The Strategic Planning Tool (SPT) is a resource to assist practitioners in selecting the most appropriate programs, practices, and strategies to respond to gang problems within their communities. The tool has four interrelated components that include a comprehensive listing of factors that place youth at risk for or protect them from joining gangs; a program listing that provides a detailed review of delinquency prevention, intervention, suppression, and treatment programs that have a higher potential for preventing and reducing serious delinquency and violent gang activity; an interactive database that aligns programs by age and risk factors; and a resource mapping tool for program planners to better align existing services in relation to expected outcomes for their gang-reduction initiatives.
There are numerous gang prevention, intervention, and suppression programs, strategies, and activities, as well as juvenile delinquency prevention and intervention programs. The NGC has developed a program matrix whereby users may review existing programs to find ones that best meet their needs and fill gaps in coverage. Programs in the database were reviewed using several criteria and designated as “effective” or “promising.” The user is offered numerous options, cross‐referenced by age of the intended target population and linked to risk factors in five domains.
The OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model provides a framework for coordinated action that improves a community’s capacity to prevent youth from joining gangs and reduce street gang crime and violence, whether emerging or entrenched.
The Gang Resistance Education And Training (G.R.E.A.T.) Program is a school‐based, law enforcement officer‐instructed classroom curriculum. The program, whose primary objective is prevention, is intended as an immunization against delinquency, youth violence, and gang membership. G.R.E.A.T. lessons focus on providing life skills to students to help them avoid delinquent behavior and violence to solve problems. The G.R.E.A.T. Program is administered by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a component of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Since its inception in 1991, more than 12,000 law enforcement officers have been certified as G.R.E.A.T. instructors, and more than 6 million students have graduated from the G.R.E.A.T. Program.