One of the final scenes of the 1988 movie "Colors" shows Felipe being led away by police after engaging in a murderous firefight with his fellow gang members against the Bloods. While "Colors" portrays one of the more extreme worlds of gang violence, it also shows how some adolescents can stand in a halfway world of being drawn into the excitement of gang life and being still young enough to have a chance of escaping that world. Because youth like Felipe are still in school -- or are supposed to be attending -- Coordinators have a chance to intervene in their lives before they join a gang. But before Coordinators can take action, it is important to understand the complicated world of youth gangs -- one that can bear little resemblance to the stereotypes often portrayed in the media and in movies.

This event is designed to help you understand the nature of youth gangs and how to prevent and address gang-related problems in your schools and communities. It will run for two weeks, from Monday, September 20 through Friday, October 1. During the first week, National Center staff will facilitate the on-line discussion among event participants on a regular basis. This means that staff will monitor and contribute to the discussion several times each day. The second week is primarily intended for participants to continue their exploration of event resources as well as any discussions with fellow Coordinators that began the week before; Center staff will monitor the event during the second week.

During this event, you will have the opportunity to do the following:

• Learn about the nature and evolution of youth gangs in the United States

• Review methods for assessing youth gang problems in schools and communities

• Examine a comprehensive set of strategies for preventing and addressing gang-related problems

• Explore additional resources that can further inform your gang prevention and intervention efforts

You are ready to begin this event if you have done the following:

• Received confirmation of your registration

• Visited the Center's Orientation to On-Line Events Web site

Before beginning Day 1, please read this page to learn the answers to the following frequently asked questions about on-line learning:

• Why Do You Offer This Training On-Line?
• What Will I Learn from This Event?
• How Is This Web Site Organized?
• How Much Time Is Required Each Day?
• Can I Print These Materials?
• Where Can I Go for Help?

Why Do You Offer This Training On-Line?

Conducting training on-line has numerous benefits! On-line or distance learning allows professionals working in different locations within a district, throughout a state, or even across the country to come together around a topic of interest and form a community of practitioners.

Specifically, on-line learning offers these advantages:

• It saves time and money for participants who would otherwise have to travel to a training.

• It provides access to information for participants who live and work in places where resources may be unavailable or difficult to locate.

• It increases participants' familiarity and comfort with technology.

• It provides flexibility, allowing participants to access information at the time and pace most convenient for them.

• It gives participants an opportunity to engage thoughtfully in a topic of interest by allowing them time to reflect before responding.

• It provides materials that participants can print for future reference or share with colleagues and community members.

What Will I Learn from This Event?

Youth Gangs: Going Beyond the Myths to Address a Critical Problem is a five-part workshop designed to be completed over five days. This workshop takes a tiered approach to learning, presenting multiple levels of information, actual examples of the application of this information, and extensive additional resources. It is divided into the following sections:

How Is This Web Site Organized?

This site is composed of the following sections:

How Much Time Is Required Each Day?

Week 1: We expect that it will take you approximately one hour per day to review materials, complete activities, and contribute to the event discussion. We ask that you visit the Discussion Area at least once each day to share your ideas and experiences, as well as to review and respond to the messages posted by your fellow participants and National Center staff. If possible, it is beneficial to visit the Discussion Area more than once each day; participants in previous on-line workshops have found that more frequent visits allowed them to better monitor and contribute to the on-line discussion.

You will have a more accurate sense of how much time you will need to set aside for this event after you complete the first session. Please make sure to allow enough time each day to complete all event tasks; your full participation is the key to the success of this training.

Week 2: During the second week of this event, we encourage you to continue your exploration of event materials as well as your on-line discussion with fellow event participants. National Center staff will periodically monitor your discussion during this week, and any critical questions left unanswered by your peers will be forwarded to gang experts at two points: on Tuesday and Thursday. You will receive a response to those questions as soon as National Center staff hear back from the experts.

Can I Print These Materials?

All event materials can be printed for future reference. However, we strongly suggest that you review the materials on-line before you print them, so that you can see how the various sections fit together and participate more readily in the on-line discussion among event participants and National Center staff.

There are two ways to print event materials. The easiest way is to look for this box at the end of each day's materials and follow the instructions:

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

While the PDF files include all of the main text and supporting materials for each day of the event, the formatting will be a bit off. If you prefer to maintain the formatting that you see on-line, please try the second printing method (described below).

You can also print the event materials directly from your Internet browser. To print a specific page, go to that page, place your cursor on File (at the top of the page), go to Print, and then press OK. Everything on the screen in front of you will print. Please note that, if you select this option, you will need to choose the "Landscape" orientation under Page Setup in order to fit all the text on the page. To print only the text (minus the title and navigation bars at the top and side of the screen), place your cursor on the page you want to print, right-click your mouse, select Print, and choose OK.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to print the entire site with a single click of the mouse.

Where Can I Go for Help?

If you have technical questions or problems, you can submit an on-line request for assistance in the Event Support section. You may also find answers to your questions in the following tip sheets located in the Resources & Links section: Navigating This Site, Participating in On-Line Events, and Using the Discussion Area.

The Lure of Gangs and the Consequences for Youth

Fueled by movies and media portrayals, a series of myths about gangs have emerged that obscure the deeper meaning and threats that gangs pose to young people. Below are some misperceptions about gangs that you may hear or have heard from school and community members in your role as a National Coordinator.

According to James C. (Buddy) Howell, Ph.D., a long-time gang researcher and former director of research and program development at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, it is important to debunk the myths about gangs and focus on real problems that gangs pose, especially for schools.

Before moving on to the variety of ways in which schools and communities can prevent and address youth gang problems, it is first important to develop a shared understanding of this complicated subject -- particularly in light of the many myths that exist about youth gangs. In today's materials, we will review answers to the following frequently asked questions:

• What Are Youth Gangs?

• What Is the Status of Youth Gangs Today?

• How Many Youth Are Involved in Gangs?

• Why Do Youth Join Gangs?

• What Are Some Consequences of Gang Membership?

What Are Youth Gangs?

Researchers and others have not been able to agree on a common definition of youth gangs, in part because each views a gang through a particular lens. Law enforcement tends to define gangs by more serious criminal behavior, while community workers and adolescents tend to adopt a broader definition of youth gangs. However, researchers generally agree that youth gangs have the following elements:

• A group of three or more members, usually between the ages of 12 and 24

• A gang name and some sense of identity, usually indicated by such symbols as a style of clothing, graffiti, and hand signs

• Some degree of permanence and organization

• Involvement in delinquent or criminal activity

Other researchers define gangs by the type of activity they engage in. According to Carl Taylor in Addressing Community Gang Problems: A Practical Guide (1994), gang characteristics can be grouped into three categories: corporate, territorial, and scavengers.

Another way to look at gangs is according to their make-up or membership.

Gangs range from long-established ones in areas like Chicago and Los Angeles to newly emerging ones in cities like Seattle, Wash.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Denver, Colo. Researcher Joan Moore asserts that for a youth gang to be established, "conventional agencies of socialization -- families and schools -- must be ineffective and alienating, which means that conventional adult supervision is largely irrelevant." Adolescents must also have a lot of free time to hang out and a place to do so, usually a neighborhood. There also "must be limited access to appealing conventional career lines -- also known as good adult jobs."

What Is the Status of Youth Gangs Today?

The 1998 release of "Colors," mentioned in this event's homepage, coincided with an alarming rise in the number of youth gangs around the country. Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, communities noted a startling increase in youth gangs. While Los Angeles and Chicago-based gangs generated the most media coverage, gangs reached from the inner cities to small towns and rural areas. The growth was particularly frightening because of the gangs' access to guns and cars, leading to the violent drive-by shootings widely portrayed in the media. According to James Howell, the growth in youth gangs during the 1980s and 1990s was typical of the ebb and flow of gangs in the past.

Many communities reported the existence of gangs for the first time. These newer gangs were more difficult to classify than those of the past. The growth of the youth gang problem has steadied since the mid-1990s. Since 1996, the National Youth Gang Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, has conducted a survey of law enforcement agencies about youth gang activity in their jurisdictions. Every city with a population of 250,000 or more has reported youth gang problems since the survey began. In 2002, 87 percent of cities with a population between 100,000 and 249,999 reported youth gang problems.

The survey found a decline in reported gang problems in smaller cities and rural counties. The 2002 survey also revealed that 38 percent of suburban county agencies, 27 percent of smaller city agencies, and 12 percent of responding rural county agencies reported youth gang problems. Larger cities and suburban counties accounted for about 85 percent of the estimated number of gang members in 2002. Researchers estimated that approximately 731,500 gang members and 21,500 gangs were active in the United States in 2002.

How Many Youth Are Involved in Gangs?

The national survey of law enforcement officials about gangs, while useful, does not paint the whole picture of youth gangs. Law enforcement concentrates on the most violent offenders and may not count younger members who are not committing the most serious crimes, said Arlen Egley, Jr., a research associate at the National Youth Gang Center, which compiles the annual survey. Law enforcement tends to concentrate on the most violent offenders or offenses, but levels of gang-related violence vary dramatically across jurisdictions (see this Bulletin for further discussion). This is likely associated with the variation in reported age composition of documented gang members across jurisdictions. For example, larger-populated jurisdictions typically report a large majority of documented gang members are adults, whereas smaller-populated jurisdictions report most gang members are, on average, juvenile-aged. Police tend to report on male gang members, although female gang members commit crimes as well.

Up until recently law enforcement officials have viewed females as simply appendages of their boyfriends in a gang rather than full members. While some of the earliest research certainly was biased toward male gang membership, serious scholarly attention to female gang membership has been carried out for at least 20 years (see this Bulletin for further discussion). By way of contrast, just a decade ago a nationwide survey found that many law enforcement agencies did not as a matter of policy identify females as gang members. While this appears to have changed over the past decade -- that is, law enforcement is more likely to report documenting female gang members -- there is still the issue of under-documentation as males continue to make up, on average, 90 percent or better of the reported gang members.

