The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

times per youth during the program period. Multiple contacts for a particular service were mostfrequently made with those youth selected for suppression contacts (50.0% of n = 48),counseling services (39.0% of n = 172), and family services (36.9% of n = 111).There was some variation in the workers’ perceived effectiveness of the particularservices provided relative to the number of contacts made. Multiple contacts had to include atleast one contact which was perceived as “very effective.” While 48.6% of program youth (n =111) were perceived as having been provided with at least one “very effective” family-servicecontact, only 34.5% of program youth (n = 84) were perceived as having been provided with atleast one “very effective” school/educational contact. Youth workers also reported that theyprovided “very effective” counseling to 42.4% of the youth (n = 172) and “very effective” jobservices to 41.3% of the youth (n = 109). Police and probation workers indicated that theyprovided “very effective” suppression services to 39.6% of the youth (n = 48) in their caseloads.Perhaps most important for program-development accountability purposes, the morecontacts provided to youth, the more likely the service was viewed by workers as “veryeffective.” Youth workers estimated that they achieved “very effective” contacts with thoseyouth most frequently contacted for job and family services. Youth workers were somewhat lessconfident that a high frequency of school and counseling contacts was associated with “veryeffective” results; police and probation workers were even less confident that high frequencies ofcontacts were associated with “very effective” results (Table 14.20).In sum, the results of this and the above two Logistic Regression analyses suggest thatProject-worker contacts with program youth, particularly for jobs, counseling, and family-relatedservices, were more effective than no contacts in increasing ratios of success to failure in14.20