The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

statistically significant (p = 0.03).A specification of these results indicates that the17- and 18-year-old program group doesbetter than the comparison 17- and 18-year-old group (p = 0.028), and the 19-and-over programgroup also does better than the comparison 19-and-over group (p = 0.010) in reduction of arrestsfor these types of offenses. But there are no statistically significant differences for the 16-andundergroup across the three samples, although there is an increase in arrests for these youth inthe three samples.Finally, controlling for level of such arrests at Time I, we find more than a regressioneffect. The youth with the higher levels of Time I arrests for disorderly conduct, mob action andgang loitering do better at Time II than those with lower levels of such arrests. But the programsample does significantly better than the comparison sample (p = 0.03). The program subgroupsthat do especially better are those with the two highest levels of arrests – medium andhigh – for these distinctive police suppression-type offenses, compared to the comparison groups(p = 0.043 and p = 0.050).Surprisingly, there appears to be no evidence of an increase in suppression-type activitiesby police at Time II compared to Time I, for all of the samples. Evidence indicates that therewas a decrease, and the decrease was significantly greater for the program sample in relation tothe comparison samples. The police did not single out program youth for special attention.However, the data indicate that the younger, 16-and-under group generally was more vulnerableto being arrested through special police activities than older categories of youth during theProject period.Thus, the police were not more often targeting gang youth for arrest at Time I than they11.19