The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago

data indicates that most offenders in all of the Districts were male. Indeed, less than 2.0% of alloffenders in violence index gang-crimes in the Districts in the pre-program period were female,but this percentage had risen to 3.0% in the program period. Nonetheless, even though wemainly targeted males, it was possible that a similar increase in violence was occurring amongfemale gang offenders. To determine if patterns were similar, we examined the offender datalooking at female offenders.Gang Violence Index. Table 15.24 presents comparative information on femaleoffenders for the serious violence index crimes across the seven Districts. Very few femaleoffenders were involved in serious violence crimes in any of the districts. Females in District 10showed no increase in the program period, remaining at seven offenders. Although District 10had the best change record, it is hard to determine whether this was related to Project effect,since the numbers are exceedingly small and the Project did not target female gang members.All Gang-Related Offenses. Because so few females were involved in violent gangcrime, further analysis was conducted on female offenders involved in other types of gangcrimes (Table 15.25). The number involved in all gang-related incidents combined increasedsubstantially over the five-year program period, particularly in Districts 10 and 8. While seriousviolent gang crime was still overwhelmingly a male activity, non-violent and less serious gangcrime had increased substantially for females.Table 15.26 presents information on the proportion of male and female offenders inDistrict 10 who fell into various crime categories in the pre-program and program periods. Thedata indicate that female offenders in Little Village experienced a greater percentage increasebetween the two periods in all categories except the violence index offenses. Still, this pattern15.18