NCJ Number
201790
Date Published
2003
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This chapter presents an overview of the four approaches for countering gang activities -- suppression, social intervention, community organization, and the provision of opportunities -- and presents data from one promising and innovative intervention and prevention effort that contrasts with the most commonly used tactic (suppression) and combines elements from the other three strategies to curtail gang-related problems in Mountlake Terrace, WA.
Abstract
In the 1990's the residents of Mountlake Terrace, a working-class suburb of Seattle, had a growing concern about youth crime, gang crime in particular, stemming from alarming statistics about juvenile crime and media coverage of high-profile juvenile crimes. Some residents demanded a citywide curfew. Instead, the police chief held public meetings to discuss the extent of the juvenile crime problem and to weigh the costs and benefits of various proposed solutions, including the proposed curfew. The two significant outcomes of the meetings were the creation of the Mountlake Terrace Community Action Resource Team (CART), a multiagency, cross-disciplinary coalition formed to devise solutions to youth problems, and this group's determination that the means usually imposed to control youth crimes, police crackdowns and curfews, have not proven effective. The intervention that was eventually designed was called the Neutral Zone-AmeriCorps program. The three major goals of the program were crime reduction, providing youth with a safe environment on weekend nights, and community building and service. The fact that juvenile crime (as reflected in calls to the police) has declined in Mountlake Terrace since 1994 while crimes more typically committed by adults have not decreased, has led policymakers to conclude that there may be a causal link between the intervention and the juvenile crime reduction. 3 tables, 4 notes, and 39 references