Trust the Process? An Examination of the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver's Street Outreach Workers and Multidisciplinary Teams

Sanchez, Jose Antonio

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Trust the Process? An Examination of the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver's Street Outreach Workers and Multidisciplinary Teams Public Deposited

Analytics

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/xg94hr31h

Abstract

Community-based violence has received the attention of policymakers for decades, with particular interest paid to gang violence. Programs addressing gangs can be traced back to Chicago in the 1930s. Over the last two decades, there has been an influx of resources into community violence intervention and prevention programs. Despite this, we do not yet know which types of programs work, and we know even less about how or why they do. This dissertation focuses on the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver (GRID). Established in 2009 and housed in Denver’s Department of Services, GRID was Denver’s response to public pressure on city leaders to address gang violence. GRID is based on the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Comprehensive Gang Model. Thus, the agency was tasked with coordinating partnerships between government and community organizations to offer various programs for gang prevention, intervention, and violence interruption.

My dissertation focuses specifically on GRID’s intervention program. GRID has two core components to their gang intervention: street outreach workers and multidisciplinary teams. As part of a federally funded evaluation, I spent three years (June 2019-June 2022) collecting observational and interview data on GRID and its partners to answer four overarching questions: (1) How do the GRID outreach workers deliver services to their clients? (2) How do the MDTs discuss clients and develop coordinated case plans? (3) How has GRID evolved as an organization over the course of the study? (4) How did COVID-19 impact outreach, the MDTs, and the GRID organization?

In answering these questions, I present several key findings. First, the street outreach workers are given a great deal of autonomy. I argue that they are given too much autonomy to implement a vague model, which results in a great deal of variation among the outreach workers and even deviates from one of GRID’s primary objectives to promote gang disengagement. Second, GRID’s MDTs generally function as expected. The partners freely share information and work together to identify and create a coordinated case plan for GRID’s clients. Disagreements are not uncommon among the team members. However, they rarely turn into conflict. Third, GRID experienced rapid change in the three years of the study period. The organization had a high amount of turnover, including losing its long-time director in late 2019 and having to wait nearly a year to hire a new one. The new director brought a new vision for GRID, resulting in the rebranding of the organization. Finally, COVID-19 had big ramifications for GRID. The outreach workers had to contend with two vacant leadership positions, a non-essential classification, and health and safety protocols. The MDTs were forced to meet remotely, which remained the policy even after the restrictions had been lifted.

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