is defined, but also whether those who have access to community resources and develop programs agree on who and what is the problem. Conflicting perceptions are likely to arise, especially when they are not based on adequate data. There is a tendency for the police to define only high-profile criminal youth groups as gangs, for social agencies to define a range of youth groups as gangs, and for schools, training facilities, and business or industry to ignore such youth or relegate them to problems that belong outside of their bailiwick. Thus, not only consciousness of, but some consensus on, the definition and basis for the gang problem has to be reached by decisionmakers of the key agencies and community organizations in the city. Failure of leadership to reach an adequate level of consciousness of the scope and nature of the problem and consensus on the need for action can mean a delay in a mobilized community and coordinated approach. Failure to respond may result sooner or later in recriminations among agencies and community groups and further fragmentation of their relationships. The youth gang problem may also be aggravated by an irrelevant response. For example, some groups see the gang problem as simply a manifestation of youthful high jinks in a frustrating, disadvantaged environment. Another group sees gang activity as organized crime. A coalition of minority group organizations views gang activity as the ultimate result of white racism. Another group perceives the problem as a failure of parental discipline and control. It is possible that a misperceived and poorly defined youth gang problem will result in action that may have worse consequences than a problem not recognized. The wrong strategy or conflicting strategies can either establish or enhance interagency rivalry and community conflict. Adequate data and an understanding of the problem in specific terms are essential to adequate assessment. Once the youth gang problem is appropriately recognized and a combination of influential organizations -- criminal justice, community-based, and grassroots -- have agreed on what the youth gang problem is and what its key causes are, existing program needs and organizational resources as well as interagency structures should be assessed. Special interest should be taken to discern the availability of community controls, opportunities, and services necessary to deter and socially develop gang youths. Organization and Development of Youth Gang Policy If we assume that the youth gang problem is primarily a function of community breakdown or disorganization, then both the structure and process of a promising response must be directed at effectively organizing the community to target the problem. As indicated above, a better structure must evolve in chronic and emerging gang-problem cities which serves to integrate strategies and programs of key criminal justice and community- based agencies, as well as grassroots organization as regards youth gang problems. In chronic gang-problem cities, this means the establishment of a special local council or statutory commission (possibly enabled by State law) to set policy, accept and allocate funds to implement such policy, and coordinate programs resulting from such policy. Such a council or commission should comprise, minimally, key law enforcement representatives, including police and State's attorney or prosecutors; probation; corrections; parole; judiciary; schools; community- based agencies, especially youth agencies; grassroots organizations; churches; business and industry; and a criminal justice planning organization. The commission or council should establish special committees on law enforcement, schools, employment, and rehabilitation. A full range of strategies -- prevention, intervention, and suppression -- must be planned, but they must be appropriately ordered or prioritized. In emerging gang-problem cities, less formal or inclusive structural arrangements may be developed to determine and implement policy and programs. Key elements of a youth gang intervention council should be law enforcement, especially police, schools, community-based agencies, and grassroots organizations. Special emphasis must be given to efforts by schools and youth agencies to reach out to younger youth and their families through a variety of prevention and early intervention programs. Gang-prone youth must be specifically targeted. The policies for dealing with youth gang problems need to be sufficiently broad and meaningful to be applicable across types of agencies and the roles of workers. This assumes that a variety of strategies and roles are necessary to deal with the problem in a given community. Separately, policies of deterrence, prevention, or rehabilitation are insufficient for confronting youth gang problems. Strategies, and procedures for implementing them, must be systematically integrated, since the problem has different but interrelated aspects. The gang problem is organic, particularly in chronic gang- problem cities. It affects different sectors of a gang population, such as older and younger members, in different but reciprocal or interrelated ways. It may not be realistic to deal only with preadolescents if adolescent and young adult gang members exercise great influence on these preadolescents. The factors to be considered in the development of gang policy and roles include: the nature and seriousness of the gang problem in a community; the history of relationships amon agencies and community groups, particularly in reference to the gang problem; the potential of particular agencies and community organizations for collaboration; and the availability of resources. By and large, fewer strategies and more informal interagency collaboration tend to develop in smaller cities, particularly where the gang problem is just emerging. Over time, especially in larger cities where the youth gang problem has become more complex, chronic, and severe, a variety of strategies by agencies and community groups will need to be developed, as agency and community leaders learn that a single, unitary strategy is not enough. For example, justice agencies -- to some extent law enforcement, but especially prosecution and judges -- emphasize or tend to restrict their approaches to suppression. However, over time, there needs to be a shift in strategies to include especially community mobilization, but also social intervention and occasionally opportunities provision. Gang unit officers may not only be primarily engaged in arrest of gang members and investigation of gang incidents, but in information-sharing and tactical planning with neighborhood or citywide organizations as well as referral of gang youth for family treatment and jobs. Members of a grassroots organization, such as a mothers' group, may not only comfort and support members after incidents of gang victimization of their children, but engage in street patrols and collaborate with police and probation around exchange of information and arrest of youth, even their own children, to stop gang violence or drug sales. An effective school strategy may call for close collaboration among school personnel, parent patrol groups, and police as well as the development of remedial programs for gang youth and the training of teachers and staff on sensitivity to and prevention and control of gang problems. The personnel of a low-income public housing project should work closely with police on occasional targeted sweeps to obtain contraband weapons or drugs stored in the vacant apartments or to improve security on project grounds. They can also seek support for resident economic development with special interest in the creation of remedial education, training, and legitimate jobs for gang youth. Managing the Collaborative Process. The community- and institution-building process with respect to the gang problem goes through various stages before significant and positive impact on the problem seems to occur. These stages include: denial, organizing and initial program development, goal and problem displacement as well as interagency or intergroup conflict, and sustained program development and impact. The further along the mobilization process, the more likely a positive outcome. The community-organizing process is essentially a political one characterized by efforts to mobilize and control organizational interest, contain interagency rivalry and conflict as well as overcome community fear and apathy. The youth gang problem, as with other social problems, is usually not recognized or adequately attended to in its early stages. Communities that have little familiarity with or understanding of gang phenomena may overlook initial signs of gang activity or deny them, particularly if police, schools, local politicians, or business interests are concerned with maintaining an image that their jurisdiction is safe, secure, and an ideal place to live, work, or visit. Usually some violent incident or a series of incidents occurs that is identified as gang- related. When the presence and threat of gangs can no longer be denied, political, governmental, and local leaders call for action. Meetings are organized, often with pressure from the media and under the auspices of the local city or county executive officer. However, the call for action is often based on incomplete information. The problem may be exaggerated. Youth from minority or newcomer groups may be perceived as a threat. Action is