Changing Course: Keeping Kids Out of Gangs

 
By Nancy Ritter, Thomas R. Simon and Reshma R. Mahendra

A new book offers evidence-based principles that can halt the cascading impact of gangs on youth, families, neighborhoods and society at large.

The gang problem in the United States has remained stubbornly persistent over the past decade. Here are the facts:

• One in three local law enforcement agencies in 2010 reported youth gang problems in their jurisdiction.
• In a 2010 national survey, 45 percent of high school students and 35 percent of middle-schoolers said that there were gangs — or students who considered themselves part of a gang — in their school.
• Nearly one in 12 youth said they belonged to a gang at some point during their teenage years.

Public health and public safety workers who respond to gang problems know that after-the-fact responses are not sufficient. An emergency department doctor who treats gang-related gunshot wounds and a law enforcement officer who must tell a mother that her son has been killed in a drive-by shooting are both likely to stress the need for prevention — and the complementary roles that public health and law enforcement must play — in stopping violence before it starts.
 
But how can we prevent gang-joining, especially during a time of limited national, state, tribal and local budgets? To help meet the challenge, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) engaged some of the nation's top criminal justice and public health researchers to explore what the evidence shows. The result of that effort is the book Changing Course: Preventing Gang Membership and its companion executive summary, which are available in print, Web and e-book formats.

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Source: The National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Program