Gangs 2.0: The Emerging Threat of Cyberthugs

Yesterday I attended a panel discussion in Ontario, California titled "Gangs 2.0: The Emerging Threat of Cyberthugs."  The speakers ranged from gang interventionists to prosecutors, detectives, and representatives from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.  The focus of the discussion was how gangs have adapted to using technology, specifically social networking, to grow their organizations and facilitate gang activity.

While there were many points made by the seven panelists, the following are the points I found most interesting and relevant to the work we do in social services

• Myspace and YouTube are popular social network sites of gang related youth.  Twitter is used to a lesser degree and Facebook hardly at all.
• People in other parts of the country connect with gang members in Los Angeles, the "mecca" of gangs, using the Internet.  Through MySpace and other online communication, youth in other cities learn from and mimic the  structure and activities Los Angeles gangs.
• Cellphones, and cellphone cameras are used to transmit information by gang members both on the streets as well as to receive communication from incarcerated gang members, who tend to run gang activity from prison.  Cellphone cameras are used to identify potential targets of violent crimes and transmit that information to fellow gang members.
• California prisons currently have a hard time preventing cellphones from getting in the hands of prisoners.  Incarcerted gang members use the phones for outside communication as well as identify theft.  Penalties for being caught with a cellphone in a prison are currently rather lenient.
• Savvy gang members use difficult to trace cellphones with pre-paid minutes, rather than contracts.
• Social media provides an opportunity for gang youth to get attention for their anti-social behavior.  However, we must remember these kids are still kids.  We should focus on providing positive opportunities for these kids using the same tools they use to attract and promote negative behavior.
  

(Photo by Herschell Hershey's)

Sponsored We at Idealistics want you to promote your organization's good works, on us.

Sponsor This Post

We're thrilled that the Idealistics Blog is so well read (who would've thought people actually care what we think?). We are excited to announce a new project to share our audience with you. If you have a non-profit organization or event you'd like to promote, we'd like to help, for free.

Other blogs put paid advertisements at the end of their blog posts. In future posts, we'll be putting unpaid sponsored advertisements, promoting the good works of great non-profit organizations or upcoming events relevant to our audience. Sponsorship is easy, although we do have a few simple guidelines. Get the 411 here.

(Photo by Luke Olsen)

Sponsored Promote your agency or event by sponsoring an Idealistics Blog post. It's free!

Why Poverty is an Imperfect Outcome Variable

When doing a Case Management system setup or a data analysis project, we encourage our customers to think about tracking "outcomes" variables.  Outcomes are the effects your services (outputs) have on clients.  Since many of our customers provide services to low-income individuals and families, we often recommend tracking changes in a client's income.  As income changes over time an agency can aggregate those changes and look at their program services versus changes in their clients' poverty statuses.

While poverty is a good outcomes variable, on its own it can be imperfect.  Let's say we wanted to compare the outcomes of two programs offered by the same agency.  One program is a men's shelter, and the other a family shelter.  In the family shelter the data tells us the poverty statuses of those clients increased more rapidly, and to greater nominal heights, than in the men's shelter.  So is the family shelter program more effective?  Not necessarily.

While change in poverty status is a good measure, it has to be seen in context.  In our example, the clients in the men's shelter might deal with more chronic issues like mental health and drug addiction.  The clients in the family shelter may be more employable and have stronger social skills and networks.  Therefore, simply comparing the changes in poverty levels of the two programs would unduly favor the family shelter.

There is no definitive method for how to compare across different types of programs.  In some cases you may try to control for the differences between the two client types, alternatively you may apply some type of multiplier that better equates the two variables.  Ultimately, the use of data is both art and technique.  While it is never a good idea to ignore data in favor of anecdotes, data must always be understood in its context.

(Photo by Heather Brandon)

Shiny and New: Website Redesign

We've changed a few things around the Idealistics website, cleaning up the look and streamlining the system's explanations.  We've even added pictures to our employee bio's (a much requested addition).