often expedient mainly to serve political or organizational interests. The period of denial, "cover-up," or apathy is often followed by a flurry of political, organizational, and interorganizational activity. A variety of organizations jockey for position as moral leaders. Task forces emerge. The availability of funds allows specific law enforcement agencies to expand and develop special mechanisms and procedures to contain the problem. Special preven- tion and social intervention programs are funded at a considerably lower level. Established criminal justice and to some extent community-based agencies tend to control the funding allocations process, but formal and informal exchanges emerge among a variety of organizations. At this second stage, only limited collaboration actually occurs. A semblance of joint agency and community group planning and cooperation takes place through somewhat formal or ceremonial communitywide meetings. The gang problem either temporarily abates, grows worse, or more likely is transformed from street corner intergang violence to drug trafficking. Frustrations over program development and progress in dealing with the problem occurs. Interagency rivalry over allocation of funds arises. Issues of minority group participation in policy planning and program implementation surface. Ethnic conflicts develop over what causes the problem, the limited effects of the programs mounted, and the need for new players in the game to cope with the gang problem. At this stage, charges of institutional racism, military tactics, and ineffective campaigns are raised. Established agencies are accused of serving their own expansionistic needs, often without addressing acute or hardcore gang members. The charge is that local community groups have been neither sufficiently consulted in the process of identifying the scope or seriousness of the problem nor advised on how to address it. Gang strategies, programs, and policies are viewed by minority spokesmen as one more example of racism that serves only to deny them economic and political power. Local agencies and citizen leaders believe they should have received more resources or been more fully involved in the decisionmaking process, rather than used or exploited in lower or intermediate level positions. In this critical third stage of the development of a genuine collaborative community approach, temporary coalitions and programs may be torn asunder. Only a series of open meetings and sincere efforts at collective decisionmaking by all key neighborhood and citywide actors, and a guarantee of a more sensitive and purposeful distribution of resources to combat the gang problem will bring about a resumption of collaborative efforts. Staff of the various programs must now be clearly multi-racial and multi-ethnic and highly representative of both the local and larger community. While a political negotiation process for dealing with the problem is now more open and involves more criminal justice, community-based agency, and community actors, the issue of accountability must still be resolved. Moral leadership must arise in the fourth stage not only to keep the renewed coalition intact and active, but to see to it that each agency and its program is held accountable for doing as effective and meaningful a job as possible. Regular formal meetings and many informal contacts must occur among community groups and outside agency representatives. Identification with the interests and needs of the community is accepted as the basis for any collective problem-solving effort. Tendencies toward community fragmentation are thereby constrained. Even gang members and former gang members become identified with community improvement and gang control efforts. Under these sustained conditions, the gang problem should significantly abate. Related Policy Issues. Because the youth gang problem is related in complex ways to a variety of more basic social problems, it may not be effectively resolved except as other social policies are addressed. But this linkage is not a perfectly reciprocal one. In fact, it is a mistake to assume that youth gang problems will be automatically reduced simply as "larger" issues of education, employment, and housing are resolved. There are examples where one or more of the "larger" issues was successfully addressed but the scope and severity of the youth gang problem was untouched or worsened. The 1960's War on Poverty arose in part out of a concern with delinquency and youth gangs in the ghettoes of large cities in the late 1950's. Structural approaches for dealing with the problems of poverty and lack of empowerment succeeded in considerable measure, permitting many low-income or marginal groups to enter the mainstream through such programs as Head Start, Job Corps, manpower development, community economic development, and voter registration. But there is little evidence that the youth gang or even the delinquency problem, per se was specifically targeted or that effective programs were developed. We have little or no evidence of a decrease in youth gangs, but rather an increase or a conversion of the gang problem to more serious forms in the mid- and late-1960's, particularly with the advent of rapid social change and community disorders. Criminal justice policy targeted at the local community youth gang problem must be joined with general social policy, particularly education and job development, to achieve positive results. Educational reform and manpower development, per se, even addressed to low-income groups and neighborhoods, may do little to modify the youth gang problem, unless youth gang-related programs for remedial education, job training, and job development are articulated with these larger concerns and programs. It is imperative that criminal justice personnel not marginalize their efforts, isolate their programs, and focus only on their own particular organizational interests and needs. They must attempt to influence decisionmakers in other relevant social policy arenas to also target the youth gang problem. In turn, legislators, chief executives, and social policy generalists must attend to significant subsets of problems, such as youth gangs, on the assumption that a variety of component problems in fact comprise the larger problem. Inclusive national policy initiatives focused on youth cultural and social development are necessary. They must emphasize opportunities for gang and gang-prone youth to escape crime-ridden and alienated communities through special educational and work incentives and conditions (and even criminal record expunging). At the same time, youth from mainstream society must be provided with an opportunity to assist in the social regeneration of inner-city areas, including participation as volunteers and staff in gang prevention and control programs. The development of domestic Peace Corps or Vista-type programs, inclusive both of inner- city minority and gang youth prepared to give up their gang commitment, and mainstream youth must be emphasized. Goals and Objectives Long and Short-Term Goals and Objectives. There is a tendency for organizations initially to respond to a social problem in quick but routine ways, such as simply providing beefed-up police patrols or additional recreational programs without clear understanding of the problem or knowledge of alternative approaches successfully tried in other communities or contexts. The rationale for the approach selected to deal with the youth gang problem is usually not expressed in interrelated causal, program, and impact terms. For example, the problem is not specified by age, number, and characteristics of youth involved; type of gang problems committed; appropriate approaches; interagency arrangements; and differential programs and expected outcomes. Usually, goals for gang programs are developed by one or two established agencies, mainly the police or youth-serving organizations. However, a strategic problem study and planning process is rarely undertaken. Long-term community goals with measurable objectives must be established and distinguished from short-term individual agency objectives. While necessary suppression procedures of the police and social intervention by youth agencies have some preliminary or short-term value, long-term comprehensive strategies across agencies and community groups are critically important. Both short- and long-term policies and procedures must be pursued and priorities established. The sooner a long-term targeted opportunities provision strategy is developed, based on mobilization of schools and businesses, the more effective short-term strategies such as suppression and social intervention will be, particularly in chronic gang- problem communities. When setting goals and objectives, it is important to remember that in many cities the youth gang problem has developed over many years. Consequently, it is reasonable to expect that it will take years of effort to substantially modify the problem. A complex set of program and interagency issues must be addressed. The varied tasks or objectives include helping specific youth to leave gangs or to avoiding joining in the first place; assisting families to do a better job of rearing children; and enabling agencies to collaborate with each other in ways that simultaneously protect communities as well as socialize gang youth. Other major factors have to be addressed to the extent possible, including improved job, housing, and