OJJDP closely monitors youth gang developments through annual surveys of the nation’s law enforcement agencies. Since 1995, National Youth Gang Surveys have documented the persistence of the youth gang problem and the changes in its scope and nature.

In 2000 (the latest survey from which data are available), more than 24,500 gangs and 772,500 gang members were active in more than 3,330 jurisdictions across the United States. Recent years have seen decreases in these numbers: in 1996, an estimated 30,818 gangs and 846,428 gang members were active in 4,824 jurisdictions. Nevertheless, youth gangs remain a substantial presence. Of the 2,542 law enforcement agencies responding to the 2000 survey, 40 percent reported active youth gangs in their jurisdictions, and 22 percent said their gang problem had worsened since 1999.

Findings from recent surveys suggest differences between traditional inner-city youth gangs and the newer gangs emerging in small cities and suburban and rural areas. For example, compared with their urban predecessors, these “modern-day” gangs tend to have younger members and a different racial mix (greater proportions of white members and black members) and are less likely to be involved in violent crime and drug trafficking. The 2000 survey found that the nature of gang-related violence differed by population size of the jurisdiction. Gangs in more populous jurisdictions tended to target members of other gangs, whereas gangs in less populous jurisdictions tended to victimize individuals not involved in gangs.

National Youth Gang Survey findings inform OJJDP’s approach to addressing the nation’s gang problem. Through research, evaluation, training and technical assistance, and dissemination activities, OJJDP seeks to support communities in their gang prevention, intervention, and suppression efforts. This chapter highlights OJJDP’s recent gang-related activities.

Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Program

OJJDP’s Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Program (the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model) includes five key strategies: mobilizing communities, providing opportunities for youth, suppressing gang violence, providing social intervention services and street outreach, and facilitating organizational change and development in community agencies. OJJDP funded implementation and testing of the model in five demonstration sites from FY 1995 through FY 1998 and provided continuation funding to two particularly promising sites—Mesa, AZ, and Riverside, CA—in FY 1999 and FY 2000. Mesa and Riverside received local support to continue their programs after FY 2000.

OJJDP is funding an ongoing evaluation of the Comprehensive Gang Model, conducted by the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago in Chicago, IL. The evaluator helped the demonstration sites establish realistic and measurable objectives, document program implementation, and measure the impact of this comprehensive approach. It has also monitored data collection and quality control efforts and provided interim feedback to program implementers. During FY 2001, the evaluator continued to analyze the data required to evaluate the model, developing results for each demonstration site as well as cross-site findings. Final results will be reported in FY 2003.

Preliminary evaluation results show that implementation across the five sites was uneven and that some sites experienced greater success at full-model implementation than others. All five sites experienced difficulty engaging grassroots groups, including faith-based organizations. Every site, however, was successful in linking youth to resources and social services, and all of the sites except one (Tucson, AZ) improved coordination between law enforcement, probation, and social services agencies. Tucson’s lack of success in this regard was attributed, in part, to police departments’ and probation agencies’ initial and ongoing reluctance to embrace the model’s collaborative aspects. In addition, Tucson’s direct funding recipient and lead agency for the project was a community nonprofit organization. This organization’s difficulties leveraging cooperation between law enforcement and probation officers and revising policies and procedures prompted changes in subsequent OJJDP gang initiatives, including a requirement that the lead agency be a unit of local government.

Gang-Free Schools and Communities

During FY 2001, OJJDP awarded grants totaling nearly $1.5 million to 10 communities under 2 new programs designed to help communities and schools address gangs and gang violence. During the first year of funding, sites in both programs are conducting thorough assessments of the gang problems in their communities as a basis for developing plans for implementing the Comprehensive Gang Model in later years.

Six of the communities—Fort Lauderdale, FL; Lakewood, WA; Los Angeles, CA; Louisville, KY; San Francisco, CA; and Washington, DC—are participating in the basic Gang-Free Communities Program. These communities are receiving seed funding to replicate the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model.

Four of the communities—East Cleveland, OH; Houston, TX; Miami, FL; and Pittsburgh, PA—are serving as demonstration sites for the Comprehensive Gang Model: An Enhanced School/Community Approach to Reducing Youth Gang Crime. This program will implement school-focused enhancements to the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model. The enhancements will build on the model’s original framework and on current efforts to prevent both youth violence in general and violence in schools.

OJJDP’s National Youth Gang Center (NYGC) in Tallahassee, FL, is providing training and technical assistance to the 10 communities. In FY 2001, NYGC developed an assessment manual, data collection instruments, and Web-based technical resources for the communities and provided assessment training at all sites and followup training at five sites. NYGC also developed a Web page to make technical assistance available to communities whose applications for program funding were not selected.

