Application of the Good Lives Model to Street Gang Members

Despite being recognized as a global public health emergency, there is a lack of evidence-base supporting the effectiveness of street gang interventions. In particular, street gang interventions suffer from a lack of theoretical foundation, unclear goals/objectives, and have a negative, risk-based focus. This thesis proposes that the Good Lives Model (GLM), a strengths-based framework for offender rehabilitation, can provide an innovative approach to street gang intervention. Utilizing approach-goals, the GLM assumes that improving an individual's internal skills and external opportunities will reduce the need to belong to a street gang. Prior to implementing GLM-consistent interventions with street gang members, it was essential to first establish whether the etiological assumptions of the GLM are upheld in this population. To examine this, qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 incarcerated, adult male offenders (17 street gang, 13 non-gang). Findings support all of the etiological assumptions of the GLM: street gang participants aimed to achieve each of the 11 primary goods (i.e., universal human needs). Furthermore, as suggested in the GLM, street gang participants experienced four obstacles (i.e., problems in capacity, coherence, scope and means), which prevented attainment of primary goods through prosocial means. Critically, street gang participants were more likely to experience a multitude of internal (e.g., emotion regulation difficulties, perfectionism, and poor coping skills) and external obstacles (e.g., poor social support, and exposure to violence) across all five risk domains (individual, peer, school, family and community), than their non-gang offending counterparts. Overall, the research described in this thesis suggests that the etiological assumptions of the GLM can be upheld in a street gang population; supporting the implementation of GLM-consistent interventions with street gang members.