MENU TITLE: National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention Program .
Series: OJJDP
Published: 1/93
22 pages
52,314 bytes

A SCHOOL-BASED MODEL

Irving Spergel and Alba Alexander
                              
National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention
Program
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

Distributed by:
Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
1-800-638-8736

------------------------------

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
ASSESSMENT
GOALS AND STRATEGIES
OBJECTIVES
 Delivery of a Flexible Curriculum
 Provision of Vocational Education, Job 
  Preparation, and Placement
 Development of a School Learning Support System
 Early Intervention to Prevent and Deter Gang 
  Involvement (and Drug Abuse)
 Application of Consistent Sanctions and Creation
  of Means to Protect the School and Community from
   Youth Gang Depredations
 Parental Involvement
 Outreach to Community Agencies
 Staff Selection, Training, Data Systems, and 
  Evaluation

A SCHOOL-BASED MODEL

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Schools with serious youth gang problems are
usually located in low-income, high-crime, and
often changing communities. Truancy rates are high,
in part because students are afraid to come to
school and once in school, afraid to enter certain
school areas. They are also reluctant to return
home through treacherous gang turfs. Officials in
schools with serious youth gang problems often deny
their existence or minimize their seriousness.
These assessments delay appropriate reaction and
the problems grow more severe.

These schools are located in communities with a
whole complex of social, economic, health, housing,
and academic problems. Single parent households may
abound; parents are often unemployed or employed in
low-skilled occupations. Preadolescents and
adolescents are provided with limited supervision
and guidance and roam the streets. Youth gangs have
staked out turf in different parts of the
neighborhood, at different schools, and sometimes
different parts of the same school. Schools,
churches, and local youth service agencies operate
independently in regard to youth gang problems and
seem unable to establish relationships with
vulnerable youth or to properly serve their needs
for education and socialization.

The youth gang problem has spread to children in
elementary school grades and to schools in suburban
areas and smaller communities. To some extent, the
school youth gang problem has been fueled by the
spread of drug trafficking, involving some gang
members; although the primary problem at schools is
alcohol and not use of harder drugs, whether gang
members are involved or not.

The school gang problem spreads from the streets to
the school. Students who are gang members,
particularly in middle schools, bring with them
destructive gang attitudes and behaviors. They
claim the school as "turf" which they "own" and
which is off limits to certain other students. They
deface the school with graffiti as part of the
territorial marking process and exert control
through intimidation and assaults of other
students. Yet the school must also bear some
responsibility for the gang problem. Most gang
members are terribly bored and feel inadequate in
class, and drop out as soon as possible. They begin
to detach themselves from the school long before
official drop-out. They develop poor learning
skills and experience academic and social failure
at school from an early age. They have little
identification with teachers or staff whom they may
distrust and intensely dislike.    

However, some schools seem to do a remarkably good
job under extremely adverse community conditions.
The school educational and social climate is
positive. Truancy rates are fairly low and student
performance and attendance are high. Their students
earn a large proportion of prizes at school
district fairs. Parent involvement in school-
related activities is very high. How do we account
for these school differences and varying levels of
deviancy problem, including participation by youth
in gang activities?

A variety of factors may account for these
differences. Much has to do with school leadership,
the knowledge and skill of faculty and staff and
their commitment to the school, the strength of the
parent organization and its commitment to the
school, and the extent and quality of interaction
and coordination of school personnel with local
community agencies, including youth agencies and
the police. Perhaps most important is the school's
attention to the academic and social learning needs
of all students; the creation of clear and high
expectations for student achievement; and fair and
consistent treatment of students, even those who
have behavioral problems or who are likely to be
gang members. The physical appearance of the school
is also extremely important. Schools should be neat
and attractive and kept free of gang and other
graffiti at all times.

Dealing with the school's youth gang problem
requires a series of interrelated and complex steps
involving key people, groups, and organizations
inside and outside the school. The approach may
vary somewhat depending on level and duration of
the problem and whether it occurs in an emerging or
chronic youth gang problem context. Reduction and
control of the youth gang problem requires that
both school and community systems learn how to
communicate with each other, integrate their
concerns, and take collective responsibility for
dealing with the problem.

ASSESSMENT

The school's approach to dealing with the gang
problem requires first that it be recognized.
Usually this occurs in response to a crisis, bad
publicity, concerns by parents, or pressures by
district administrators. The extent and seriousness
of the problem must be openly and systematically
assessed in order to select appropriate strategies
and programs. An important first step, by a school
committee appointed by the principal (or district
officials), is to gather data about the problem.
This committee or advisory group should be as
broadly based as possible, including school
administrators, teachers, and staff as well as
parents, representatives of the police, youth
agencies, and community groups. Information must be
obtained from school records, teacher and staff
observations, parents, police, and community agency
personnel as well as directly from students and
youth gang members, themselves. These data may be
gathered informally or formally and the assessment
should begin at an early point before the problem
has become chronic and almost intractable.

Specific information needs to be gathered as to
which youth and gangs are involved and where the
gangs hangout within and outside the school. Such
individual gang member characteristics as age,
gender, race/ethnicity, family structure, and
school performance need to be known. Information
about gang characteristics such as leadership,
size, and the scope and severity of the criminal
behavior of its members are important.
Determination also has to be made as to whether the
individual's troublesome behavior is indeed gang-
related; what precipitating events or conditions
led to the various incidents of gang activity that
concerns school officials, parents, and the
community.

It is very important to develop a consensus as to
the nature and scope of the problem. Such consensus
among the actors will contribute to the
effectiveness of program planning and implementa-
tion. Conflicting views as to whether a gang
problem exists often signal that appropriate
strategies will not be selected or adequately
implemented. 

The committee assessing the problem needs, with the
help of the police and school system authorities,
to establish clear definitions of what is meant by
a "youth gang," "gang member," and "gang incident."
Definitions tend to be too broad in those schools
and communities where the problem is just emerging,
especially in smaller communities. These
definitions may also be quite inclusive of a
variety of youth and delinquent activities when the
community takes a very "hard line." A narrower or
more specific definition of gang activity and gang
member is somewhat more characteristic of a school
or community with a history of experience with the
problem. Excessive labelling of youth as gang
members without adequate criteria can be as
inappropriate as denying that a gang problem exists
when in fact it does. Some of the multiple criteria
that should be used to identify at-risk or gang
youth are: use of gang signs, special clothing,
self-admission, association with known gang
members, gang members in the family, school
failure, drug use, and actual participation in gang
conflict.

Definition of the problem usually brings with it an
explanation of the causes of gang presence and
disruptions in and around a school. Youth associate
with gangs, and sometimes participate in violent
behavior, to compensate for personal, academic, and
social deficiencies. Gang activity may become a
pervasive way of life in a community without social
resources, where day-to-day survival is uncertain.
Gang members are often from families that may not
be literate and do not encourage youth commitment
to school and studies. While peer groups and
sometimes family members value education in
general, they often do not provide or enforce norms
that support school expectations and routines.
Specific aspects of school structure and program
may also contribute to the problem.

The problem is usually assessed as emerging when
only a few youth are involved or the gang problem
appears to have been introduced by newcomers to the
community. A few youth, uncomfortable at school,
wear gang colors and declare themselves to be gang
members. The problem is regarded as chronic when
gang violence and gang-related crime are serious
and sustained over a long period. In either case,
when gang assaults or turf battles occur on school
grounds, the school's system for dealing with the
gang or gang-prone youth has broken down. A set of
differential approaches or strategies must be
developed in emerging and chronic gang problem
contexts.

GOALS AND STRATEGIES

While there are limits to what the schools can do
about the basic family and community factors that
significantly contribute to the youth gang problem,
there is much that schools, in conjunction with
community agencies and groups, can do. Gang youth
need strong support and control, a flexible and
meaningful curriculum, positive role models and
relationships with adults as well as access to
opportunities for achievement at school, in work
settings, and in the community. Schools can provide
important opportunities for youth development and
control of youth gang activity by virtue of the
fact that schools can control their environment and
can significantly influence the academic and social
development of youth for 5 to 6 hours a day, 5 days
a week through much of the year.

The approach of the school should be built around
five strategies. The key strategy is provision of
social opportunities, i.e., the development of
academic competence and employment preparedness.
Special remedial courses, training situations, and
appropriate flexibility in school curricula and
procedures must be provided. The second strategy is
social support, which must be demonstrated by
faculty respect for gang as well as non-gang youth
particularly as the former tries to achieve success
through legitimate means. While formal counseling
of individuals and groups is important, positive
relationships between teachers and administrators
and youths who happen to be gang members, are
essential to the development of this support
structure. Third, since gang youth are by
definition in conflict with established norms of
society, the school has a special responsibility to
directly impose controls and enlist a variety of
outside forces to assist in the supervision of gang
youth while also protecting non-gang youth. Fourth,
since the gang problem arises and is sustained
through weakness of family and community
structures, the school has to mobilize
organizations including police, youth agencies,
grassroots groups, and above all parents to deal
with the school-related gang problem. The final
strategy is organizational development and change.
A school may need to change organizational
structure and procedures to facilitate the above
strategies. New or different mechanisms for
decisionmaking about curricula and ways of handling
gang youth (e.g., special training for teachers and
staff and new structures to integrate community and
school efforts for dealing with the problem) may be
required.

