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Home > NYGC > Addressing Community Gang Problems > Comprehensive Gang Model

OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model

The OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model is a flexible framework that communities can use to plan a comprehensive approach to gangs. For optimum effectiveness, several elements are essential:

  1. Acknowledgment of the problem. The presence of a youth gang problem must be recognized before anything meaningful can be done to address it. If denial is present, it must be confronted.

  2. Assessment of the problem. Those with responsibility for addressing the problem—representatives of police, schools, probation, youth agencies, grassroots organizations, government, and others—participate in identifying its nature and causes and in recommending appropriate responses. The assessment results in an understanding of who is involved in gang crime and where in the community it is concentrated. This, in conjunction with other data and information, enables targeting:

    • Gang-involved youth.
    • The most violent gangs.
    • The area(s) where gang crime most often occurs.

  3. Setting goals and objectives. Once the problem is described, goals and objectives should be consistent with the assessment findings. Goals specify ends, while objectives describe the means to an end. Goals and objectives should be clearly linked to the data and the identified priority issues.

  4. Relevant services and activities. Rationales for services, tactics, and policies and procedures that involve each of the key agencies should be developed for each objective. Services and activities should be clearly articulated and then implemented for each of the five core strategies. These activities must be closely coordinated and integrated to ensure that the work of collaborating agencies is complementary. Selecting appropriate activities is an important step to ensure that project goals are achieved. Activities fall into four categories: prevention, intervention, suppression, and reentry. Most comprehensive gang projects include a prevention component. Primary prevention focuses on the entire population in the community, while secondary prevention focuses on youth aged 7–14 who are at a high risk of joining gangs. Intervention targets active gang members and close associates. Suppression activities within comprehensive projects go beyond traditional activities. Law enforcement agencies partner with other community agencies that hold youth accountable and enforce community norms for youth behavior. Because many gang-involved individuals are constantly leaving or entering one system or another, often for brief periods, reentry activities are often handled as an overlapping function with intervention.

  5. A multidisciplinary intervention team is the primary service delivery strategy and targets gang-involved youth. It is important to remember that while youth gang members must be held accountable for their criminal acts, they also must be provided with services for their academic, economic, and social needs. Gang members must be encouraged to control their behavior and to participate in legitimate mainstream activities. At the same time, external controls must be exercised on gang and gang-member behavior. For some gang members, secure confinement will be necessary. For others, graduated degrees of community-based supervision, ranging from continuous sight or electronic supervision to incarceration, will be appropriate. It is important that youth understand that they will face consequences if they do not follow rules, laws, conditions, or reasonable expectations of the project. Thus, a range of services and sanctions is required, often in some interactive way.

  6. The work of the collaborating agencies is overseen by a Steering Committee of decision makers from agencies and organizations that have an interest in or a responsibility for addressing the community’s gang problem. These representatives should not only set policy and oversee the overall direction of the gang project, but they should take responsibility for spearheading efforts in their own organizations to remove barriers to services and to social and economic opportunities; develop effective criminal justice, school, and social agency procedures; and promote policies that will further the goals of the gang strategy.

  7. Evaluation and sustainability. Results from the evaluation of the Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project show that the Model is effective in lowering crime rates among youth gang members. Results from an evaluation of five communities chosen as demonstration sites for the Model show that a combination of intervention, suppression, and prevention strategies, along with a coordinated team approach to delivering services, is effective in having a positive impact on reducing gang crime. For these reasons, the incorporation of a strong evaluation component is critical to assessing the impact of the project. Equally important is a plan for sustaining the project over the long term.

This section provides only a very brief discussion of the Model. For a more in-depth discussion of the Model, please read The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach by Dr. Irving Spergel. Chapters 11–17 provide further details on the five Model strategies and roles of specific organizations in implementing the Model. It is also recommended that project staff review Reducing Gang Crime: The Little Village Project (Spergel, 2007, and Spergel et al., 2006).