Exploring Resources on Youth Gangs

Over the past few days, we have explored a range of approaches to combating gang involvement and activity among youth. While we have also presented many valuable resources in the area of gang prevention/intervention, there are other resources that you and your community may find helpful as you begin to work on this important and challenging issue.

As mentioned earlier, few gang-specific programs have been evaluated or have shown clear results. As with some of your other work, programs that may not call themselves anti-gang may still provide the structure, support, and job opportunities that youth need to avoid or leave gangs.

It is important to remember that gangs spring out of local conditions and are, for the most part, locally based. Any effective intervention into gang problems will take into account community conditions, relationships among service organizations, backgrounds of gang youth and their families, law enforcement involvement, and willingness of community organizations and schools to get involved, among other things.

Today, we will focus on exploring the various kinds of resources that may be of help to you in your work. The National Youth Gang Center provides a wealth of information. You can receive a CD-ROM of much of its material free of charge. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention also provides resources about gangs.

Assessment and Implementation Guides

First, there are several guides that can help you assess and implement anti-gang programs. Among them are the following:

OJJDP Reports on Gangs

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has funded a series of publications on youth gangs in recent years. The publications explore issues related to youth gangs, including growth, expansion, and migration; drugs and violence; homicide; female involvement; and the effects of gang presence on communities and non-gang youth. These four-page publications provide research on specific topics in youth gangs that may be useful in your background work and in framing your approach to gang issues in your community. You can find a list of all of these recent publications along with a brief description by clicking here.

Gang-Related News

Another way to find information about gang problems and about success of interventions is to look at news clips. Here is one resource that provides up-to-date clips:

Job Training

Many programs who seek to help youth involved in gangs realize that the youth need gainful employment, and often job readiness training in order to leave their gang lives. Homeboy Industries was featured on Day 4. You can find more information about their work at www.homeboy-industries.org.

Another similar organization, Homeboyz Interactive, trains young people in information technology who then work for clients. In 2003, client services revenues topped $1 million. For more information, click here: http://www.homeboyz.com.

Funding for Anti-gang Initiatives

You may want to look for funding for an anti-gang program in your community. There are several avenues of funding available, many of which do not specifically call themselves anti-gang but still may apply for the work you would like to do. Following are links to several federal funding sources:

• U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Oriented Policing Services Grants
• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Support and Grants
• U.S. Department of Education: Funding Opportunities
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Notices of Federal Funding Available (Federal Register Search)

Resources

There are numerous organizations and materials that can help you and your school dig deeper into the important topic of truancy. On this final day of the event, please complete the following steps:

1. Review the list of resources located in the Resources & Links section. You will find links to several on-line publications and organizations with information about the nature and prevention of truancy.

2. Identify one resource that you find interesting, follow the link, and spend some time reviewing the publication or learning about the organization.

3. Visit the Discussion Area to share with your fellow participants and the event facilitator the link you followed and any interesting tips you learned.

Please also take some time today to share any additional thoughts -- either about the topic of youth gangs or about this on-line event -- in the Discussion Area .

Click here to print today's materials in PDF format.

References for Day 5 materials:

Gottfredson, G. D. & Gottfredson, D. C. (October 2001) Gang Problems and Gang Programs in a National Sample of Schools. Ellicott City, MD: Gottfredson Associates, Inc., . Also available on-line at: http://www.gottfredson.com/gang.htm

National Youth Gang Center. http://www.iir.org/nygc.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org.