photo by Joseph Rodriguez
Yesterday the Washington D.C. based think tank, the Justice Policy Institute issued a 100-plus page report that is getting a lot of attention. The report, called Gang Wars, analyzes which strategies work to combat gang violence, which strategies really don’t work, and which approaches only make the problem far, far worse.
The good news, according to the research, is that there are strategies that have been proven to be effective. The bad news is that Los Angeles, long the gang capital of the world, is the model for how NOT to solve the gang problem. The report points out that, rather than put money and effort into gang prevention and intervention programs, LA county has spent the past several decades trying to arrest and incarcerate its way out of the problem—and has failed spectacularly.
“Anti-gang legislation and police crackdowns are failing so badly that they are strengthening the criminal organizations and making U.S. cities more dangerous…..” writes the AP about the report’s findings. “Mass arrests, stiff prison sentences often served with other gang members and other strategies that focus on law enforcement rather than intervention actually strengthen gang ties and further marginalize angry young men…”
And over at the NY Times’ editorial pages they write:
It shows that police dragnets that criminalize whole communities and land large numbers of nonviolent children in jail don’t reduce gang involvement or gang violence. Law enforcement tools need to be used in a targeted way — and directed at the 10 percent or so of gang members who commit violent crimes. The main emphasis needs to be on proven prevention programs that change children’s behavior by getting them involved in community and school-based programs that essentially keep them out of gangs.
Most of us who’ve been paying attention, have been saying as much for a long, long time, but lawmakers have insisted on pursuing the crack-down/lock-’em-up policy almost exclusively.
“A 25-year anti-gang effort has cost taxpayers billions of dollars but has resulted in six times as many gangs and twice the number of gang members, because Los Angeles has not adequately funded social programs…” says the Washington Post of LA’s history of ill considered gang policy.
Statistics show that youth crime in the United States is at its lowest levels in 30 years and that gangs are responsible for a relatively small share of crime. In addition, according to a national Justice Department survey of police departments, gang membership declined from 850,000 in 1996 to 760,000 in 2004.
But occasional outbursts of violence prompt the media and politicians to seek immediate answers, said the report’s authors, Pranis and Judith Greene.
“And it’s more about politics than it is about serious efforts to do something,” Greene said yesterday. “It’s frustrating to see officials come forward with money for mass arrests, when the money is so sorely needed in programs that are tried and true and can really work.”
Interestingly, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the AP and various other news publications all have longer news stories on the report than LA’s hometown paper saw fit to run.
From a brief skimming of these studies it appears the authors say that “Functional Family Therapy†is the most cost effective solution to the Gang Problem, and is SEVEN times more effective than law enforcement and detention.
Gee what a surprise that a TRADITIONAL FAMILY UNIT would be so effective against gang violence. The Bush Administration also seems to have read the study a few years back (before it was written) and had determined that the promotion of Marriage was the single most effective way to combat Gangs and Poverty. The left / democrats of course would hear none of it and rejected it as paternalistic.
However, if instead of simply promoting “Traditional Families†(Marriage), we instead hire therapists by the truck load to try and fix broken ones, that seems to work for the progressives.
As I’ve said before, I’m pretty sick and tired of this simplistic notion, that if all parents stayed married, there would be no gangs. Pokey: I admire your mentoring with kids. But as a single mom, my kid is a very sweet, highly gifted and talented kid who plays sports, music, is a computer genius and is an all-around just plain nice kid. Would he have ended up like this if he’d have stayed in a rough-and-tumble public school where toughness is valued, his skills devalued? No way. Would gang kids whose parents are married but whose dad is himself a gangbanger who knocked up his mom at 17, be better off with that role model in the house? No. They’re better off breaking the cycle: which is where the after-school programs/prevention come in, from government-sponsored, to the Scouts.
I know lots of “average” middle-class kids who do very well with a single mom, but they’re not the ones who roam the streets on their own soon as school gets out. There are plenty of rich, two-parent kids who do that, too, and get into trouble with drugs and everything else. Only difference is, with money you take care of them privately.
