"Stopping Gangs with a Balanced Strategy: Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression"
Affiliated Faculty Member Professor James Diego Vigil and Associate Professor Gilberto Q. Conchas have published a chapter in the new release Changing Places: How Communities Will Improve the Health of Boys of Color: "Stopping Gangs with a Balanced Strategy: Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression."
Abstract
This chapter outlines a balanced approach to stopping gangs through a combination of prevention, intervention, and law-enforcement strategies. We employ a multiple-marginality framework in describing how poverty leads to “street socialization” among boys and men of color. We then elaborate on the ways in which street socialization undermines and transforms the otherwise normal course of human development to institutionalize a street subculture. We must look to these gang roots to help develop prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies that take into consideration the facets of time, place, and people.
Time. We need to change the ways in which urban youth most susceptible to street socialization choose to spend their time through programs and activities targeted at the three most important social-control institutions of our society: homes and families, schools and teachers, and law enforcement and police.
Place. To address “hot spots” and/or areas of poverty prone to gangs, we must set up situations (such as social and personal outlets) and conditions (for example, buildings and safe houses) that reestablish the character and identity of the neighborhood.
People. Once young people’s time is better-directed and focused, and their environments safer and enriched, people — those caring adults most involved with youth — become the essence of the equation. This thorough approach will inform the formulation and implementation of new policies to support urban street youth. We end the chapter with examples of promising programs that embrace a balanced approach.