These goals and strategies must be given initial
form and meaning through school leadership,
especially the office of the principal. The special
community-focussed school structure that is
established, furthermore, must be related to and
supported by the school district superintendent and
a neighborhood or local community organization
concerned with the problem. Little of significance
can combat the youth gang problem in emerging or
chronic problem contexts, unless there is
coordination with and support by both the school
system and the community.

A key structure for the development and
implementation of these goals and strategies,
particularly in the emerging gang problem setting,
should be based on an alliance between the school
and a local community-based agency or a group of
such agencies. A special school community council
focussed on the gang problem should be established.
A team of local school administrators and program
directors of local agencies should be organized to
create a pattern of coordinated learning
opportunities and services directed at gang member
and gang-prone youth. In the chronic gang problem
community, the problem may be of such scope and
severity that central responsibility for dealing
with it must lie with a broadly based coalition of
criminal justice agencies, local business and
citizen groups as well as schools in central
leadership positions. This coalition should also
include youth agencies, churches, and
representatives of city government. 

OBJECTIVES

Our model proposes that primary academic competency
objectives cannot be achieved unless social
objectives are also given due attention. The
objectives of a special school program should be:
1) creation of a structure for flexible curriculum
delivery to gang-prone and gang member youth; 2)
provision of vocational education, job preparation,
and employment experiences; 3) development of a
learning support system; 4) early intervention to
prevent and deter gang involvement (and drug
abuse); 5) application of consistent sanctions and
means to protect the school population and sur-
rounding community from gang depredations; 6)
parental involvement; 7) liaison, coordination, and
outreach to community agencies and programs; and
finally 8) appropriate training, staff selection,
data retrieval systems and evaluation procedures to
facilitate and determine the effectiveness of the
programs developed.

For purposes of the present model, a gang-prone
youth is defined as an individual student, usually
a younger student, who meets at least three of the
following conditions: there are gang members in his
family; he is performing poorly at school; he
flashes gang signs, wears gang colors or special
gang clothes; he associates regularly with known
gang members; he has engaged in gang-related
behaviors, especially conflict on school premises;
or he has been arrested at least once for a gang-
or non-gang-related offense. A committed gang
member can be defined as a student who is generally
recognized or acknowledges himself to be a regular
or core gang member and has a record of two or more
arrests for gang related incidents.

1) Delivery of a Flexible Curriculum

The mastery of basic skills leading to success in
elementary and middle schools and ultimately to a
high school degree or the GED equivalent can be
delivered in one or two forms. Schools should
supplement a basic academic core with remedial
instruction within their own institution during
regular school hours or after school. At the high
school level, schools should be able to refer gang-
prone students to alternative educational settings.
Gang-prone youth who are deficient learners
especially in the upper grades of elementary school
and lower grades of middle school should be
especially targeted for enriched programs within
their schools. However, alternative schools should
be considered for dropouts and even for chronically
truant middle school students who have fallen far
behind grade level. They often include the most
committed gang youth. Many of them cannot be
directed to return to, nor will they be accepted
by, the traditional school system. High school
students especially will need a program of special
education, social support, and supervision before
returning to regular school classes or completing a
G.E.D., perhaps in conjunction with a work
experience.

In developing academic curricula for gang-active
youth, educators usually find it most difficult to
"mainstream" them. To successfully reintegrate
students with acute learning disabilities into
traditional school instruction requires a great
deal of effort. Therefore, the easy or quick use of
special classes or alternative schools for gang-
affiliated youth might be inappropriate,
particularly if the special classes or alternative
settings project a sense of being a "losers" group.
Young people with learning problems and moderate
self-discipline may be able to learn with special
assistance in a normal classroom setting or perhaps
when they are a little older, in a normal school-
work apprentice setting, with some counseling and
social support. A further means to "mainstreaming"
gang youth, should an alternative school setting be
required, is to establish the school on neutral
"turf," with ample support services, for example in
a downtown business or commercial area.

2) Provision of Vocational Education, Job
Preparation, and Placement

It is essential that a gang youth be literate in a
variety of subjects essential to survival and
achievement in an increasingly complex society. He
must be adequately prepared at school for success
in holding skilled level jobs. Social and
vocational adaptation means that he must begin to
acquire understanding of and familiarity with the
legitimate world of work from an early age. He must
become familiar with people who are successfully
holding full-time conventional jobs. He must
himself become exposed to the incentives of a work
structure in a part-time or full-time job. A
curriculum that combines academic and vocational
preparation is particularly useful for many gang-
prone and younger adolescent gang members. 

