Intervention

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     Sometimes the individual may enter the system of gang life before it is noticeable. In these situations, interventions must occur. Everything possible must be done to defer the adolescent from the life of violence, drugs, and negativity that is gang-life.

     Perhaps one of the greatest exampes of mass intervention is the “Little Village Project” as outlined and studied by Spergel et al. (1997). In this instance, an entire community in Chicago who had prior been riddled with gang violence united together to intervene with the gang problem. Many parts composed the intervention utilized by the “Little Village Project” that can be utilized to intervene with an individual in a gang or the gang in its entirety:

1. Community Mobilization
2. Opportunities Provision
3. Social Intervention
4. Suppression

"The Little Village Project" and Interventions

• Community Mobilization

       Through community mobilization, local community members, agencies, and ex-gang members must unite together against the problem. By uniting they can help to organize the movement and involve a wide enough variety of individuals to better rid themselves of the gang problem.

• Opportunities Provision

       Since a lack of opportunities can lead an individual to join/form a gang, better opportunities need to be provided. The providing of better jobs or a chance at receiving the proper training or education to achieve a desirable position can lessen the number of individuals likely to join a gang by making them feel less disadvantaged. In this same method, providing an individual already in a gang with proper education, training experiences, and career potential can help lead them away from gang life.

• Social Intervention      After the community decides to unite and intervene with the gang problem (or an individual decides to do so with a youth in their care), community programs can/need to be set to help the gang-members forget their own ways. Counseling programs devoted specifically to gang members (perhaps run by ex-gang members), tattoo removal clinics, and referral programs are all great social interventions.
• Suppression

       Both positive and negative suppression need to be utilized by the community. Positive suppression involves positive communication to gang members and within social intervention agencies to help reduce the problem through communication.

       Negative suppression usually exists but should be expressed with zero tolerance. This type of suppression includes surveillance, arrest, probation, and imprisonment to de-motivate gang members.

Individual Interventions

“Combinations of interventions, they have attested, need to be tactically and prescriptively implemented as a function of the individuals' and gangs' demographic, cultural, and behavioral profiles,” (Wood et al., 1997).

     Intervention programs exist all around the country. These programs are created through the hopes of counseling gang affiliated youth out of the life style as quickly as possible. On the Other Resources, specific counseling/intervention centers will be listed.