Gangs, Criminal Offending, and an Inconvenient Truth

• Author: David C. Pyrooz
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Date: 01 August 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12053

POLICY ESSAY

EVALUATION OF THE G.R.E.A.T.

PROGRAM

Gangs, Criminal Offending, and an

Inconvenient Truth

Considerations for Gang Prevention and Intervention in the

Lives of Youth

David C. Pyrooz

Sam Houston State University

For a theoretically driven school-based program, there is much to like about the

findings from the 1- and 4-year evaluations of the Gang Resistance Education and

Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program provided by Esbensen, Osgood, Peterson, Taylor,

and Carson (2013, this issue). Relative to the control group, students who received the 13

lessons of the G.R.E.A.T. curriculum had (a) more positive scores across a range of attitu-

dinal measures central to several theories of criminal behavior; (b) improved police–youth

relationships and lower odds of gang membership, satisfying two of the three primary goals

of the program; and (c) long-term positive effects on many of the attitudinal outcomes, as

well as police–youth relationships and gang membership. The findings for gang member-

ship are important because they stand in contrast to a large body of work, including the first

national evaluation of G.R.E.A.T.(Esbensen, Osgood, Taylor,and Peterson, 2001), making

this the first study with rigorous randomized control trial evaluation to have a demonstrable

impact on decreasing the rates of gang membership. Despite being a “gang” spinoff of

the ineffective Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program, the aggregate results

suggest that the more inviting and optimistic acronym is indeed fitting for the G.R.E.A.T.

program.

But the picture is not all rosy. The thirdprimar y program goal to “prevent violent and

criminal activity” was not achieved despite positive program effects on gang membership

and numerous mediating mechanisms. This finding flies in the face of the logic of gang

The author would like to thank Scott Decker, Gary Sweeten, and Vince Webb for their comments on this

policy essay. Direct correspondence to David C. Pyrooz, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Sam

Houston State University, 1806 Avenue J, Huntsville, TX 77341 (e-mail: David.Pyrooz@shsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12053 C2013 American Society of Criminology427

Criminology & Public PolicyrVolume 12 rIssue 3