According to Howell, the prevalence of youth gang membership depends on the location, with areas that have had long-standing gang problems reporting higher percentages of youth involved in gangs.

However, a series of surveys in the past decade paint a picture of many students who either report attending schools with gang problems or who have joined gangs themselves. A 2000 survey of middle and high school students found that 7.1 percent of males and 3.6 percent of females reported gang participation (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2001). Among samples of high-risk youth, gang membership is higher, ranging from 14 percent to 30 percent in Denver, Colo.; Seattle, Wash.; and Rochester, N.Y. According to Howell, the average age that adolescents join gangs is between 13 and 15.

Just as disturbing, a national survey of students age 12-19 conducted in 1995 by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice found that more than one-fourth (28 percent) reported that there were gangs at their schools. Analysis of the data also "suggested that gang presence is an important contributor to overall levels of student victimization at school," according to the federal report by Chandler and others. The survey asked students whether they had been victimized at school, such as having someone take money from them by force, stealing something from them or physically attack them.

Further analysis of the survey data in a report by Howell and James P. Lynch found that when more security measures are used in schools, gangs are significantly more prevalent (e.g., the presence of security measures at schools, such as security guards, metal detectors and locked doors during the day). The authors noted that the results were difficult to interpret because the data could indicate that more security measures are employed in response to gang presence. However, they also stated that many of the security measures that schools are using may not be used effectively.

Current Results

Why Do Youth Join Gangs?

So what is the draw for some adolescents to join a gang? The answers vary but researchers offer some insights, both from talking with gang members and examining their lives. Terrence P. Thornberry, a professor at the school of criminal justice at the University at Albany, State University of New York, conducted a 16-year-long study of high-risk youth in living in Rochester. Thornberry and his colleagues followed the youth for several years, some of whom joined gangs and others who did not.

When Thornberry and others look at the backgrounds of gang members, they find that a variety of risk factors place adolescents at increased risk for joining a gang.

Those factors include the following:

• Early involvement in delinquency, especially with violence and drug use

• Troubled family relationships

• Low attachment to school and poor grades

• Association with youth involved with gangs, including older siblings

• Living in neighborhoods with gangs

The more of these factors in a child's life, the greater the risk that he or she will join a gang. Hanging out with delinquent peers, school failure at the elementary level, and sexual activity at an early age in particular are among the stronger predictors of gang membership.

What Are Some Consequences of Gang Membership?

"For it is not simply the case that gang members are somewhat more delinquent than nonmembers. They are, in fact, responsible for a huge proportion of the crime, especially the serious and violent crime that occurs."

-Terrence Thornberry, et al. in Gangs and Delinquency
in Developmental Perspective

Adolescents who become involved in gangs are at great risk, not only during the time they are in the gang but for a downward course for their lives. According to J. David Hawkins (director of the Social Development Project at the University of Washington) and his colleagues, gang membership is one of the strongest indicators of individual violence in adolescence. Studies in several cities indicated that gang members are responsible for a large percentage of violent crime. In Rochester, N.Y., gang members reported committing 68 percent of all adolescent violent offenses; in Seattle, Wash., gang members reported committing 85 percent of adolescent robberies, and in Denver, Colo., gang members self-reported committing 79 percent of all serious violent adolescent offenses. Gang members are far more likely than other delinquents to carry guns and use them. In a Rochester, N.Y., study, gang members were about 10 times as likely to carry guns as non-gang juvenile offenders.

Studies of gang members in Seattle, Rochester, and Denver show that youth commit many more serious and violent acts while they are gang members than after they leave the gang. But even after they stop being an active gang member, their crime rates remained high. Thornberry and his colleagues note that gang involvement tends to increase the "criminal embeddedness" of gang members.

Gang involvement can also wreak havoc in an adolescent's life even after he or she leaves a gang. According to Thornberry, gang involvement disrupts the developmental course of youth's lives, forcing them to take on roles that they are not yet ready for with devastating consequences, such as teen parenthood, dropping out of school, and unstable employment. They also have a much higher likelihood of violent victimization than other adolescents in other peer groups.

Youth who participate in gangs also have much lower educational expectations than do other students and are much more likely to be threatened or victimized at school, according to Gary and Denise Gottfredson (educational researchers based in Ellicott City, Md.). While 91 percent of students who are not involved in gangs report that they expect to complete high school, only 75 percent of gang-involved youth expect to finish high school.

Their 2001 study found that 28 percent of gang-involved boys reported that they had been threatened with a knife or gun in the current year in school while only 5 percent of other boys reported similar threats. Similarly, 18 percent of gang-involved girls reported being threatened while only 2 percent of other girls reported threats. Ironically, while some boys and girls say they join gangs for protection, they are much more likely to be afraid of being hurt than are other students.

Looking Ahead

Frightened by the upsurge in gang activity, communities around the country have been implementing a variety of approaches to stop or at least slow down this alarming problem. In recent years, often supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, communities have begun to implement comprehensive programs that include prevention, intervention, and police suppression efforts. All of these efforts require close collaboration among police, public officials, community agencies, schools, businesses, and others. In Day 2, we will take a look at some of these efforts and the research behind them, as well as spotlight some innovative programs that might be applicable to your area.

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

References for Day 1 materials:

Addressing Community Gang Problems: A Practical Guide (1998). Washington, DC.: Bureau of Justice Assistance. Available on-line at: http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/164273.pdf.

Chandler, K. A., Chapman, C. D. Rand, M. R., and Taylor, B. M. (1998). Students Reports of School Crime: 1989 and 1995. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, and U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Egley, A. (July 2004). Personal communication.

Egley, A. & Major A. K. (April 2004). Highlights of the 2002 National Youth Gang Survey. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Also available on-line at: http://www.njrs.org/pdffiles1/ojjdp/fs200401.pdf.

Gottfredson G. D. and Gottfredson D. C. (October 2001). Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools. Ellicott City, MD: Gottfredson Associates, Inc. Also available on-line at: http://www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm.

Howell, J. C. (2003). Preventing & Reducing Juvenile Delinquency: A Comprehensive Framework . Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Howell, J. C. (July 2004). Personal communication.

Howell, J. C., and Lynch, J. P. (August 2000). Youth Gangs in Schools. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, . Also available on-line at http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/jjbul2000_8_2/contents.html.

Thornberry, T. P. (August 2004). Personal communication.

Thornberry, T. P., Krohn, M.D., Lizotte, A. J., Smith, C. A. & Tobin, K. (2003) Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

In Gangs: A Community Response, the California Attorney General's Office lists several types of gangs that are active in the state, some of which are similar to gangs in other parts of the country. The following quotes from this guide are intended to provide an overview of these different gangs:

African-American Gangs

"African-American gangs first appeared in southern California in the 1920's. They were not like the Bloods and Crips that are well-known today. It is believed that the first Crip gang was formed in late 1969. During this time in Los Angeles there were many African-American gangs, and they were all rivals with each other.

"The Crips outnumbered the rest of the African-American gangs. Because of this and the fact that the Crips had become the common rival between the remainder of the gangs, the first Blood gang was formed. The Blood gang was an alliance formed by all the other gangs who did not want to be part of the Crips. As the Crip and Blood rivalry increased, gang assaults became increasingly more violent. Crip and Blood gangs also got involved in the distribution and sale of drugs. The illegal trafficking of drugs became a major factor that intensified the rivalry between the two gangs."

Asian Gangs

"California is home to the majority of Asians who live in the United States. Types of Asian gangs include Korean, Chinese, Japanese, South Pacific Islander, and Indo-Chinese. Some Asian gangs mimic western gangs in dress style, the use of tattoos, graffiti, and criminal behavior. Other Asian gangs develop expertise in particular crimes, such as home invasion robberies, credit card and check fraud, and computer chip thefts.

"The Indo-Chinese gangs have members from the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Minh, and Hmong who immigrated to the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Refugee and immigrant families experienced a similar culture shock as Mexican immigrants did in the 1900s [some of whom formed gangs]. As a result, some Asian youth established and joined a gang. The first Indo-Chinese Asian gangs appeared in southern California between 1978 and 1980. Culture and language barriers have made it difficult to monitor, investigate, and prosecute Asian gang members."

Hispanic Gangs

"Hispanic gangs are established throughout the state. Hispanic gangs use graffiti to mark the boundaries of their turf. These marks serve as a warning to rival gangs, a welcome greeting to peer gang members, and often a form of intimidation to the citizens who live within the boundaries of the turf. Hispanic gang members often consider themselves the 'policemen' of their neighborhoods. Thus, they are motivated to protect these areas.

"As makeshift guardians of their barrio, Hispanic gang members are expected to defend it against any type of intrusion. The mere presence of a rival gang, the crossing out of their gang graffiti, a derogatory look, an insult to a girlfriend -- all have been motivations for gang-related attacks. Many Hispanic gangs are generational. California has third-and fourth-generation Hispanic gang members."

Tagging Crews

"In tagging crews, also known as 'graffiti vandals', the individual members are called 'taggers.' Many tagging crews initially formed for the sole purpose of placing their names or slogans in as many visible locations as possible. Sometimes individual crews would have a contest or `battle' with each other. They would try and get their tag and crew name up as many times as possible within a specified geographical area and time. The winners could play for cans of spray paint, or the losing crew members would have to join the winning crew, or the losing crew might have to give up its current name. Initially tagging was conducted by individuals or crews who had no specific gang affiliation. However, fatal violence began to occur among tagging crews. Rivalries have intensified, and some tagging crews have begun to claim turf-life traditional gangs and regularly arm themselves with guns."