educational opportunities as well as issues of rapid population change, fear of newcomers, and racism. The balance between strategies focused directly on individual and family change and those that emphasize system changes and the provision of additional resources, such as the creation of a youth conservation corps and the targeted inclusion of gang youth in the program, must be considered and appropriate decisions taken to maximize benefits to costs. At the same time, concern for protection of life and property of both community residents and gang members must be maintained, largely through a vigorous and efficient set of suppression measures that removes and confines hardcore gang members and influentials from the community -- at least temporarily. Sustained Effort. It takes time, usually a long time, to develop the understanding, planning structures, and processes necessary to facilitate gang-problem reduction. Different kinds of interrelated individual youth, agency, and community changes have to be created. It is not easy to counsel, modify behavior, and constrain a youth who is a committed youth gang member and already has a long delinquency record. Organizations do not readily change their routines to "reach out" to difficult gang youth. Planners and funding agencies do not usually leap forward to attack complex, amorphous, and persistent social problems such as gangs. The odds of program failure are perceived as very high. There are few who would advocate anything other than a strictly suppression approach. There are no easy winners in the battle against gang crime. A quick-fix approach, in fact, may lead to a variety of dysfunctional policy and program effects, as documented in other justice system reforms. Unanticipated policy results include "netwidening" or increasing the number of youth labelled as belonging to a gang; "relabelling", calling a disorderly youth in a nuisance street corner group a member of a criminal gang; "skimming", "creaming", or working only with fringe or less delinquent gang members; "violating" or arresting gang youth rather than attempting to counsel or rehabilitate them. Rapidly formulated, massive non-targeted police sweeps of so-called gang youth may result in gang or gang-prone youth being arrested for a short period and returned to the street, now more established in their "anti- cop" and street gang reputations. Sustained long-term, developmental efforts are required to bring about changes in the behavior of hardcore gang youth, in part because agency strategies and programs are difficult to change. Furthermore, once a new strategy or different program is in place, it may still need to be modified or even abandoned, and an alternate strategy sought to replace it. The individual youth, the family, the gang, the community organization, the social agency, and the community are in a state of continual mutual interaction or reciprocal influence. Well-conceived, flexible, accountable, and persistent efforts are required to deal with the problem. All this takes time for hopefully positive results to appear -- sometimes five years or more. Targeting Specific Problem or Vulnerable Groups. Meaningful objectives cannot be established, unless policymakers and program directors define and target specific youth gang members for attention. Objectives can then be developed which express the changes the program intends to bring about among these youth. It is inappropriate for an agency or community group to develop an amorphous youth gang program for youth who are neither gang youth nor at risk of gang membership, under the mistaken notion that all youth in certain neighborhoods or contexts have to be or can be equally prevented from joining gangs and engaging in criminal activity. Not specifying youth who are to receive particular kinds of gang program attention is also dysfunctional because it wastes resources. It may mean that youth who need preventive, remedial, or suppression services do not get them, and that other youth who do not get them are wrongfully labelled and drawn into a net of social control that increases rather than reduces the problem. In some cities broad-scale non-targeted gang sweeps, as indicated above, may result in arrests of scores, if not hundreds of youth and young adults who are neither gang members nor engaged in gang-related or gang-motivated crime. Many youth service agencies are also prone to provide irrelevant gang prevention activities, for example recreation, to a range of younger teens or preadolescents who are neither gang members nor youth at risk for gang membership. Therefore, policymakers and program providers have to conceptualize who the problem populations are, where the gang problem is likely to occur and under what conditions, what the key objectives are, and what specific programs and activities are necessary to achieve these objectives. Relevant Programming. The next step is the development and implementation of appropriate action or intervention activities. Differential intervention for varied gang youth, gangs, and gang situations is not a fine or well-practiced art, let alone based on a set of scientific procedures. Appropriate treatment or action measures are even less well developed than assessment categories for different types of gangs, gang members, and gang- problem situations. Ad hoc, fashionable, and intervention slogans often become the basis for action. Rationales for services, tactics, or procedures have to be systematically articulated. At present, we possess only rudimentary notions about "effective" tactics and services. They include targeting, arresting, and incarcerating gang leaders; referring fringe members and their parents to youth services for counseling; providing preventive services for at-risk youth who are often not clearly defined as a group; parent and teen gang member education about the consequences of gang membership; crisis intervention or mediation of gang fights; patrols of "hot spots" in the community; close supervision of gang offenders; remedial education for targeted gang youth in middle school; job referral, placement, and mentoring; safe zones around schools; vertical prosecution or case management and enhanced sentences; and nuisance abatement. How these tactics and services are to be developed and carried out is not clear. An integration of activities and mixed strategies within a context of agreement by key organizational and community leaders as to what needs to be done may be more important than development of specific tactics and activities or an independent agency basis. Again, there needs to be knowledge of tactics or programs that don't work or what their limitations are. Recreational activities alone do not reduce gang problems; gang conflict mediation procedures have had mixed results; ad hoc job referral and placement procedures for gang youth are often ineffective; use of gang leaders or influentials to deal with gang crises has at times been disastrous; vertical prosecution has proved highly efficient but there is no evidence that it has a general deterrent effect. There is a great deal that needs to be done in the form of simple and complex evaluation and research to test these program activities, many of which have been used for decades. Systematic description and evaluation of such activities must be undertaken, if investments in particular programs are to have credibility. Slogans, myths, and wishful thinking as guides to the selection of specific procedures and activities to implement program objectives are no longer acceptable. COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES Coordination and Community Participation It is possible in part that because we do not know convincingly what particular activities or tactics work for which kinds of gang youth problems in particular circumstances, we must rely at this stage of program development on more general organizational and especially interorganizational approaches. Our analyses suggest that certain structures or processes, such as comprehensive community mobilization, in some cases associated with opportunities provision, may be promising. Operationalization of these notions requires the development of neighborhood, city, or community coordinating mechanisms, such as intra- and interagency task forces, agency coalitions, community-based advisory groups, and cooperative projects. Interagency collaboration facilitates the development of common perceptions and definitions of the problem. It is especially important that justice system agencies (e.g., police, prosecution, school security, and probation) from the same jurisdiction develop the same definition of the problem and collaborate with each other about appropriate objectives and tactics in targeting the problem. Information-sharing about high-profile criminal youth gangs and specific gang youth is of special importance. Systematic exchange of information about gang youth and complementary ways of dealing with them also need to be developed across different kinds of agencies and community groups, e.g., law enforcement, youth service, school, and grassroots groups. Ground rules for the exchange of such information should be established with protection of life and property of paramount importance, but also accompanied by appropriate procedures for confidentiality of information and due process in regard to juveniles. A climate of trust and a system of interdependent strategies and procedures essential to coping with