MENU TITLE: COMMUNITY-BASED YOUTH AGENCY MODEL. Series: OJJDP Published: DRAFT 9/90 24 pages 53934 bytes Irving Spergel and Candice Kane 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 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM A COMMUNITY-BASED YOUTH AGENCY (CBYA) APPROACH GOALS AND OBJECTIVES ORGANIZATIONAL AND PROGRAM STRUCTURE EMERGING GANG-PROBLEM CITIES SOCIALIZATION EDUCATION FAMILY SUPPORT TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT SOCIAL CONTROL COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION AND AGENCY COORDINATION CHRONIC GANG-PROBLEM CITIES RESEARCH AND EVALUATION STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM There has been a long tradition of interest and concern among youth agencies, settlement houses, and community centers with the socialization of youth, particularly in low-income, newcomer, or transitional communities. Services and activities, usually of a recreational, informal educational, and social developmental nature, have been offered to youth and sometimes their families to acculturate them to the norms and values of American, especially middle class, society. Despite the long history of youth work, services have generally been directed at younger children, particularly between the ages of 6 and 14 years. Historically, most community-based youth programs have been directed at the conforming or "normal" children and youth in a particular area of the city. At various times and places, youth agencies such as YMCAs, Boys Clubs, and Settlement Houses have developed programs for delinquent or predelinquent youth. While many youth service programs have attempted to prevent delinquency, very few have tried to deal with or reach out to older delinquent youth, particularly those who as a rule do not frequent youth agencies. Some special outreach programs have been established to deal with delinquent groups and youth gangs. However, evaluative research of some of these programs, which have generally emphasized recreation, individual counseling, group work, or case management, have reported either no effects or, in a few instances, increased levels of delinquency for program youth. Delinquent groups inadvertently may have been made more cohesive by youth outreach or gang workers. A few exceptional examples of youth work of a broad community character have shown some promise. They include the Chicago Area Projects in the 1930's and 1940's and the Philadelphia Crisis Intervention Network in the 1970's, a coalition of East Los Angeles public and private agencies, and a combined Boys Club and police department program in El Monte, California during the 1970's and 1980's. Each of these projects was associated with a reported reduction in delinquency or gang violence rates. The distinctive character of these promising and apparently successful programs -- none of which was subjected to a rigorous evaluation -- was the combination of strategies employed: community resident mobilization, youth agency social intervention, social opportunities or the provision of jobs to targeted youth, and the integral involvement of criminal justice system units, particularly police, probation, and parole. Despite such evidence, many youth agencies and community leaders continue to insist that all that is required to deal with group delinquency, particularly the youth gang problem, is a little counseling or constructive activity "to keep idle hands busy." The historical record, however, indicates quite clearly that a youth agency program that emphasizes only a social intervention or recreational approach does not work. Often, delinquent or gang youth are not adequately targeted, and the results are poor. Despite the record, youth agencies can provide a meaningful and possibly effective service to gang youth. But this requires that 1) youth agencies make a commitment to serving gang youth, including older adolescents and even young adults; 2) community-based youth agencies adopt a combined social intervention and deterrence or suppression strategy; 3) youth agencies engage local citizens or influential leaders to help deal with the problem (This means resurrecting an older tradition of social advocacy, community organization, and local leadership development.); and 4) adequate public funding be provided under conditions of strict accountability. Youth services and community-based agency programs often "skim" or "cream" more promising or conforming youth and fail to target more difficult youth. In the past two decades, community-based youth agencies may have decreasingly served gang youth because youth gangs have grown increasingly more violent and criminal. They are more difficult to deal with. Some older gang youth are now heavily engaged in drug trafficking. On the other hand, youth agencies with the aid of Federal and State funds, in recent years, have focused on runaway, status offender, mental health, and alternative educational and training programs. A COMMUNITY-BASED YOUTH AGENCY (CBYA) APPROACH No agency or organization alone can deal appropriately with the problem of youth gang crime. Only a comprehensive community-based approach involving other community-based, criminal justice, and grassroots organizations interested in both preventing and controlling youth gang crime, including gang-related violence, holds promise of effectiveness. An essential component of a broad- scale approach is a local community-based youth agency (CBYA) that provides a continuum of services to gang and gang-prone youth as well as to other youth, family, and community residents. The agency must have a board containing local residents and representing the expressed needs and interests of its community. Furthermore, a CBYA must closely coordinate its services with criminal justice system units including police, court, probation, detention, parole, and correction institutions as well as with local schools, business and industry. The CBYA may have to engage in advocacy on behalf of gang youth, both individually and in general, especially in chronic gang-problem communities where youth have been underserved. This social advocacy should be directed toward the development of a whole range of essential opportunities, especially improved educational training, and job programs that categorically target gang youth. A CBYA should engage in a variety of youth outreach service and grassroots mobilization efforts. It should attempt directly to mediate differences among warring gang groups. At the same time, it should assist local community resident