NCJ Number
243471
Date Published
2013
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This chapter discusses risk factors for joining a gangs, prevention principles for school-based strategies, implementation challenges, and policy implications.
Abstract
The chapter concludes that a comprehensive school-based gang-prevention program requires simultaneous attention to all of the issues discussed in this chapter, i.e., assessment of needs, open recognition of problems, selection of strategies that have proven effective, assessment of and resolution of obstacles to program implementation, and breaking the cycle of community disadvantage and school ineffectiveness. A discussion of risk factors for joining a gang notes that gang-related problems disproportionately occur in schools that serve areas of concentrated poverty and social disorganization. Research has shown that youth join gangs, in part, because of a perceived threat from rivals, hoping to reduce anxiety about their vulnerability by being under the protection of a gang. Gang involvement can also be viewed as a contagious disease that perpetuates itself as a chronic feature of a community where gang membership is assumed to be a norm for youth. Because gang participation is greater in unsafe schools, educational leaders should be alert to the emergence of gang-related threats. A review of school-based programs generally shows that more intensive prevention strategies directed at selected groups of higher risk students have larger effects than universal strategies that target the entire student-body. The chapter provides examples of universal and selected school-based programs for countering the joining of gangs. One section of the chapter identifies challenges related to implementation and leadership deficits in recognizing and acting on gang problems. The chapter also gives attention to the role of alternative educational programs for students at risk of gang involvement. 53 chapter notes