the problem must be generated among the diverse organizations and community groups, including parents. For example, probation and police need to reach out to work closely with parent groups and grassroots organizations. Organizations involved with gangs should meet on a regular basis and be accountable to each other with respect to specific activities to carry out their common objectives of gang violence prevention, mediation of gang fights, supervision of offenders, arrests of drug dealers, and job and social service referral. Common assessment of and perhaps more specific prescriptions for dealing with the youth gang problem result from such collaboration. It also leads to a more cohesive and "competent" community. A fragmented or disorganized community encourages the development of serious gang activity. On the other hand, the development of consistent, positive relations among diverse agencies and community groups signifies greater social control and social support, better targeting of the problem, and makes more likely its probable reduction. The chief proposition of the present model is that a mobilized community is the most promising way to deal with the youth gang problem. The complexity of the gang problem, with its multiple causes and competing agency and community group strategies and programs, requires not only a broad-scale but an integrated response, particularly in chronic gang problem situations and cities. Thus, it is critically important that community agencies go beyond development of a series of "beefed up," but unrelated individual agency programs. In both chronic and emerging gang- problem cities, local community organizations or groups may require special resources, training, and consultation from established criminal justice and community-based agencies in the development of cooperative and coordinated programs. Consistency Within Organizations The phenomena of social disorganization are incremental and cumulative in their impact on the gang problem. Personal and family inadequacy contributes to the need for children and youth to seek substitute satisfactions in unsupervised play groups and later in gangs on neighborhood streets where conflicting group values or criminal patterns may abound. The lack of adequate and consistent approaches in schools and within increasingly large bureaucratic organizations to prevent or remedy the problem may further aggravate the gang problem. The fragmentation of efforts as well as the lack of available resources for different units within organizations contribute both directly and indirectly to the development of youth gangs. Failure of individual units within an organization to speak with one voice may mean that organizations do not develop policies and mechanisms to maximize resources appropriate to dealing with the particular gang problem. Not all units of an agency may recognize or address the youth gang problem in the same or a consistent manner. Fragmentation within an agency manifests itself in various ways. For example, the narcotics and gang units of a police department may not develop or willingly share information relevant to both units. The police gang bureau in a large city may be so decentralized that headquarters and area units have different operational definitions and recordkeeping procedures, as well as different tactics for dealing with the same situations. A youth service organization may exclude gang youth from its in-house programs and relegate them to special services in its street program or to some adjoining building, although complementary services that mainstream these youth in fact would be desirable. Coordination tactics among and within organizations are often insufficiently related to each other. One unit of a police department or of a large youth organization may have a close relationship with a particular community organization and share a particular strategy while other parts of the police department, or the youth organization are closely connected to a second community organization, or even a State or Federal agency with an opposing perspective or strategy as to what to do about the youth gang problem. The particular agency executive has an ongoing responsibility to ensure that maximum consistency is developed by his or her units in their internal as well as external relationships. The idea of a common goal to which all parts of an organization are committed requires that different units of the same agency have similar policies and complementary procedures with respect to youth gangs and their members. Most important, it calls for the head of an agency to establish -- through authority, staff training, and appropriate procedures -- a primary emphasis on and a common or integrated strategy for dealing with a youth gang problem. Such commitment has to be clearly communicated, coordinative mechanisms developed, and procedures enforced for carrying out the primary strategy or combination of strategies. Development of Broad Community Support Very often police officers, school teachers, youth workers, and community residents are aware of the presence of gangs in their neighborhoods well before the "gang problem" becomes the focus of top- level official attention. These street-level professionals or bureaucrats observe changes in the behavior of youngsters, such as wearing of colors, representing, or signing; associating with certain other young people; graffiti on walls of buildings; and young people bragging that they're members of a particular gang or admitting to fighting because someone insulted a fellow gang member. Rarely, however, will a concerted effort be undertaken in a particular community unless a recognized leader -- such as a mayor, police chief, school superintendent, youth agency director, minister, or community leader -- declares that a gang problem exists and that action must be taken to address it. Frequently this acknowledgement is precipitated by a crisis event that is "close to home", such as an assault on the mayor's daughter or a shooting in a classroom. Once an authority figure has publicly spoken out or taken a stand on gangs, an expectation is created in the minds of those who are concerned about gang activity in their communities that something will, in fact, be done. For the leader's credibility to be maintained, this expectation must be fulfilled. The reality of the youth gang problem, particularly in cities and institutional situations where it has been chronic, calls for complex ways of dealing with it. It requires leaders to be sensitive and to understand local community factors that may give rise to gang recruitment, intergang conflict, drug dealing, and other criminal and non-criminal activities. It means mobilizing the interest and energies of other leaders and significant groups in the community. It requires not only clarification of information and development of facts, but persistent and patient negotiation and renegotiation among conflicting community groups and agencies, and the establishment of new relationships between agencies that may not have been in communication with each other. To ensure an approach is developed that both makes sense and has the greatest likelihood of succeeding, the views of significant interests groups must be incorporated into the planning process. An effort should also be made to identify and involve those who have access to or control of information, resources, and personnel to contribute to a program. Such resources should not be viewed narrowly: often volunteer efforts, redirection of existing community programs or rethinking of current priorities or policies can be just as powerful as new funding. While additional funds may be useful, they may not be a solution if other changes are not made. Involving diverse groups at the outset, especially representatives of minority groups in gang neighborhoods with an interest in seeing the gang problem addressed, will better position the leader to develop a viable approach while building a support base for that effort. Local leadership must also be recruited and developed if racial and class conflicts are to be avoided or minimized. A process of informal and purposeful power-sharing with respect to dealing with the problem must be initiated as early as possible. Community involvement can be accomplished in a number of ways, including community meetings, advisory groups, task forces, parades, marches, forums, and informal person-to-person contacts. Proactive Leadership Successful gang prevention, intervention, and suppression programs call for a high level of commitment and entrepreneurship by agency or community leaders. Gang work leadership is a particularly difficult, risky, and frustrating vocational or avocational specialty. The job requires great courage and creativity to overcome organizational and political obstacles that prevail in emerging or chronic gang-problem cities or contexts. Leaders who contribute to the development of promising programs usually demonstrate considerable personal interest and concern, excitement and challenge as regards the problem, as well as a high level of personal and professional energy and drive. The proactive leader must also have a knowledgeable and well-articulated position about what needs to be done. The proactive leader must be able to cut through staff apathy in his own organization as well as stimulate other executives and leaders in the community to be concerned with the problem. However, the apathy of established