Gang Resistance Education Program

In the years prior to the creation for the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program, America’s inner cities was experiencing a substantial increase of gang membership along the youth living in impoverished communities. During the early 1990s, many viewed gang activity as a particular community’s problem, but as youth and gang violence was increasing drastically across the United States’ inner cities, the public’s perception about this social issue changed. Due to the rapid rise of gang violence and youth membership, delinquent behavior by youths began to receive a substantial amount of academic and media attention.

Gang activity and gang violence have been a major issue in the urban community for over half a century, dominated by mostly minority youth. This essay will review the question: Does growing up as a minority with a dysfunctional family setting aide or contribute to joining a gang, therefore continuing the cycle of gang violence and activity? In order to dive deeper into this subject, several references from the internet and Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez will be stated and discussed. After the discussion of the web articles and passages from the book a solution will be suggested to help the misguided youth of America to make better life decisions than just throwing their lives away as expendable tools of urban guerilla warfare.

Understanding that most of this kids are coming from a lower social economic background means that there is not a lot of resources provided for them. Despite this what the community should do is have a career fair to help gang members. According to, Beth Caldwell “ connecting gang members with meaningful employment opportunities, may be some of the most successful efforts in helping people to stop engaging in gang activity”. Having a career fair can be an option for youth gang members to think about going to college or finding a job rather than being in a gang. Giving them the ability to think that their essence is important can impact their life in a positive course. Job training skills can help them be a better person to seek for job opportunities. Even though civil gang injunction tend to bring a negative aspect into society and communities, they also benefit our society. Civil gang injunction help maintain community safety and focuses on the safety of the

For my final paper I am going to talk about a program that in my eyes is a great way for our youth to receive different views and healthy choices when it comes to avoiding and confronting gangs or gang members. Gang Resistance Education and Training, abbreviated G.R.E.A.T., and provides a school-based, police officer instructed program that includes classroom instruction and various learning activities. The mission of the program is to provide a range of activities to our kids to keep them away from gangs or related activity as well as educate them on competency, usefulness, and personal empowerment which will prevent them from

I have almost 18 of working with at-risk youth to provide intervention, diversion or employment services and program referrals starting in 1998 with the Mayor’s Gang Intervention Project Pride Program as a Youth Outreach Worker I. My population target was at risk a high-risk, gang-impacted 12 to 18 year old participants at the Gardner Community Center located in a highly gang-impacted neighborhood where there is a multi-generational Norteno gang influence from one of the oldest gangs in the city of San Jose, Varrio Horse Shoe. I was in charged of implementing pro-social activities like educational and recreational field trips, which included college campus visits and teamwork oriented recreational activities like white water rafting and camping

One program that has become widely used is Gang Resistance Education And Training (G.R.E.A.T.). In 1991 the Phoenix PD along with local educators and community leaders, implemented a school-based, gang prevention pilot program. With the hope to reduce gang activity and teach skills to students in order for them to resist the pressures of gangs.

Teachers in the classrooms where the program is being taught also help facilitate the lessons as well. All of the four phases have the same primary focus, which is to educate its participants about the dangers of gang membership. The first component of the program is taught to students in elementary school. In this phase, students are introduced to the GREAT program concepts and skills in order to begin the change in the participant’s behavior. The students participate in six lessons and each is about one hour in duration. These lessons teach the participants about the importance of decision making, how to effectively communicate with others, and they also get exposure to anger management strategies. The six lessons in the elementary stage are essential to help to build a foundation for the middle school component of the GREAT program, which goes more in depth into gang resistances (Esbensen et al.,

The gang in Memphis, Tn migrated from Chicago and California, in which they called themselves the Crips and the Bloods subsets, Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, Blac P. Stones, Four Corner Hustles to name a few. These gangs are known for their juvenile memberships. However, the Gang Reduction Assistance for Saving Society's Youth (GRASSY) program has provided resources for gang members by making nearby streets more feasible. This organization has reduced gang conflicts in nearby school by 63 percent. In doing such there is an increase in school attendance and graduation of gang members. It is Ron Pope goal to ensure that school-age student will become inactive in their gang membership(Goggans, L., 2014). In the state of Tennessee,

