In this book, Irving Spergel details the efforts of his Chicago youth gang project, a comprehensive, community-based model designed to reduce gang problems, including violence and illegal drug activity. He offers an in-depth description of the Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project, revealing the successes and failures of intervention at each level: individual youths, the gang itself, and the community at large. Spergel relates how a coalition of criminal justice, neighborhood, and academic organizations_along with a team of tactical officers, probation officers, former gang leaders, and a neighborhood organization_developed strategies for dealing with hardcore violent male youths from two gangs: the Latin Kings and Two Six. This well-known project has become the model for a series of national initiatives. Policymakers, criminologists, and gang researchers will find this model valuable for assessing gang programs and reducing gang violence.

Irving A. Spergel is George Herbert Jones Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in Social Work with a minor in Sociology at Columbia University in 1960, and has worked for five decades on gang problems in the U.S. He is the author of The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach.