Program History and Current Structure
The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program can be described as an accident of history. In a detailed history of the program, Winfree and colleagues (1999) describe what can be summarized as a haphazard and uncoordinated effort that accidentally produced a widely popular, school-based gang prevention program. G.R.E.A.T. was certainly not the product of a well-orchestrated and planned effort to develop a national, let alone international, program.
During the late 1980s, gang-related crime had increased substantially throughout much of the United States (part of what has been described as a ”youth crime epidemic”) and the situation in Phoenix, Arizona, was no different. While visiting constituents in Phoenix, Senator Dennis DeConcini was struck by the volume of gang violence in his state’s largest city and called for efforts to confront this crime problem. The Phoenix Police Department, in conjunction with several other area police agencies, was charged with developing a program to provide ”students with real tools to resist the lure and trap of gangs” (Humphrey and Baker 1994,2). The police officers assigned the task of creating a gang prevention program relied on their knowledge of and experience with D.A.R.E. as they developed what became known as the G.R.E.A.T. program. Considerable effort, however, was made to develop an antigang program that was distinct from a drug prevention program. Early versions of the curriculum were reviewed by educators and pretested by several classrooms of students and their teachers. By the end of 1991, G.R.E.A.T. had been born.
This school-based gang prevention program taught by uniformed police officers that was ”never intended to go beyond the Valley of the Sun, went national almost before the ink was dry on the lesson plans.From its inception, G.R.E.A.T. experienced rapid acceptance by both law enforcement and school personnel; as of 2004, more than seven thousand law enforcement officers had been certified as G.R.E.A.T. instructors and nearly four million students had graduated from the G.R.E.A.T. program (http://www.great-online.org). Coinciding with this program development was creation of an organizational structure to facilitate national-level coordination and training. From 1992 to 2004 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), and representatives from what eventually grew to be five local law enforcement agencies (Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; La Crosse, Wisconsin; and Orange County, Florida) shared responsibility for and oversight of the program. In 2004, Congress transferred administrative responsibility for the G.R.E.A.T. program from ATF to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Program Description
The stated objectives of the G.R.E.A.T. program are (1) “to reduce gang activity” and (2) ”to educate a population of young people as to the consequences of gang involvement” (Esbensen et al. 2001, 109). The original curriculum consisted of nine weekly lesson plans offered once a week to middle school students, primarily seventh graders. Officers were provided with detailed lesson plans containing clearly stated purposes and objectives. The G.R.E.A.T. program is illustrative of a general prevention approach to the gang problem. As such, uniformed law enforcement officers introduced students to conflict resolution skills, cultural sensitivity, and the negative aspects of gang life. Discussion about gangs and their effects on the quality of people’s lives were also included. The original eight lessons were as follows:
1. Introduction: Acquaint students with the G.R.E.A.T. program and presenting officer.
2. Crime/Victims and Your Rights: Students learn about crimes, their victims, and their impact on school and neighborhood.
3. Cultural Sensitivity/Prejudice: Students learn how cultural differences impact their school and neighborhood.
4. Conflict Resolution (two sessions): Students learn how to create an atmosphere of understanding that would enable all parties to better address problems and work on solutions together.
5. Meeting Basic Needs: Students learn how to meet their basic needs without joining a gang.
6. Drugs/Neighborhoods: Students learn how drugs affect their school and neighborhood.
7. Responsibility: Students learn about the diverse responsibilities of people in their school and neighborhood.
8. Goal Setting: Students learn the need for goal setting and how to establish short- and long-term goals.
As evidenced by the curriculum, the G.R.E.A.T. program was intended to provide life skills that would empower adolescents with the ability to resist peer pressure to join gangs. The strategy is a cognitive approach that seeks to produce attitudinal and behavioral change through instruction, discussion, and role-playing.
Evaluation Results
The national evaluation of the G.R.E.A.T. program sought to answer the following question: Can a cognitive-based prevention program produce a measurable treatment effect? A second issue of considerable policy interest concerns the role of law enforcement in such programs; that is, are officers suitable deliverers of prevention programs in schools? Previous evaluations of law enforcement prevention efforts similar to G.R.E.A.T. have provided mixed results. However, contrary to the mixed reviews of DARE (e.g., Lynam et al. 1999; Rosenbaum and Hanson 1998), the national evaluation of G.R.E.A.T. produced modestly positive results (Esbensen and Osgood 1997, 1999; Esbensen et al. 2001).