agencies may quickly convert to hostility against the proactive leader who is suspected of "showboating" to obtain more funding for his own organization's activities or if he demonstrates political motives. The proactive leader will have to pursue a somewhat independent course until he is able to convince others that he is honest and committed, that the gang problem is serious, and that interagency collaboration is essential and should be accepted. The proactive executive or community leader is essentially a catalyst energizing other leaders, frequently from large public and private bureaucracies as well as local community groups to create a rational, coherent, and active community approach to the gang problem. Youth Accountability and Specific Situational Opportunities Any set of policies or program model must hold gang youth accountable for their criminal acts and also provide opportunities to change or control such behavior. The less able a youth is to control his or her own behavior the more supervision must be exerted to demonstrate to and educate the youth as to what behavior is not acceptable. For some gang youth secure confinement will, at some point, be necessary; for others, graduated degrees of community-based supervision ranging from continuous "eyeball" or electronic supervision to total self- supervision, is appropriate. It is also important that youth understand and believe that there will be a consequence imposed if they do not follow program rules or reasonable expectations in a particular organizational setting or social situation. To the extent possible, this message must be consistently communicated and enforced by all those who come into contact with the youth. Also important is that the consequence for a criminal act be meaningful, fair, and quickly imposed. On the other hand, it is not sufficient to hold a gang youth accountable for his acts based only on mandated acceptance of conventional norms and values, court orders, or expectations of severe consequences. To support and ensure long-term change, a gang youth must also have chances to do something he perceives to be worthwhile, which provides him with a sense of personal accomplishment, self-esteem, and positive future prospects. A series of situations must be provided in which he can develop social, academic, and vocational skills. Rewards for work well done and positive accomplishments must be provided. A set of ongoing developmental opportunities accompanied by a normal structure of rewards and punishments must be created. It is not possible to take the "jungle out of the youth," unless the youth is also given a positive or legitimate opportunity to survive and develop outside of the jungle of youth gangs and crime. Staffing the Community Mobilization Process Gang prevention and control efforts require the effective implementation by workers of their agency's particular policies and procedures and an adequate understanding of the complexity of gang activity in the context of local community life. It calls for perceptive intelligence by the street- level agency or community worker, a basic friendliness by him towards all kinds of people, and above all, an extraordinary degree of professional self-discipline to manage diverse value systems that may challenge his or her own feelings during crises and anxiety-provoking situations. The reality of the youth gang problem, particularly in cities and institutional situations where it has been chronic, calls for complex ways of dealing with it not only at the executive but at the practitioner or street level. It requires sensitivity and understanding of patterns of relationship and specific situational factors that give rise to a crisis or potential crisis. The worker must be highly knowledgeable of particular intergang conflicts, criminal opportunities, group and family pressures, local resources and community influences that assist in constraining or preventing youth gang problems. Local influentials with positive norms and values can be useful in this regard. For example, a sensitive, former gang member with a legitimate job from the same neighborhood can be helpful in bridging the world of street expectations and workplace norms for the ambivalent young gang member. At the same time, the agency or community worker must generally avoid recognizing or using the gang structure or gang process as a primary instrument or mechanism for controlling or resolving a gang problem. This is to avoid co- optation by gang members and thereby contributing to gang cohesion where it already may exist or furthering influence by criminally oriented gang leaders. The worker must avoid conflict with representatives of other organizations also engaged in dealing with the problem. He has to be clear and "up front" about his values and practices which must demonstrate that gang recruitment, intergroup conflict, and other forms of gang criminal behavior are not acceptable and will be punished sooner or later. With these values expressed and operative, it is still possible for the agency or community worker to collaborate in a mobilized community context with gang youth, neighbors, parents, and agency representatives in the resolution of gang crises and also deal with criminal behavior. The approach recognizes the reality and the existence of criminal gangs, but not their legitimacy. It permits the worker to deal with gangs within a framework consistent with the norms and values of the conventional world, including those to which important influentials in the local community also subscribe. This approach allows for collective participation by the perpetrators of gang activities along with others affected by these activities as well as with key law enforcement agency, school, church, and other community influentials in dealing with a gang problem. Open communication and a collaborative orientation do not prevent law enforcement from gathering intelligence, arresting, investigating, prosecuting, and incarcerating gang youths, or youth service agencies and schools from counseling, rehabilitating, and socializing gang offenders. A cooperative community approach means the street- level worker has to deal purposefully with interpersonal hostility, intergang conflict, and pervasive apathy and hopelessness. In this process, the mobilization of local sources of legitimate social control as well as external resources of suppression and social opportunity is integral to controlling both gang-related violence and drug trafficking. Adequate staffing of the community mobilization process depends on the selection of competent neighborhood as well as outside personnel concerned with the youth gang problem. Local neighborhood people must be employed at different levels of the task force or community council structure and should have an opportunity in due course to qualify for positions and advancement outside of the local community. On the other hand, outside competent staff should bring the interest, concerns, and energies of the wider community into the usually ghettoized or socially isolated community. A strictly self-help or externally imposed program as represented in leadership and staffing patterns of the community organizing program will not be productive. Staff Education and Training A significant lack of reliable information exists about youth gang problems and what strategies and programs succeed or fail. Many practitioners have little knowledge of newer program alternatives that might be productive. Many legislators, policymakers, agency executives, and practitioners also do not have accurate knowledge of gang problems and therefore do not have an adequate basis for the development of relevant policy and programming. There are few gang policy and program experts available and literature on what to do about the current problem(s) does not exist. Presently, the major sources of information about gangs and what to do about them appear to be the media. However, newspaper, radio, and TV reporters tend mainly to describe the problem and emphasize quick-fix responses that serve the interests of mass audiences and advertisers rather than the educational and training needs of staff and community leaders. Valid training resources are in short supply. Only a few law enforcement and criminal justice personnel have extensive experience in working with youth gangs and much of that is suppression-oriented. Significant curriculum development efforts are required in universities, and criminal justice and community-based agencies to educate faculty, program directors, staff, reporters, and local citizenry as to the scope and nature of the problem and as to what valid policies, programs, and procedures are necessary. Specific gang-content courses need to be introduced into curricula of departments and schools of education, social work, law and criminal justice, and other organizations to more adequately prepare teachers, police, social workers, and other criminal justice and community practitioners to better prepare them for gang work. A more immediate requirement is the training of personnel presently engaged in school gang prevention, tactical patrol, youth service intervention, justice system supervision, and community group programming. High-quality, short- term training courses are needed based on the findings of available youth gang scholarship and research. They should be cross-disciplinary, and to the extent possible, use the few academics and experts in the field who have