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

Summary and Conclusion 43
outside agencies were sometimes slow to develop,
once they developed, they offered multiple benefits.
These relationships allowed the Clubs to receive
referrals and also provided settings for direct outreach
in recruiting youth.
The documentation process, although time consuming,
led to increased contact with the youth and
knowledge about how they were doing in the different
domains of their lives. This level of contact with
the youth may be a factor in why youth in GPTTO
and GITTO reported such high levels of adult support
from Club staff. Clubs that maintained documentation
found that they were in a good position to
show the credibility of their project and work with
youth, going beyond just being a recreation facility.
At What Cost?
Costs to society associated with gang suppression
include police time, graffiti removal, court fees and
protective services, plus the non-monetary negative
of the fear of being out on the streets and the loss of
lives from gang-aggressive acts and interactions. A
1998 study estimated the total costs to society of
allowing one youth to leave high school for a life of
crime and drug abuse to be somewhere between $1.7
and $2.3 million (Cohen, 1998). For the youth’s four
years as a juvenile, the study estimated the criminal
justice costs at $21,000 to $84,000. In contrast, investment
in deterring a youth from or reducing youth’s
involvement in gangs can save a substantial amount
of taxpayer money and community stress, both in the
short and long term.
What would be the cost of supporting more Clubs to
implement GPTTO or GITTO initiatives at their facilities?
This evaluation did not include a cost study, so
we cannot precisely document the annual cost of supporting
Club services for additional target youth.
However, we did ask Clubs to provide their budgets
for October 1997 to September 1998 and thus have
some information on their direct expenses for that
year. Building their programs from an initial $4,000
in seed money for prevention and $15,000 for intervention
received from OJJDP through BGCA, 19 prevention
programs raised additional funds ranging
from $3,000 to $46,000, and intervention programs
raised from $22,000 to more than $1 million to cover
the costs of one year of implementation. As depicted
in Table 13, taking into account the number of youth
served, the average cost of adding on GPTTO/GITTO
for one GPTTO target youth was $340, for GITTO
youth, $1,889. However, half the GPTTO Clubs spent
less than $282 per youth in direct funding.
It is important to keep in mind that these are direct
costs and do not include resources spent on Club operating
expenses or management, facility upkeep or maintenance,
or the in-kind contributions of Club staff and collaborating
agencies. Thus, $340 for prevention and $1,889 for
intervention are not the total costs but should be
considered the incremental costs for adding services to
new youth. The relatively low figures mark the
advantage and efficiency of using established agencies
and enhancing their services to reach these
harder-to-reach youth.
The main costs for both GPTTO and GITTO were
for staff salaries (generally one half or more of the
expenses). Staff time taken up by GPTTO or GITTO
responsibilities was devoted to outreach, to spending
time in settings outside the Club to build partnerships
and referral relationships, and to completing
the paperwork for the program. And, although the
outreach and recruitment efforts, networking time
and case management approach utilized by the
Clubs implementing GPTTO and GITTO can be
costly, these costs can be contained by the volume of
youth already served by the Clubs and the facilities
already in place.
Even if the full cost of implementing GPTTO or
GITTO were twice as large as these incremental costs,
they are minimal in relation to the amount society
would otherwise spend on gang suppression and
incarceration for these youth. The cost is also relatively
low, considering the challenges associated with
reaching and serving this high-risk population of
youth, the level of the youth’s engagement and the
alternative cost to society of juvenile gang involvement,
crime and delinquency. In sum, the cost of the
initiative appears worth the benefits accrued to youth
and the potential for savings over the long term.
Final Thoughts
Although this evaluation was launched with specific
questions pertaining to GPTTO’s and GITTO’s effectiveness
in recruiting, serving and helping high-risk