Little Village Project Summary

As a future social worker I realize that there are several approaches to social work such as macro, mezzo and micro. Each of these approaches affects the communities and systems of care social workers provide. As I read the article titled “The Little Village Project: A Community Approach to the Gang Problem”. I begin understand how each approach of social work affects the community.
This article focuses on the problems of gang violence and its effects on a Chicago community. To begin the process to combat this negative effect, the community sought out and worked with several national organizations that interacted with other federal organizations and community organizations to form a new and innovative program titled the Little Village

Gang Violence Reduction Project in Chicago. I understand that the macro approach begins with helping communities by intervening in large-scale systems.
This macro approach in this article begins with team effort involving the Chicago Police Department CPD, The University of Chicago, US Public Affairs, Health and Welfare Programs, a team of community youth workers, tactical police officers, juvenile probation officers, social service and Little Village community representatives and former gang members. Their target groups were youths involved in Chicago street gangs.
The gangs in this article are of primarily Mexicans or Mexican Americans.

The two major gangs that exist in the Little Village community are the Latin Kings and the Two-Six. From 1989 to 1992, members from these gangs accounted for 75 percent of all gang-motivated homicides, aggravated batteries, and aggravated assaults in Little Village. (Irving A. Spergel, 1997) The Latin Kings were the more violent and criminal group, while the Two-Six engaged more in property offenses (Irving A. Spergel, 1997). Gang members were ages 17 to 24 were primarily targeted for services because they accounted for a large percent of serious gang violence. The program later began to target youth ages 12 to 27 (Irving A. Spergel, 1997). The article explains that the traditional treatment modalities were not working at this time because these treatments were not effective for planning and dealing with the problems of people who are living in poverty and segregated

communities.
Little Village is a largely Hispanic community and residents were primarily lower income and working class families. There are a large amount of undocumented workers. The community has a large amount of people living below the poverty level which makes them a prime target for gang members to recruit. After the rise of gang violence in their community, community leaders agreed to try the new program called the Gang Violence Reduction Project for three years (GVRP).
The goal of the GVRP was to reduce the number of serious violent gang crimes among the youth that live in the Little Village community and to enter the program. The macro level approach begins here with inter organizational teams that creates a “think –tank” on a large scale. These teams form budgets and interventions that will be used. The social work team creates what interventions should be used based on their experience. GVRP, if proved successful would become the model for other cities. The key concepts and ideas are now formally concrete at the macro level.
Mezzo level of social work is usually in neighborhoods, schools and local communities. Mezzo level of social work can be considered “in the trenches” with direct services with clients. The intervention directives involving GVRP were created to work with mainstream youth of the community who felt alienated. These interventions included working with in the gang structure and interactive involvement directly in the community. A multiple of social interventions were used such as crisis interventions, family counseling, drug treatment, educational programs and recreations.
The GVRP model identified five core elements (or strategies) communities should incorporate into their programs to achieve successful outcomes.

These strategies involved include community mobilization. Local citizens and the involved organizations are in a collaborative effort to work as a team to understand gang structures and provide social intervention. Social intervention this program was design to reach out to youths/gang members who are unable to connect with legitimate social institutions. Provision of social opportunities because youths/gang members have different issues in there live and need different things. Older gang members need to secure a legitimate job and need training and education to do so. Also younger youths who are at risk of becoming gang members may likewise need alternative schools or family counseling. The program should provide individualized services for each youth based on his or her needs (Irving A. Spergel, 1997). Suppression this strategy consists of surveillance, arrest, probation, and imprisonment to reduce violent behavior, but also involves greater communication between the agency service providers and control providers.
Collaboration of organizations and development of local agencies is where all parties’ involved need to work closely with one another. GVRP assigned former gang members working as community youth workers; they needed to be given as much respect as police officers in the program. Each group can provide important information

for the program that the other may not be able to obtain (Irving A. Spergel, 1997). This must be done in a coordination of the various agencies.
The last and most common approach is the micro level approach. Micro approach is when the social worker works with individuals and families. Micro level practitioners social workers that practiced in the GVRP coordinated with other social services such as medical services, counseling. There was a large amount of Spanish speaking clients, the organizations thought it best to bring in bilingual social workers. These social workers were familiar to the ethnic culture and language. At the micro level these social workers served these youth and clients with job placements, school referral and court appearances. More than 200 youth were assessed and were provided with treatment service. Social worker planned a series of case management meetings.
After three years of the GVRP, the outcomes were considered to be positive. Crime patterns of the youth involved in the program showed a reduction in gang crime especially gang violence. “Crime patterns of the youth were compared not only with those of similar groups but also with themselves in the preprogram period, controlling for age in a modified cohort analysis (Grossman, Spergel, & Jacobs, 1977)”. The data showed a reduction in arrests for violent crimes, serious violent crimes, and drug crimes, but did not have an effect on arrests for property crimes or total arrests (Irving A. Spergel, 1997). GVRP results also showed that the youth exhibited a larger reduction in arrests for serious violence than the comparison or pre-program youth.
The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project (GVRP) was evaluated by Spergel and colleagues (2003) using a quasi-experimental design. The evaluation collected and analyzed data on 493 youths who were either program youths (195), quasi-program youths who received some services (90), or youths who were part of a comparison group that did not receive services (208) (Irving A. Spergel, 1997). Service contact was the feature distinguishing the quasi-program from comparison youth. Evaluators discovered that some gang members who were selected to be part of the comparison group received some sort of service contact. These members became the quasi-program group. Data collection included criminal history records and aggregate level police arrest data. Police arrests were aggregated into seven general categories: (1) total arrests; (2) arrests for serious violence offenses (homicide, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, and armed robbery); (3) arrests for all violence offenses (including misdemeanors), such as battery, simple assault, intimidation, and weapons possession; (4) arrests for property offenses; (5) arrests for drug offenses; (6) arrests for additional offenses that were characteristic of police suppression efforts, such as disorderly conduct, mob action, and unlawful assembly; and (7) arrests for other offenses—including status offenses but excluding probation and parole violations (Irving A. Spergel, 1997).
I chose this article because I am the mother of two sons. I believe that Black Lives Matter. There are so many obstacles that young black girls and boys have to contend with. These obstacles include gangs. I want to work to better my community and the life of the youth that live there. Knowledge is a power and the more we educate our youth, the better their chances to make better decisions. My family is from Chicago and they often talk of the dangers of wearing certain colors in the wrong neighborhood, it could cost you your life. Gang violence is a multimillion-dollar industry with drug and gun sales. This is killing our youth and these lives matter. Proponents of underclass theory assume the existence of a permanent urban underclass. Unlike the lower class of the past, those born in the underclass lack the opportunity to transcend the class position to which they are born. According to Wilson (1996), macro-social patterns of residential inequality give rise to the social isolation and concentration of the urban underclass, leading to cultural adaptations that undermine social organization. Furthermore, Wilson argues that crime among the urban underclass is best explained in terms of the intersection of macro-social forces – e.g. residential segregation; migration; housing discrimination; structural transformation of the American economy; and various community level factors, including residential turnover, concentrated poverty, and family disruption (Wilson, 1996). If Wilson’s theory is correct, what will become of black poor and uneducated youth and our future?
“The result of these forces in recent years has been called "hypersegregation:" historically unprecedented levels of geographic segregation by race and class, magnifying the effects of poverty and racial isolation (Massey and Denton, 1993). Yet community prevention programs address none of these causes of community composition and structure, which in turn influence community culture and the availability of criminogenic substances like guns and drugs (Sherman, 1993). All of this is part of gang use of intimidation and influence on a community.