Bernalillo County Gang Violence Program

OJJDP’s gang and youth violence prevention strategy is founded on the recognition that preventing and reducing gang crime and violence require a shared framework of strategic and coordinated delivery of programs, services, and practices across multiple sectors that balance community development, prevention, intervention, and targeted suppression and enforcement. The OJJDP FY 2018 Gang Suppression: A Law Enforcement and Prosecutorial Approach to Address Gang Recruitment of Unaccompanied Alien Children program is designed to reduce violent crime, gangs (specifically transnational gangs), and victimization and promote public safety in communities through implementation support for eligible communities that demonstrates their readiness to put a comprehensive strategic plan into action, based on a multilateral data-driven strategy.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department (BCSD) will use the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model to synchronize current gang initiatives with new countywide community mobilization efforts and other intervention, suppression, prevention, and targeted gang enforcement projects into a synergistic team to combat the ever-increasing gang problem. BCSD will partner with the New Mexico Gang Task Force to support this effort. A primary goal of BCSD is to establish a central referral and intervention location to assist families in need prior to involvement in the criminal justice system. The immediate goal is to thoroughly evaluate the gang problem by conducting a countywide community assessment. The intermediate goal is to convene a coalition of partners, led by a steering committee, to contain the spread of gang activity, protect youth who are susceptible to gang involvement, and mitigate the risk factors that foster gang activity. This will be accomplished by establishing intervention, prevention, and suppression services and enhancing targeted gang enforcement efforts.

CA/NCF