This study evaluated three drug intervention and prevention programs aimed at gang-involved female adolescents to determine their success at providing services to this underserved population. The evaluation had seven objectives that included describing the organization and implementation of the projects designed specifically for African-American and Latina females; describing the services and activities of the projects, their participants, and the implementation of the local evaluations; describing background characteristics, family interactions, and peer relationships for the participants; describing the reasons why some youth participated in the program while others did not; providing a comparison between gang-involved and non-gang involved African-American and Latina females; and understanding the impact the services provided to the participants by each of the programs. Highlights of the evaluation findings include the following: the three projects had very different styles of organization and implementation, with two being implemented by a local agency and the third being implemented by a community-based organization; all three projects were focused primarily on providing services to individual youth and their families; all three projects had evaluation plans that contained both process and outcome components and plans for conducting local evaluations; each program reached populations of girls at risk of gang involvement and delinquency comparable to the general level of risk faced by the population of girls in the community, and each program disseminated information to populations of non-involved girls; and two of the three programs saw no significant program effects for delinquency reduction among the program participants. Recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the programs are discussed. Tables, figures, and appendixes
Evaluation of Youth Gang Drug Intervention/Prevention Programs for Female Adolescents
NCJ Number
239855
Date Published
July 1999
Length
482 pages
Annotation
This study evaluated youth gang drug intervention and prevention programs for female adolescents.
Abstract