groups and agencies in the area to support the positive efforts of gang and gang-prone youth while deterring their criminal activities, including drug trafficking. In other words a highly complex, proactive, and generalist role is envisioned for the CBYA interested in developing its capacity to deal with the youth gang crime problem. Proposed is a six-fold mission for those youth agencies intending to serve gang youth: 1) socialization, 2) education, 3) family support, 4) training and employment, 5) social control, and 6) community mobilization and agency coordination. This mission must target and serve different types of gang youths, problem families, and communities in different ways. This variation is largely related to degrees of poverty and social and personal disorganization, particularly as represented in emerging and chronic gang-problem communities. We have identified emerging gang-problem com- munities or cities generally as those with a changing population where low-income minority groups -- usually African-American and Latino -- have become somewhat socially isolated and bereft of social resources. Youth gang problems, sometimes of a serious nature, have emerged in these changing or increasingly economically depressed, low-income communities, particularly under the tutelage of a few older gang-wise youth who may have moved in. In general, such areas have relatively adequate access to educational, employment, and recreational resources. The chronic gang-problem city or community has been identified as an inner-city, highly impoverished and/or disorganized community. The relative numbers and severity of gang-problem youth and families are much greater in comparison to emerging problem communities. Gang crime and criminality are well established and have been endemic, with acute phases, for decades. Many in the community are discouraged, hopeless, and resigned to a fate of victimization, violence, drug trafficking, illness, poor housing, and unemployment. Membership in gangs is often generational, although there are many families whose children lead conventional lives and become successful working-class and middle-class citizens. This approach assumes that the CBYA will serve a range of children, youth, and families in a given community who represent various social, economic, and racial or ethnic groups. Even in relatively segregated communities, it is expected that the CBYA will serve residents of diverse class and status to meet a broad range of interests and needs. To the fullest extent possible the agency must represent and cater to a complex community. The CBYA, however, which proposes to serve gang and gang-prone youth, must identify them in specific terms and provide them with appropriate and distinctive programs. The types of gang youth and their families will vary among emerging or chronic problem communities. Priority services should be provided to those younger youth who are designated at-risk according to specific criteria and to those older youth who have already been adjudicated for gang-related crimes. More specifically, gang-prone or high-risk youth admitted to the special youth gang program should be between the ages of 12 to 16 years and meet at least four of the following criteria: 1) associate regularly with acknowledged gang youth; 2) have family members who are or were gang members; 3) occasionally wear gang colors, use gang symbols, or flash gang signs; 4) are performing poorly in school or if out of school are unemployed; 5) have one or more arrests; or 6) use drugs. Adjudicated or convicted gang youth, ages 12 to 21, include those who are on probation, who have served time in detention or in a correctional setting, and/or who have been on parole for a felony gang-related offense. At least 70 percent of gang-prone or gang member youth to be targeted should probably be males. (Available statistics indicate that at least 80 or 90 percent of youth arrested for gang offenses are male, although recent sources indicate that the number of females in gangs is increasing.) The CBYA program should target a different mix of youth in emerging and chronic problem communities. Relatively more gang-prone youth should be targeted in emerging gang communities; relatively more committed and adjudicated gang members should be targeted in chronic gang localities to reflect the varying scope and nature of the problem. The greater cohesion of youth gangs in chronic problem communities would probably require relatively greater attention to older gang youths than in an emerging problem community. The specific proportions of each type of youth in the special CBYA youth gang program should also vary with specific neighborhood and agency resource factors, for example, types of facilities available, quality of staff, and their experience with gang youth. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES The key goal of the program is the reduction of the incidence and prevalence of youth gang crimes. This would include a reduction in the number of violent and serious youth gang crimes, particularly homicides, assaults, and drug trafficking as well as a reduction in the number and size of gangs. To avoid excessive labelling of youth, the gang- related incident should be defined in narrow group interest or motivational terms. The focus of the CBYA gang program should not be on the wide range of criminal activities committed by the youth gang member, but mainly (not exclusively) on those that grow specifically out of gang structure and process. The primary strategies of the special CBYA youth gang program should be intervention and suppression at various levels. The emphasis of the U.S. Department of Justice mission should not be on a prevention strategy that targets youth who are not at high risk of gang membership or gang crime, i.e., who do not meet the gang-prone risk criteria identified above. Neither should they serve serious offenders who are not gang members but who may be members of criminal organizations. Special attention in the formulation of objectives should be given to redirecting the interests and capacities of gang members and gang-prone youth toward improved performance at school, in training, and on the job. Development is required of attitudes and social skills that assist youth in avoiding gang membership or participating in gang- related conflict or criminal activities. A key objective should be to help youth understand the meaning and value of social controls as well as to directly implement such controls as appropriate. Close