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Director Farmer urges systematic follow-through after 2012 gang task force
Summary
Director Farmer told a task force that the 2012 gang-reduction effort produced useful recommendations but lacked assigned leads, benchmarks, sustained funding and evaluation; he urged a systematic, data-driven approach and noted witness-intimidation concerns went unaddressed.
Director Farmer told the task force that the 2012 statewide gang-reduction effort produced a long list of recommendations but failed to secure sustained implementation, leaving many programs without assigned leads, benchmarks or evaluation.
The briefing, introduced by the Chair as the next agenda item, summarized that the 2012 work established four work groups—prevention, intervention, suppression and reentry—under a two-year executive order and recommended county-level planning using the OJJDP model, a resource portal and review of the North Carolina Street Gang Suppression Act. "2012 is really the the big task force iteration that we were focused on," Director Farmer said as he opened the presentation.
Why it matters: Farmer said the absence of designated responsibility, timelines and systematic evaluation after 2012 limited the state's ability to sustain promising programs. He said funding largely "dried up" after the task force ended and regional communication mechanisms, such as a liaison program and best-practice sharing, stopped, hampering continuity.
Farmer outlined specific prior recommendations: county planning modeled on the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) approach, training for youth-facing service providers, culturally sensitive supports, alternatives emphasizing education and vocational pathways, and strengthening programs described in 2012 like Street Safe. On suppression and reentry, Farmer said past proposals included creating a special U.S. attorney prosecutor role, expanding a field-liaison program, training communities on the High Point model and expanding threat-management resources.
Farmer also noted gaps that were not dealt with in 2012: "They didn't predict anything about the witness intimidation," he said, and the task force did not address retaliation or how new developments might change program needs. He emphasized the need for updated statutory reviews, noting that while the state had "raise the age" reforms, related juvenile-processing questions remained and crime types have changed over two decades.
On data, Farmer said inconsistent collection has prevented hard-number tracking: "the data hasn't changed. We haven't been able to really pinpoint hard numbers on some of these things because the data hasn't been there." He said he had spoken with four leaders from the prior effort to seek consensus on lessons learned.
The Chair said the group would complete the rest of the agenda and move into closed session for two presentations, after which members were asked to remain for a group photo. The task force did not take a vote during the portion of the meeting recorded in the transcript.
The task force plans next steps will focus on identifying responsible leads, establishing benchmarks and improving data collection before recommending broader implementation.