Female Gang Members

"While female gang members account for less than 10 percent of California's total gang population, females, especially in the Asian and Hispanic gangs, have moved away from the traditional role of being merely girlfriends of gang members. There are no stereotypes for female gang members. Some female gang members are gainfully employed. Females have formed their own gangs and also have become members in traditionally all-male gangs. Caucasian and African-American females have also formed their own gangs. In some instances, female gang members have become co-leaders of a gang that has both male and female members. Female gang members have been known to carry weapons and drugs for their gang."

Source:

California Attorney General's Office (June 2003). Gangs: A Community Response Sacramento, CA: Author.

The Kansas City Missouri Police Department Gang Squad lists the following as warning signs of gang membership for parents and other concerned adults:

• Changes in the child's behavior.

• Not associating with long-time friends and being secretive about new friends and activities.

• Changes in hair or dress style and/or having a group of friends who have the same hair or dress style.

• Changes in normal routines with new friends, such as not coming home after school or staying out late at night with no explanation.

• Suspected drug use, such as alcohol, inhalants, and narcotics.

• Unexplained material possessions ion, or other deadly weapons.

• Change in attitude about school, church, or other normal activities.

• Discipline problems at school, church, or attended functions.

• Lower grades at school or skipping school.

• Change in behavior at home -- increases in confrontational behavior, such as talking back, verbal abuse, name calling, and a disrespect for parental authority.

• A new fear of police.

• Phone threats to the family from rival gangs (or unknown callers) directed against your child.

• Photographs of the child and others displaying gang handsigns, weapons, cash, drugs, or gang-type clothing.

• Graffiti on or around the residence, especially in a child's room such as on walls, furniture, clothing, notebooks, etc. Many also include drawings and "doodling" of gang-related figures, themes of violence, or gang symbolisms.

• Physical signs of being in a fight, such as bruises and cuts and secrecy on the child's part as to how they were received.

• A new found sense of bravery -- brags that he/she is too tough to be "messed" with.

• Use of new nickname.

• A new-found sympathy or defending of gang activity by the child.

• Tattoos or "branding" with gang-related symbols.

Model Strategies to Prevent and Address Youth Gangs

"It is so important that adults build relationships with young people around something they are interested in. As adults, we are often tempted to 'fix' something going on in the lives of kids, and we focus on what is 'wrong' with them. In a youth development setting [and in an educational setting as well], adults have the opportunity to utilize interest-based programs as a vehicle to build a trusting, healthy relationship with young people around something they are interested in first. From there we are more effective in addressing the needs of young people . . . because we are more likely to establish a foundation of trust. So, for example . . . if an educator identifies a kid who is at high risk of gang involvement who is interested in art, but needs conflict resolution skills . . . we have the option to refer the youth into conflict resolution classes and/or an art program. Given the choice to attend one or the other, a young person will most likely choose an art program over a conflict resolution program because it is what he/she likes to do. So, instead of referring this young person to a conflict resolution class first to "fix" the problem, we start with referring him/her to an art program . . . an interest. The art instructor at the Boys & Girls Club [or school or other youth development agency] utilizes art as a vehicle to build a healthy relationship over time and down the road is able to integrate conflict-resolution skills into the art program. The combination of interest- and needs-based programming [instead of just needs-based or just interest-based] is a powerful relationship-building tool that youth development professionals and other adults can utilize to bring about impactful change."

- Becky Flaherty, senior director, delinquency
prevention, Boys and Girls Clubs of America

For decades, police and communities have tried to address gang problems in their areas, with often disappointing results. Like many other attempts to solve deep-rooted problems, there has been a swing from one approach to another. Early on, programs emphasized prevention in an attempt to keep youth from joining gangs. Later on, perhaps as gangs grew more violent, the focus shifted to police suppression.

Neither approach, at least alone, has demonstrated much effectiveness in addressing gang problems.

In response to these findings, and work with gangs, many communities have begun to adopt a more comprehensive approach to dealing with gang problems. Many of these approaches have been funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Most are modeled, in one way or another, on the work of Dr. Irving Spergel, a University of Chicago sociologist and researcher, and his colleague, Dr. David Curry. The model is based on survey responses from 254 law enforcement and social service agencies that were part of the National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Research and Development Project. The comprehensive approach, includes these five components:

• Community Mobilization: Involvement of local citizens, including former gang youth, community groups and agencies, and the coordination of programs and staff functions within and across agencies.

• Opportunities Provision: The development of a variety of specific education, training, and employment programs targeting gang-involved youth.

• Social Intervention: Involving youth-serving agencies, schools, grass roots groups, faith-based organizations, police and other juvenile/criminal justice organizations in "reaching out" to gang-involved youth and their families, and linking them with the conventional world and needed services.

• Suppression: Formal and informal social control procedures, including close supervision and monitoring of gang-involved youth by agencies of the juvenile/criminal justice system and also by community-based agencies, schools, and grass roots groups.

• Organizational Change and Development: Development and implementation of policies and procedures that result in the most effective use of available and potential resources, within and across agencies, to better address the gang problem.

The model includes a focus on providing safe, gang-free schools by involving both the schools and communities.

Current Results

In their research, Spergel and G. David Curry found that cities with chronic gang programs reported that providing opportunities like jobs and education, and community mobilization were the most effective responses to gang problem. However, they were the least often employed strategies.

The National Youth Gang Center (2002) suggests that the chances of community success in dealing with gang problems can be increased by implementing the Spergel-Curry Comprehensive Gang Model (Spergel, 1995). It is a multifaceted, multilayered approach that includes eight critical elements:

• Initial and continuous problem assessment using qualitative and quantitative data
• Targeting of the area and those populations of individuals most closely associated with the problem, as described in the assessment
• Mix of the five key strategies: community mobilization, social intervention, opportunities provision, suppression, and organizational change/development
• A steering committee to oversee and guide the project
• A direct contact intervention team that includes police, probation, outreach staff, and others
• A plan for coordinating efforts of and sharing appropriate information among those who work with the youth on a daily basis, the steering committee, and persons within the partner organizations
• Community capacity building to sustain the project and address issues that are long-term in nature
• Ongoing data collection and analysis to inform the process and evaluate its impact

Research Basis for the Comprehensive Approach

An early demonstration of the comprehensive approach came in an evaluation of a program in Little Village in Chicago, a low-income and working-class community that is approximately 90 percent Mexican-American. The program targeted older members of two of the most violent Latino gangs in the area through two coordinated strategies: (1) increased police and probation supervision to conduct violent gang youth or delinquent youth at risk of joining a gang; and (2) efforts to encourage at-risk youth to finish school, find jobs, and become part of the conventional adult world through job training, family support, brief counseling, and other interventions. Evaluation results indicated a reduction in the rate of increase in gang violence in the Little Village area compared with a control area.

OJJDP has since funded several other programs that are modeled on this approach, including the Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression program (including Project Bridge in Riverside, Calf.), the Gang-Free Schools Program and the Gang Reduction Program. In recent years, OJJDP has begun to emphasize the prevention elements more than it has in the past. Earlier efforts focused heavily on intervention for adolescents who were already involved in gangs, according to OJJDP officials. Prevention efforts are needed as well because it is much harder to dissuade adolescents from gang life once they are involved. While these approaches appear promising, evaluations of the programs are not complete. So it is hard to say with certainty whether the comprehensive approach, while it makes sense in theory, has any long-term impact on reducing gang involvement and violence.

Gary and Denise Gottfredson carried out a national study in 2000 titled "Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools," of gang problems and prevention and intervention programs in schools. They found that the quality of the programs varied widely, with many falling short in their effectiveness.

Practitioners and researchers suggest that anyone seeking to implement a program to prevent adolescents from becoming involved in gangs also take a look at general juvenile delinquency programs. These programs tend to have more of a research base and, with some changes, could also apply to youth at risk of joining a gang or for those already involved in a gang.

Overview of the Comprehensive Approach

One of the newest models of a comprehensive approach to gangs is the Gang Reduction Program, funded by OJJDP. At work in four cities (North Miami Beach, Fla., Los Angeles, Calif., Milwaukee, Wisc., and Richmond, Va.), the program has the following elements: (1) primary prevention; (2) secondary prevention, (3) intervention, (4) police suppression, and (5) reentry.

The Gang Reduction Program has a stronger emphasis on prevention than did previous programs. But like other comprehensive approaches, program staff hire outreach workers to spend time out in the streets and connect with youth who are most difficult to reach. These workers actively seek out youth on the cusp of joining or already in a gang. That approach can potentially solve one of the problems of programs reaching only youth who are not at the most risk of joining a gang or in a gang.

Several programs have reported pros and cons in hiring former gang members and community members as outreach workers: they know their community and can reach the adolescents most at risk, but they are not always well-versed in the administrative aspects of the job, such as keeping gang colors, drugs, and weapons outside community organizations, which are also important. A more promising model appears to be combining street outreach workers with college-educated program coordinators to oversee the programs.

These programs typically have an intervention team consisting of school officials, police, probation officers, community agencies, such as the YMCA or Big Brother and Big Sister, mental health services, treatment agencies, and others who work with youths. These teams met regularly to discuss caseloads of adolescents who are involved with gangs or who are at risk of gang involvement. They share information among themselves and make referrals to appropriate agencies.

One of the elements that can be helpful to Coordinators is that the approach often looks to coordinate services in the community, rather than establish new ones.

Elements of the Comprehensive Approach

As researchers and practitioners have gained experience in trying to prevent gang involvement and intervene with youths already deeply part of gangs, they have seen that a broad range of responses is needed -- from the youngest child to offenders coming out of incarceration and re-entering the communities where fellow gang members are still active (note: when experts talk of gang prevention, it is a short-hand method of saying preventing youth from joining gangs, rather than preventing gangs from forming).