Both teacher and principal need to introduce gang-
prone and gang member youth to the adult world of
work responsibility and reward. The teacher should
take responsibility in the early grades for
arranging visits of workers from a variety of
occupations to class as well as field trips to work
sites. The principal or administrator should take
key responsibility for placement of older gang
member youth in community agencies and places of
business and for integrating the school and work
experience. A variety of part-time job and/or
training opportunities should also be created in
cooperation with probation officers and local
business organization, chambers of commerce, and
public employment services. These job placement
sites will obviously need to be tailored to the
needs of youth based, to the extent possible, on
individual age, interest, and ability. More
limited, less demanding training and job
opportunities will obviously be required for
younger youth, and more substantial skill and
career-oriented opportunities for older youth.

Special attention should be paid to the work
supervisors or mentors at the job site as well as
to issues of integration of the vocational and
educational experiences. There is some evidence
that good supervision at the work site helps the
gang youth maintain interest and involvement in
class work. Furthermore, supervision and
instruction on the job or at a training site can be
enhanced by use of volunteers, including senior
citizens or retired "experts" who may be able to
provide academic tutoring as well as vocational
assistance.

For the older gang member or gang-prone youth, job
and school performance have to be adequately linked
if the larger objectives of developing problem-
solving capacity and career development are to be
achieved. Standards of class and job attendance and
performance should be maintained in some
interdependent fashion. Close working relationships
and immediate feedback have to be established
between the school and work site, especially with
the tendency of some youth to "slack off" or retain
close gang ties. Positive teacher interest and
close work supervision of the gang youth is
required so that he does not fall between the
cracks of school routine and work pressures.

3) Development of a School Learning Support System

The special, additional efforts required to
implement a flexible and meaningful curriculum to
"mainstream" gang-prone and gang member youth may
be called a "learning support system." The class-
room instructor, school counselor, and other staff
must fulfill complex interrelated roles of teacher,
policeman, and social worker. The distractions and
emergencies created by gang life tend to impede the
learning process of gang and non-gang youth in
class. Extraordinary dedication is required by the
teacher to make headway with these difficult youth.
A sensitive and caring approach is critical to the
development of any system that has promise of
success with gang youth. Back-up support by all
staff and administrators is also necessary if the
gang youth is to develop the social skills
necessary to achieve success at school, on the job,
and remain trouble free in the community.

The development of small student work groups
emphasizing mutual cooperation should enhance
learning. Cooperative group learning arrangements
build on needs of the gang-prone or gang youth for
group identity and collaboration. Small study teams
may accommodate different student learning styles
and rates. Teachers will need to pay special
attention to group formation, i.e., to adequately
assess the strengths and weaknesses of each youth
and determine the extent to which members of the
study group will work together productively. It is
advisable that no more than one or two gang youths
be assigned to a particular work group. Much
depends on the strength of positive leadership
provided by the non-gang members of the group. 

Teachers must be careful to avoid coaptation or
intimidation by gang youth of other non-gang youth.
Special care may be required in assigning students
from different gangs in conflict with each other to
the same class. However, a sensitive,
knowledgeable, and skilled teacher may be able to
use a potential conflict or tense situation for
specific dispute resolution purposes, but there are
risks involved. The teacher needs to understand
group process and use it for the social benefit of
the youth involved. He must also have developed
close and positive relationships with his class.

In their efforts to enhance the academic
achievement of gang-prone and gang member youth,
teachers should not emphasize performance standards
to the exclusion of the nature and quality of the
learning process. A system of points or credits
that rewards students for personal progress, nature
of contribution to the group's achievement, as well
as actual performance is useful. Such an approach
enhances a gang youth's self-esteem in a non-gang
context and at the same time reasonably meets
"real" world and school standards.

Situations need to be developed in which the gang
youth's achievements in class or on a particular
work project are advertised or rewarded. Thus
certificates of commendation should be given out on
a frequent basis. Rewards for academic progress may
include special jobs, pleasurable assignments, and
field trips. The notion of failure must be avoided
as much as possible. The student who is
persistently weak at academic tasks may have to
achieve his status and rewards in other useful
situations at school (e.g., as organizer of
athletic events or school monitor). But persistent
efforts must be made to assist the youth to succeed
in academic or vocational learning situations.

It is likely that school and class size are less
important than the teacher's positive personal
long-term contact with a youth gang member. There
is some evidence that where teachers or staff have
personalized, positive relations with gang members,
violence and disruptive acts are reduced at least
in the classroom or school context. Where resources
permit, a team of teachers and staff should be
established to target particular youth and develop
a stronger, more integrated pattern of academic and
social support as well as control relationships
encouraging both academic achievement and
conforming behavior by gang youth.