relationships and coordination must be established with the families of gang-prone and youth gang members as well as with schools, police, probation, parole, and other justice system representatives. Program objectives should vary depending on whether the focus is on older, hardened gang youth or younger "wannabes" and fringe members. Closer supervision and coordination with justice system units, training, and employment settings will be required for older youth. Relatively more home and school contact will be required for younger youth, with special attention to the development of those social and athletic activities that emphasize social control and conflict resolution skills. ORGANIZATIONAL AND PROGRAM STRUCTURE Both the strength and the weakness of the community-based youth services approach is its broad-scale yet residual character. The community- based agency responds to the basic and often changing interests, needs, and problems of the local population. The CBYA must be able to adapt quickly and sensitively to both individual and social problems as they evolve, usually before other established institutions have been able to readjust their strategies and programs. In the face of traditional organizational lag, the CBYA should and often does attempt to fill in the gaps of other institutional programs. At the same time, it should assist the established institution, e.g., family, school, employment, or criminal justice agency, to modify its own approach. In this context, the CBYA is temporarily required to perform certain functions that should in the long term be better accomplished by these other institutions. Therefore, CBYA structures and programs for dealing with gang-prone youth and gang members should be closely linked to an established institution. It should operate as a partner and enabler to the school in the emerging youth gang-problem community, and as partner and enabler to some public authority, probably a justice system unit, in the chronic gang-problem community. In both cases, a special collaborative or team arrangement between organizations should be established. The program structure created in each of these problem contexts should require the participation of local residents in decisionmaking, program development, and operations. The programs should result in the achievement of three goals: 1) reduction of the gang problem; 2) strengthening of primary institutions, particularly the family, school, and employers in their efforts to deal with gang prone and gang member youth; and 3) increased local community capacity to address its youth gang problem. A continuum of services that focus on six programmatic areas should characterize the CBYA's effort: 1) socialization, 2) education, 3) family support, 4) training and employment, 5) social control, and 6) community mobilization and agency coordination. In both emerging and chronic gang- problem cities, the CBYA should play a special case management role. In the emerging problem context, the CBYA should contribute primarily to the school's institutional mission of academic and social development of youth. In the chronic problem context, the CBYA should contribute significantly to the justice system's mission of social control of gang youth and protection of the community. Case Management Role. The CBYA can assume case management responsibility for each youth in the program. This should be done in conjunction with the schools in an emerging gang-problem context and with probation in a chronic gang-problem context. Variations in structure will be required where both gang-prone and gang member youth are served by the same program. The CBYA should receive referrals of youth identified as gang-prone from sources such as schools, police, court diversion units, other human service agencies, community organizations, families, self-referrals, and the outreach agency worker. Referrals to the CBYA's adjudicated gang member program should be restricted to court, probation, parole, corrections, and the prosecutor's office. The CBYA should directly supply or broker a variety or services including the following: 1) intake screening; 2) crisis intervention; 3) advocacy/mentoring; 4) short-term out-of-home placement (court determined); 5) educational remedial classes and activities; 6) vocational training; 7) job apprenticeships; 8) part- and full-time employment; 9) drug/alcohol assessment and treatment; 10) individual/group/family counseling; 11) medical assessment and treatment; 12) parent/guardian training; 13) a full range of community center social and recreational activities; 14) educational and employment referral services for family members of gang and gang-prone youth; 15) community service activities that can be utilized by the gang member and gang-prone youth for repayment of debts to society; 16) in-home detention programming; 17) special gang patrol services; and 18) monitoring and other community support services. The special coordinative interagency unit (CBYA and school; CBYA and probation) or community committee should meet at regular intervals with the case manager for the purpose of 1) clarifying case plan responsibilities; 2) reviewing the youth's progress; 3) recommending a change in the plan of services, e.g., increase or decrease the level of restriction for the youth; 4) resolving problems of interagency coordination and resource development; 5) engaging in community service planning and policy advocacy; and 6) promoting resident involvement and community development issues related to the gang problem. EMERGING GANG-PROBLEM CITIES In emerging gang-problem cities, the six core categories of services are intended to address the gang-prone youth's special needs for status, his lack of academic skills, his difficulty in relating to others in positive ways, his lack of an adequate support system, and his need for supervision. It is also important to address the community's inability to recognize the gang problem, to structure programs adequately to deal with it, and to determine what services and activities would most benefit the particular youth and target population. In due course, each program youth should participate directly or indirectly in an intake assessment interview. Often, this assessment will come after the youth worker has contacted the gang member and his group on the streets and established a positive preliminary relationship with them. Follow-up information would be supplied by the school on performance, attendance, and social adjustment or behavior problems as well as by the