Effectiveness of street gang control strategies : Efficacité des stratégies de lutte contre les gangs de rue : Revue systématique et méta-analyse des études d'évaluation

This systematic literature review and meta-analysis of evaluation studies on street gang control strategies focused on articles and reports from multiple bibliographic databases. The database search resulted in a total of 2,060 hits. Of the 297 studies that were examined, only 38 were retained for the systematic review after all screening procedures and inclusion criteria were applied. This list of studies was classified into a typology of five broad categories of street gang control strategies, including: 1) prevention, 2) gang activity regulation, 3) justice system based intervention, 4) comprehensive, and 5) holistic. A quantitative synthesis of program outcomes could not be undertaken because of the difficulty in pooling together studies that were incommensurate; it was considered substantively meaningless to produce a summary effect. Instead, a systematic review was undertaken. The systematic review of street gang control strategy evaluation studies revealed that findings in regard to effectiveness were not encouraging, especially for studies evaluating general prevention, and gang membership prevention programs.