The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

Similar sharp declines in frequencies and categories of various types of offenses occurred for theLatin Kings and Two Six. The reductions were statistically significant for all types of selfreportedoffenses in both gangs, except for drug selling, which declined, but again not tostatistical significance. The percentages of decline for the Latin Kings and Two Six weresimilar, with a slightly greater reduction for the Latin Kings (Table 10.2).Similar patterns in the reduction of arrests for the different offenses for each of the gangswere reported, with greater statistically significant reductions for the Latin Kings than for theTwo Six. For all types of self-reported offenses and arrests, the Latin Kings appear to have beenmore delinquent than the Two Six. Some of these differences, we shall see later, wereattributable to the differences in the average age of the Latin Kings, who were older and,perhaps, aging out of criminal behavior more rapidly. We control for age differences in themultivariate analyses (below).Cohort. It is difficult to compare the three youth Cohorts because of variations in the sizeof each Cohort, and in the youth-age distribution within each Cohort. The first Cohort containedmore than twice the number of youth than in either the second or third Cohorts. Cohort I youthtended to be a little older and were in the program for a longer period. Cohort III youth wereyounger, with the least program exposure. In general, all of the Cohorts reported declines inoffenses and arrests over time. The level of decline in self-reported offenses and arrests isstatistically greater for the first Cohort than for the other two Cohorts. There were two minorexceptions to the reduction of offense and arrest patterns across the Cohorts. Cohort II showed aslight increase in drug selling at Time III, and property arrests were unchanged for Cohort II (butthey were already at zero at Time I and remained at zero for Time III) (Table 10.3).10.5