Schools will probably take the most active role in the prevention aspects, but can play an important part in the entire spectrum of responses. The following is a more detailed look at the OJJDP's Gang Reduction Program.

As adolescents enter high school, school officials and others must look to intervention strategies.

Looking Ahead

Coordinators already have some tools to address gang problems in their communities, such as programs to combat bullying and truancy. They also have advisory committees composed of community members who can act as resources for potential and current gang members. The first step is to assess the extent of the gang problem in each community. We will take a closer look at that process tomorrow.

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

References for Day 2 materials:

Anthony (August 2004). Personal communication.

Arbreton, A. J. and McClanahan, W.S. (March 2002). Targeted Outreach: Boys and Girls Clubs of America's Approach to Gang Prevention and Intervention. Philadelphia, PA: Public/Private Ventures. Also available on-line at http://www.ppv.org/ppv/publications/assets/148_publication.pdf.

Boys and Girls Clubs of America web site http://www.bgca.org.

Decker S. H. (February 2001). From the Street to the Prison: Understanding and Responding to Gangs. St. Louis, MO: University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Flaherty, B. (July 2004). Personal communication.

Gottfredson G. D. & Gottfredson D. C. (October 2001) Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools. Ellicott City, MD: Gottfredson Associates, Inc. Also available on-line at: http://www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm.

Howell, J. C. (2002). Youth Gang Programs and Strategies: Summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Also available on-line at http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/summary_2000_8/home.html.

Howell, J. C. (July 2004). Personal communication.

National Youth Gang Center (2002). Assessing Your Community's Youth Gang Problem. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Spergel, I. A. (1995). The Youth Gang Problem. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tagle, R. (July 2004). Personal communication.

Wojtalewicz. C. (July 2004). Personal communication.

According to the National Youth Gang Center, the Comprehensive Gang Model came about after extensive research with law enforcement, review of the research literature, and "social disorganization" theory.

On its Web site, the National Youth Gang Center explains the model as follows:

"The terms 'youth gang' and 'street gang' are commonly used interchangeably and refer to neighborhood or street-based youth groups that are substantially made up of individuals under the age of 24. While youth in this age group are most likely to be engaged in or at risk of committing serious or violent gang crimes, the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model focuses primarily on youth gang members less than 22 years of age, which is based on OJJDP's authorizing legislation. Motorcycle gangs, prison gangs, ideological gangs, and hate groups comprised primarily of adults are excluded from the definition."

The Model holds that the lack of social opportunities available to this population and the degree of social disorganization present in a community largely account for its youth gang problem. The Model also suggests other contributing factors, including poverty, institutional racism, deficiencies in social policies, and a lack of or misdirected social controls. Drawing principally on social disorganization theory to frame the development of the Model, a team from the University of Chicago expected the core strategies of the Model to address gang youth, their families, and the community institutions that purport to promote their transition from adolescence to productive members of society. With this in mind, law enforcement and other agency personnel in 65 cities reporting problems with gangs were surveyed. Analysis of that information, in conjunction with site visits and focus groups, led to a mix of five strategies that address key concerns raised by the theory upon which the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model is based:

• Community Mobilization: Involvement of local citizens (including former gang youth and community groups and agencies) and the coordination of programs and staff functions within and across agencies.
• Provision of Opportunities: The development of a variety of specific education, training, and employment programs targeted at gang-involved youth.
• Social Intervention: Youth-serving agencies, schools, grassroots groups, faith-based organizations, police, and other criminal justice organizations "reaching out" and acting as links between gang-involved youth (and their families) and the conventional world and its needed services.
• Suppression: Formal and informal social control procedures, including close supervision or monitoring of gang youth by agencies of the criminal justice system and also by community-based agencies, schools, and grassroots groups.
• Organizational Change and Development: Development and implementation of policies and procedures that result in the most effective use of available and potential resources within and across agencies to better address the gang problem.

These strategies were found to be present -- to a lesser or greater degree -- in the cities with identified gang problems that were having a positive impact on gangs. In addition to data from the surveys, extensive input from expert practitioners and gang researchers made it clear that a community's gang violence problem required attention be paid to both gang-involved youth and gangs themselves. Long-term change would not be achieved without also addressing the institutions that support and control youth and their families.

The OJJDP initially funded five sites in 1995 to implement the Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression program. Two of the sites, Riverside, Calif., and Mesa, Ariz., had enough promising funding to receive additional OJJDP funding in 1999. In fiscal year 2000, OJJDP launched the Gang-Free Schools Program in four sites (Miami-Dade County, Fla.; East Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Penn.; and Houston, Tex.) as a replication of the Comprehensive Model.

In recent years, OJJDP has put more of a focus on emphasizing prevention in the comprehensive approach. In fiscal year 2004, it established the Gang Reduction Program in four pilot sites (Los Angeles, Calif.; North Miami Beach, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; and Milwaukee, Wisc.). Department of Justice officials believe that programs must start as early as possible in children's lives to prevent them from becoming involved in gangs.

Sources:

National Youth Gang Center at http://ww.iir.org/nygc, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

In Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, two gangs, the Latin Kings and the Two Six, kept the community in fear and were responsible for 75 percent of gang-related homicides, aggravated batteries, and aggravated assaults in Little Village in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The rival gangs directed much of the violence at each other, with sometimes devastating consequences for bystanders.

To address this problem the Chicago Police Department undertook the Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project between 1992 and 1997. University of Chicago Professor Irving Spergel designed the project and became its coordinator.

According to an article on the project, "the underlying assumption of the project is that the gang problem is largely a response to community disorganization, where key social institutions -- such as family, schools, police, and business -- are unable to collaboratively address the problem. The key idea of the model is to have organizations and representatives of the local community join forces to socially engage and control the behavior of young gang members, and encourage them to participate in legitimate activities in society."

The project targeted 200 members of the Latin Kings and the Two Six. The project combined an approach of social intervention with police suppression. It also included community mobilization strategies and the provision of increased social and economic opportunities for youth between the ages of 17 and 24. Youth outreach workers, a neighborhood organizer, police officers and probation officers all provided counseling to gang members they met on the streets. About half of the gang members also received home visits. Team members provided about 40 percent of the targeted youths with school referrals and special educational programs and 60 percent with job referrals and help with job placement. Workers also referred gang members and their families to medical care and drug and alcohol treatment as well as professional counseling. Police and other team members focused on reducing violence among gang members through monitoring and arrests.

The evaluation yielded the following key findings:

• Participating youth generally reduced and/or lowered their level of arrests for violence and drug crime compared with gang youth who did not receive the intervention services.

• Participating youth decreased their drop out rates (Latin King from 52 to 35 percent, and Two Six from 44 to 26 percent). The percentage of Latin Kings who held jobs increased from 36 to 48 percent and the percentage of Two Six members who were employed increased from 31 to 63 percent.

Evaluators found that a collaborative, community-based approach was more effective than traditional approaches emphasizing singular strategies, such as prevention, intervention, or suppression. However, they also found that the combined approach that brought together police, youth outreach workers, and a neighborhood organizer was difficult to implement and sustain. It was also difficult to work with the outreach workers, some of whom were former gang members.

Sources:

Hahn, T. (March 1999). Reducing Youth Gang Violence in Urban Areas: One Community's Effort. Chicago, IL: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Also available on-line at http://www.icjia.state.il.us/public/pdf/oga/OGAv2n5_0399.pdf

Spergel, I. A. & Wa, K. W. (August 2002) Combating Gang Violence in Chicago's Little Village Neighborhood. Chicago, IL: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority . Also available on-line at http://www.icjia.state.il.us/public/pdf/oga/GVRP.pdf

Gary D. Gottfredson and Denise C. Gottfredson carried out a study of prevention and intervention gang programs in the nation's middle and high schools. Their findings point out some of the pitfalls of these programs, as well as provide some guidance for implementing more effective programs. Among their key findings are the following:

• "There is much room for the improvement in the quality of programs in some straightforward ways. This includes increases in the use of practices with respect to program content and methods that are found in programs that have been evaluated and found to be effective. It includes increases in the intensity (duration and frequency) with which programs are operated and includes increases in extent of their application."

• "A principal implication of the data on quality is that a large fraction of these programs are not programmatic in the sense that they are well-developed and high-quality systems of service. Quite the opposite. It appears likely that the quality of prevention activity in schools might improve if it were consolidated into a smaller number of higher-quality programs."

• "Results show that secondary students who report being involved in gangs are less exposed to many prevention activities than are students who are not exposed to gangs. This suggests the potential for including more of the highest-risk youth by actively seeking ways to include them. An analysis of the forces that limit gang-involved youth from participation should be part of the planning of any gang prevention or intervention program, with program design features or arrangements put in place to cope with or minimize the influence of these forces."

• "Fewer than half of gang prevention or intervention programs have been guided by a formal needs assessment. Formal planning is associated with stronger programs."

• "Formal needs assessment may contribute to (or depend on) principals' willingness to identify problems related to gangs. The finding that principals usually report that gangs are not a problem even in schools with a high percentage of students reporting that they participate in gangs suggests that lack of principal recognition of problems may be an obstacle to the development of effective prevention and intervention programs. At the very least, the results imply that principals' reports that gang activity is not a problem should be met with skepticism unless evidence from other sources confirms the reports."

Source:

Gottfredson G. D. & Gottfredson D. C. (October 2001). Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools. Ellicott City, MD: Gottfredson Associates, Inc. Also available on-line at: http://www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the Phoenix Police Department developed the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program (G.R.E.A.T.) as a potentially cost-effective approach to reduce serious youth and adult gang crime. The program, which began in 1991, was aimed at providing students with tools to resist the lure of joining a gang. Modeled after the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program (a school-based drug prevention program taught by law enforcement officers), the 13-session course taught by uniformed law officers to middle school students, the curriculum: (1) highlights the dangers of gang life and provides information on the dangers of gang involvement; (2) seeks to help students develop life skills in peacefully resolving conflict and resisting pressure to join gangs; and (3) encourages adolescents to develop a positive relationship with law enforcement. Unlike most efforts to reduce gang involvement, this program is given to an entire classroom, rather than focusing on adolescents who appear to be most at risk for gang membership.

