1997 National Youth Gang Survey: Introduction

Introduction

Nearly 5,000 agencies were surveyed in 1997.

The 1997 National Youth Gang Survey is the third annual gang survey conducted by the National Youth Gang Center (NYGC), which was created in 1995 through a cooperative agreement between the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the Institute for Intergovernmental Research. The primary purpose of the survey is to assess the extent of the youth gang problem in communities throughout the United States.

The 1995 National Youth Gang Survey was the first annual survey of youth gangs conducted by NYGC. Although the 1995 survey was the most extensive national gang survey up to that time and provided valuable baseline data, it was not entirely representative of the Nation as a whole. Therefore, the sample for the 1996 National Youth Gang Survey was constructed to be statistically representative and to present a more complete national picture of youth gang activity. The 1997 National Youth Gang Survey used the same sample that was used for the 1996 survey, permitting comparative and trend analysis.

The 1996 and 1997 surveys were sent to two sample groups:

3,018 law enforcement agencies that constituted a statistically representative sample (hereinafter referred to as the "representative sample").
1,951 additional law enforcement agencies that were surveyed in 1995 but were not included in the representative sample (hereinafter referred to as the "comparative sample").

Agencies in the representative sample were asked questions regarding the extent of the gang problem in their jurisdictions, including the number of gangs and gang members. In addition, agencies were asked to comment on gang drug sales and distribution, gang migration, the level of crime committed by gang members, the types of response units created to address gang problems, and the perception of gang crime in their jurisdictions (the survey form is presented as appendix A). This sample included four subsets or area types: large cities (populations of more than 25,000), small cities (populations between 2,500 and 25,000), suburban counties,¹ and rural counties.²

The agencies included in the comparative sample received an abbreviated questionnaire that asked only about the presence of gangs in 1997 and the number of gangs and gang members (the survey form is presented as appendix B). This sample is not representative and, therefore, is not used for making inferences about agencies that were not surveyed; it is used only to make comparisons with the 1995 survey.

Nearly 5,000 agencies were surveyed in 1997. However, this Summary focuses solely on the 3,018 survey recipients included in the statistically representative sample, because the survey instrument was more comprehensive than that used with the comparative sample and the representative sample allows for extrapolation of the data.

Contents

1997 National Youth Gang Survey

December 1999