dealt with the problem in its varied complexity. Specific agency- relevant strategies and work skills as well as collaborative relationships across professional disciplines and community organization interests must be emphasized. Staff training must focus on the development of somewhat different strategies of intervention and suppression in emerging and chronic gang- problem jurisdictions. More attention to the specifics of gang recognition and understanding the bases for gang process is required in emerging gang-problem contexts. The limits of a simple, exclusive suppression strategy must also be stressed. Relatively more attention to principles of cross-agency and community group collaboration is necessary in chronic gang-problem cities, with special attention to development and use of techniques of remedial education, training, job development, and support for gang youth. RESEARCH AND EVALUATION Research and evaluation bearing on youth gang policy and programs have been infrequently conducted in the past two decades. Good evaluation of gang programs requires complex research skills. Gang research or evaluation is extremely difficult and has never been a well-developed scientific form even in the hey-day of youth gang programming in the 1950's and 1960's. Influentials in the youth gang field tend to be legislators, politicians, bureaucrats, and community "experts" who are quick to propose a variety of explanations, ad hoc policies, and program answers but are reluctant to test their ideas or support evaluation of specific programs. The usual unfounded claim by practitioners or activists is that "we know what needs to be done, give us the money and don't waste it on research and evaluation." A common assumption of planners not familiar with the field is that tested or proven ways of dealing with the youth gang problem exist, and the only thing required is application of these "tested" models and demonstrated effective principles. But such successful models do not exist, or at least we have no good evidence that they exist. We lack effective designs for the elimination or reduction of the youth gang problem. Old and especially new policies, programs, and procedures are desperately in need of systematic and rigorous research testing that should be performed along with the implementation of promising program designs. Several analysts have suggested that some policymakers and agency personnel are not seriously interested in resolving youth gang problems, since such problems provide sources of political, moral, and economic influence or resources. The long history of failed or defective gang policies and programs will not be broken without the aid of research and evaluation. We have little basic data on the scope and seriousness of the problem in most jurisdictions and certainly across jurisdictions or nationally. We do not know who gang youth specifically are and why they commit gang crimes. We have not developed a tested structure and technology for dealing with different types of gang youth and their problems in different kinds of communities. Extremely little comparative descriptive and evaluative information exists on gang prevention, intervention, and suppression programs. In other words, essential policy- and program-relevant information on what the gang problem is and what to do about it is in scarce supply. From the perspective of justice system policy, it is especially important to determine and disseminate a common operational definition of a youth gang, a youth gang member, and a gang incident so that we can with some validity assess the scope of the youth gang problem across place and time and determine in relation to a common standard whether our interventions validly make a difference. FUNDING PRIORITIES No clear and simple way exists at this time to determine which policies and procedures will work in reducing youth gang problems. We know something about strategies and programs that do not work. To that extent, it is incumbent on policymakers and program executives not to support and/or fund policies and programs that have been repeatedly found useless, such as simple recreation, non-directive counseling, simple youth outreach or street group work, and massive arrest and incarceration procedures. We need to establish "up front" that a variety of sophisticated, interrelated policies and procedures are required to meet the current complex nature of the problem. Based on available research, theory, and experience and until we know better, certain strategies and programs must be accorded the highest funding priority. These include policies and procedures that encourage community mobilization, i.e., the involvement of key organizations -- police, schools, youth agencies, probation, and parole as well as local community organizations and grassroots groups -- together in the development of common or interrelated program efforts. Furthermore, from the perspective of suppression and intervention, a closely connected social opportunities provision strategy, especially in chronic gang-problem jurisdictions, needs to be emphasized in which gang members or youth clearly at risk are targeted in the middle schools for spe- cial preventive, remedial, and supervisory services, and older youth gang members who are ready to leave the gang are assisted with training, jobs, and appropriate justice system supervision. At the community level, there needs to be component programs that address simultaneously and interactively, issues of early intervention, suppression, rehabilitation, and prevention. In addition, the recipients of funding for such community mobilization or opportunities provision programs must be those agencies and community organizations most knowledgeable, experienced, and influential in the local community context in which a response has to take place. A governmental unit or special commission needs to be selected to coordinate the development of the targeted communitywide mobilization program, particularly in chronic gang-problem cities and jurisdictions. A school or educational administration unit in connection with a community- based youth agency must take key responsibility for development of early intervention programs, particularly in emerging gang-problem cities. A range of organizations needs to be involved in the creation and implementation of programs -- including schools, training, and employment facilities, as well as justice system units and community-based organizations or coalitions -- which direct attention to youth gang members or those clearly identified as at risk of gang membership and criminal youth gang behavior. Lower funding priorities need to be accorded to single-type strategies, whether deterrence, social intervention, or organizational development. Non-targeted prevention must receive even lower priority, at least within the framework of justice system suppression and intervention approaches. The concept of prevention tends to be loosely applied to reach a mass of children who are often at low risk, even in low-income high gang crime neighborhoods. A targeted approach is most useful at the present time for purposes of community protection and reaching those gang youth in greatest need of supervision, social support, and redirection. In addition, no major justice system sponsored youth gang policy or program initiative ought to be funded unless it meets the following criteria: 1. The policy or program will address a demonstrated local community crisis, actual or clearly impending, as regards youth gangs. 2. Long-term need assessment and relevant resource development to meet youth gang problems will be coordinated at local, State, and national levels. 3. A local neighborhood or community advisory group will be established and held accountable for each local program with representation from justice system agencies, including police, prosecution, judiciary, probation, parole and corrections; community-based agencies, including schools, youth and treatment agencies; and grassroots community groups, including churches and business groups. 4. A rigorous cross-neighborhood or community and cross-city experimental or quasi- experimental design will govern the development and testing of major national policy or program initiatives. REFERENCES Spergel, Irving A.; Curry, G. David; Ross, Ruth E.; and Chance, Ron. 1990. Survey of Youth Gang Problems and Programs in 45 Cities and 6 Sites. Chicago: School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago. May. Spergel, Irving A. with G. David Curry, Candice Kane, Ron Chance, Ruth E. Ross, Alba Alexander, Pamela Rodriguez, Deeda Seed, Edwina Simmons, and Sandra Oh. 1990. Youth Gangs: Problem and Response. National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Project, University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. April. APPENDIX RESEARCH PARADIGM General Model I.Assumptions 1. The youth gang problem is an indicator and extreme manifestation of a very large social and economic problem that includes rising rates of violent delinquency, school dropout, unemployment, drug trafficking and addiction, single parenthood, child abuse, and unstable families. 2. Youth gangs are alternative or surrogate social institutions that satisfy, at least partially, basic human needs of youth for social, emotional, academic, and economic achievement when existing institutions of family, school, legitimate employment, and neighborhood organizations fail to function adequately. Youth gangs result from cumulative failures of key social institutions. 