Janel Craig
Research suggests that youth gang-related violence has contributed to increased violent crime and gun violence in urban communities (McDaniel & Sayegh, 2020). Reducing the number of gun-related injuries and deaths committed by adolescent gang members has become a national priority. Law enforcement agencies have collaborated to implement gang violence reduction programs focusing on criminal behaviors and crime suppression through focused deterrence. This student-researcher has chosen a crime reduction program designed to inform known high-risk adolescent gang members that gang violence will not be condoned and will be met with severe punishment. Additionally, the program will provide youth gang members with social services to disrupt gang activity and violent crime in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By focusing on the problematic 15 to 24-year-old gang members in disorganized neighborhoods and strategically and directly applying interventions and social service resources, it is posited that recidivism will decrease by implementing the Philadelphia Youth Gang-Related Violent Crime Reduction Program. The following paragraphs will discuss the descriptive statistics to be examined before and after the implementation of the Philadelphia Youth Gang-Related Violent Crime Reduction Program.
Descriptive statistics are used to summarize collected information by describing the relationship between variables in a sample or population (Kaur et al., 2018). Essential variables of this study include age, sex, ethnicity, years of residency, gang membership rate, gang crime rate, unemployment rate, and educational level. Furthermore, this study will address each variable's mean, standard deviation, and minimum and maximum descriptive statistics. According to Vito and Higgins (2015), the mean is one of the most essential descriptive statistical measurements that determines the average of the given set of values. These scholars further describe standard variation as the square root of the mean of the sum of all squared deviations from the mean of a distribution of scores. For example, in prior studies related to adolescent gang violence, it has been discovered that prior to any crime prevention intervention, 35% of youth gang members in the United States are African American (Lozon & Bensimon, 2017).
Scripture states, “And the Lord said to Moses, “List all the firstborn males of the people of Israel, from a month old and upward, taking the number of their names” ( English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Numbers 3:40). In this verse, Moses is ordered to take a census of the number of every firstborn male of the sons of Israel. Later in the Book of Numbers, God again commanded Moses to take a census of all twenty years old and upward. It is suggested that this statistical census was conducted concerning war preparations. Accordingly, the Bible shows how vital statistics are in making decisions based on data. Descriptive statistics, therefore, enables researchers to present data more significantly, allowing a more straightforward and more summarized interpretation of the collected data. This essay provided an examination of potential descriptive statistics that may be used to evaluate the Philadelphia Youth Gang-Related Violent Crime Reduction Program. From quantitative data, this student-researcher can use descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation measurements to provide vital information related to crime reduction in adolescent gang members.
