The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

Chapter 15Aggregate-Level Changes In Gang Crimewith Ayad JacobIn the design of the Gang Violence Reduction Project, we proposed that a relativereduction of gang violence by sufficient numbers of targeted program youth – key violent gangyouth – would contribute to an absolute or relative lowering of the overall Little Village-areagang violence prevalence rate, compared to similar high gang-violence Hispanic communities inChicago. We expected that the level of gang violence would be relatively lower in the Chicagopolice district beats comprising the Project area, compared to a set of equivalent beats in sixother community area police districts with similar demographic and socio-economic makeup andvery high gang violence problems. We could not, of course, control for significant ecological,social, and environmental changes that could have occurred in the communities, including majorpopulation shifts, non-equivalent age and race/ethnicity distributions, or gentrification.We expected that the most realistic and valid differences relevant to the effects of theProject would most likely occur by the end of the second or third program year, and possiblyover the longer five-year program period, given the community-level changes taking place indifferent parts of the city. We thought that changes over the short-term would more likely bedue to program factors. Since the two targeted gangs, the Latin Kings and the Two Six, arereported to account for 75% of the serious violent gang crime in Little Village, and we served anestimated 15% (N = 195) of the total membership and probably 50% to 60% of the hardcoreviolent members of the two gangs in the area, we anticipated limited effects of the Project,particularly in lowering serious gang-related violence.15.1