The program also provides a shorter curriculum for third and fourth graders as well as a summer and a family component. Nearly 365,000 students received the G.R.E.A.T. curriculum in fiscal year 2002.

A national evaluation of the program yielded some contradictory findings. There were no significant differences between participants and non-participants after two years, but after four years, G.R.E.A.T. students exhibited more positive social attitudes than non-G.R.E.A.T. students. Students in the G.R.E.A.T. program reported lower levels of risk-seeking and victimization, more positive attitudes toward the police, more negative attitudes toward gangs, and more friends involved in positive social activities than students in the control group. Neither study showed any reduction in gang membership and delinquent behavior.

But the study's authors cautioned that the program results were modest. "Clearly, this program is not a 'silver bullet' or a panacea for gang violence," stated evaluator Finn-Aage Esbensen. The initial poor results promoted ATF to solicit a review of the curriculum, which the Bureau revised in January 2001 to provide more interactive lessons, greater involvement with classroom teachers, and booster sessions to reinforce skills learned in earlier years.

For more information on the program see http://www.great-online.org/.

For information on the evaluation see Esbensen, F. A. (June 2004). Evaluating G.R.E.A.T.: A School-Based Gang Prevention Program. Washington, DC U.S. Department of Justice. Also available on-line at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/198604.pdf.

In the early 1990s, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) began working with youth at risk of joining gangs or already in gangs. Government officials were becoming alarmed about the increasing numbers of youth gangs, and BGCA officials were hearing about increased gang activity from their local clubs.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of America drew on their long work in juvenile delinquency prevention in developing programs aimed at preventing youth from joining gangs and enticing youth away from gangs. The programs, Gang Prevention Through Targeted Outreach, and Gang Intervention Through Targeted Outreach, seek to reach youth by first establishing relationships with them and then providing them with services they need to keep or get their lives on track. The programs are based on research that showed that risk factors for delinquency are similar to risk factors for joining a gang. BGCA sought to offer alternative activities and supports to youth that a gang typically meets.

The prevention model brings youth into local Boys and Girls Clubs to participate in all aspects of Club programming. Known as "mainstreaming," the approach seeks to avoid labeling adolescents-who probably have already heard a host of negative labels about their behaviors, according to Becky Flaherty, senior director, Delinquency Prevention, Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

"We know from research that you don't put a bunch of high-risk kids together. They will learn high-risk behavior from each other," Flaherty said.

She continued, "When we talk about community mobilization, we are talking about working with adults who understand mainstreaming. Let's say a fifth grade teacher sees a kid drawing gang signs. He's not there yet [as part of a gang] but he's headed there. Instead of saying, `I see you drawing gang signs,' and sending him to the Boys and Girls Club for a [anti] gang class, she could say, `I see you're artistic, and send him to a Boys and Girls Club or YMCA for an art class. The programming, at least initially, is going to be about art."

But the art teacher would also incorporate conflict resolution into the art lessons, Flaherty said. As the staff at the Boys and Girls Clubs get to know the youth, they help them set goals for school and for life. An evaluation of the program found that it was difficult in practice to integrate programs that incorporated a youth's interest and builds skills, such as conflict resolution. In practice, the program was typically offered separately.

"Because getting the gang members to the classes the program offers can be challenging, Clubs provide incentives and rewards for good attendance," wrote Amy J. Arbreton and Wendy S. McClanahan of Public/Private Ventures in an evaluation of the programs. "A reward might be the opportunity to go waterskiing or rock climbing. These events give youth an important chance to see appropriate behavior outside of the neighborhood."

The approach also involves a close working relationship with the parents, the school, and law enforcement and probation, if necessary, so all the key adults in the youth's life know what is happening with her. Club staff make special efforts to recruit youth, going to schools, hanging out in parks, and seeking referrals from police, probation officers, and teachers.

Public/Private Ventures, Inc., conducted an evaluation of the BGCA prevention and intervention programs between 1997 and 2000. Both programs fared well. For the prevention program, the evaluators surveyed the youth when they first were recruited to the program and 12 months later. The evaluators found that the majority of youth engaged in Club activities for 12 months (73 percent for the prevention group and 50 percent of the intervention group) reported going to the Clubs or projects several times per week in the month prior to the follow-up interview.

The evaluators pointed out that those levels of retention and participation "are difficult to achieve with any youth or teen, let alone with youth who have been engaging in high-risk behaviors." Study findings also reported that participating youth reported several experiences that are critical to healthy development, according to the research literature. Those experiences included (1) receiving adult support and guidance from at least one Boys and Girls Club staff; (2) feeling a sense of belonging and safety; and (3) finding the Club activities interesting and challenging.

In trying to determine whether the prevention program played a role in keeping youth away from gangs, the evaluators reported that more frequent participation was "associated with the following positive outcomes":

• Delayed onset of one gang behavior (less like to start wearing gang colors)
• Less contact with the juvenile justice system (less likely to be sent away by the court)
• Fewer delinquent behaviors (stealing less and less likely to start smoking pot)
• Improved school outcomes (higher grades and greater valuing of doing well in school)
• More positive social relationships and productive use of out-of-school time

Sources:

Arbreton, A. J. and McClanahan, W. S. (March 2002). Targeted Outreach: Boys and Girls Clubs of America's Approach to Gang Prevention and Intervention. Philadelphia, PA: Public/Private Ventures. Also available on-line at http://www.ppv.org/ppv/publications/assets/148_publication.pdf.

Boys and Girls Clubs of America Web site http://ww.bgca.org.

Flaherty, B. (July 2004). Personal communication.

The City of Houston Mayor's Office offers these suggestions in working with Gang-Impacted Families:

As you reach out to enlist families in keeping their children out of gangs and gangs out of the community, these reminders may be helpful.

LISTEN.
Ask how they feel; consider body language as well as words and voice tones. Listen to the interactions among family members for clues to underlying relationships.

DON'T BLAME.
Sometimes family members will try to enlist you on "their side." Sometimes it's tempting to deal in "if only . . . " thinking. You are trying to enlist, encourage, and empower people, not load them with guilt.

BE AVAILABLE.
In a busy world with many urgent priorities, this can be the hardest job of all. But being in places where family members can reach you in person and by phone, and being open to their concerns makes the overall job much easier.

HAVE THE FACTS.
Dealing in rumors, opinions, and surmises hurts your own credibility. Factual answers can also help defuse tensions.

BE AN ALLY.
Helping people do things themselves may at first seem more difficult than doing it on your own. But keeping in mind the ally and helper role makes it easier to enjoy enormous benefits of empowering the families you are working with.

BE A RESOURCE.
As a professional with training, experience, and contacts, you doubtless know many ways to help people avoid "re-inventing the wheel." There is nothing wrong with offering guidance and advice.

BE SENSITIVE TO FAMILY CULTURE.
Regional differences, cultural differences, and differences in heritage can all affect how family members go about working together and with you.

Source:

City of Houston Mayor's Anti-Gang Office.

Assessing Youth Gang Problems in Your School and Community

When Renee Parker began conducting an assessment of the gang problem in a section of Miami, she asked some reformed gang members to talk to her and her advisory committee about what they were up against.

Parker also asked law enforcement officers who work closely with gangs to educate the advisory committee about gangs in the area. It was a critical step on their way to understanding the gang problem in their area, she said. The officers trained Parker and others on signs of gang membership. Even though the hard-core gangsters might no longer wear colors, have tattoos, or shoot hand signs, the younger "wannabes" who are less sophisticated probably will.

As Coordinators, you have multiple responsibilities and taking on a problem as big as gangs may seem daunting. Fortunately, you should already have several pieces in place that will help you do this work. With guidance from your advisory committee, you can conduct an assessment of the gang problem in your school. The assessments that you have already carried out could provide valuable information in putting together a picture of gangs in the school community.

The community members on your committee and your contacts can help you learn about the resources already available that could be used to address the needs of at-risk youth and those already in gangs.

Current Results

Collecting the Data

The first step in addressing a gang problem in your community is understanding the scope of any gang problem. The depth of your assessment depends on your resources. But several practitioners interviewed said that it is critical to look at several data sources in order to get a full picture of the gang situation in the area. Law enforcement will likely only deal with the most serious gang members and may not have information on newer members who are not yet committing serious crimes. Adolescents may have insights into gangs at their schools, and community agencies still have another picture of gang involvement from youth that they serve. Each piece has its strengths and weaknesses, but all of them can add up to a more complete picture of gang activity in your area.

Experts recommend the local law enforcement department as the first stop in assessing a gang problem. Larger police departments may have an anti-gang unit; smaller ones should have police officers who are familiar with gangs in the area. As a first step, Coordinators can make an appointment with an officer familiar with gangs and ask for an hour to get an overview of the situation. Coordinators can make clear that they are not looking for individual names or information on ongoing investigations. You simply want to understand more about gangs in your community, including an overview of gangs, size of gangs, rivalries among gangs, turf issues, and adult involvement (for example, some adults go to schools to recruit for gangs with offers of free alcohol, drugs, and sex).

It also helpful at the outset to determine the scope of the assessment: whether it will focus on only younger children at risk of joining gangs, adolescents on the cusp of joining a gang, active gang members, or all three. While it can be tempting to focus just on younger children, it will do little to address an immediate gang problem in your community.