police, court, family, peers, and other organizations in the community. In the development of a service and community action plan, it is assumed that the youth and his family will be voluntarily involved and, in some cases, that participation in the program may be mandated by the court, probation, or the school. SOCIALIZATION Of primary importance in emerging gang-problem contexts is the ability of the CBYA worker to reach out to youth on the street who are not yet involved in existing agency programs. These youth constitute a recruiting pool for gang membership. They may also comprise a new membership pool for agencies in those communities where the established population has aged or changed and no longer uses the facility. The agency may need to reach out to a group of youth new to the community to fulfill its socialization mission. Special efforts may be required, however, to change the style and content of existing programs to meet the interests and needs of newcomer ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. Citizen leaders of the local community and even former gang members may need to be brought into the agency as staff or even board members to assist in the development of appropriate programs and agency practices. Special linkages will need to be developed in conjunction with schools to provide recreational, social, and afterschool activities for those youth who are particularly vulnerable to gang membership and crime. Simple introduction or modification of existing programs for younger youth is possible, either through special arrangements for transporting youth from school to the agency or transfer of CBYA activities to school facilities. More complex socialization efforts will be required for the small group of older, committed gang youth who may be present in the emerging gang-problem community, particularly those who are unemployed and no longer attending school. Since they are likely to be present on the streets, CBYA workers again must reach out to them to establish contact and, if possible, assist them in joining and becoming integrated in existing agency programs. The CBYA may be required to establish new program outposts, or simply develop a variety of non- facility-based recreational, athletic, and informal educational programs. Field trips, camping, and other programs that bring gang youth into contact with other physical and social environments are also advisable. In the course of many of these activities, the CBYA worker must guard against inadvertently becoming a focus for organizing or cohering a loose knit youth group into a gang. The CBYA worker should use a variety of devices to insure that the delinquent group or gang is diffused and that influential or leadership youth are helped to leave the "scene" through jobs, referral to special educational or training programs, or even removal to correction institutions. The CBYA worker should be skilled in helping gang- prone and gang member youth to learn conflict resolution skills and avoid violence in settling interpersonal arguments and intragroup or intergang conflicts. Individual group counseling as well as structured courses at the CBYA facility or school may be used to instruct targeted youth in how to handle personal value conflicts, resolve potential gang fights, avoid gang membership, and leave gangs. Team sports and social affairs such as dances and camping trips can be vehicles for mixing youth from different neighborhoods and gang factions; but extreme caution needs to be exercised in structuring such experiences to avoid increasing interpersonal and intergroup tension and conflict, gang intimidation, and recruitment. On the other hand, there are limits to the value of social and athletic activities. Often the most needy, frustrated, and violent youth do not participate in these experiences. Finally, it is especially important to involve parents, neighborhood residents, and even former gang members or leaders in the supervision of these social and athletic events. Sensitive and trained volunteer or paraprofessional staff can quickly identify potential trouble spots and troublemakers and neutralize them through use of their interpersonal skills, often based on personal and neighborhood status and prestige. They can also serve as role models, and teach and demonstrate social skills essential to the development of mature and socially conventional behavior by youth. EDUCATION With gang-prone 12-to-16-year-olds, major emphasis should be on assisting school administrators and teachers to appropriately meet the educational and social needs of these vulnerable yet troublesome youth. A primary task will be to assist such youth to improve their performance at school and at the same time curb or limit their actual or potentially disruptive gang-related behavior. Additional resources may be required to provide extra school time teaching or tutoring, during and after regular school hours to upgrade the youth's reading, writing, mathematic, and general problem-solving skills. In this process, teachers, tutors, or mentors must be assisted, presumably by streetwise and experienced CBYA staff, to understand gang culture and identify gang-related behaviors that may be disruptive of the school learning process, e.g., signing, wearing colors, intimidating other youth, and recruiting members. The CBYA worker will have to work closely with teachers and administrators in the development of specific means to prevent and control those problems. The teacher will need special help in recognizing and controlling the efforts of core gang members or leaders and in advising gang-prone youth on how to stay out of gangs, avoid gang crises and attacks, and other gang-related criminal behaviors. The CBYA worker is expected to be part of the school team, coaching, supplementing, and joining with teachers in a variety of activities, both inside and outside of school, to deal with gang- prone youth and current gang members. The CBYA worker should be able to establish credibility with school administrators and teachers based on his understanding of gangs and prior experience in the school system or as a parent of a school-age child. The teacher and the CBYA worker should present a unified front to students and family as regards the youth's problems and the need to improve his performance and behavior both at school and in the community. The CBYA worker should take special responsibility for assisting and controlling the youth with respect to his afterschool behavior, e.g., providing constructive activities