Targeted Outreach - Governor's Office of Crime Control & Prevention ...

Introduction 3
A New Approach for Clubs: Targeted
Outreach and Services
In the late 1980s, BGCA embarked on a partnership
with OJJDP involving an extensive pilot project
aimed at reducing youth delinquency. BGCA’s two
comprehensive approaches to gang prevention and
intervention—GPTTO and GITTO—emerged as outgrowths
of these strategies, designed to target two
groups of particularly hard-to-reach youth, those on
the fringes or at risk for gang involvement, and those
already involved in gang behaviors and a gang
lifestyle. Thirty-three Clubs across the country
piloted and helped to develop GPTTO and GITTO
in the early 1990s.
The prevention approach (GPTTO) provides positive
alternatives for youth with risk factors associated with
gang involvement. The intervention approach
(GITTO) targets youth already involved in gangs or
heavily involved in gang behaviors. The four components
and the overarching objectives of these components
(e.g., their intended outcomes), as stated by
BGCA, are:
• Community mobilization of resources to combat
the community gang problem;
• Recruitment of 50 youth at risk of gang involvement
(prevention) or 35 youth already involved
in gangs (intervention) through outreach and
referrals;
• Promoting positive developmental experiences
for these youth by developing interest-based
programs that also address the youth’s specific
needs through programming and mainstreaming
of youth into the Clubs; and
• Providing individualized case management
across four areas (law enforcement/juvenile justice,
school, family and Club) to target youth to
decrease gang-related behaviors 5 and contact
with the juvenile justice system, and to increase
the likelihood that they will attend school and
show improved academic success.
Because one approach is preventive and the other an
intervention with youth who are already exhibiting
gang behaviors, these components translate into different
strategies for implementation. For example,
the youth in the intervention project need different
services (e.g., drug treatment, tattoo removal, job
training, educational services) than those in the
prevention group. Therefore, the organizations with
whom Clubs develop their network would also differ.
Furthermore, for prevention youth, the point at
which a youth might be mainstreamed into Club programming
is immediate, whereas it occurs much
later for a hardcore gang member or youth who has
been more entrenched in the gang lifestyle and negative
behaviors. Nevertheless, each of the four components
is a building block for the success of both
the intervention and the prevention strategies.
Because the approaches undertaken by each Club
are designed within the framework of the four components
of GPTTO and GITTO (and their intended
outcomes), there are many similarities among Clubs
and how they operate their initiatives. However,
because the Clubs’ communities, gang problems,
resources and infrastructure differ, there is not one
specific way to conduct GPTTO or GITTO; and
therefore, there is not a single model or program
that all Clubs implement. Each Club identifies the
specifics: target populations, based on the risk factors
prevalent for gangs in their area; the community
agencies with which they will collaborate; and the
programming they will offer based on the needs and
interests of the groups of youth they serve. As such,
there is no specific model or “program” to describe;
rather, throughout the report, we describe the
approaches taken by the Clubs to address the four
components of the initiatives.
A major component of both GPTTO and GITTO is
the Clubs’ attention to recruitment of hard-to-reach
youth. Club staff develop strategies to draw in youth
who have not typically been involved in productive
after-school activities, and those who might not have
joined the Club without some external encouragement.
The Clubs use direct outreach and referrals
from such agencies as school, social service, police
and probation to identify and recruit target youth.
Clubs that implement the prevention model focus on
mainstreaming GPTTO youth into Club activities
without labeling them. Although these youth are
“case managed,” Club staff work to keep the process
“transparent.”
Clubs that have developed an intervention model
may serve youth separately from those youth who are
attending the existing Boys & Girls Clubs (e.g., after
regular Club hours, in a separate location or through
individualized case management services that are not