Coordinators should also investigate these avenues for information about gangs:

• Police data. Coordinators can ask the police officer they are working with if they collect data on gang-related incidents, and if so, to share those data. If they do not, you can ask to review police incident reports to try to determine the extent of gang problems. If police do not mark reports as possibly gang-related, as many do not, Coordinators may want to ask for all reports on homicide and aggravated assault involving people under 20 years of age, which in many areas is a good proxy measure of gang violence. Coordinators may also want to limit their review to incidents within a defined geographical area, such as the schools they work in. However, it is also important to let the data speak for itself. For example, it may seem that most gang problems are in one neighborhood, but then the data reveals another story. Click here for more information about analyzing police reports.

• Student and school-level data. School data can help identify risk factors, such as school suspension, truancy, and dropout rates that may make students more vulnerable to joining a gang. Among the activities that Coordinators can take are the following:

  • Collect school data on number of fights in schools, dropout rate, and truancy figures. These figures can serve as a proxy for potential gang activity.

  • Conduct a student survey on their perceptions about gangs or conduct student focus groups. These surveys or interviews should also ask about students' perceptions of needs to address gang problems.

  • Conduct a teacher and school administrator survey about perceptions of gangs and social service needs of at-risk and gang-involved youth.

• Community data Hold focus groups of community members. Interview community members and leaders about their perceptions of gangs, including the police chief, elected officials, community organizations, neighborhood groups, parents and others. Again, ask them about the unmet needs they see. Click here for a sample interview form for community members.

For interviews of youth and parents, it may be a good idea to contract with a local university or research firm to conduct in-person or telephone interviews. Some marketing professionals, professors or graduate assistants might do the work for free as part of a research project.

Current Activities and Resources

The next step is to inventory the activities and resources that are available in the community. In creating a response to gang problems, model sites around the country are looking for ways to link into existing programs rather than create new ones.

• Begin with any previous needs assessment that you have done and review for programs related to youth development, juvenile delinquency, and violence prevention. The programs do not have to have gang in their title to be effective in working on gang prevention and intervention.

  • Ask local agencies and members of the advisory committee if their organizations have conducted a needs assessment or community mapping of resources. The local United Way, police department, or YMCA might have conducted an assessment of youth resources.

  • Using any existing needs assessments as a start, survey community service providers to identify their current programs and whom they serve. Classify them by the needs they are trying to fill and any documented effectiveness of the program. Among the key questions to ask: (1) what are the objectives of the services?; (2) how are the services delivered?; (3) what geographic areas are served?; (4) to whom are services provided? (age, sex, qualification requirements); (5) when are the services provided?; and (6) what does it cost and who pays for it?

  • Find out whether these organizations serve or would serve gang members. Some social service agencies might be initially reluctant to work with gang members but will do so under certain rules, such as not allowing gang members to wear gang colors or bring weapons into their program.

• Compile and analyze the data.

  • All of the data combined should start to paint a picture of the gang issues in the community and how to target resources. For example, police reports might show that one of the major times for gang offenses is after school or that they occur on certain routes to school.

  • An assessment also provides a research-based report of the gang problem, which can be helpful in making the case to the school, community officials, and community organizations about why they need to address it.

• Coordinators or committee members should prepare a short report on their findings.

Looking Ahead

The assessment guides listed in the references section provide a wealth of information. When you have a chance, look them over and use what would work for your situation. Some of these programs ask Coordinators to carry out a 6- to 18-month assessment. Yours does not have to be that extensive to yield valuable information.

The report should include social indicators, such as aggravated assaults in which the victim was under 20 years of age, school fights, and drop-out rates as indicators of bad outcomes. The report should also point out the services that are available and gaps that need to be addressed. From there, it is important to develop a consensus around priorities in gang prevention and intervention. The team should first develop a consensus themselves and then take the findings to the public. Tomorrow we will look at options for interventions.

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

References for Day 3 materials:

Addressing Community Gang Problems: A Practical Guide (1998). Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance. Also available on-line at: http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/164273.pdf.

A Guide to Assessing Your Community's Youth Gang Problem (2002). Tallahassee, FL: Institute for Intergovernmental Research. Also available at http://www.iir.com/nygc/acgp/assessment.htm.

Parker, R. (July 2004) Personal communication.

Wyrick, P. (July 2004) Personal communication.

When trying to learn more about gang problems in your community, the following questions can be helpful as you begin your assessment:

• Do gangs exist in our community?

• How do we know they exist?

• How long have these gangs been in operation?

• Approximately how many youth are involved in these gangs?

• How are youth recruited into these gangs?

• What behaviors do these gangs engage in?

• What specific harm do these behaviors cause?

  • Is someone being injured?
  • Is something being stolen? If so, what?
  • Is property being damaged?

• Could serious social or economic costs result from these behaviors?

• Who carries out these behaviors?

• What efforts, if any, have already been made to control gang membership or harmful activities?

• Are specific individuals, businesses, or community groups complaining about gang activities? If so, what specific behaviors or activities are they reporting?

• Are these behaviors being carried out at certain times and places?

Source:

Addressing Community Gang Problems: A Practical Guide (1998). Washington, DC.: Bureau of Justice Assistance. Available on-line at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/164273.pdf.

The Institute for Intergovernmental Research, which runs the National Youth Gang Center, has prepared an extensive guide on assessing a community's youth gang problem. In it, the manual provides the following guidance in collecting data from law enforcement:

Source:

A Guide to Assessing Your Community's Youth Gang Problem (2002). Tallahassee: FL: Institute for Intergovernmental Research. Also available at http://www.iir.com/nygc/acgp/assessment.htm.

Copyright 2002, Institute for Intergovernmental Research, All Rights Reserved.

Developing an Implementation Plan for Your School and Community

"Public schools, especially middle schools, are potentially the best community resource for the prevention of and early intervention into youth gang problems. The peak recruitment period for gang members is probably between fifth and eighth grade, when youth are doing poorly in class and are in danger of dropping out. Most schools, overwhelmed by other concerns, tend to ignore or deny the problem."

Gang Suppression and Intervention:
Problem and Response (Spergel I., Curry D., Chance R.,
Kane C., Ross R., Alexander A, Simmons E, & Oh, S.
Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, 1994)

Making the Case for a Response to Gangs

In the 1990s, gang activity in Pittsburgh, Pa., was at an all-time high, as it was for many other large cities. Law enforcement mounted a major undercover investigation, which led to the arrest of more than 30 gang leaders who went to prison under tough federal sentencing guidelines. In recent years, after an apparent lull, Pittsburgh is seeing an increase in gangs again. But Erika Fearby Jones, the Gang-Free Schools director in Pittsburgh, believes that the gangs never really went away.

Youth who are involved in gangs today are more savvy about federal laws, such as added penalties for being an identified gang member, so they are less likely to display obvious signs of gang membership, such as wearing a color. But they may employ subtler signs, such as wearing similar designer clothing.

As part of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Gang-Free Schools program, Fearby Jones and her colleagues spent 18 months carrying out an in-depth assessment of the gang problem in Pittsburgh. The resulting report provided evidence not only of gang activity, but specifics about where the activity was taking place, at what times, as well as an assessment of the existing resources in the community that might be used to respond to youth at risk for becoming involved in gangs or already in gangs.

The document also helped make the case to school and city officials that a gang problem existed. For some officials, it is difficult to acknowledge serious gang activities, perhaps out of fears of negative publicity. But when a report spells out the problem with specifics, it is much harder for officials to deny that gangs are active in their area.

Using the resources from this event, including your needs assessment, evaluation findings, and the toll of gang membership on youth, you should have enough information to persuade local officials that they need to address a gang problem found in your community. If you find less evidence of a specific gang problem, the literature on the consequences of gang activity should provide support for strengthening or simply continuing your prevention programs, including your safe and drug-free programs.

Taking the First Steps with Implementation

With the needs assessment, Coordinators will have a picture of the gang problem and the needs in the community. The next step is crafting responses to the problem, many of which may already exist in the community but may need tweaking or coordination, such as after-school programs with a special outreach to kids who have started to get involved with gangs.

Look for ways for existing programs to start serving gang members or potential gangs if they have not in the past. For example, a drug treatment program that has refused to serve gang members out of fear for staff safety might agree to do so if the members don't wear gang colors, which could incite a rival gang.

If your assessment has revealed gaps in services, such as prevention, you can start with prevention programs that have a solid research base.

The assessment may reveal gaps that are not filled in the community, however. For example, the assessment may show that there are few programs that target girls at risk of gang involvement. In that case, you will need to look for approaches or programs to implement. Click here for a link to a strategic planning tool that lists effective gang and delinquency programs.

Setting Goals and Objectives

According to the National Youth Gang Center's Planning for Implementation, when creating a plan to address gang issues, it is important to take the following steps after the priority issues have been established and the target population identified:

• Develop goals (three to five).

• Develop objectives for each goal.

• Develop activities for each objective.

• Identify target groups (youth, family members, community residents, etc.) for activities.

• Identify the agency responsible for the activities.

• Identify potential barriers and a plan to overcome the barriers.

• Identify the contact person responsible.

• Determine start and completion dates.

You will look to different programs for youth at elementary, middle, and high school. As mentioned earlier, the younger the children, the more efforts will focus on primary and secondary prevention. As youth get older, especially in high school, efforts will need to focus on intervention and working with police in suppression.

Developing Community Partnerships

One of your most important jobs as a Coordinator is to foster relationships with community agencies and members who will provide many of the services to potential and active gang members. Your work already with your advisory committee and in developing responses to other issues, such as bullying, crisis response, and others should have laid the groundwork for many of these relationships. The needs assessment may well reveal other organizations that you will want to work with.