OJJDP has awarded a grant to COSMOS Corporation of Bethesda, MD, to conduct a process evaluation at the four school/community sites. The grantee is examining school and community collaboration, assessment activities, and program planning.

Gang Prevention and Intervention Through Targeted Outreach With Boys & Girls Clubs

OJJDP provides funds to Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) to help its local affiliate clubs prevent youth from entering gangs, intervene with gang members in the early stages of gang involvement, and divert youth from gang activities into more constructive programs. The national BGCA organization provides training and technical assistance to local gang prevention and intervention sites and to other clubs and organizations through regional training sessions and national conferences.

In FY 2001, BGCA added 30 new gang prevention sites, 4 new gang intervention sites, and 3 new “targeted reintegration” sites (where clubs provide services to youth returning to the community from juvenile corrections facilities, with the goal of preventing their return to gangs and violence).

An OJJDP-funded national evaluation of the Gang Prevention and Intervention Through Targeted Outreach Program was completed in FY 2001. The evaluation, conducted by Public/Private Ventures, Inc., concluded in part that “participants demonstrated positive change” and that “the clubs were successful in reaching an underserved, high-risk population through direct outreach and referral-network-building activities.”

In FY 2002, BGCA will identify and support up to 30 new gang prevention sites. Evaluation of the targeted reintegration component of the program will begin with the receipt of FY 2002 funding.

National Youth Gang Center

The National Youth Gang Center was established by OJJDP in 1994 to maintain and expand the body of knowledge about youth gangs and effective responses to them. Each year, NYGC conducts an annual survey of law enforcement agencies (the National Youth Gang Survey mentioned earlier in this chapter), which provides critical data on the extent of the nation’s gang problem. Results of the surveys are disseminated by OJJDP’s Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse in a series of Summaries and Fact Sheets.

In FY 2001, NYGC implemented a new survey of youth gangs in American Indian communities. The survey assesses the prevalence, composition, and activities of gangs in federally recognized tribes that have not been included in NYGC’s annual surveys of law enforcement agencies.

As mentioned above, NYGC is providing technical assistance to communities participating in OJJDP’s Gang-Free Schools and Communities Initiative. NYGC also helped OJJDP develop the initiative and promoted it in communities that reported gang problems in the annual survey.

On an ongoing basis, NYGC provides technical support to the National Youth Gang Consortium, which is convened by OJJDP three times a year to bring together all Federal departments and agencies engaged in antigang activities. The consortium builds partnerships and coordinates Federal resources to support local efforts to combat gangs.

NYGC maintains a Web site (www.iir.com/nygc) that offers comprehensive, up-to-date information about gang programs, research, and legislation. NYGC also maintains GANGINFO, an electronic mailing list that provides a forum for professionals to exchange information about gangs.

Publications

The Growth of Youth Gang Problems in the United States, 1970–98, released by OJJDP in April 2001, presents detailed national findings on youth gang problems by locality for the 25-year period between 1970 and 1995 and summarizes new findings on gangs up to mid-1998. This 148-page Report includes information on the numbers and specific identities of gang-problem localities, the size of these localities, their location by State and region, and rates of growth. The selection of a single, simple unit of analysis—locality—and the availability of baseline data from the 1970s allowed researchers to offer concrete and detailed information on long-term trends in the prevalence of gang problems and provided a solid basis for predicting future trends.

Findings show that by the late 1990s, 3,700 localities in all 50 States and the District of Columbia reported gang problems. This represents a ninefold increase in the number of gang-problem cities and an elevenfold increase in the number of gang-problem counties since the 1970s. The States with the largest number of gang-problem cities in 1998 were California (363), Illinois (261), Texas (156), Florida (125), and Ohio (86); in the 1970s, only California and Illinois reported large numbers of cities with gang problems. In 1998, the States with the largest number of gang-problem counties were Texas (82), Georgia (61), California (50), Illinois (42), and Florida and Ohio (40 each); the South replaced the Northeast as the region with the most top-ranking States.

The historical perspective used in this study provides evidence that the United States, during the last three decades of the 20th century, experienced gang problems in more localities than at any other time in history. The data from the study support a prediction that the rate of growth in gang cities that prevailed during the later 1990s will decrease in the early 2000s and that the actual number of gang localities may also decrease.

In 2001, OJJDP published as part of its Youth Gang Series Female Gangs: A Focus on Research (NCJ 186159), which summarizes past and current research on female gangs and draws attention to programmatic and research needs. OJJDP also published Youth Gang Homicides in the 1990s (FS–200103), a Fact Sheet summarizing findings from an NYGC study that used several databases to examine recent trends in gang-related homicides.

