The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

The drug-change model was constructed the same way as the other models. Again, thecontrol variable was Time I category of drug arrests, and the dependent variable was change indrug arrests between Time I and Time II. Drug arrests are not as frequent as violence andproperty arrests for Little Village gang youth. The drug-change model is not as powerful as theothers. Only drug arrests at Time I and detentions/incarcerations at Time II are highlysignificant predictors (p = 0.001). The different samples variable approaches significance (p =0.053), and the interaction term drug arrests with different sample categories is significant (p =0.021). The model accounts for 17.1% of variance on the dependent variable at Time II (Table11.7).The regression effect – i.e., the youth with fewer drug arrests at Time I increasing theirdrug arrests at Time II, and those with more drug arrests at Time I decreasing at Time II – doesnot completely pertain for the category of youth with the most-serious drug arrest histories.These youth show an increase rather than a decrease at Time II. In terms of age effects, theyoungest group, 16 and under, shows the largest relative increase in drug arrests at Time II. Incomparison with the 17- and 18-year-old group, the 16-and-under group shows almost asignificantly greater increase at Time II (p = 0.058).Comparing the samples, we find that only the program sample has a drop in drug arrestsat Time II. There is a substantial increase in drug arrests for the comparison sample, controllingfor other variables. This difference is statistically significant (p = 0.015). We observe that eachof the youth age categories of the program sample reduce their drug arrests at Time II, whileeach of the age categories for the comparison and the quasi-program samples are increasing,except for the 17- and 18-year-old quasi-program sample, which still does not decrease as much11.14