3. Youth gangs signify the extreme breakdown of specifically local, organizational, and community functions, especially of legitimate social control, socialization, and social support. 4. Larger societal conditions contribute to institutional breakdown and local community disorganization. They include population movements, market economy changes, poverty, defective national social policy, and racism, particularly as they impact minority groups. 5. These larger social conditions which generate community and institutional breakdown must be addressed even as we focus locally on the gang-related aspects of these interconnected problems. 6. We need to target those youth who are committed gang members through a set of policies and programs that includes social intervention, provision of social opportunities and community mobilization, and organizational development and modification as well as suppression. The focus of policy for justice system program purposes should be intervention and suppression, i.e., secondary and tertiary rather than primary prevention (which should be the primary responsibility of a variety of other organizations at national and local levels). 7. Thus, The National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Program will target gang youth a) 12 to 24 years old; and others who directly influence youth gangs, particularly as regards traditional turf-based violent gang activity. b) male and female youth especially in turf-based violent gangs, as well as those in mobile gangs engaged in a variety of serious crimes including drug trafficking, property crime, and with connections to organized crime, but whose identification with the youth gang is primarily for symbolic, communal, or status development purposes. 8. The Program will not target the following groups a) youths under age 12 years, particularly wannabes, including those not connected to high-profile, police-identified serious street or youth gangs; b) older youth or adults where primary identification is with criminal organizations for purposes of economic gain; c) delinquent groups, generally those that are ad hoc, ephemeral, or engage in property crime as minor criminal behavior. 9. At the same time, because of the systemic character of youth gangs, younger and older gang youth, male and female, will be targeted in some interrelated fashion. In other words, we will target gang youth at both earlier and later points in their gang commitment and development, but not prior to actual police contact or after the youth or the gang is primarily committed to criminal gain opportunities. 10. A key interrelated focus of the program will be reintegration of gang youth into mainstream society as well as community protection. II. General Hypothesis The interrelated application of strategies of mainly community mobilization and social opportunities provision, also including culturally sensitive suppression, organizational development, and social intervention, will lead to a reduction in the youth gang problem. III. Specific Hypothesis 1. These five strategies will be present in appropriate organizational and program combinations in any city or social context for the problem to be reduced. 2. Certain priorities in use of strategies will occur in situations where the problem is to be reduced. a) In chronic youth gang problem contexts, emphasis will be on strategies of community mobilization and opportunities provision. b) In emerging youth gang problem contexts, emphasis will be on strategies of community mobilization. c) Issues of criminal opportunity system, criminal tradition, culture, and institutional pressure will also `have to' be considered in the possible modification and prioritization of strategies. 3. Furthermore, for a reduction and nonconversion of the youth gang problem, e.g., drug trafficking to occur, strategies will be implemented in such a way that: a) there is consensus by key community actors on perception of the nature of the problem, its causes, and program goals and objectives; b) accountability is achieved through such mechanisms as informed and proactive advisory groups comprising both public, non-profit, and community interest groups. IV. Dependent Variables (Desired Outcome) 1. Primary a. Reduction of serious youth gang violence; b. Reduction of less serious youth gang violence. 2. Secondary a. Reduction of youth gang- related drug trafficking; b. Reduction of other youth gang- related activity c. Reduction of other non-youth gang-related criminal activity. V. Program Process/Independent Variables (Community Level) 1. An appropriate community assessment of the problem. 2. Organization of a collaborative community planning and control organization, especially one that maximizes inclusion of criminal justice, community agencies, and grassroots influentials. 3. Development of a relevant combination of suppression and intervention strategies, especially with respect to the overall community approach. 4. Provision of proactive and sustained community leadership with respect to the overall community approach. 5. Mediation of interagency and intercommunity group conflict as regards programs and resources affecting the problem. 6. Mechanisms of accountability, especially those that maximize commitment to program strategies and minimize tendencies to goal displacement, coaptation, and collusion mainly for purposes of maintenance and expansion of organizational interests. 7. Provision of adequate long-term funding to appropriate agencies and clusters of organizations over a sustained period of time, 3 to 5 years, to achieve program goals. VI. Program Process Independent Variables (Organizational Level) 1. Provision of social/educational/vocational support relationships by organizational workers with gang youth; 2. Development of fair and equitable social control relationships with gang youth; 3. Improved access to remedial education for gang youth; 4. Improved access to vocational training for gang youth; 5. Improved access to adequate job opportunities for gang youth; 6. Improved access to supervised recreational activities for gang youth; 7. Improved access to health services for gang youth; 8. Improved access to educational, social, and vocational services for gang youth's family/support network. VII. Intervening Variables (Youth Gang Member Level) 1. Improved school performance; 2. Satisfactory participation in training programs; 3. Satisfactory performance on a job; 4. Non-participation in criminal youth gangs; 5. Increased participation with non- youth gang peers; 6. Improved self-esteem; 7. Improved family support group function; 8. Improved physical/mental health. VIII. Conditional (Qualifying) Variables (Their extent or degree in a particular community affects the power of the independent variables) 1. Social Disorganization a) personal (behavioral disorder or illness); b) family (disruption); c) gang/group process (status conflicts); d) organization (lack of coordination); e) interorganization (competition and conflict); f) community (fragmentation, isolation, duration of population groups). g) integration of criminal and legitimate opportunity systems. 2. Poverty a) actual level of deprivation (e.g., income); b) relative deprivation 3. Culture a) tradition of criminality b) tradition of violence IX. Definitions (See Training Manuals) TRADITIONAL MODEL COMPONENTS Community Model A (Suppression/Intervention) Residual, simplistic, agency-oriented policies (focussed mainly on Suppression or Social Intervention); deterrence (mainly community protection); and primary concern with prevention of broadly defined at-risk youth I. Assumptions (Beliefs) 1. Youth gangs are all highly anti- social and contain severely socially and emotionally disturbed members. 2. Youth gangs are organized and exist mainly to engage in violence, drug trafficking, and other serious criminal activities. 3. Youth gangs comprise hardcore delinquent or criminal offenders. 4. All hardcore gang youth should be prosecuted to the limits of the law and incarcerated for as long a time as possible. 5. Gang membership is a life-long commitment. Once a gang member, always a gang member. II. Definition of the Problem 1. Any offense committed by any group of youths is classifiable as a gang offense. 2. The youth gang is defined simply as any street association or grouping. It includes any collection or structure of persons engaged in criminal activity, street- based or otherwise, ranging from violence, drug trafficking, shoplifting, and burglary, to disorderly conduct and incivilities. 3. A youth is defined as a member of a youth gang based mainly on situational, community, agency, or police attribution; self-admission; or association with known gang members. 4. A youth gang incident is any criminal or uncivil act defined by the police as involving a gang member suspect or victim. 5. A youth gang member is viewed as predisposed to a greater range and frequency of crime because of his gang membership. III. Policy/Program Goal 1. To eliminate youth gang crime 2. To eliminate youth gangs IV. General Approach (Emphases) 1. Non-targeted suppression and some diversion for "at-risk" youth broadly defined; 2. Undifferentiated focus on service not based on age or race/ethnicity criteria, albeit with some focus on hardcore leaders and "at-risk" youth; 3. Exclusive criminal justice orientation; 4. Commitment to dealing with the problem by a single method; 5. Primary, if not exclusive, responsibility by a single agency. V. Strategy 1. An agency-oriented strategy that emphasizes specialized programming and structures independent of those of other organizations. Emphasis is on the strategy of suppression in both chronic and emerging youth gang problem cities. Attention is also paid to a strategy of social intervention, especially in chronic gang problem contexts. 