Responding to gangs

This essay begins with a simple premise: if we don’t understand our problems we aren’t going to be able to solve them. This premise applies to challenges in a variety of fields: medicine, social services, education and juvenile justice. Criminal justice is replete with examples of well-intentioned efforts to curb gang crime and victimization that are based on incomplete or false understanding of the problem. Such examples include interventions that lack careful attention to implementation, are built on stereotypes or partial problem descriptions or lack sufficient “dose size” to make an impact. Oftentimes interventions are guided by media stereotypes rather than scientific approaches.