Depending on the scope of the gang problem in your community, you may want to spearhead the creation of a separate committee that targets gang prevention and intervention. This committee can act as other multi-disciplinary committees do, meeting on a regular basis, carrying a case load of youth at risk for gang membership, and making referrals for each youth depending on his or her needs. Practitioners who work with youth involved with gangs point out that each adolescent needs individual attention. Any group seeking to respond to their issues must find ways to respond to those particular needs, such as mentoring with a consistent adult figure, job training, anger management, providing help getting to school, finding an alternative school, or tutoring to bring the reading level up, just to name a few needs.

If you believe that more concerted efforts are needed to reach some youth, you may want to look into funding to hire outreach workers and Program Coordinators (we will look at funding sources on Day 5). It is important, however, to look for ways to institutionalize any of the efforts in local agencies so that they will continue once funding ends.

Other Options in Addressing Youth Gang Problems

It may turn out that the gang problem in your area is not severe enough to warrant creating a separate committee that focuses on youth at risk of gangs or actively involved in gangs. Or you may not have the resources to create and sustain such a committee. If so, your ongoing work should begin to include anti-gang approaches. As mentioned earlier, you do not necessarily have to create new programs for youth at risk of gang involvement, but it is important to look at the existing programs through a new lens: do these programs reach these youth, and do they meet the multiple needs of these youth -- many of whom might have more severe problems than the typical adolescents whom programs address.

Working Toward Organizational Change

In your work on gangs, you may find out that structural changes are needed in the community in order to more effectively address gangs. For example the Pittsburgh Gang-Free Schools program staff is working with the police department to include a checkbox on arrest reports where officers can indicate whether or not they believe that a crime is gang-related. That change would make it easier to gather data on gangs in the future.

The Pittsburgh police department also began officer training in working with gangs and tracking incidents to assist in directing patrols and activities. At the school level, it may be necessary to make changes that ease the ability of youth with mental health issues to get help, for example. According to Planning for Implementation, a manual for developing gang intervention programs, in Tucson, Ariz., the juvenile court judge issued an order allowing various agencies to share information that was previously considered confidential. In San Antonio, Tex., several schools began allowing youth workers to meet with youth at the school during the school day, which had been prohibited in the past. Another program persuaded the police agency to change a policy that prohibited hiring outreach workers with criminal backgrounds.

Other Steps That Coordinators Can Take

If there are few resources for a consistent community response to gangs, Coordinators and communities can still take steps to address gang issues. One of the most important is to educate schools and the community about the gang problem in your area and the consequences of involvement in gangs.

You can start by asking a local police officer or probation officer to come to a faculty meeting to lay out the situation of gangs in your community. Because gangs are all local, only local officials will be able to tell school officials what is happening in their area. You can ask the law enforcement officer to talk about the types of gangs in your school district, how big they are, what ages are involved, what they are into (protecting turf, selling drugs, etc.), and how they identify themselves (through clothing, graffiti, lettering, tattoos, etc.). If adults are involved, they may be recruiting members from schools through offers of free alcohol, drugs, or sex. School officials, including teachers, need to be aware of these signs of gang membership so that they can serve as an information source about youth possibly involved in gangs.

According to Irving Spergel, a University of Chicago sociologist and gang researcher:

Teachers, counselors, security officers, and others will need to know whom to refer these youth to and about available resources, both in school and the community. You can also provide handouts to teachers and other school staff about gangs, including signs of gang membership and how youth can get out of gangs.

Looking Ahead

If your community does not have a coordinated response to gangs, the school principal could be an effective leader in motivating people to take action. Social service agencies, police, and others turn to schools when they want to reach youth. Because of that, schools are in a powerful position to exert leadership on an issue that can affect so many youth -- either by their involvement with gangs or by suffering from the presence of gangs in schools or in their neighborhoods. School leadership can take the stance that they are concerned about the safety of their students and reach out to other leadership in the community and become the catalyst for pulling together an organized response. At the least, schools should have the name of police officers they can share information with about gangs, and Coordinators can look into joining a community anti-gang task force.

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

References for Day 4 materials:

Fearby Jones, E. (July 2004) Personal communication.

Felch, J. (August 4, 2004) Second Graffiti-Removal Worker is Shot to Death. Los Angeles Times.

Gottfredson, G. D. & Gottfredson, D. C. (October 2001). Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools. Ellicott City, MD: Gottfredson Associates, Inc., . Also available on-line at: http://www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm

Kallus, L. (July 2004).Personal communication.

Homeboy Industries. http://ww.homeboy-industries.org

Labossiere, R. (June 25, 2004) Police Suspect Tagger in Shooting Death of Graffiti Removal Worker. Los Angeles Times.

Planning for Implementation (2002). Tallahassee, FL: Institute for Intergovernmental Research.

Spergel, I. & Alexander, A. (1991) School Technical Assistance Manual. Rockville, MD: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Spergel, I., Curry, D., Chance, R., Kane, C., Ross, R., Alexander, A., Simmons, E. & Oh, S. (1994) Gang Suppression and Intervention: Problem and Response. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Wyrick, P. (July 2004) Personal communication.

According to Planning for Implementation, an implementation manual on gang programs developed by the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, anyone seeking to implement a gang intervention or prevention program should take the following steps in setting goals, identifying objectives and planning activities.

The steering committee should first develop three to five goals that are general statements of outcomes. The following are examples:

• Reduce gang-related violent crime in the target area.

• Alleviate community residents' fear of gang activity.

• Reduce targeted youth gang members' rate of school failure and poor academic performance.

The next step is to identify one or more objectives for each goal. Objectives describe the desired outcome and results that can be measured at a certain time. The following are examples:

• Reduce gang-related assaults and batteries, as measured by law enforcement crime data, by 15 percent by Month 18 of the project and 30 percent by Month 36 of the project.

• Reduce the level of gang-related property crime, as measured by law enforcement crime data and community residents' perceptions, in the target area by 20 percent by the end of Year 1 of the project.

• Increase the number of project youth finding and keeping jobs for at least 120 days, as measured by project records, by 25 percent by the end of the Year 2 of the project.

• Increase school achievement of school-age project youth by two grade levels as measured by standardized math and reading test scores by the end of Year 2 of the project.

Then, the steering committee should develop activities and services for each objective. The following are examples of how activities and services might be stated:

• Train and place 25 youth in jobs in Year 1 of the project.

• Provide anger management class to project youth.

• Offer three hours a week of tutoring in math and reading to each school-age youth in project.

• Provide training for employers for working with target population.

• Inform parents of target youth of their child's gang affiliation.

• Initiate tattoo removal program.

• Modify school policies as necessary to promote academic achievement of target population.

Source:

Planning for Implementation (2002). Tallahassee, FL: Institute for Intergovernmental Research.

Copyright 2002, Institute for Intergovernmental Research, All Rights Reserved.

Irving Spergel, a University of Chicago sociologist, who is one of the best-known researchers of gang activity, makes the following suggestions of programs and approaches that could be appropriate for elementary, middle, and high school students.

In some elementary schools, several methods are used to prevent gang activity and substance abuse and to control youth who begin to engage in gang-related behavior. They include the

Where possible, new academic programs should be integrated into the existing curriculum (i.e., health, social studies, or English classes to prevent or control gang activity).

In high school and middle schools, gang and gang-prone youth need to master the academic skills required to finish high school and later obtain employment. Some of these youth cannot cope with the rules and academic requirements in conventional schools and will require additional services. These students can achieve the mastery of basic skills in three possible ways:

"A curriculum that combines academic and vocational preparation is particularly useful for gang and high-risk youth", according to Spergel. "Strategies that provide economic opportunity for them will reduce gangs and gang violence. Legitimate jobs, as youth get older, are an alternative to street crime and hustling."

Source:

Spergel, I. & Alexander, A. (1991). School Technical Assistance Manual. Rockville, MD: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The National Alliance of Gang Investigators Associations offers these suggestions to youth for getting out of gangs:

You can walk away from gangs.
For most gang members, the gang they belong to meets some kind of need in their life; for safety, love, excitement, or money. When a gang member learns that he or she can meet these needs in other ways, the gang may lose its appeal, and this person may decide to walk away from the gang life. However, being a gang member is far more dangerous than the typical dangers faced by most of today's teenagers. For that reason, the issue for many gang members is not if they will decide to stop being a gang member. The issue is whether they will live long enough to make that decision.

Make a plan for getting out.
When gang members decide that they want to leave the gang, there are a few simple steps they can follow:

Find people who will support you and believe in you.
Getting out of a gang isn't easy, but it can be done. Young people across America make the decision to have a better life every day. Find people, especially adults, who think that you are special and will keep telling you that. In your mind, think of a supportive adult wherever you go (school, neighborhood, rec center) whom you can touch base with if you have a problem or need to talk. Then use these people to help support you as you change with good advice and assistance. Finally, begin believing in your power to change. Gangs are a dead-end street. No matter who you are, what you have done, or where you love, you deserve better.

Source:

National Alliance of Gang Investigators. Written by Michelle Arciaga, and updated/reprinted with permission of the Salt Lake Area Gang Project, Salt Lake City, Utah. Also available on-line at http://www.nagia.org.

Exploring Resources on Youth Gangs

Over the past few days, we have explored a range of approaches to combating gang involvement and activity among youth. While we have also presented many valuable resources in the area of gang prevention/intervention, there are other resources that you and your community may find helpful as you begin to work on this important and challenging issue.

As mentioned earlier, few gang-specific programs have been evaluated or have shown clear results. As with some of your other work, programs that may not call themselves anti-gang may still provide the structure, support, and job opportunities that youth need to avoid or leave gangs.

It is important to remember that gangs spring out of local conditions and are, for the most part, locally based. Any effective intervention into gang problems will take into account community conditions, relationships among service organizations, backgrounds of gang youth and their families, law enforcement involvement, and willingness of community organizations and schools to get involved, among other things.

Today, we will focus on exploring the various kinds of resources that may be of help to you in your work. The National Youth Gang Center provides a wealth of information. You can receive a CD-ROM of much of its material free of charge. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention also provides resources about gangs.