Support staff, whether social workers, coaches,
tutors, psychologists, security personnel,
community agency professionals, parents, and even
community residents can supplement the teacher's
efforts. Ideally, they should all meet together
periodically as members of an explicit and
recognized team to consider and assist the student
with his academic and social progress. A combined
academic and human services approach is important.
Home visits, assistance to families of gang youth
(e.g., job and educational referrals for parents)
may be indirectly but extraordinarily beneficial to
the gang youth in reducing home pressures on him
and in providing additional support for the efforts
of the teacher.

Finally, school administrative leadership is
critical to the development of a combined school-
community support system. The principal should play
not only the central role in facilitating a
positive school climate, setting standards, and
ensuring that fair and consistent treatment exists
for all students. He must also demonstrate special
knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the youth gang
problem. He must also be able to combine extra
support with social controls on gang-prone youth
while protecting non-gang youth and maintaining
academic integrity at the school. The principal
plays a complex role in which he or the assistant
principal meets with police, youth agency
personnel, community organizations, and even gang
leaders or ex-gang leaders in the community to work
through a whole variety of problems which may
impede the learning support system at school.

4) Early Intervention to Prevent and Deter Gang
Involvement (and Drug Abuse)

The school must undertake a variety of programs to
prevent and deter gang activity, particularly in
its early stages. Counseling, crisis intervention
and informal education should be joined with close
supervision to deal with the gang behaviors of
younger students. The school should be especially
alert to those risk factors (described above) that
incline youth to gang membership. The following
methods should be employed to prevent gang activity
and drug abuse, and to deter and counsel youth who
begin to engage in delinquent and violent youth
gang behavior.

Anti-gang Curricula. Elementary schools in many
cities throughout the country have been the
settings for a variety of discussion and lecture
programs on the dangers of, and ways to avoid, gang
membership and its activities. DARE (Drug Awareness
Resistance Education), SANE (Substance Abuse
Narcotics Education), and other programs have been
introduced by police or sheriffs departments and
some youth agencies. Schools themselves have also
developed their own gang curricula for use in the
early grades. These programs are mainly preventive
and guide youth from neighborhoods with high drug
use and gang activity in the maintenance of
prosocial behavior. They provide discussion
opportunities for youth to examine and make correct
decisions, and to learn how to avoid peer pressure
and experimentation with antisocial behaviors
destructive to themselves and their communities. By
and large, these programs are directed mainly at
drug prevention, and deal with gang prevention only
on a secondary basis. Nevertheless, there is some
evidence that they are successful in promoting
positive attitudes and possibly some positive
behavioral change particularly for youth at minimal
risk for drug use and/or gang behavior. 

Some schools have developed dispute resolution and
values change curricula. Sometimes there is
discussion of the dangers of firearms to resolve
interpersonal disputes. These curricula tend to be
made available to a broad cross section of
students. It is not clear, however, that such
informational programs are sufficient to affect the
attitudes and behavior of youth more fully engaged
in gang activity. The carrying of weapons to
school, even guns, is not an uncommon occurrence in
chronic gang problem neighborhoods. Adequate
security arrangements, including use of metal
detectors and police presence, are as essential as
anti-weapons curricula.

Few school-based programs have been established to
target youth who are already committed gang
members, while still in middle school and as they
enter (or do not enter) high school. The programs
available tend to be non-curricular. They do not
involve gang youth in some type of participatory
classroom or field learning experience. They
involve mainly the participation of adults as
enforcers of rules and regulations or punishments.
They emphasize suppression, in which special
surveillance, searches, or patrols are provided.
Some local police and/or school security personnel
as well as parent and youth or agency groups will
patrol the streets during school hours, for
example, to identify and apprehend truants,
especially those likely to be gang bangers. The
truants may be directed to a special community
site, school, or agency outpost to which parents
are then called and appropriate arrangements made
to assist with the reintegration of the youth back
to school.

An alternate approach involves a school-community
staff team, as suggested above, in the development
of a more comprehensive program response with
student involvement. The team identifies gang youth
and provides them with extra supervision and
services, including remedial teaching and
discussion groups. An assistant principal and
school or community-based agency outreach staff,
along with special teachers, may be assigned
responsibility to the development of such a
program. A youth who commits an infraction,
especially gang-related, will be suspended from
school, required to participate in values change or
dispute resolution seminars, and receive special
supervision to make sure he completes his class-
work. If a gang youth is absent, outreach personnel
should go to the youth's home or search the
neighborhood to bring him to school. At the same
time, special services should be provided both to
the family and youth, utilizing a school community-
based psychiatrist or psychologist. Special
recreational and cultural activities, and
educational visits to prisons and drug treatment
facilities may also be provided to such gang youth.

