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Today@Sam Article

CJ Faculty Studies Gang Reentry Program

June 22, 2011
SHSU Media Contact: Beth Kuhles

 

Two faculty members in Sam Houston State University’s College of Criminal Justice will evaluate the effectiveness of a new gang intervention program in Houston that is designed to reduce recidivism rates among juvenile offenders released from Texas Youth Commission facilities.

Assistant professor Kate Fox and CJ dean Vincent Webb, along with Charles Katz, of Arizona State University, received a grant from the Texas Youth Commission to evaluate the Gang Intervention Treatment: Reentry Development for Youth program, which targets gang-involved youth between the ages of 13-19 who will return to Houston from juvenile facilities.

The program will work with youth and their families based on their individual needs and offer intensive therapeutic case management and supportive services, including mental health and substance abuses assistance, care coordination, family counseling, functional family therapy, school-based counseling, gang education and intervention programs, workforce development, employability assistance, mentoring, supported employment, and aggression replacement training.

“The goal is to make sure that the gang members in the program do not recidivate,” Fox said. “We have two main ways to measure whether the youth commit crime after they reenter the community: re-arrests and re-incarcerations.”

The research project will follow approximately 200 gang members who participated in the GitRedy program and compare the GetRedy youth to those who were not in the program.

“The GitRedy program will be evaluated based on recidivism over time among a sample of juvenile offenders recently released from TYC into Houston who were members of a street gang prior to incarceration,” Fox said. “Not all gang members who return to the community recidivate, and an important goal of this study is to pinpoint the differences between those who desist from crime and those who recidivate.”

The program will be evaluated over a one-year period, from April 2011 to March 2012.

In addition to capturing data on arrests and incarcerations, the research also will measure how many youth successfully completed the program, the number of youth that became employed, and the number of family members that participated in the service, according to Fox.

In addition to therapeutic and support services, the program offers other opportunities, such as tattoo removal, assistance in obtaining birth certificates or state identification cards, and gang intervention and education curriculum.

Among the goals of the GitRedy program are:

• To ensure early identification of the target population
• Provide incarcerated youth and their families with comprehensive and coordinated reentry planning
• Provide targeted gang-involved juvenile parolees returning to Harris County with comprehensive, culturally competent, gang intervention treatment and support services needed to reduce the risk of recidivism.
• Provide youth and families with the skills, strengths and resources to sustain their success.
• Develop and enhance the collaborative relationship among TYC and community partners necessary to sustain the GitRedy program.

 

 

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