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Gang experts think some programs are effective or show promise
by Visalia (CA) Times-Delta
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Southeast Asian Teen Engagement Project/Adolescent Health Education and
Diversion (STEP/AHEAD)
Richmond, Contra Costa County — When a spike in violence between Asian gang members led to the shooting death of a 15-year-old girl, members of the Richmond-based Southeast Asian Youth and Family Alliance decided to act.
They began by providing cultural training on dealing with Asian youths and their families to Contra Costa County’s probation department, some schools, law enforcement and other agencies.
"The public systems were not geared up to deal with Southeast Asian kids" and to help steer them away from gangs and illegal activities, said Sean Kirkpatrick, coordinator for the alliance.
For example: Lao immigrants speak three languages, but the probation department had one employee who could speak just one of those languages, he said.
And while Asian youths usually speak English, their parents — who often also needed counseling and help with their parenting skills — frequently don’t, he explained.
So the alliance partnered with other groups, including Asian Pacific Psychological Services, and designed a program to provide interpreters for some public agencies as well as counseling, case management and other services to youths referred by public agencies.
These and other programs are paid for through grants and payments for providing mental-health services, Kirkpatrick said.
Gang Resistance Is Paramount (G.R.I.P.)
Paramount, Los Angeles County — "We’ve been doing it 25 years, and I can say right now it’s an effective program," said Tony Ostos, neighborhood counseling manager for the G.R.I.P. program.
After complaints about growing gang activity, leaders conducted a survey involving police, community members and even gang members. They found that the more enmeshed children became in gangs, the harder it was to get them out.
So the city developed a program for students in the second and fifth grades — along with follow-up training in the ninth grade. It was designed to empower students to say no to gang involvement as well as to show them where gangs might lead them, Ostos said.
"The message they are getting [from gang members] is gang activity is cool. We send a counter-message," he said. "We talk about what a gang is, the consequences of drawing bad attention to themselves, that gangs are more violent and deadly than when their parents were young."
More than 50,000 children in Paramount have taken part in G.R.I.P., and a 2003 study of the program conducted by the University of Southern California showed that the ratio of gang members to residents in Paramount dropped from one in 24 in 1982 to one in 63.
Other agencies have recognized that success, Ostos said, noting that G.R.I.P. programs are being run in communities across the country.
The Incredible Years
Washington — This program was developed by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, a professor and director of the Parenting Clinic at the University of Washington, to reduce aggression and related conduct problems among young children, as well as help them perform better socially and in school.
This is accomplished by working with the children as well as training their teachers and parents.
In the long term, this could lead to fewer problems with delinquency, substance abuse and other problems, according to the program’s Web site.
Frank Vitaro, a professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, helped developed a similar program about 25 years ago. A secondary benefit was that the Montreal students, who were selected in kindergarten, tended to gravitate toward gangs less than a group of students who didn’t undergo the training.
Vitaro said the approach is similar to his program from the 1980s but that it has been improved.
The Ring of Fellowship
North Carolina — It began with members of the United Methodist Church of North Carolina running a series of 24-week Bible study programs for adult inmates in the state prisons. Later, it included young offenders in the state’s youth development centers.
The next step would have been to set up mentoring programs in three North Carolina communities to help youths who have gone through the Ring of Fire training to stay away from gangs, drugs and other illicit behavior once they were released from the juvenile facilities, said the Rev. Mark Hicks of Disciple Bible Outreach Ministries.
"We would train faith-based community programs to work with these kids when they come back home, because we find recidivism is very high with kids," he said. "They go right back in the situations that got them in trouble in the first place."
That was the plan, anyway. But the ministry failed to get a federal grant to fund the program.
Though it still is only a proposal, James "Buddy" Howell, senior research associate for the National Youth Gang Center in North Carolina, said the mentor program has some important elements that likely would make it successful — if the ministry could get it started.
"You know it will work because it’s so practical," he said. "That lifeline coming out, man, that’s the toughest transition of all, particularly if [youths] have been in a long time."
Some youths who don’t have gang ties when sent to juvenile detention facilities end up joining gangs just to protect themselves, Howell said.
"And very few communities have a network of support that the kids can draw upon," he said. "They’re on their own. Many don’t even have families ... so they go back to the gang life."
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