Other mechanisms for involving committed gang youth
in experiences to change attitudes and behaviors
include peer group counseling, peer conflict
resolution teams, and other devices in which youth
assess or critique each other's gang-related
problems and develop constructive ways for dealing
with them. It is critically important that staff at
school and from outside service agencies closely
coordinate their efforts in the creation of
experiences directed at gang youth, including
combined school and community service projects such
as graffiti elimination, murals, school
beautification, camping, and leadership
development. 

5) Application of Consistent Sanctions and Creation
of Means to Protect the School and Community from
Youth Gang Depredations

There are at least three components to an effective
suppression approach with respect to youth gang
problems in a school setting. They include 1) the
development of a school gang code including
guidelines specifying an appropriate response by
teachers and staff to gang behavior, and a
mechanism or set of procedures for dealing with
gang delinquency after it occurs. The effectiveness
of sanctions, however, depends not simply on rule
enforcement but 2) their application within a
context of positive relationships and open
communication among principal, teachers, staff,
parents, community-based agency workers, and all
students, including gang youth.

School authorities should establish and communicate
rules of school conduct, particularly relevant to
prohibition of gang behavior, and enforce them
firmly and fairly. Thus, gang attire; symbols;
signs; graffiti; sale, possession, or use of
weapons or drugs; and certain behavioral patterns
(for example, body language) that can be clearly
related to gang activity, should not be permitted.
The more serious the gang behavior, the more severe
the school's reaction or punishment should be.
However, gang patterns may change from year to year
and interpretations of serious behavior and the
school's response should be attuned to these
changes.

Furthermore, it may be appropriate to 3)
distinguish between gang- and non-gang-related
activity of youth gang members. While gang members
may be responsible for a large amount of delinquent
and disruptive behavior, much of it may be of an
individual nature and not gang related, thereby
suggesting that gang control strategies per se may
be inappropriate. In addition, delinquent gang or
non-gang behavior may not always be related to
academic performance. Some gang youth are very
bright and may even perform well academically at
school. Yet the school has responsibility for the
youth's social and moral as well as academic
development. 

The teacher should assess the meaning of gang-
related behavior both for the youth's academic and
social development and that of other students in
class. He should not be gullible and duped into use
of or toleration of gang symbols or behaviors. The
teacher needs to devise appropriate teaching
strategies that will take into consideration the
interests and abilities of gang youth as well as
protection of other class members. Again, special
attention needs to be paid to development of a
positive relationship with gang youth in terms of
an appropriate blend of support and control. The
teacher must try to understand the dynamics of gang
life as it affects the youth's behavior and also
that of the other students in the class.

The teacher should refrain from quick calls for
assistance from administrative and security
personnel, except in the face of clear-cut physical
threat to students or teachers, or in situations in
which gang behavior is a major impediment to
teaching. The teacher, based on his relationship
with all students in the class, is in the best
position to handle most crisis situations. The
working through of a series of problems by the
teacher is an appropriate way to ensure progress
and development for both gang youth and the class
as a whole. Even when it is necessary to suspend a
gang youth, a positive and continued relationship
by the teacher with the youth should still be
maintained so that academic and social development
is assured to the fullest extent possible.

Several mechanisms should be in place for dealing
with gang delinquency and outbreaks of violence in
addition to punishment by a school disciplinarian,
usually an assistant principal. Student,
faculty/staff/parent or task force groups can be
formed to assess the gang problem and advise on
measures to be taken. In emergencies these groups
or task forces can be used as crisis teams to deal
with offenders, victims, and others affected by
gang incidents.

Finally, a cautionary word is in order, if a
decision is made to transfer a gang youth from one
school to another because his gang activities
constitute a serious threat to other students or he
himself is subject to assaults, it is important to
engage and follow through on a process beneficial
to the youth transferred. The administration of the
school to which the youth is to be transferred as
well as the youth himself and his parents should be
thoroughly briefed. Expectations and contracts for
future improved behavior, and special services by
and for the youth and his family should be
clarified and agreed upon. Furthermore, it is
important that the youth not "fall between the
cracks." School transfers can be an easy device to
get the youth out of the system, if there is no
follow through. The gang youth at age 14 or 15
years becomes in effect a permanent truant and
premature dropout when no one pays attention to the
fact he does not show up at the school to which he
is transferred.

"Safe" or drug-free zones for students should also
be established around schools and safe passage
guaranteed for students going to and coming from
school. City or state ordinances may already be in
effect requiring extra law enforcement and enhanced
sentences for drug possession and sale as well as
weapons possession and use in the vicinity of the
school. In this gang activity deterrent process,
special attention is also required to safeguard
rights of student privacy, confidentiality of
records, free expression, and due process in
actions taken against gang member students.