that substitute for gang activity. He should be able to involve parents in special gang informational evening activities as well as programs that enable parents of gang-affiliated youth to make better use of school educational resources for themselves. The CBYA worker may be able to assist parent and community groups to organize patrols in collaboration with the police to protect children on their way to and from school and home. The worker should also be helpful in recruiting community volunteers to participate in a range of school-based activities that would enhance the social and cultural life of gang-prone students and their parents both during and after school. The activities of the CBYA workers with older gang youth still at school may have a somewhat different emphasis. These youth may not only be failing, but on the verge of dropping out. The CBYA worker should encourage the school to keep these youth in regular school programs and provide additional tutorial and afterschool support or perhaps arrange special remedial classes or school transfers for them, if appropriate. Program changes for youth that involve vocational training and cooperative school and work experiences should be encouraged. If these youth have quit school, CBYA staff should work with school administrators to establish alternative school programs and remedial evening programs, and special skill or GED centers. CBYA workers should collaborate with teachers, parents, and community volunteers to teach and supervise these youth. CBYA staff could be especially helpful by counseling parents who unknowingly reinforce their children's participation in gangs. They should also facilitate communication between court and probation officers and employers and teachers, to create a consistent set of expectations and community controls. FAMILY SUPPORT Families in low-income, newcomer communities are often characterized by personal and social disorganization, and lack of stability and self- respect. They may be socially isolated from the opportunities, values, and norms of the larger society. A few of the newcomer families may have a history of gang affiliation. Fathers, uncles, cousins, and friends may be current or former gang members. Some families from inner-city areas move to the new neighborhoods or smaller cities and bring the gang subculture with them. Many of these parents, burdened with their own problems, are often ineffective parents in dealing with their children. They are not consistent in their guidance, control, or support of particularly headstrong or impulsive youth. They may have difficulty in setting limits or communicating behavioral expectations. They may not support the youth in his school efforts. They may pay little attention to peers whom he hangs out with. They fail to notice or understand the sudden appearance of gang signs and symbols in the home. A few of these parents will look away when the young adolescent male begins to drink hard liquor and smoke marijuana. And they may avoid asking questions of the youth who provides the occasional extra money for food or household expenses, although the parent knows that such funds come from street drug sales or other criminal, sometimes gang-related, activity. These parents are extremely difficult to reach and counsel effectively. They are often known to many agencies, but do not respond to school, agency, or community efforts to control and socialize their children. A persistent long-term outreach effort by the CBYA in cooperation with other agencies must be initiated. Usually, these parents will not appear for counseling sessions with the school, family, or mental health social worker. The CBYA staff person will need to visit the family in the home on a regular, informal, yet purposeful basis. A positive helping relationship must be established. The worker may possess certain family treatment skills, provide home care assistance, help the family with access to new resources, or simply be available to participate in a variety of social, family, and cultural affairs as a family associate or friend. Over time, the worker should become an advocate, helper, teacher, referral agent, mental health worker, and friend. In all cases the focus should be on assisting the family unit to function in a more socially productive way, particularly as it contributes to improved social behavior of the gang-prone or gang member youth. There will be occasions when the family is so disorganized and the influence of the parent(s) so negative that a gang-prone or gang member youth must be assisted to leave the particular family situation. In conjunction with the child welfare agency, the court, or probation officer, the CBYA worker may assist with temporary shelter or foster care for the youth or recommend transfer of parental responsibilities to another relative such as a grandparent, uncle, or aunt. Residential care out of the community can be a useful last resort. When appropriate, the CBYA worker can attempt to aid parents of gang members by having them meet together to share problems of parenting and supervising their gang offspring. These groups can become mutual aid or support groups during times of gang crises. Some of the groups may assist in efforts at community control of the gang problem through crisis intervention and mediation efforts as well as school patrol and afterschool volunteer activities. These activities may require the guidance of school and police authorities as well as that of the CBYA. Some of these support groups or concerned parent groups may develop leadership capable not only of counseling other parents but advocating for more and improved agency services and community opportunities for gang-prone and gang member youth. TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT The CBYA can play a multitude of roles in the training and employment of older gang youth and in preparing younger youth who are still at school for the world of work. Gang members and gang-prone youth tend not to have the academic or vocational preparation, let alone specific job skills or experience, necessary for the work place. Most important, they simply do not understand the meaning of work, holding a job, and earning a regular wage. Often, there have often been few adults available at home or in the neighborhood with regular full-time jobs to provide models of attitudes and behaviors necessary for success at work. The CBYA can help schools, community organizations, and employers to prepare youth for employment with job readiness programs at their