Responding to Gang, Crew and Youth Violence in the District of Columbia

A BLUEPRINT FOR ACTIONlights the multiple and complex causes of violence and theinteraction of risk factors operating within family, community,social, cultural, and economic contexts. Thismodel also adopts a developmental perspective of how violencemay be linked to different factors at different stagesof one’s life.Public Safety ApproachHistorically, most jurisdictions sought to solve youthdelinquency and violencewith a law and Voices from the DistrictDC does not always“embrace its youth in apositive light. We demonizeour youth so much. We rarelyfocus on the good stuff. I thinkthat we have encouraged aculture of fear of youth in thiscity. I don’t think it’s that hardto fix, but we have to becommitted to fixing it. I justthink that a part of gangviolence prevention, a criticalpiece has to be, to embraceour youth as an importantasset and to embrace ouryouth in a loving way;letting them know that theyare significant.”order, or public safetyapproach. This approachfocuses on suppressingviolent andsocially-unacceptablebehavior. Five basicstrategies have evolvedin dealing with youthgangs: (1) neighborhoodmobilization; (2)social intervention, especiallyyouth outreachand work with streetgangs; (3) provision forsocial and economicopportunities, such asspecial school and jobprograms; (4) gangsuppression and incarceration;(5) an organizational development strategy, suchas specialized police and probation gang units.Increasingly, gang and youth violence have been viewedless as social problems and more as criminal and pathologicaldisorders, accordingly the call for ramped up lawenforcement has increased. Unlike in other public safetydiscussions, the “law enforcement approach” deemed necessaryto combat youth and gang violence is often suppressionand not community policing. Key componentsof suppression are surveillance, stakeouts, aggressive patrolsand arrests, curfews, zero tolerance policies/practicesand intelligence gathering. 57Community Peace ApproachIn response to the national concern about youth violence inthe 1990s, the Institute for Community Peace (ICP) wasformed to bring a primary prevention focus to communitybasedviolence problems. The community peace model isa comprehensive, research-basedpracticemodel that combinesthe other approachesand includes thosemost directly affected–community residents,including young people– as the drivers forchange. Essential tothis model are:• Building capacity tocollaborate across disciplineand sector;• Broad-based residentengagement;• A focus on rootcauseanalysis of violence;• The implementationof a comprehensive,evidence-based action plan;Voices from the DistrictMost community based organizationsknow their neigh-“borhoods, they’re on theground, and are familiar withthe people in the neighborhoods.But sometimes it’s achallenge to overcome inertia;recognizing when somethingisn’t working as good as itcould, taking new informationand integrating that into yourapproach; working with evaluationsand looking at differentmodels to integrate. Theredoes tend to be a lot of resistance– like ‘We’ve been doingthis for a long time.’”• Consistent reflection and revision of the plan;• Attention to preventing violence and buildingcommunity; and• A focus on sustainability.The community peace model differs from the other approachesin that it challenges community and collaborativepartners to create a safe environment and to buildcommunity that is resistant to violence. An evolutionaryframework, developed by ICP, assists in understanding theevolutionary process in which communities move fromcrisis and inaction over violence to sustained peace.Called the developmental stages, this framework providesa guide to effective resource distribution and targeting effortsover the life of a community’s work to develop andsustain peace.Resiliency TheoryFor the past 30 years researchers have been trying to determinethe answers to the following questions: Why dosome children from very adverse circumstances grow up tobe productive, responsible adults while others do not?Why are some children “resilient” in the face of seriousrisks, and others are not? What can we do to increase thechances of successful outcomes? The outgrowth of thesequestions and research related to them is known as resiliencytheory, a major theoretical approach to delin-56 U Bronfenbrenner, “Ecological Systems Theory”, Annals of Child Development (1989).57 Ibid.31