6) Parental Involvement

Parents are essential to any structure and process
established to deal with the gang problem on school
grounds. They need to be involved as part of the
provision of social opportunities as well as those
of suppression, social intervention or support, and
community mobilization. Parents need to help their
children internalize those norms and values that
will help them make the best possible use of the
school's educational program. Some distinctions
need to be made, however, as to which kinds of
parents are involved in these efforts, whether
parents of gang youths, parents of non-gang youths,
or parents of youths who may be innocent victims in
gang incidents.

Most parents will be concerned with the safety and
security of their children attending school. They
should be involved in parent group meetings, street
patrols, and monitoring in and out of school to
detect and prevent gang activities, including
providing assistance to teachers and staff in
carrying out class and field trip activities.
Parents, by their presence, can exercise a certain
degree of natural control that is calming both to
teachers and students. Essential control and
punishment for infraction of rules, however, must
lie with principals and teachers. By and large,
parents of youth who are not in gangs are more
likely to participate in these efforts, although
there may be significant exceptions. Occasionally a
parent may be a community leader and school
activist and still have a child who is a gang
member.

The challenge to the principal and the teacher is
to engage the passive or reluctant parent in
addressing the problems of his child who is gang-
prone or a gang member. The parent may deny
knowledge of his or her child's involvement in gang
activities or, if he or she does acknowledge it,
demonstrate an inability to deal with him. Special
contracts -- sometimes formal -- may be required
among parent, youth, and the school to maintain the
youth's conformity to school expectations. Specific
duties or responsibilities of parent and youth will
have to be spelled out. At the same time, a variety
of social or psychological services or referrals to
obtain help for the parent and youth are required.
Furthermore, effort should be made to persuade
parents with problem youth to participate in mutual
support groups.

Of special interest to parents, including teenage
gang member parents, may be parenting or parent-
education classes conducted by school or outside
community youth agency personnel to deal with a
range of issues related to child development, child
care, and optimizing the student's performance at
school, with special attention to related youth
gang problems. Efforts should also be directed at
involvement of parents of gang youth in activities
of personal and social interest to them, including
field trips, picnics, typing or computer learning
classes, and other general learning activities. The
assumption is that if parents' own needs are met,
this may improve the capacity of the parents to
supervise, support, and guide their children.

Experienced parents, particularly those who have
successfully dealt with their own gang member
children, may be especially useful as members of a
special parent committee. These parents can assist
with a variety of gang prevention and control
programs, including visiting homes of school
parents whose children are currently causing gang
problems, assisting teachers directly in class to
manage potential gang situations, and acting as
advocates or representatives on school and school-
community task groups addressing youth gang issues.

7) Outreach to Community Agencies

The youth gang problem largely arises as a result
of the interaction of conditions of poverty and
social disorganization, including the failure of
local organizations and community to consensually
and appropriately perceive and collectively act on
the problem. In most socially and economically
deprived communities, the school represents the
strongest or most viable legitimate social
institution. But it tends not to serve as a major
base for addressing local community problems.
Ideally, it should or can be a key mechanism for
integrating or mobilizing community efforts,
especially as they directly touch on the school-
related youth gang problem.

The school should establish liaison relationships
with a variety of outside organizations and
agencies that have knowledge and data about the
problem and can provide services and energies to
deal with it. The police, probation, youth service
agencies, and local community groups are often
already involved with these problems. Both police
and youth-serving agencies can be extremely useful
to the school with information about youth gangs
and how to deal with them. The community-based
youth agency in the area can be a valuable partner
in joint programs dealing with gang-prone youth.
Police, probation, youth service personnel, and
other experts should be used on a regular basis for
educating students, teachers, and staff about the
problem. Contact with PTA representatives and
committees of local organizations and churches
concerned with youth problems and program should
also be established on a regular basis.

The school principal, the community-based youth
agency director, and other organizational
representatives need to accept the critical
importance of close cooperation with each other in
sharing service resources, not only for the benefit
of gang and non-gang students but for their own
particular organization's interest and benefit. For
example, if the youth gang problem is reduced, more
students will be in daily attendance at school and
state funding for schools will automatically
increase; if youth are truant less often, police
recorded community burglary and larceny rates will
go down; and if youth agency activities are better
attended, accountability of the agency will rise in
the eyes of the United Fund or other funding
sources.

Local businesses and the media can also be
participants in this larger community developmental
process, particularly through outreach efforts to
support certain community-oriented school projects.
Positive communitywide recognition should be given
to individual "problem" youth who participate in
activities that make a contribution to community
well being, particularly for leadership in
community clean-up, graffiti expunging campaigns,
mural projects and other activities sponsored by
the schools in which gang-prone and gang member
youth play an important role.

