The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

gone through a treatment program (p = 0.026). Possible Project-related treatment effects havenot been helpful. The eleven-variable model predicts 44.0% of variance (Table 12.5).A combination of opportunity, deterrent, social-control, and differential-associationvariables seems to provide the best predictors for reduced levels of drug arrests. Holding a job isimportant. The more household members who have gone to jail provides a deterrent effect.Seeking to settle down with a girlfriend or marriage partner again is a positive motivating factor.The gang youth who is satisfied with [conditions in] the community is a candidate for increaseddrug crime arrests. Higher levels of educational opportunities do not necessarily contribute toreduced drug crime.In sum, employment seems universally to reduce delinquency and crime, including drugarrests. Marriage or a steady girlfriend seem to be strong factors in the reduction of bothviolence and drug arrests. The Project appears to have had a considerable direct effect inlowering rates of total arrests and serious violence arrests but not drug arrests, at least based onpredictors derived from our gang-member survey and police-arrest data. We find the same lackof Project success when we more closely examine different service effects on different types ofprogram youth in Chapter 14.There is no magic bullet, or single set of life circumstances, for the reduction of gangcrime. Thus, a somewhat different cluster of program strategies and elements may be required tofacilitate legitimate conventional socialization and maturation in the life space, or socialrelationships, of gang youth who may have different problems at different time periods.Influence of the Program on Key Life-Space/Life-Course Variables12.14