2. The youth gang problem is mainly a responsibility of specialized law enforcement personnel, and to some extent youth agency, including recreation, personnel. 3. Participation by professional police and/or social agency leaders is emphasized 4. The role of suppression is dominant and is exercised by law enforcement. Community participation, particularly by other agencies is requested on a token basis. Law enforcement mainly encourages community residents and non-criminal justice agencies to aid police and prosecutors in law enforcement. 5. Police operate independently and in non-targeted fashion with reference to sweeps or mass arrests of so-called gang offenders. 6. The gang unit is concerned strictly with suppression activities and prefers not to dilute its patrol, intelligence, investigating, and criminal justice liaison functions with social intervention or social opportunities strategies, although it may engage in some community mobilization activities to facilitate its suppression objectives. 7. Social intervention is restricted to particular youth service agencies or community-based agencies. 8. Youth agencies or community-based organizations restrict their efforts to treatment and social intervention functions. 9. Opportunities provision organizations, such as schools, training and placement agencies, and employers, are concerned with narrow definitions of mission, i.e., education, employment, and profitmaking, mainly in reference to traditional populations (for example, white, middle class, and selected inner-city youth. 10. Opportunities provision organizations, e.g., schools, employers, training organizations, do not perform functions such as social support or community development, in reference to the youth gang problem, although there is concern with community safety and security. VI. Structure and Implementation 1. Ad hoc, short-term, rigid arrangements to deal with the youth gang problem are developed. 2.Traditionally, specialized, professional role functions are emphasized. 3. Simple, undifferentiated assessment criteria are used in conduct of activities or provision of services. 4. Emphasis is on limited range of practitioner activities and responsibilities in dealing with the youth gang problem. 5. Limited or nominal intra-agency unit and interagency collaboration is accepted. 6. Reliance is mainly on public agencies to deal with hardcore gang youth and voluntary agencies to deal with "at-risk" youth broadly defined (e.g., all youth in a low-income neighborhood). 7. Staff selection is based on exclusive criteria with strong preference given either to candidates with certain common racial/ethnic, residence qualifications or alternatively to candidates with high academic, professional and/or service qualifications. 8. A generally cautious, denial, politically sensitive approach is viewed as appropriate. 9. No systematic communication exists as regards interagency or community group programming for gang youth. 10. Funding arrangements are made so that each agency has independent responsibility for specific programs with no interagency or mutual agency accountability structure. INNOVATIVE MODEL COMPONENTS Community Model B (Community Mobilization) Innovative, complex community mobilization focussed also on appropriate balance of opportunities provision, social intervention, and suppression; substantial concern with rehabilitation for youth identified as gang members as well as concern for community protection. I. Assumptions (Beliefs) 1. Youth gangs are residual social institutions. They comprise youth who are social but not necessarily emotional failures. 2. Not all youth gangs are the same, but vary as to age, race/ethnicity, and patterns of illegitimate behavior. Not all are engaged in drug trafficking or extreme violence. 3. Youth gangs comprise a variety of types of members -- wannabes, fringe, core, associates, and leaders. 4. Hardcore and gang leaders should be selectively prosecuted and "thrown" into jail. Some can be rehabilitated. 5. Gang membership is a time-limited commitment -- mainly between the ages of 12 and 24 years. Most gang members no longer engage in gang activity - criminal or non-criminal -- after age 20 years. II. Definitions 1. A youth gang problem is defined in narrow terms. It includes a limited range of offenses, mainly by adolescents, only a few of which are selected for law enforcement attention. 2. The youth gang is defined as a discrete, specifically identifiable street entity. The youth gang is recognized mainly by its commitment to status achievement and turf interests, violence and intimidation, and by its secondary interests in criminal gain activity, such as drug trafficking. 3. A youth is defined as a member of a youth gang only if such identification is based on multiple and systematic sources of information, particularly if the youth was apprehended at an earlier time for a gang-related offense. 4. A youth gang incident is a criminal act growing out of specifically defined gang-motivated circumstances. 5. A youth gang member is not necessarily viewed as predisposed to all kinds of criminal behavior because he is a gang member. Motivations unrelated to the gang, such as economic gain, may predispose him to commit non-gang-motivated crime. III. Policy/Program Goal 1. To reduce the level of youth gang crime, as to scope and intensity. 2. To control criminal youth gangs. IV. General Approach (Emphases) 1. Targeted rehabilitation, suppression, diversion (secondary prevention); a continuum of activities to achieve different levels of the strategies; 2. Differential focus on service based on a range of age, race/ethnic youth gang problem considerations; 3. Community involvement; 4. Agency multiple role function; 5. Interagency coordination. V. Strategy 1. A comprehensive strategy is employed which emphasizes community mobilization in chronic and emerging youth gang problem cities, with special attention to opportunities provision in chronic gang problem cities. 2. A communitywide approach involving grassroots groups, social agencies, schools, business and industry, churches, criminal justice agencies, former gang members, and even selected youth gang members is developed. 3. Participation by community residents and local agencies is emphasized in efforts to control their own community. 4. The role of suppression is important and is carried out in various ways by different community and agency activists in terms of community patrols, close supervision of students, children, and offenders. 5. Police operate in coordination with other law enforcement and sometimes community groups in sweeps of targeted gang offenders. 6. While the gang unit and other units of the police, probation, and prosecution target gang youth, they perform a variety of secondary functions with gang youth, including opportunities provision, social intervention, and community relations. 7. Social intervention, e.g., counseling, development of support groups for parents, referral for services, athletic and recreational programs, is characteristic at some level of all agencies and community groups addressing the youth gang problem. 8. Youth agencies perform a variety of functions, e.g., opportunities provision, community mobilization, and suppression, in addition to their traditional function of social intervention. 9. Opportunities provision organizations take a broader view of their mission, with special concern (and inducements to serve) a variety of socially disadvantaged groups including gang youth. 10. Opportunities provision organizations reach out to become part of general community efforts serving a youth gang population and in the process also provide or coordinate with a variety of appropriate social support and suppression or supervision functions. VI. Structure and Implementation 1. Planned, long-term, flexible arrangements for dealing with the youth gang problem are developed. 2. Professional, multi-role functioning as well as local citizen involvement is emphasized. 3. Use is made of assessment criteria for agency activity or service based on age, race/ethnicity, gender, prior offense, social adjustment, and available services. 4. Emphasis on client participation in program development and implementation to the extent consistent with safety and security of clients and community. 5. Integral development and use of advisory committee and interagency or coalitional structures. 6. Reliance on a range of collaborative public, voluntary agency, community, and church structures to carry out various differentiated aspects of program. 7. Staff selection is based on a mixture of criteria, with appropriate preference given both to racial/ethnic, residence, academic, professional, or civil service requirements. 8. Generally proactive accountability approach. 9. Use of written and informal contracts for joint agency, community group implementation of programs. 10. Funding is provided to coalitions of agencies and/or community groups with collective as well as independent responsibility for dealing with the youth gang problem.