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Introduction
When I first examined the issue of how many youth we have lost, and continue to loose to gang violence, I had to consider how serious this issue is, and ask when examining issues of cause, how systemically is this issue tied to other issues within the African American community?
Over the past twenty years, the United States has reported a tenfold increase in the number of cities that are experiencing gang problems. The growth of this problem, similar to other issues that face our communities is growing so exponentially that gang migration patterns now extend to smaller cities, towns and villages in the United States, where the average size of the city population has fallen from 182,000 to 34,000 (Miller, 2001). The results of a national survey in the United Stated indicated that only 30.2 % of law enforcement agencies nation-wide has a strategic plan for dealing with gangs (The Governor's Commission on Gangs Final Report, 1998). However, one of the more compelling points made in this report was the call for alternative strategies. Although the gang problem in the United States currently outpaces many community and law enforcement responses, police departments across America are increasingly aware of the need for innovative, non-traditional approaches to supplement the standard and mainly reactive role of law enforcement (The Governor's Commission on Gangs Final Report, 1998).
Yet, in addition to traditional law enforcement efforts, there is a continuing support of deficit oriented intervention strategies, other than law enforcement efforts, that are oriented toward changing individual behavior, attitudes or values either through court dispositions such as diversion, probation or parole, or via diverse therapeutic interventions (Goldstein, 1991), versus looking at the systemic issues that give rise to this problem. However, the most critical point for us to understand is that the results of these strategies suggest that they are not working. Despite the increase in funding and focus on repressive strategies to stop the rise of youth gravitating to gangs, the gang problem in this country is growing. As a matter of fact, it is growing internationally. There is not a habitable continent in the world that is not attempting to deal with the rise of youth gangs, many of whom are ethnic minorities.
Unfortunately, when addressing other issues that impact the African American community, we treat these issues with the same strategies, despite previous results, which suggest that they either lack impact or sustainability and we often fail to investigate their interrelatedness to other issues.
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