Getting to the Heart of Youth Transformation-Strategies to Reduce Gang Violence in Juvenile Justice Settings
Although the primary goal of gang violence reduction is to prevent a young person's involvement in gang activity and engagement with the justice system overall, the reality is that there are youth engaged in gang-related delinquent activity who are currently placed in custodial facilities or out-of-home placements. Gang involvement is a complex issue, the negative impacts of which can be exacerbated by system involvement. It is critical that current practitioners involved with the juvenile justice system understand the nature of gang involvement and promising strategies for gang reduction to better support the young people currently in the system, mitigate potential harms, and ensure that these young people have the network, tools, and opportunities needed to thrive as they transition back into the community. This webinar highlights key considerations from the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators Gang Reduction Strategies for Juvenile Justice Facilities Toolkit, and speaks to how the guidance and resources listed can reaffirm or refine the work of juvenile justice practitioners and improve opportunities for young people involved in gang violence.
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Getting to the Heart of Youth Transformation-Creating Pathways for Youth Involvement in Violence Reduction Efforts
Often left out of system-wide efforts to reduce gun and gang violence are those directly impacted by it. While young people benefit from prevention and intervention programming, they are also valuable stakeholders in the development and implementation of solutions that address gun and gang violence. Creating pathways for their involvement can be not only powerful for the personal transformation of youth but also critical in transforming the systems that impact them. This webinar features programs that have intentionally engaged youth perspective and involvement in the strategic planning, development, and implementation of youth violence reduction strategies as well as system-wide advocacy.
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What Does It Mean To Be Credible | Interrupting the Cycle of Youth Violence
Interrupting the cycle of youth violence requires a comprehensive, community-led effort. Credibility is essential at all levels of operation and implementation. Respect, trustworthiness, reliability, and consistency are all characteristics of credibility that apply to partner agencies and individual professionals. Credibility is critical to building relationships with youth and their families to create opportunities for substantive intervention. A crucial piece of this process involves authentic individuals whose experiences enhance their connection to youth, their families, and the community more broadly. This webinar explores the roles of these key professionals, including street outreach workers, credible messengers, violence interrupters, and other youth advocates who work to intervene in youth violence. In addition to a brief presentation, practitioners from the field will join a panel discussion to share their specific experiences on the topic.
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Moving Toward an Equitable and Accountable Justice System for Gang-Involved Youth | Interrupting the Cycle of Youth Violence
This webinar explores strategies for creating justice systems that are more productive for the youth involved and the public as a whole and will examine specific considerations for youth involved with gangs, who may be engaged in more serious offenses. Practitioners share how their agencies have made system improvements to support the diversion of gang-involved youth away from traditional justice structures.
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Insights from the Urban Institute’s Research-Based Practice Guidance to Reduce Youth Gun and Gang/Group Violence | Interrupting the Cycle of Youth Violence
In this webinar, hosted by the National Gang Center, researchers from the Urban Institute present the practice guidance from the "Reducing Youth Gun, Gang, and Group Violence" project, as well as some of the key findings from the research synthesis and environmental scan on which that guidance is based. Practitioner panelists speak to how this guidance relates to the work they are doing in their communities, including the need for interventions to be individualized by the specific place, problem, and cultural context in which they are implemented.
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Coordinating a Comprehensive Response | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs
As the seventh and final in the “Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs” series, this webinar focuses on the nuts and bolts of coordinating a comprehensive response to gang, group, or gun violence. With the range of strategies and partnerships needed to effectively respond, multiagency initiatives need an administrative structure to facilitate and support the work of prevention and intervention activities. The agency selected to lead does not assume control of the initiative but is identified as capable of managing project start-up, fiscal responsibilities, and/or day-to-day operations. Critical to the success of a coordinated response is the project coordinator, who plays an important role in project implementation.
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Essential Partnerships for Leading a Community-Based Response | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs
The sixth webinar in the “Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs” series focuses on the steps for building a community-based comprehensive response with a focus on engaging partners and establishing a steering committee to guide the process.
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Understanding Violence in Your Community | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs
As the fifth in the “Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs” series, this webinar will focus on the need for conducting a comprehensive and systematic community gang assessment to determine the nature and scope of what is driving the violence in a community. In communities where gangs are perceived as the drivers of violence, an in-depth analysis will determine if this is accurate and ultimately guide the selection of appropriate gang prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies.
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Operating a Multidisciplinary Intervention Team | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs
As the fourth in the “Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs” series, this webinar focuses on the operation of the multidisciplinary intervention team, as a core strategy in a community violence intervention. The intervention team intervenes with gang-involved youth, connects them to needed services, and responds to crisis incidents, such as gang-involved shootings.