We update our products often, regularly re-analyze our statistical techniques and methodologies, and like to bring that same focus on change, iteration, and innovation to every part of our business, including our website.  All things in life are a work in progress, and if they're not, they should be.  We take the view that nothing is ever complete to heart here at Idealistics.  It's part of what makes us what we are, and drives us to be better, and do better, for the people and organizations we support.

Take a look around our new site, and stay tuned for more changes coming.  

Tweeting good

The trendy thing for any tech company to do these days is build some type of Twitter program.  Not wanting to be left out, we at Idealistics built our own little Twitter utility.  The program, and its functionality, is simple.  The idea is to help twitter users find volunteer opportunities more easily.  Any twitter users can at reply (send a message to) the Idealistics Twitter account with a search term like "homeless shelter" or "mentoring kids" and the hashtag "#volunteer" to get a listing returned to them of local volunteer opporutnities.

We do this by utilizing the allforgood.org website, a collaborative effort spearheaded by Google to consolidate information from various volunteer databases throughout the country.  We use the twitter user's stated location (e.g. "Los Angeles, CA") to determine location for the search query.  So for example, the following message sent to @idealistics on Twitter

 @idealistics children literacy tutoring mentoring programs #volunteer

Would get the following response from the Idealistics Twitter account

@david_henderson here's a list of volunteer opportunities based on your location and search criterion http://tinyurl.com/yhdvbo3 #volunteer

That's it!  If you're on twitter, send us a message and give it a try.

Firefighters Don't Cause Fires: LAHSA's 2009 Homeless Count

Last week, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) released a report on their 2009 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. The report's main finding, that the homeless population in the cities covered by the Los Angeles Continuum of Care has dropped 38% since the last LAHSA-sponsored count in 2007, is counterintuitive, given the dramatic decline in the region's economic fortunes over the past two years. More accurate counting techniques may be responsible for the difference between the 2009 and 2007 reports as the authors write:

enhancements to the data collection process such as the increased number of volunteers, expansion of census tracts covered, and the reduction of possible counting biases have collectively enabled researchers to extrapolate more detailed information...

However, the authors downplay the role of the measurement strategy used in the 2009 report and make a bold claim:

While many factors likely contributed to this decline, it is important to acknowledge new and expanded programs implemented by the Los Angeles [Continuum of Care] network of housing and service providers.

The data presented in the report don't support this claim. Let's say measurement doesn't matter and the homeless population in the Continuum of Care's coverage area really has gone down 38% since 2007. The drop in homeless population says nothing about the success or failure of the providers' new and expanded programs. Just because these programs were implemented at the same time as a speculated decrease in the area's homeless population doesn't mean that the new programs caused the decrease by getting people off the streets and into new, self-sufficient lives.

Just because a person, agency, or program is present when an event occurs doesn't mean that he or she caused it. The title of this post is the classic example: firefighters are typically present when a fire occurs- does that mean that firefighters cause fires? Of course not, and we have statistical ways of showing that firefighters respond to fires. To prove a much less obvious conclusion, that new programs are responsible for a decline in the homeless population, LAHSA's researchers need to employ these techniques. The unlikely nature of a decline in homelessness during a recession necessitates good, solid evidence, not unsubstantiated claims.

(Photo by Lucas Janin)

Freeing client data

Companies like mine that build client management software for social service agencies should make it easy for those agencies to move from one vendor's system to another. The problem is that there are as many database schemas and proprietary binary data storage formats as there are client management software solutions. This presents two problems:

1. Moving from an old to a new database often means having staff reinput data, giving control of client data to the software vendor rather than the social service agency.

2. Since client management databases currently don't talk to each other, agencies are often put in positions of having multiple client management systems, one for their agency then any number of other systems that their funders require they enter client data into.

The solution to this problem is technically simple, and politically difficult.  Technically, the client management software industry should come together to build an open XML format to make data exchange between systems standardized.  Politically this is difficult because unlike some other industries, social service software as a sub-sector is a disorganized hodgepodge of non-profit and for-profit entities, rather than a federated association of organizations.

Without an open standard for moving client data from one vendor's system to another, social service agencies will continue to waste time duplicating data into multiple systems and will never truly be in control of their own information.

(Photo by Free Henrik Holappa)