NCJ Number
165574
Journal
Compiler Volume: 16 Issue: 2 Dated: (Fall 1996) Pages: 7-10,16
Date Published
1996
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article describes the Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago, an effort that uses a team of police officers, community youth workers, and a University professor to reach hard-core gang members and reduce their violent behavior.
Abstract
Leadership for the project has been provided by Dr. Irving Spergel, a professor at the University of Chicago who has studied gangs for nearly 40 years. The program is based on Spergel's belief that the best way to curb gang violence is by blending law enforcement and social services into a problemsolving approach that targets hard-core gang members, generally those between the ages of 17 and 24 who have committed violent acts. The program helps gang members access social opportunities such as school, remedial education, job training, and jobs. It also attempts to connect gang members with community social services such as crisis intervention and personal and family counseling. In concert with the social assistance is the effort to suppress violence, which includes obtaining information on gang activity, closely monitoring and supervising targeted youths, and making arrests for criminal activity. Since it began in July 1992, the project has worked with more than 200 hard-core gang members in Little Village in Chicago, a gang-infested neighborhood. Although homicides and assaults with firearms have continued to escalate in the area, the violence has increased at a lower rate since the project started. Gang-related violence in Little Village has increased at a lower rate compared to other areas of the city. The project has become a model for gang projects in other cities throughout the Nation.