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Understanding Youth Gang Involvement | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs Series
This webinar is the third in the “Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs” series, and it addresses why youth join gangs. Research suggests that joining a gang is a complex decision that involves multiple negative conditions that "push" youth into gangs, as well as perceived positive opportunities that "pull" youth into gangs. Understanding both the reasons behind a youth's decision to join a gang and the youth's level of embeddedness in the gang is instrumental in developing programs and supports for gang disengagement.
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Effective Street Outreach | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs Series
As the second in the “Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs” series, this webinar focuses on street outreach as a core strategy in community violence intervention. Street outreach workers are critical in engaging gang-involved youth and working in the community. Their role goes beyond referrals to service and involves intentional relationship-building with youth, families, and communities to support reductions in gang violence and victimization.
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Intro to the Comprehensive Gang Model | Community Violence Intervention—Addressing Gangs Series
This webinar serves as the first in the "Addressing Gangs" webinar series, which provides participants with an in-depth understanding of the process to implement a comprehensive gang reduction strategy in their community as well as practical guidance and resources. This series is intended for community organizations, local government leaders, law enforcement officials, and other stakeholders in communities impacted by youth gangs that are interested in a multidisciplinary strategy such as the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model (CGM or the Model). This webinar serves as an introduction to the CGM and its five core strategies—social intervention, community mobilization, suppression, opportunities provision, and organizational change and development—with a Q&A to address questions for those interested in the Model.
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Comprehensive Gang Model: Building Impactful Collaboration Through Community Mobilization
This webinar is intended for community members, local government leaders, law enforcement officials, and other stakeholders in communities impacted by youth gangs. It will provide an overview of the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model. This session will focus on community mobilization—one of the Model's five core strategies—as a solution for increasing community engagement and building impactful collaboration between agencies and the residents they serve to address gang-related issues. The webinar will include a forum with practitioners experienced in implementing this strategy and guidance for next steps in implementing the Model.
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Gangs and Human Trafficking
To evade the ever-changing law enforcement and criminal justice landscape, gangs have continued to evolve by engaging in more clandestine type criminal activities, such as human trafficking. With an increase in gang-involved human trafficking cases over the last decade, it has become even more important for law enforcement and prosecutors to be aware of the connection between the two and the best strategies to investigate and prosecute the gang members involved. This webinar focuses on the nature of gang involvement in human trafficking; challenges in investigation and prosecution, along with some potential solutions; and resources available to support law enforcement and prosecution efforts throughout the process.
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Protecting Youth From Gangs on Social Media
This webinar is intended for parents, educators, service providers, and law enforcement officers in communities impacted by gangs. Participants will learn how gangs use social media to recruit and carry out illegal activity; how to identify these threats; and how to apply knowledge and tools to protect youth. Participants will also be directed to references and resources that can be used to enhance social media safety programming.
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Recognizing Gang Activity in Schools
This webinar presents formal and informal techniques to recognize signs of gang activity in a school setting. Establishing reliable evidence of gang presence in and around a school depends on the sharing and validation of information among school personnel, youth service providers, and local law enforcement. Taken together, this authentication of information establishes a more accurate picture of the level of disruption and threat to school safety posed by gang-involved youth. It protects individual students from unsubstantiated labels. It equips school administrators with the ability to develop data-driven policies and effectively respond to gangs in their schools. To obtain handouts for this webinar, please contact [email protected].
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Responding to Gangs in Schools: Creating a Collaborative Process Between Schools and Law Enforcement
This webinar highlights the importance of responding to gangs within a school setting through a collaborative approach between law enforcement and school administration. The National Gang Center’s Gangs in Schools guide discusses strategies around gang activity identification and assessment; planning and implementing a collaborative approach; and prevention, intervention, and suppression. With input from practitioners, this webinar will specifically focus on the process of and challenges with developing a collaboration, the unique roles of law enforcement and school administration, and ways to foster and sustain a collaboration once it has been established.
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Street Outreach and Law Enforcement Collaboration: Prioritizing Safety When Working With Gang Members
This webinar outlines how best to conduct street outreach when gang-involved clients are in danger. The webinar highlights the work of the National Gang Center, Houston Mayor's Anti-Gang Office, and Houston Police Department. The presenters will discuss the importance of building collaborative relationships and communication protocols among outreach staff, police, schools, and justice systems to develop crisis response and safety plans, including plans to address client, outreach worker and public safety violent retaliatory situations.
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