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National Evaluation of The Gang-Free Schools Initiative - Draft Final Report

NCJ Number
307112
Date Published
November 2007
Length
351 pages
Annotation

This Draft Final Report lays out an overview of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Gang-Free Schools Initiative; it discusses the initiative’s cross-site results and outcomes, with one section devoted to each location: Houston (Texas), Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), East Cleveland (Ohio), and Miami-Dade County (Florida).

Abstract

This Draft Final Report provides an in-depth description of the results from the national impact evaluation of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP’s) Comprehensive Gang Model: An Enhanced School/Community Approach to Reducing Youth Gang Crime. The evaluation featured three program aspects: implementation of data collection activities designed to capture both process and impact outcomes; development of individual site program logic models or theories of change specifying immediate, intermediate, and long-range outcome measures; and articulation of four case studies that focused on the grant sites’ continuing efforts to develop collaborative capacity to implement the Gang-Free Schools (GFS) model. The evaluation addressed two primary, overarching goals: to provide a thorough understanding in four communities of the development and process through which school and community collaboration leads to assessment and program planning activities; and to provide employable and functional outcome results through the use of process and impact evaluations. Lessons Learned, featured in the Executive Summary, include: information about community capacity for these youth services; the fact that the role of the Project Coordinator is one of the most critical elements that determine the success of the project; the location of the grant-funded intervention program may be more productive when situated and managed within the school systems rather than at law enforcement agencies; the range of interventions offered and age-span of clients eligible to participate will play a role in program success; and parental and community member involvement may be key to learning the true tone and inner-workings of a community.