Youth gang activity is rising. Can NC address it better than last time it tried?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Task force hopes to set measurable initiatives, track progress and adjust tactics.
- Report cites about 4,000 validated gang members and juvenile offenses up 50%.
- Members prioritize data sharing and creating accountability with benchmarks.
A state task force designed to systemically address gang activity in North Carolina wants to implement sustainable, achievable initiatives — a feat that a past iteration missed the mark on, the group said this week.
Members at a meeting on Tuesday shared their hopes to work differently than a former version of the task force by creating measurable and defined initiatives to reduce the presence and impact of gangs. It wants to also track the results to make adjustments.
A 2025 legislative report on gang activity showed that there are about 4,000 validated gang members in the state. Data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System showed that while reported crimes with gang involvement in North Carolina are down overall, those with juvenile gang involvement increased nearly 50% in five years — from 397 offenses in 2020 to 587 in 2024.
Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, established the Gang Prevention and Intervention Task Force by executive order last summer. The group is scheduled to begin creating recommendations and present them starting in November.
A previous iteration of the task force, which released a report in 2012, proposed recommendations like providing gang recognition and awareness training, implementing cultural sensitivity training and expanding state public safety programming to specifically include gang-related crimes.
N.C. Department of Adult Correction Secretary Leslie Cooley Dismukes, who was appointed co-chair of the task force by Stein, said she asked herself why the group was meeting even after recent initiatives have targeted similar goals.
“It’s follow-through,” she said.
Caroline Farmer heads the Governor’s Crime Commission under the Department of Public Safety. She said there was no system of evaluation for recommendations made more than 10 years ago.
Farmer said the previous task force had no benchmarks or milestones for its proposals. Particular agencies or people were also never tasked with implementing those recommendations, she said.
Task force details
Dismukes said the task force could think of 50 different ideas to implement in North Carolina schools, but “that’s not going to get us where we need to be” unless the changes can be implemented statewide and tracked for progress.
Members also emphasized increasing state agencies’ documentation of data and sharing it with other agencies without violating privacy laws.
Chuck Hastings, the president of the NC Gang Investigators Association, said he hopes to see agencies get “back on board” with documentation of data.
He said data about gang-related activity for people more than 18 years old is skewed because of the lack of reporting.
The task force was divided into three subgroups: prevention, intervention, and intelligence and interagency.
Michelle Hodges Guarino, who chairs the gang intervention workgroup, also serves as Gang Free NC’s director of program development.
In reference to the initiatives from 2012, Guarino said one of the overall goals is to not need another gang intervention and prevention task force 10 years from now.
“Many of us in this room have been around so long, we have seen those programs dissolve. We’ve seen the ones that are consistent,” she said. “We see the ones that, if it just had a little bit more funding, or had that mayor [been] reelected, they would still be working successfully.”
