The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

months; and 41 Cohort III youth were served by 1.7 workers for an average of 15.9 months.Frequency of contact did not vary by Cohort or by length of time the youth was in the program.Frequency of contact mainly depended on the nature of the youth’s troublesome gang activity,especially his violent behavior. Frequency of contact usually diminished once the youth “settleddown.”Based on worker-tracking data, the Project served more Latin Kings (n =102) than TwoSix (n = 89). 1On average, the Latin Kings were served by more workers (2.6) and for a longerperiod of time (32.5 months); the Two Six were served by 2.1 workers for an average of 25.3months. More of the program youth who were both tracked and interviewed were in contactwith more workers (2.6), and longer (31.7 months) than program youth who were tracked but notinterviewed. The 27 youth for whom only tracking data exist were served essentially by onlyone worker for a period of 13.4 months. There was also a relationship between the number oftimes a program youth was interviewed and the length of time the youth was tracked. Youthinterviewed two or more times were provided with 23.2 months of contacts, while youth whowere interviewed only once were provided with 16.7 months of contacts.Frequency of Contacts. Frequency was based on the number of youth contacts per monthby each worker. An average of 2.4 Project workers were in contact with program youth anaverage of sixteen times per month over the entire time those youth were in the program. Inother words, program youth were provided with a great deal of contact by a variety of workers,on average almost four times a week. An average of 1.7 youth workers serving 179 youth were1 In our analysis of debriefing records of a subsample (n = 65) of youth identified in the worker-trackingrecords (n = 164), Two Six workers indicated they contacted more youth than did Latin King workers. Overall, theProject provided services and contacts to more Latin Kings.9.6