facility. Introductions to the world of work may already exist in a more fully developed form, however, at a variety of other agencies or training centers. The CBYA should set a high priority in referring gang youth to these programs and helping them to make the best use of these opportunities. Filling out forms, role playing, and developing techniques for getting a job, particularly for older youth, is only one, and not necessarily the most important, component in preparing the gang youth for work. A job that has some status and provides self- respect for the gang youth is almost a sine qua non for his breaking or significantly reducing contact with the youth gang and settling down. It offers him the sense of manhood, identity, and loyalty he obtained as a gang member and gang fighter. There is much that a job can teach a youth about conventional behavior and productive ways to interact with peers and authority. On the other hand, sufficient, meaningful jobs or connections to them may not be readily available. It is incumbent upon the CBYA, therefore, not to engage in superficial or ineffective job referral, but in substantial job development efforts on behalf of gang youth in cooperation with business and industry, other CBYAs, and public agencies. A variety of innovative arrangements have begun to develop in which CBYAs provide training for specific job openings in particular industries. Instructors and stipends for trainees are offered by the particular business or corporation, and the youth is assured a job at the termination of training. The CBYA can also provide a variety of services to support him during training and the initial job adjustment period, including remedial education, drug treatment referral and counseling. In some cases, the CBYA can develop small entrepreneurial operations, sometimes in collaboration with other established businesses, that employ gang youth. Examples include graffiti removal, building contract work including carpentry and painting, and food preparation services. Of special importance are cooperative job development and job readiness programs with the schools. CBYAs can take some responsibility for the creation of job banks to provide part-time employment for youth after school and during the summer period. They can assist schools with special support services for youth in apprenticeship positions. In all cases, the focus must be on gang members and gang-prone youth who have the greatest need to develop problem-solving skills. The temptation to deal with lower risk or less intractable youth has to be avoided. SOCIAL CONTROL The CBYA must learn to accept and take on new roles of deterrence, supervision, or suppression in dealing with gang-prone and gang member youth. In this process, key links with police, probation, parole, and the courts must be developed. Gang youth and their families should come to view the CBYA worker not only as a helping agent but as a possible link to authoritative or criminal justice agencies that will not hesitate to report gang- related behavior and assist with certain activities such as surveillance or patrol. The agency's supervisory or deterrent role takes many forms. It is based on the traditional socialization function of the CBYA to assist the individual to mature and socially develop within the framework of the conventional values of the neighborhood and a democratic society. Because of family and community breakdown, the CBYA must not only take on a greater responsibility for social support and remediation of problem behavior, but also for control of deviant and anti-social behavior. The challenge is difficult since gang members and gang-prone youth often have very weak identification with conventional authority. The CBYA worker must clearly demonstrate and articulate his identification with legitimate authority. His exercise of rules, regulations, and decisionmaking must be eminently fair, patient, and consistent. At the same time, he must clearly associate his role of authority with that of protecting and safeguarding the youth from physical harm. Protection of other people and community property should be viewed as affecting, ultimately and directly, the welfare of the gang youth himself. The authority role of the CBYA worker is particularly difficult to carry out when he is on youth gang turf or surrounded at the agency or elsewhere by a solid phalanx of gang members displaying gang-oriented norms and values. The development and expression of the worker's deterrent role is an evolving one that must be connected to the worker's support role. It must be exercised judiciously, in part depending on the strength of his relationship with gang members or gang-prone youth and their common experiences together. At no point, however, should there be any doubt by gang youth as to where the worker and his agency stand on issues of gang criminal behavior, particularly violence and drug trafficking. Gang-prone and gang member youth should recognize that the worker and his agency are closely affiliated with criminal justice agencies and will support all legitimate investigation, surveillance, and suppression activities, if not assist in carrying them out through crisis intervention, school patrol, and criminal justice information- sharing. The CBYA should also participate in a variety of joint probation and parole activities to facilitate the implementation of court or correctional orders, particularly with respect to avoiding participation in gang-related delinquent or criminal behavior. CBYA rules and regulations must be kept to a minimum but vigorously enforced. On the other hand, the CBYA worker should not come to be viewed as simply a policeman or probation officer. He is largely an authoritative intermediary. He must express acceptance of and identification with gang youth and local neighborhoods norms and values that are non- criminal. He must demonstrate his concern for social justice when the gang youth receives unfair or unjust treatment at school, in court, on the job, or elsewhere. This means that there will be occasions when he will advocate for just and fair treatment for the gang youth both through informal, formal, and public channels. COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION AND AGENCY COORDINATION Community-based youth agencies also have a responsibility to mobilize local community groups and other agencies to develop collective community or citywide anti-gang crime efforts. These include not only advocacy and development of more effective means to protect the