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Addressing Community Gang Problems

Welcome to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) Web site on the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model (Model). In 1987, OJJDP began supporting a project to design a comprehensive approach to reduce and prevent youth gang violence. This project resulted in the development of the Spergel Model of Gang Intervention and Suppression, later renamed the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model.

The OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model includes five strategies for dealing with gang-involved youth and their families. The five strategies are: (1) community mobilization, (2) social intervention, (3) opportunities provision, (4) suppression, and (5) organizational change and development.

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.
Opportunities Provision:
The development of a variety of specific education, training, and employment programs targeting gang-involved youth.
Social Intervention:
Youth-serving agencies, schools, street outreach workers, grassroots groups, faith-based organizations, police, and other criminal justice organizations reaching out and acting as links between gang-involved youth and their families, the conventional world, and 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 to better address the gang problem.

In 1993, Dr. Spergel began implementing the initial version of the Model in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. An evaluation of the program found a reduction in serious/violent crimes, decreased criminal activity and gang involvement by project clients, and increased success in educational and job opportunities (Spergel, 2007).

In 1995, OJJDP tested the Model in five selected sites—Bloomington, Illinois; Mesa and Tucson, Arizona; Riverside, California; and San Antonio, Texas. In the process of establishing these sites, it became clear that to successfully implement the Model, the lead agency and its partner agencies must fully understand the Model, the implementation process, and perhaps most important, the nature and scope of the community’s gang problems. Evaluators of the Model combined the Little Village evaluation with studies of the above five sites. The evaluators assessed program elements, strategies, and operating principles in terms of their importance to successful implementation of the Model (Spergel, Wa, and Sosa, 2006). An unpublished report for each of the five sites is available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service at http://www.ncjrs.gov/.

In addition to the original demonstration sites, OJJDP has funded four additional initiatives. In 1998, citing evidence that youth gangs were emerging in rural areas, OJJDP developed and funded the Rural Gang Initiative (RGI) to demonstrate the Model in four rural communities.

In 2000, OJJDP began the Gang-Free Schools and Communities Initiative. In this initiative, the Gang-Free Schools Program sought to develop a school component to the Comprehensive Gang Model to develop programs within the school setting and link the school component to community-based gang prevention, intervention, and suppression activities. Four Gang-Free Schools sites were funded. Six sites in the Gang-Free Communities Program were given seed money to demonstrate the Model, but they were to leverage local resources more extensively.

In 2003, OJJDP launched the Gang Reduction Program to reduce gang activity in targeted neighborhoods in four cities. The program integrates prevention, intervention, suppression, and reentry activities and uses existing community resources to sustain itself.

For more information on these initiatives, please refer to Best Practices to Address Community Gang Problems at: http://www.iir.com/nygc/publications/gang-problems.pdf.

These pages provide assistance to communities in assessing their gang problems and designing a plan to implement the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model. Two guides are provided: (1) A Guide to Assessing Your Community’s Youth Gang Problem provides information and direction about conducting a data-driven assessment, and (2) Planning for Implementation offers assistance in developing a plan to implement the Model.

CD-ROM image In addition to being available for download from this Web site, a CD-ROM containing both the assessment guide and the implementation manual can be mailed to you. Request a CD-ROM.

Assessment Guide Overview

Research consistently shows that gang problems differ among and within communities. Prior to implementing strategies, communities need to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the nature and scope of their gang problems to gain an understanding of those problems. A data-driven assessment will:

  • Identify the most serious and prevalent gang-related problems.
  • Determine factors contributing to gang problems.
  • Identify target group(s) for intervention, suppression, and prevention efforts.
  • Shape community mobilization efforts and identify community members who should be involved.
  • Identify organizational or systems issues that must be addressed to have a long-term effect on the problems.
  • Identify current efforts to address gangs and gang-involved youth and gaps in existing services.

This guide describes the data variables and sources and provides data collection instruments. It also provides suggestions on how to organize and analyze the data for an assessment report.

Implementation Manual Overview

Using information from the assessment report, the Steering Committee (a group of persons who are key policy and administrative leaders of agencies and community organizations, as well as other community leaders concerned with youth gang problems) will determine whether the community has a significant gang crime problem. If so, the Steering Committee will develop an implementation plan with relevant program responses to reduce local gang crime and gang activity. An implementation plan will:

  • Define goals, objectives, and activities for implementing the Model.
  • Identify target group(s) for the focus of activities.
  • Determine the agency(ies) responsible for carrying out the activities.
  • Identify person(s) responsible for each activity.
  • Acknowledge potential barriers and a plan to overcome the barriers.
  • Determine start and completion dates.

This manual is intended for use by the Steering Committee and project staff. It provides: (1) information to guide the Steering Committee through the development of an implementation plan, and (2) the structure and staff composition by which the plan and the Model strategies can be carried out.