The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

We try to identify those specific components of the program important in achievingProject objectives, particularly those related to reduction of particular types of crime. Wealready have evidence, presented in Tables 12.2 and 12.3, that the Project may have had somedirect influence in lowering the total arrests and serious violence arrests of individual gangyouth, at least based on interview responses related to various social-space and relationshipfactors. The Project may have directly and significantly contributed to modification of thesefactors.We now turn briefly to the question of what direct effects the Project may have had onthe life-space and social-relationship factors that, in turn, contributed to reductions in varioustypes of crime by program youth. We ask: what elements of the program induced youths to giveup certain dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors? Also: what concepts are relevant in explainingthe transition process of gang youth to legitimate roles in society? Using program characteristicsdescribed in Chapter 9, we identify variables, or combinations of variables, that predict thosespecific life-space/life-course changes important in lowering levels of crime – total arrests,arrests for serious violence, arrests for all types of violence, and drug arrests (refer to Table12.6 subtables).We are limited by the categorical nature of program data collected through the workertrackinginstrument, but many of our program and life-space/life-course variables are also of acategorical nature. We employ Logistic Regression analysis to determine which particularprogram elements are particularly useful in predicting successful life-space/life-course changesand developments that contribute to higher proportions of youth with reduced arrests. Weinclude age as a covariate in these change models. We know that the youth gang problem is12.15