Outcomes

PanZOu Project, Inc. serves approximately 100 gang involved/high risk youth and their families each year through intensive case management, strengthening families classes, job skills development and placements, as well as providing a safe place for these youth to congregate and engage in healthy pro-social activities. PanZOu receives hundreds of referrals each year from Broward County to Homestead. Unfortunately we are not able to serve them all but remain focused on our mission in our home communities of North Miami Beach, North Miami and the City of Miami. PanZOu is please to report the following successes:

PanZOu staff has worked hard to achieve an 85% success rate in reducing recidivism among our clients who came to PanZOu as multiple offenders. This is 10% above our targeted goal of 75%.

Additionally, PanZOu clients have been extremely successful at achieving their intervention goals. As the chart shows, clients with goals in the following categories: education, criminal justice, personal/family, and employment, have achieved an average of 91% of their goals!

Last year PanZOu received a grant from the Jenny Jones Foundation to start a screen printing and embroidery shop. PanZOu Productions hires and trains transitioning gang members and ex-offenders from our communities. We have built partnerships with local businesses, organizations, as well as the City of North Miami Beach and the City of Miami to produce their screen printed shirts, bags, totes and more. This innovative social enterprise has created jobs the most marginalized among us, fulfills a need for decorated apparel by our local business, and in turn generates revenue for PanZOu’s gang prevention programs!

In 2001 and 2002 there was a rise in violent and non-violent crime in the City of North Miami Beach (NMB), especially in regards to Juvenile crimes. Juveniles make up approximately 31% of the population, but comprised 45% of the crime. Then in July of 2002, gunfire erupted when a car fired 70 rounds at a group of teenagers near a recreational park. Seven people were wounded and one person died. Throughout that spring and fall there were at least 15 drive-by shootings in the area. This rise in crime prompted the area to take action and to seek to become a GRP site.

The PanZOu Project has been working in the City of North Miami Beach (NMB) since 2004, when we first did our community strategic planning process. In 2005, our doors opened with staff and a community location at Island Place Apartments, in the heart of our target area. The map below is from the Urban Institute, our National Evaluators. They evaluate change at a city wide level.

The predominate zip code for the City of North Miami Beach is 33162, which is also where the majority if our clients live. As the map above shows, gang crime in the city is most heavily concentrated in a few areas, most notably the neighborhood known as Victory Park. This is the area that PanZOu targeted the majority of our efforts. The below data table from the North Miami Beach Police Department looks at crimes committed in the Victory Park neighborhood during the two years prior to PanZOu Project and compares them to crimes committed during our first two years in operation.

The V.P. Neighborhood experienced a 22% reduction in crime after PanZOu began targeting services in this community! The below graph shows the trend in the same community over the same time periods.

On a city wide level, the following tables show the number of juvenile arrests and the number of juvenile offenses committed between 2003-2007 for the 33162 zip code have been decreasing*:

The tables show a decline in both arrests and number of offenses committed by juveniles during the last five years we have been operating in this City.

*Data obtained from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.