The first component of the National Evaluation consisted of a cross-sectional study of almost six thousand students enrolled in public schools in eleven U.S. cities. Esbensen and Osgood (1997, 1999) found that students who had completed the G.R.E.A.T. program reported committing fewer delinquent acts and expressed more prosocial attitudes, including more favorable attitudes toward the police, higher levels of attachment to parents and self-esteem, and greater commitment to school. The second component, conducted in twenty-two schools in six American cities, consisted of a longitudinal, quasi-experimental design with pretests and post-tests plus four years of annual follow-up surveys. Once again, modest program effects were reported: Students participating in the G.R.E.A.T. program expressed more prosocial attitudes after program completion than did those students who had not been exposed to the G.R.E.A.T. curriculum (Esbensen et al. 2001).
In spite of these consistent yet modest program effects of the G.R.E.A.T. program, two issues need to be addressed. First, the program’s primary stated objective is to reduce gang activity. While the cross-sectional evaluation did find slightly lower rates of gang membership and self-reported delinquency, this was not the case in the longitudinal study. Second, while the cross-sectional findings reflected a difference between groups one year after program completion, the longitudinal design did not produce any significant group differences until three to four years after program exposure. Had the evaluation been concluded after a one- or two-year follow-up period, the conclusions would have been different.
The finding that the benefit of G.R.E.A.T. became evident only gradually over many years can be considered curious and unexpected. For a program such as G.R.E.A.T., one might expect the impact to be strongest immediately after program delivery and to be subject to decay over time. However, a number of relatively recent evaluations have reported similar lagged or long-term effects (see Esbensen et al. 2001 for discussion).
The Current G.R.E.A.T. Program
In 1999, following reports from the national evaluation that there were no significant programmatic effects two years after program exposure (Esbensen et al. 2001), the G.R.E.A.T. National Policy Board (NPB) requested that the national evaluation team conduct a rigorous assessment of the curriculum. Concerned about the lack of effect, the NPB wanted to improve their product. Following a critical assessment, the review team recommended a major curriculum revision: Retool the current curriculum to be more skill based with a focus on interactive and cooperative learning strategies. The revised program was unveiled in 2002 and consists of the following thirteen lessons (http://www. great-online.org/corecurriculum.htm):
1. Welcome to G.R.E.A.T.: Introduction and relationship between gangs, violence, drugs, and crime.
2. What’s the Real Deal?: Message analysis and facts and fictions about gangs and violence.
3. It’s About Us: Community, roles and responsibilities, and what you can do about gangs.
4. Where Do We Go From Here?: Setting realistic and achievable goals.
5. Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: G.R.E.A.T. decision-making model impact of decisions on goals, and decision-making practice.
6. Do You Hear What I Am Saying?: Effective communication, verbal and nonverbal communication.
7. Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes: Active listening, identification of different emotions, and empathy for others.
8. Say It Like You Mean It: Body language, tone of voice, and refusal-skills practice.
9. Getting Along Without Going Along: Influences and peer pressure, refusal-skills practice.
10. Keeping Your Cool: Anger management tips, practice cooling off.
11. Keeping It Together: Recognizing anger in others, tips for calming down.
12. Working It Out: Consequences for fighting, tips for conflict resolution, conflict resolution practice, where to go for help.
13. Looking Back: Program review, ”making my school a G.R.E.A.T. place” project review.
Thus, the length of the program was increased, the delivery mode was changed to a focus on interactive learning, and rather than a cognitive emphasis, the new curriculum was skill based. The new program has slowly replaced the original, although no evaluation of the new program has yet been implemented. As of school year 2004-2005, G.R.E.A.T. was offered in schools throughout the United States, at military bases around the globe, and in a number of other countries. In addition to the middle school program, the G.R.E.A.T. program has also developed a family component; an elementary school program for third- and fourth-grade students; and a summer component. To date, G.R.E.A.T. remains the best-known gang prevention program, although its impact remains questionable.