local community from youth gang crime, including drug trafficking, but the development of more resources and opportunities for education, training, and jobs targeted to gang members and gang-prone youth. As a member of the community system of agencies, the CBYA may be ideally positioned to observe and articulate the needs and problems of the community and its youth. The CBYA may be able to rally others to action, especially if the agency has a track record of working with gangs and can demonstrate credibility with diverse organizations and community groups. It may also act as a moderating force where others might be inclined to overreact to gang youth and their crimes of violence. The CBYA is integral to the success of local efforts to reduce gang activity. It can be either an initiator of action in the development of local anti-gang strategy or a key partner with other organizations, especially the schools in emerging gang-problem contexts. The community-based youth agency can therefore assume either a leadership role or that of team member as a long-term plan for reducing gang violence and working with gang youth is developed. Consistency within the Agency: Essential to a community mobilization and coordination effort is a consistent agency response and strategy. The CBYA director must develop a vision that is shared by and communicated to all staff. He must have a commitment to assisting youth to meet their social needs through positive means, yet holding them accountable for their actions. He must also work on their behalf so that appropriate community systems are established to benefit them. Necessary to this commitment is a common set of agency rules and expectations subscribed to by board members, program staff, and volunteers in their concerns and interactions with gang youth. Coordination Among Organizations: In conjunction with the schools, agency executives and program directors should participate in whatever local or citywide group is formed to ensure coordination with representatives of police, prosecutors, probation/parole, other direct service providers, the mayor's office, community groups, and local businesses. Since this task force may be large, it is anticipated that work on certain issues may be assigned to committees. Staff, other than the agency and program directors, may find it valuable to serve on committees, as appropriate, to learn and draw on expertise of committee members as well as to build relationships with them that are useful in the development of services for gang youth. Reporting to youth agency program and school staffs on these meetings should be a standing item on staff agendas to ensure CBYA and school staff are kept abreast of important issues and decisions. Regular meetings could also be held with probation and parole to discuss the progress of youth in the program. CHRONIC GANG-PROBLEM CITIES The same type of CBYA core services and approaches are required in chronic gang problem cities as in emerging gang problem cities. The differences lie mainly in the elaboration and intensity of services and emphases in approaches provided. The residents of the chronic gang-problem community will have suffered greater relative deprivation and consequently will need greater resources. The problem of gangs and gang crime will be more entrenched and complex. Service and program patterns will already have been established, but more formal arrangements will be required within and across a greater variety of agencies and community groups. The role of the CBYA will have to be more closely linked with that of a public authority or criminal justice agency, particularly a probation department. Some of the key differences or elaborations of services and approach in chronic problem contexts are the following. Socialization: The intransigence of gang violence and gang crime in chronic problem settings will require a more formal and comprehensive arrangement by the CBYA to reach established gangs and gang members on the street. Crisis intervention teams will be needed to visit "hot spots" to reduce gang tensions and mediate conflicts. A special 24-hour emergency communications system may have to be established in cooperation with the police department's gang unit. Special procedures will be necessary to distinguish between the conflict resolution purposes of the CBYA worker and the suppression purpose of the police. Greater attention to the social needs of older gang youth and their families will be required. The CBYA worker will also have to be in touch with a greater range of agencies to integrate gang youth into mainstream conventional activities. Education: More youth will have dropped out of school. Since they are older, they will require special school arrangements, probably in alternative or special adult education skill centers. A greater range of remedial educational, vocational training, and apprentice arrangements with business and industry, and supportive counseling programs will be required. Ideally, such adult skill and educational centers should be an integral part of the existing educational system, preparing a range of newcomer adults and dropout youth -- some delinquent for a variety of legitimate careers. These programs should be flexible in format and permit entry and exit at different points. Parents and community groups should play an integral role in the program's development. While special attention should be paid to the interests, needs, and problems of gang youth and their families, it should be within the context of a mainstream school and training environment. Family Support: The tradition of youth gangs is expected to be extremely strong in the chronic gang-problem community. Two- and three-generation gang families will be common, particularly in ghettoized public housing. The massive social and economic problems of these families will of course not be overcome simply through a variety of outreach and support efforts by CBYA workers. Therefore, it is advisable that relatively greater concentration be focussed on guidance to families with younger gang-prone youth. Older gang youth are more likely to be on their own and not amenable to family-based interventions. Probation, parole, and corrections, along with parent and community groups, should be used more often by CBYA workers to bring pressures to bear on committed gang youths to change their values and behaviors. Parent groups may be useful in persuading other parents to more frequently communicate and cooperate with police and probation around problems of serious