What Are the Principal Activities that Make the Model Unique?
The numerous principal activities we provide turn lives completely around. Despite the violent criminal backgrounds of our adult residents, gang members once sworn to kill one another live in integrated dorms and work together cooperatively and non-violently. Although the average resident is illiterate, all residents receive at least a high-school equivalency degree, and many go on to college. Although the average resident is unskilled, all are trained in three marketable skills before graduating. The minimum stay at Delancey Street is two years; the average stay is four years. During that time residents learn not only academic and vocational skills, but also interpersonal, social-survival skills along with the attitudes, values, sense of responsibility, self-reliance and earned sense of pride necessary to live in the mainstream of society drug free, crime free, successfully and legitimately. Over 14,000 men and women have graduated into society leading successful lives including lawye
