Community Mobilization—

community engagement and

collaboration

Opportunities Provision—education,

training, and employment programs

Social Intervention—outreach and

access to provision of services for

gang-involved youth and their families

Suppression—community policing 

with formal and informal social

controls and accountability measures

Organizational Change and

Development—development of

policy for effective use of resources

Comprehensive 

Gang Model: 

Core Strategies

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 

(OJJDP) Comprehensive Gang Model (CGM) is a set of five 

interrelated core strategies that offer a comprehensive, 

collaborative approach designed to prevent and reduce 

gang violence. The five strategies are:

Community Mobilization:

Involvement of local citizens, including former gang members 

and community groups and agencies, and the coordination of 

programs and staff functions within and across agencies.

Opportunities Provision:

The development of a variety of education, training, 

employment, and reentry programs specific to engaging ganginvolved youth and young adults.

Social Intervention:

Youth-serving agencies, schools, street outreach workers, 

grassroots groups, faith-based organizations, law enforcement 

agencies, and other criminal justice organizations reaching 

out and acting as links between gang-involved youth and their 

families, the conventional world, and needed services.

Suppression:

Formal and informal social controls procedures and 

accountability measures, including law enforcement and close 

supervision or monitoring of gang-involved youth, by criminal 

justice agencies working in collaboration with communitybased service providers, schools, and grassroots groups.

Organizational Change and Development:

Development and implementation of policies and procedures 

that result in the most effective use of available and potential 

resources to better address the gang problem.

Five Core Strategies

The National Gang Center (NGC) provides training and technical assistance via phone, email consultation, and on-site consultation visits as 

applicable to communities engaging in CGM implementation. Assistance may include, but is not limited to:

• Comprehensive Gang Model overview

• Planning and conducting an assessment of a community’s 

gang problem

• Establishing and maintaining a Steering Committee

• Developing an implementation plan

• Establishing and maintaining a multidisciplinary 

Intervention Team

• The role of the lead agency

• Project director training

• Outreach worker training

• Developing an evaluation and sustainability plan

• Developing memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and data 

sharing agreements

• Developing local subcontractor scope of work

• Developing safety protocols

• Education on risk-factor research

• Identification of evidence-based programs and activities

NATIONAL GANG CENTER

This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement No. 2020-MU-MU-K002, awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs. The 

opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.