Assessment and Implementation Guides

First, there are several guides that can help you assess and implement anti-gang programs. Among them are the following:

OJJDP Reports on Gangs

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has funded a series of publications on youth gangs in recent years. The publications explore issues related to youth gangs, including growth, expansion, and migration; drugs and violence; homicide; female involvement; and the effects of gang presence on communities and non-gang youth. These four-page publications provide research on specific topics in youth gangs that may be useful in your background work and in framing your approach to gang issues in your community. You can find a list of all of these recent publications along with a brief description by clicking here.

Gang-Related News

Another way to find information about gang problems and about success of interventions is to look at news clips. Here is one resource that provides up-to-date clips:

Job Training

Many programs who seek to help youth involved in gangs realize that the youth need gainful employment, and often job readiness training in order to leave their gang lives. Homeboy Industries was featured on Day 4. You can find more information about their work at www.homeboy-industries.org.

Another similar organization, Homeboyz Interactive, trains young people in information technology who then work for clients. In 2003, client services revenues topped $1 million. For more information, click here: http://www.homeboyz.com.

Funding for Anti-gang Initiatives

You may want to look for funding for an anti-gang program in your community. There are several avenues of funding available, many of which do not specifically call themselves anti-gang but still may apply for the work you would like to do. Following are links to several federal funding sources:

• U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Oriented Policing Services Grants
• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Support and Grants
• U.S. Department of Education: Funding Opportunities
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Notices of Federal Funding Available (Federal Register Search)

Resources

There are numerous organizations and materials that can help you and your school dig deeper into the important topic of truancy. On this final day of the event, please complete the following steps:

1. Review the list of resources located in the Resources & Links section. You will find links to several on-line publications and organizations with information about the nature and prevention of truancy.

2. Identify one resource that you find interesting, follow the link, and spend some time reviewing the publication or learning about the organization.

3. Visit the Discussion Area to share with your fellow participants and the event facilitator the link you followed and any interesting tips you learned.

Please also take some time today to share any additional thoughts -- either about the topic of youth gangs or about this on-line event -- in the Discussion Area .

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

References for Day 5 materials:

Gottfredson, G. D. & Gottfredson, D. C. (October 2001) Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools. Ellicott City, MD: Gottfredson Associates, Inc., . Also available on-line at: http://www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm

National Youth Gang Center. http://www.iir.org/nygc.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org.

This section provides a comprehensive list of the materials and resources presented in this event. Session Resources include the main text for each day of this event, as well as supplementary materials. General Resources include materials designed to facilitate your participation in this on-line training.

Session Resources

Day 1 - The Lure of Gangs and the Consequences for Youth

• An Overview of Different Gang Types

• Common Signs of Gang Membership

Day 2 - Model Strategies to Prevent and Address Youth Gangs

• Comprehensive Gang Model

• Comprehensive Anti-Gang Effort in Chicago Yields some Success, Lessons

• Gottfredson Study

• Anti-Bullying Efforts

• G.R.E.A.T. Program Shows Promise, but Evaluation Results Are Mixed

• Boys and Girls Clubs Reach Youth at Risk of Joining Gangs, Evaluation Finds

• Working with Gang-Impacted Families

Day 3 - Assessing Youth Gang Problems in Your School and Community

• Community Assessment Questions

• Law Enforcement Gang Data

Day 4 - Developing an Implementation Plan for Your School and Community

• Strategic Planning Tool

• Setting Goals and Objectives for Gang Responses

• Ideas for Programs for Elementary, Middle, and High School Students

• How Youth Can Get Out of Gangs

Day 5 - Exploring Additional Resources on Youth Gangs

• National Youth Gang Center

• Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

• Addressing Community Gang Problems: A Community Guide

• Assessing Your Community's Gang Problem

• Planning for Implementation

• Strategic Planning Tool

• Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools

• OJJDP Reports on Gangs

• Gang-Related News

• Listserv on Gangs (GANGINFO)

• Job Training: Homeboy Industries

• Job Training: Homeboyz Interactive

• U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)

• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Oriented Policing Services Grants

• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Support and Grants

• U.S. Department of Education: Funding Opportunities

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

• Notices of Federal Funding Available (Federal Register Search)

General Resources

• Navigating This Site

• Participating in On-Line Events

• Using the Discussion Area

• Event Support

Whether you are a computer expert or novice, you may need some guidance on using this Web site. This document will provide you with an overview of site mechanics, including how to get from one place to another. Two additional tip sheets, Participating in On-Line Events and Using the Discussion Area, will orient you to issues associated with actual participation.

There are several ways to move around this Web site. When you enter the site, you will automatically arrive on the Homepage. Here you will find brief instructions for what to do and where to go first in order to orient yourself to the event. These instructions include links that you will be asked to follow.

• Using Links to Get Around: As you read through the event, you will encounter links that can connect you to related materials and resources. Links will always appear as underlined blue or purple (depending on your browser) text, like this: I am a link.

• Using the Menu at the Side of Your Screen to Get Around: If you look to the left side of your screen, you will notice a yellow sidebar that lists each main section of the event Web site. Just click on one of the titles to travel to that page. The page you are currently on will be indicated by an arrow. When you travel to different materials found within a main section of the Web site, a link in the sidebar will allow you to return to the main section. For example, clicking on the link in the sidebar to the left will take you to the main Resources & Links page.

• Using the Yellow Box at the Bottom of Your Screen to Get Around: Clicking on the yellow box at the bottom of your screen will return you to the main page of that event section. For example, clicking on the box at the bottom of this page will take you to the main Resources & Links page.

Facilitated communication among participants in this on-line workshop will be asynchronous, meaning that K-12 Coordinators can log on to the event at their convenience to read and contribute messages. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you participate in this exciting on-line event:

• Your involvement is key to event success! We hope to have enjoyable and stimulating discussions, but that can only happen if you log on and participate.

• Make sure that you have adequate time to review new information and messages.

• Log in at least once a day and participate in the on-line discussions as often as you can. You can share long or short messages, ask big or small questions, or contribute brief reactions to the messages posted by other Coordinators and facilitators.

• You can compose, review, and edit messages in a word processing program (e.g., Microsoft Word) or in the event's Discussion Area prior to posting your messages on-line. Your messages will not appear on- line until you actively choose to post them. This allows you time to think about what you want to say and how you would like to say it.

• When you reply to a message that was posted by a fellow coordinator or a facilitator, make sure to refer to the original message in your response so that others can follow the conversation.

• To participate more fully during the event, try enabling the mailing list feature (see Using the Discussion Area). This will enable you to receive all discussion postings by e-mail.

• If you have any technical questions or problems, please do not hesitate to submit a request for assistance to Event Support. We promise you a prompt response.

• Relax and have fun with this opportunity to learn and connect with your fellow drug prevention and school safety Coordinators!

These tips can help both experienced and novice Web users fully participate in and benefit from on-line event discussions.

Understanding the Lingo

New technology often assigns new meaning to "old words." Here are some commonly used terms you may encounter when you participate in on-line discussions throughout this event.

• WebBoard: The software used on the general Drug Prevention and School Safety Coordinator Web site and the on-line event Web sites to support on-line discussions among coordinators and National Center staff.

• Discussions: On-line "conversations" taking place within central Discussion Areas of the WebBoard. Discussions appear on the left side of the screen. One or more Discussion Areas will be available to you during an event.

• Topic: A specific thread of discussion within a Discussion Area of the WebBoard. Topics appear indented, under a particular discussion.

• Post: Sending a message to the Discussion Area of the WebBoard that begins or continues a thread of discussion. You must first select a discussion before posting a new topic (or continuing one that already exists).

• Reply: A posting/message made in response to another posting/message, always threaded under an existing topic on the WebBoard. Replies appear indented beneath the messages to which they correspond.

Viewing Topics

To view topics within a discussion, click on the plus symbol [+] next to a discussion name (or the discussion name itself). You can also click on the plus symbol [+] next to a topic to view the replies beneath it.

Posting a Message

If the message you are sending to a discussion begins a new topic (rather than adding to a current topic), you are posting a message. To post a message, follow these steps:

• Select a discussion by clicking on its name.

• Use the Post button on the top (color) toolbar, or open a message in the topic and select Post from the options at the top of the message. You will see a Message Creation Form. Enter your new topic in the topic field.

• Type your message in the text box.

• Select the Post button on the form.

Responding to a Message

To respond to a message, follow these steps:

• Open the message by clicking on it.

• Select Reply from the menu at the top of the message.

• You will see a Message Creation Form; the current message's topic will appear in the topic field. You can edit this topic if you wish.

• Type your response in the text box.

• Click on the Post button. You're done!

Subscribing to a Discussion via E-Mail

You have the option of subscribing to a discussion via e-mail. This means that you can receive new discussion postings as regular e-mails, and you can respond to them as regular e-mails as well. To subscribe to a particular Discussion, follow these steps:

• Select More from the toolbar.

• Select Mailing Lists from the list of options.

• Subscribe to the discussions you want by clicking on the appropriate checkboxes.

• Save your changes -- and you're done!

Attachments made to a WebBoard posting/message will not be carried through e-mail. You must open the posting via the Web in order to retrieve an attachment.

Attaching a File to a Message

If you use Netscape 3 or above (or Explorer 4 or above), you can attach documents to a message in a WebBoard Discussion. To attach a document, follow these steps:

• Create a message either by posting or replying.

• Select the Attach File checkbox by clicking on it.

• Post the message. If you have Preview/Spell Check selected, you must click on Post twice.

• You will see a form for uploading documents. Click on the Browse button to look for the document you wish to attach.

• Select the document and click on Upload Now. You're done!

This event is now concluded. No further support is provided for this event.