Research

Socialization to Gangs in an Emerging Gang City

With funding support from the National Institute of Justice and OJJDP, researchers at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, MO, have completed a study that examined gang-involved youth in St. Louis and assessed the acceleration of gang involvement for the youth who were most at risk. Researchers studied the following: gang homicides in St. Louis, the St. Louis SafeFutures program (an OJJDP program that provides a comprehensive community response to gangs and delinquency), youth referrals to the St. Louis Family Court, the relationship between gang involvement and delinquency, and organizational aspects of gangs. Phase I of the Socialization study surveyed seventh and eighth grade youth populations in selected St. Louis middle schools and analyzed available gang-related crime and juvenile justice data. Under Phase II, indepth interviews with 100 gang-involved youth were conducted and the analysis of data gathered under Phase I of the study was extended. The final report from this project, Socialization to Gangs in St. Louis Project (NCJ 185395), is available through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service at www.ncjrs.org.

Survey of School-Based Gang Prevention and Intervention Programs

In this study, researchers at Gottfredson Associates, Inc., of Ellicott City, MD, examined the approaches currently used by schools to prevent or reduce gang involvement among students. The study identified features of effective prevention and intervention activities that local schools and communities can replicate. The study also gathered information on the extent of student involvement in gangs, characteristics of gang-involved students (including the use of drugs and weapons and other forms of delinquent behavior), and the extent and nature of schools’ gang-related problems. Funded through OJJDP’s Field-Initiated Research and Evaluation Program, the research used a sample of 1,287 public and private and Catholic schools and included surveys of principals, teachers, coordinators of gang prevention activities, and students. The final report for this study, Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools (NCJ 194607) , is available from the Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse. It is also available online at www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm.

Tribal Youth and Gangs

OJJDP supports two research projects designed to address youth gang activities on American Indian lands.

• The Navajo Nation Judicial Branch in Window Rock, AZ, is conducting a comprehensive assessment of gang activity, the first such assessment to be undertaken by a tribal government. The study is using a mixed research design of quantitative and qualitative assessments, with close community involvement at all stages. Findings will help researchers understand the nature, extent, and causes of Navajo Nation gang violence and discover approaches to dealing with gangs that can be adapted by other tribes.

• Building on the Navajo Nation’s youth gang study, researchers at California State University in Sacramento, CA, are using ethnographic observation and interviews with community members and gang members to document and profile the youth gang experience in up to six rural and urban tribal sites across the country.

Women in Gangs: A Field Research Study

In this study, researchers at Illinois State University in Normal, IL, will interview and observe gang-involved women in the Little Chicago neighborhood of Champaign, IL, over a 6-month period. The study, which is funded through OJJDP’s Field-Initiated Research and Evaluation Program, will explore the role that women play in maintaining the social capital of gangs. The proposed research is policy oriented and spotlights the immediate social and economic complexities of women in gangs and, more generally, the pressure of poverty on women and how such pressure influences the nature of gang participation subsequent to an active, criminally oriented gang lifestyle.

Youth Gangs in Juvenile Detention and Corrections Facilities

The National Juvenile Detention Association of Richmond, KY, has completed a study of youth gangs in juvenile detention and corrections facilities. Researchers assessed the nature and extent of youth gang problems in these facilities and examined the use of risk and needs assessment instruments, which can help determine the level of security required for confined juveniles and match gang members with appropriate programs. Researchers also identified promising and effective programs for replication. The final report for this project is expected to be available in 2002.

Rural Gang Initiative

During FY 2000, OJJDP provided funds, through the Rural Gang Initiative, to four rural communities (Elk City, OK; Glenn County, CA; Longview, WA; and Mount Vernon, IL) to conduct comprehensive assessments of their local youth gang problems. Each site collected and analyzed data from a variety of sources to determine the nature and scope of the existing local youth gang problem. A steering committee of community representatives at each site used the assessment findings to develop a response to the problems identified.

In FY 2001, two of these communities—Glenn County and Mount Vernon—began implementing the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model to address the most serious problems identified in their assessments. Intervention teams, including representatives from police and probation agencies, schools, and community-based organizations, began working in gang violence “hot spots” to provide services and support to gang-involved youth, with a goal of reducing and eventually eliminating youth gang violence in the community. In FY 2002, these sites will continue implementing the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model. Ongoing data collection and assessment will be used to select intervention targets.

In FY 2000, OJJDP awarded a grant to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) of Oakland, CA, to evaluate the Rural Gang Initiative. NCCD has conducted case studies to document and analyze the 1-year community assessment and program planning efforts in each of the four sites. These case studies served as a foundation for an evaluation design being applied in Glenn County and Mount Vernon. The design is based on program logic models developed at each site and will capture information on program implementation and outcomes at the individual, gang, and community levels.