An extension of the outreach notion is use of the
school as a community base or center for the
provision of a whole range of protective,
preventive and remedial health, educational,
training, employment, and other services focussed
on the needs of youth, including gang-prone and
gang member youth and their parents. This more
comprehensive approach means that a variety of
agencies should have service resources situated
directly in the school. This approach requires that
these human services be closely integrated with
those of the school. Thus, teams of teachers, youth
agency, social service and health workers, as well
as parents, representatives of business, police,
and probation would be available to deal with
various issues related to youth gang problems.

This targeted gang member or gang-prone approach
could be part of a more general approach that
targets all youth at different levels of risk. In
this broader preventive approach, specific schools
and locations in the community, rather than certain
types of youth, would be targeted for services and
special activities. Again, special care should be
taken that more intractable gang-prone and gang
member youth are neither excluded nor receive lower
priority attention in such programs.

8) Staff Selection, Training, Data Systems, and
Evaluation

School success in dealing with youth gang problems
will depend on the nature of school structure and
processes, and especially the quality of staff and
information developed to address the problem. The
right staff must be selected and trained;
appropriate information acquired, managed and
transmitted; and programs in due course evaluated.

School personnel who have special leadership,
school security, or student rehabilitation
responsibility with respect to gang youths should
be selected with particular criteria in mind: 1)
warmth, friendliness, a sense of humor, and a
capacity to reach out and relate to youth in both
formal or informal settings, including school
playgrounds and athletic fields or the youth's
home; 2) sensitivity to the interests and needs of
adolescents, with an ability not to be intimidated
by the youth's testing behaviors; 3) an ability to
stand firm on rules and regulations which the
teacher or staff person can spell out clearly, and
especially be able to justify; 4) understanding of
adolescent development, gang subculture and
behavior at school and in the local community; and
5) an ability to establish productive relationships
with parents and representatives of key local
organizations, including law enforcement and
grassroots groups. Security and other staff in
close contact with gang youth should not be active
gang members or even strongly identified with a
particular gang. Police checks may be required.

Training in most respects serves to develop or
enhance the abilities and knowledge that many
school personnel already bring to the job. Training
should increase the teacher's or staff person's
knowledge of gangs and community resources for
dealing with gang members and their families.
Individual and group counseling skills, especially
in relating to gang crisis situations, should be
developed. Information should be continually
updated on local gang activities, including codes,
symbols, and intergroup relationships. A key
concern of training should be development of ways
to enhance both self-esteem and self-discipline of
gang youth. Criminal justice personnel, especially
police, as well as community agency and local
grassroots representatives, and other outside
experts should be involved in these special
teacher, staff, and school security gang training
institutes and seminars.

Gathering and sharing information on gangs are
extremely important tasks in the development of an
information system to identify, track, investigate,
suppress, and assist gang youth. The school system,
particularly in large cities, should have a
centralized system for identifying student gang
members and recording gang-related acts,
particularly disruptive and drug-related activity.
The analysis of these records becomes a basis for
school and school system policy to deal more
effectively with the problem in terms of assignment
of security personnel and development of targeted
intervention programs. These records also assist in
focussing efforts on certain youth, whether first-
time "offenders" or repeaters, for appropriate
special supervision and services.

These records, however, can be abused by school
administrators, teachers, and other staff, if they
serve to exclude youth from school, subject the
youth to harassment and stigmatization, and violate
normal student rights and privileges. It may be
appropriate for only certain school personnel to
have access to these records and for their use to
be carefully monitored. Procedures for maintaining
such files should be developed by a special
committee or task force, containing representatives
from school, local community, and parent groups.

In general, no outside agencies, including the
police, should have access to these files. Both
parents and students should complete forms that
authorize the release of specific types of
information to certain sources desiring information
without going through a formal administrative or
legal process. This does not mean that selected
information on specific youth who are clearly
chronic gang offenders cannot be shared informally
by school authorities with security personnel and
police. The nature of informal or less than formal
communication of such information should be
carefully monitored, however. If the youth is
already known to the justice system, especially if
he is on probation or parole, the full sharing of
school information may be required. On the other
hand, a full sharing of justice system information
by criminal justice personnel with school
authorities may not be appropriate, particularly if
the gang youth is performing reasonably well in
school.

Such data systems provide a critically important
basis for testing the effectiveness of prevention,
rehabilitation, and control programs. But they must
be developed and used judiciously. Periodic
evaluation should determine who is being classified
as a gang youth and for what behaviors, what
services or special treatment such students
receive, and what benefits or costs result from the
programs established. Benefits to be expected would
be improvement in academic achievement by gang and
non-gang youth, reduction of gang and non-gang
delinquent behavior, and success in keeping
potential dropout youth, especially gang members in
school.