This article describes a project in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood that is designed to reduce gang problems, including violence and illegal drug activity. The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project was a comprehensive, community wide program designed to reduce serious violence in Chicago’s gang-ridden Little Village neighborhood. The main goal of this project was to reduce the extremely high level of serious gang violence, first at the individual youth gang member level, and then at both the gang and community level. The project appeared to reduce arrests for violent crimes, serious violent crimes, and drug crimes, but did not have an effect on arrests for property crimes or total arrests.

Gangs are very dangerous to everyone in society. “Gangs are groups of people (mostly young males) who band together for protection and a sense of belonging. The U.S. Department of Justice officially defines a youth gang as a group of young people involved in criminal activity” (Gangs 1). There are about one million gang members in more than 20,00 criminally active gangs in the United States. Also, that group of about one million people, are accountable for up to eighty percent of our nation’s crimes. Since 2005, gangs have nationally added about 200,000 members (Targeting Gangs 1). This is why more action from the community needs to be taken to help with the growing gang-related crimes here in America.

As Chief of Police, I would encourage the educational institutions to increase their gang awareness both in the schools as well as around the schools as well as join in a joint effort with the police department and other community agencies to address the issue (Arciaga et. al., 2010). The vast majority of crime within Memphis is completed by individuals under the age of twenty-four (Operation: Safe Community, 2011). It is important to prevent as well as intervene in the lives of our youth early to combat gang activities (Arciaga et. al., 2010).

G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Resistance Education And Training) was developed in 1991, by Phoenix Police Department to reduce teenage participation in criminal behavior and gangs, so “a combined effort was created with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Phoenix Police Department (PPD), and began as an eight-lesson middle school curriculum” (“History of the”,n.d.). Additional instructors, officers and law enforcement agencies where added help manage the program. These agencies were: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Police Department; La Crosse, Wisconsin, Police Department; Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau; Federal

Juvenile gangs have become a serious and growing problem in many areas throughout the U.S. It is unlikely that gang control strategies can be successful as long as legitimate economic alternatives are lacking. I will be exploring the possible proactive solutions to this social problem.

The scholarly article, “Risk and protective factors associated with gang affiliation among high-risk youth: a public health approach”, written by Doctor Dawn Delfin McDaniels, was first published in 2012 in the BMJ Journals. The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors of high-risk youth and by doing so, also identify violence-prevention strategies (McDaniels, 2012). McDaniels analyzed data from the CDC’s 2004 cross-sectional survey ‘Youth Violence Survey: Linkages Among Different Forms of Violence’. The data collected from 4,131 youths in grades 7, 9, 11, and 12, in high-risk, urban schools, was used to find an

The term youth gangs refers to a group of three or more members, who are between the age of 12 and 24; they share an identity through the use of names or symbols; they see themselves as gang and are recognized by others as a gang; there is some amount of permanence and degree of organization; and the group is involved in an elevated amount of criminal activity (National Gang Center Staff, n.d.). Risk factors for gang involvement are based on factors such as individual, family, school, community. School risk factors include poor school performance, poor connectedness to schools, low degree of commitment to and involvement in school, and weak attachment to teachers (Howell, 2010). Community risk factors includes such things as greater level of criminal activity, neighborhood youth are involved in illegal behaviors, widespread access to and the use of firearms and drugs, and low level of neighborhood attachment (Howell, 2010). Additional factors that lead to gang involvement include learning disabilities and emotional disorders, school failure and truancy, no positive involvement outside of school, friends and peers are delinquent, low income, and early involvement in petty crimes and behavioral disorders in grade school (Hernandez, 2015). Reasons given for joining a gang as reported by youths includes for protection, for fun, for respect, for money, family members are part of the gang (and because a friend was in the gang (Howell, 2010).