Preventive Work With Street-Corner Groups: Hyde Park Youth Project, Chicago

Group work with predelinquent youths outside of building-centered programs is an aspect of delinquency pre vention to which settlement houses, neighborhood centers, and youth-servicing agencies are increasingly giving attention. Such group work follows the same general pattern as work with delinquent gangs, but there are significant differences in the nature and intensity of the workers' relationships with parents and other adults which have to be observed. The Hyde Park Youth Project, described in this paper, selected groups of teen-age youths who were believed to have a high potential for delinquent behavior and provided them with in tensive staff service for periods from six to eighteen months. A comparison of the frequency of individual antisocial behavior at the outset of the staff service and termination indicated that the youths who were participating in little or no antisocial behavior when staff service was first provided continued to avoid delinquency. The staff was least successful with youths who, at time of first contact, already had a history of anti social behavior.