The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

164 interviewed program youth, plus an additional 27 youth for whom we have tracking but noindividual interview data, for a total of 191 different youth. We examine the dimensions of thecontacts provided by the particular Project workers: outreach youth workers, police officers,probation officers, the neighborhood organizer, and all of these providers together. We describeprogram effects over the five-year Project period: by total sample, by Cohort, and by specificgang.Duration of Contacts. Not all Project workers were in continuing contact with eachprogram youth; the same worker team did not necessarily service or contact a particular youth.Nevertheless, multiple types of workers did often contact each youth served. Several of eachtype of worker, in coordination with one or more other types of workers, were often in contactwith a particular youth during the course of the program. On average, contacts were made by 2.4different workers with the total youth sample over a period of 29.2 months. In other words, theaverage program youth for whom tracking data exists received contacts from one or moredifferent types of workers over an average of almost 2½ years.Project youth workers were in touch with and served the largest number of these youth.An average of 1.7 different youth workers served 179 youth over 17.5 months. (Note that theaverage stay of community youth workers with the Project was approximately two years.) Theyouth workers were usually assigned in sets of two to the Latin Kings and Two Six programyouth. As a rule, the different youth workers contacted members of several sections of one gangonly. The police, probation, and to some extent, the neighborhood organizer, were generallyable to work with youth across all sections of both gangs.The pattern of Project police contacts was different from that of the youth workers: 1.69.4