News

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Gang Intervention Program

The board recently accepted the Evaluation Report on the districts’ Gang Intervention Program written by Dr. Victor Rios, from the Department of Sociology, UCSB. The evaluation report was designed to measure the effectiveness of the districts’ outreach coordinator and consultant in two areas: (1) meeting the districts’ primary goals of strengthening students who are involved with gangs or at risk of involvement with gangs as well as the students’ level of attachment to school and (2) reducing the level of gang-related conflict and violence and recruitment on our campuses and surrounding communities.

Data gathered by the research conducted for the program’s evaluation provides convincing evidence that the intervention program has been found as overall effective based on the improvement of students' educational attitudes and self-reported decrease in negative gang behaviors. Students also reported lower rates of delinquency, victimization and pressure to join gangs after participation in the outreach programs.

Among the recommendations made in the report is the criticalness of finding a way for the districts’ teachers to collaborate with the program in order to provide teachers with opportunities to better understand some of their students and the youth with a chance to learn to trust and communicate with their teachers.