The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

Finally, we began to test the utility of anomie, or alienation propositions, as a correlate ofthe youths’ aspirations and expectations for future income and occupation. Aspirations, per se,were not correlated with the offense variables. However, higher expectations for future incomewere correlated with lower levels of self-reported total arrests (r = -0.423, p # 0.01), and withlower levels of violence arrests, serious violence arrests and property arrests (p # 0.05), at TimeI but not at Time III. Also, higher occupational expectations were correlated negatively withdrug use, i.e., the lower the level of occupational expectation, the less the drug use at Time I (r =0.305, p # 0.05) and at Time III (r = 0.256, p # 0.01). A higher level of occupationalexpectation was also extensively correlated with lower self-reported offenses.The “disjunction,” or difference, between income or occupation aspirations andexpectations did not generally produce significant correlations with offense variables in thesimple bivariate analysis. The larger the income aspiration/expectation gap, or “disjunction,” thegreater the association with increased property offenses at Time III (r = 0.305, p # 0.01), but notat Time I. A larger occupational gap or disjunction between aspirations and expectations wasassociated with greater drug use at Time III (p # 0.05). In our multivariate analysis we shallmore strongly show that, when other variables are controlled, using either the income oroccupation measures, a smaller disjunction (or gap) is associated with a lower level of selfreportedtotal offenses, especially violence offenses.ModelsThe Gang Violence Reduction Project was primarily concerned with the reduction ofgang violence. In the following multivariate analyses, we first test the strength of the10.25