The only method that has proven to be atleast marginally effective is segregation, best example is Connecticut DOC. They HATE being segregated, not by affiliation, but simplydue to the fact of membership in ANY gang.

I work in a county jail. We have a whole 10 juveniles. 90% of them are being held on gang related charges; robbery, murder, attempted murder, auto/home burglary, home invasion. We try to identify the gang members when they get booked, but usually we find out when they start tagging the walls and drawing gang graffiti on their papers. Then we sic our gang detective on ’em and try and get their charges gang enhanced.

Hello all, I work in a maxium male juvenile correctional facility in Indiana. The facility houses 360 juvenile offenders with ages ranging from 12 to 20 years old. We have addressed our gang problem in two ways. First we basically just id all gang members upon admission. This accounts for over 90% of our population. Second, we developed a unit for all confirmed gang leaders in the facility. We house these offenders together and program them together. It has been successful in curtailing our issues that are typically associated with gangs inside institutions.

It sounds to me like the institution is reinforcing the gang culture by seperating them. I have utilized the MDT process in the past to integrate youth into dormitory settings where the population was mixed. Often times, that involves changing the entire culture of the facility where violence and gang behavior are not tolerated. This includes tribunals for new youth on the unit, peer mentors, a positive peer culture, etc. Very tough work to change a facility’s culture and easily eroded by ne or two staff who do not buy in….good luck.

“Behavior Modification” = OC & PR-24

Worked in the old days…..

A part of the problem is that you have your true gang members and then you have your wanna be’s. Putting them together only reinforces the gang behavior but yet keeping them apart quite often means that the wanna be’s are going to try and impress others with how tough they are….this is where behavior modification could come into play if there was an effective program that addresses the issues.

I appreciate your input and it is probably right on. It just gets very frustrating when our mission is to try and reintegrate these guys back into the community and all we are really doing is warehousing gang members and sending the same gang members back into the community to terrorize.

Your thinking is probably right, but the facilities think of the high cost of lawsuits when good little johnny gets beat up when we housed him with a rival gang member when we should have known they wouldn’t get along. And judges go along with it. Instead of forcing them to live together and deal with their differences (usually just the stupid zip code they live in), we put them together reinforce the gang mentality, and let them reorganize, and recruit more members while locked up so when they hit the streets, they can pick up where they left off without missing a beat.

I work at a juvenile facility housing over a hundred 16-18 year olds in a dorm-type setting. There are 6 “dorms” and when a kid comes in they check gang affiliation and rivals. Then the minor is placed on one side of the facility or the other based on this info. Over half of our population are in a gang and many are on “gang-terms” regarding their probation. My issue is this, it appears that separating minors based on their gang affiliation serves only to re-inforce the gang member mentality and gives the minor a sense of empowerment for engaging in this behavior. I am curious as to how other facilities deal with this issue and are there any evidence-based intake procedures that work better than this?