The model emphasizes the importance of targeting both institutions and youth and the need to mobilize institutional and community resources in an integrated and interrelated way. The community's approach must be based on problem assessment, not assumptions. Schools play a major role in the socialization of children and are critical players in the comprehensive community approach described above. The proposed research addresses the need of schools for information on promising and successful programs that can be used in and by them as part of a comprehensive approach to preventing, intervening with, and suppressing gangs.
Schools reflect the greater community that they serve.
As youth gangs and crime have proliferated, the Nation's school children have experienced the effects. In 1993, about 40 percent of high school students reported gangs in their school. Students today are aware of and worried about crime at school. In a 1995 national sample of public, private, and parochial school students, almost one-half of the students reported that they had made at least one change in daily routines because of concerns about personal safety and about crime and violence in their communities. Even with the increase of gang activity in the schools, local school boards and administrators often have been reluctant to admit that a gang problem is developing or exists in their schools.