gang violence and drug trafficking. This can be done to protect their own active gang member youth as well as other members of the community. In other words, distinctions among socialization, family support, and control strategies become particularly difficult to make in chronic gang-problem communities, since problems seem to be more tightly interlinked. Employment: While a variety of training and employment programs directed at low-income and sometimes offender youth exist, very few, if any will target the needs of gang youth. More formal and intensive efforts will be required in cooperation with public authorities, businesses, and industries. Governmental tax incentives will be necessary to facilitate the training and employment of gang youth. A series of arrangements with probation and parole should allow CBYAs to supply various support and even some supervisory services to gang youth in these training and employment settings. CBYAs can also be contracted to provide special training in business and industry in how to deal with gang and gang-prone youth. Social Control: Because of the intensity and greater severity of the gang problem in chronic problem contexts, close community-based supervision and short-term incarceration may be more likely options than traditional counseling service by CBYA workers. The CBYA worker will have to share information more regularly and quickly with police, probation, community influentials, schools , and even correctional authorities to prevent and control sudden gang outbreaks. Considerable personal risk for the worker may be incurred in this effort. The CBYA worker will require greater agency support. Also important in chronic gang- problem contexts is for the CBYA worker to maintain contact with the youth during his stays in probation camps, detention, correctional institutions, and prisons. The gang youth usually does not remain in jail for long. Appropriate services for him in the institution and his positive integration back in the community should be primary objectives. Regular visits to the youth in jail and sustained relationship with him are critical as the CBYA worker attempts to influence the core gang member not to return to gang activity in the community. Community Mobilization and Agency Coordination: The chronic gang-problem community is characterized by fragmentation of services and a lack of resources to deal with problems of extreme violence and gang- related drug trafficking. Only a massive and persistent community and interagency mobilization effort through formal and informal structures will contribute to a significant reduction in the problem. The CBYA can be a lead agency in a mobilization process of which criminal justice agencies, community groups (including parent groups), businesses, and schools are important components. The CBYA executive and staff must be particularly skilled in interagency and intercommunity group conflict resolution. Not only youth gangs but agencies and community groups appear to be in a perpetual war of competition for scarce resources. External resources should be provided to local agencies on condition that gang youth are adequately targeted for service and that such services are highly coordinated and integrated. Consensus on the nature of the gang problem and what to do about it is critical to efforts within and across agencies and communities. Such consensus is particularly difficult to achieve in larger, more complex, and fragmented chronic gang-problem contexts. Community-based and criminal justice agencies and local groups must also show their dedication to the mission of gang control by holding each other accountable for providing requisite services. Staff Selection and Training: CBYAs should be staffed by mature individuals who are strongly motivated to serve and have the capacity and skills to work with young people. At least some of the staff should have backgrounds similar to those of the target population. Some should have lived in similar ghetto or socially isolated and problem- ridden communities. The CBYA worker should be able to reach out to parents, criminal justice and treatment agencies, and local community organizations as well as to teachers in dealing with troublesome gang member or gang-prone youth. Only staff who are committed to the program's goals should be hired. All staff should participate in a training and orientation period. Agency staff, board members, community residents, and representatives of schools and justice system agencies should participate in joint training, as appropriate. Much of the training will be defined by the experience that participants themselves bring to the agency. However, outside experts will have to be brought in to discuss a range of topics: 1) the current scope, nature, and basis for the gang problem; 2) how to relate to gang youth and their families; 3) special issues of gang control and mediation of disputes; and 4) identification and use of agency facilities and programs as well as local community resources. Other topics include appropriate collaborative procedures with staff of other agencies. Ways to integrate CBYA support and social control procedures with various agency and community group representatives working with gang youths should be emphasized. RESEARCH AND EVALUATION The proposed community-based youth agency model should be tested in emerging and chronic youth gang-problem communities. Such a complex program needs to be carefully designed and faithfully implemented. Specific objectives, services, and process should be assessed initially through formative evaluation procedures. In other words, a substantial period of demonstrating and testing of the elements of complex CBYA-related programs should be carried out before any systematic outcome testing or summative evaluation is conducted. When such outcome evaluation is finally carried out, it should focus on objectives for the general reduction of gang conflict, gang-related drug trafficking in the local area, and reduction in the number of gangs and gang members among targeted youth in the program. Specific intermediate objectives to achieve these outcome objectives should be assessed. They include changes in the targeted youth's school performance, attendance, and behavior; and special training courses completed, types of jobs obtained, and their job duration. Internal agency, interagency coordination, and community mobilization processes as well as the role of the CBYA worker should also be studied to the extent that research resources are available.