This is where our schools fail: the existing facilities should be kept open until at least 5/5:30, as at schools with STAR programs, but those costs thousands per year. Subsidized programs like this, including after-school sports, tutoring for older kids are great. Also, centers where they can drop by to play computer games, get homework help, are certainly more cost-effective than hanging out on the streets. It’s a disgrace that school pools haven’t opened this summer — lots of black and Hispanic kids never even learn to swim — they should have supervised sports, too, on school playgrounds.
Er, Maggie? I’m not sure whether I disagree with Pokey’s position, or not … but, I’m relatively confident I don’t agree with yours. Truth is there’s likely quite a bit of sociological, demographic, and economic nuance behind Pokey’s assertion. If you’ve been following his comments for awhile, chances are you already know that. So, your response, I’m pretty sick and tired of this simplistic notion, that if all parents stayed married, there would be no gangs. really misses the thrust of his position – which he’s developed over numerous posts. And, since you’ve been following them (Right?) you are aware you’ve either oversimplified his position (if I’m generous), or discounted it out of hand (if I’m not). In reading his comment, I don’t get the sense that Pokey assumes kids in gangs were ever conceived inside a marriage. So how could the dissolution of a marriage even factor into the equation? I humbly submit that stayed married thingy is your issue, not his.
The problem I have with your position is I’m not sure I’m willing to make the school the de facto parent for whenever the parent isn’t available. I do think the bricks and mortar edifice we know as a school tends to be underutilized, but I’m not sure that swimming lessons, Scouts, tutoring, etc ought to take place outside of a family unit. I think it can, but I’m not ready to codify the school as the cultural ehnancement arm for all kids. And, given current SCOTUS decisions, if we offer it for one, we’d best be prepared to offer it for all. As a taxpayer, I’m not quite ready to fund that.
PS. That stuff about your highly gifted and talented child? FWIW, you really only need to mention that once.
“What a surprise that a TRADITIONAL FAMILY UNIT would be so effective against gang violence…The Bush Administration… had determined that the promotion of Marriage (capitalized, of course) was the single most effective way to combat Gangs and Poverty. The left/democrats (lower-case, of course)… rejected it as paternalistic.” Uh, yeah… Nuanced? No.
And you’re “not sure that swimming lessons, Scouts, tutoring, etc. ought to take place outside of a family unit.” WHAT? That is just really nonsensical and offensive to “non-TRADITIONAL” FAMILIES. Green Dot Charter schools require all its schools to stay open until 5 precisely to give kids those opportunities, where the parents work. (Is that a sure sign of heading to Gangs and Poverty, also?) These programs offer precisely the programs I mention.
As for not wanting to “offer it for all,” if you read the article this dialogue is prefaced on, you will recall that it criticizes L A’s 25-years of combatting gangs with law enforcement sans prevention measures, has “cost L A taxpayers billions of dollars but has resulted in six times the number of gangs, and twice the number of gang members, because L A has not adequately funded social programs.” The most cost-effective of which are the ones I’ve mentioned.
Penny-wise, pound-foolish in the long run.
I guess this is forum is a mutual admiration society among a few people who of course, agree with each other in their “correct” views, and are apparently retired and well-meaning. But mired in a mindset that doesn’t reflect reality or future solutions. Good luck to you.
[…] How NOT to Solve the Gang Problem […]
Hey, Maggie, I’ve been out working so haven’t followed the comments very closely today, but everybody quarrels with everybody here. (Okay, Pokey and Woody seem often to agree—but not always.)
And there are assuredly a lot of non-commenting readers out there who are nodding their collective heads and saying, “That Maggie, she’s got it right again.” And others who prefer what Pokey has to say, or Listener, or whomever.
You offer smart, informed comments. Please keep ’em coming!
(PS: I’m a single mom too.)
Maggie, I salute you for being a terrific caring Mom and no doubt doing a fabulous job of child rearing while being a single. I am sure that you wished your marriage was perfect as I wished my FIRST marriage was also. But you probably grew up with the idea that marriage SHOULD come before babies, which is not a concept that MOST inner city children grow up with any more.
As a generalization, it is harder to raise children alone, it is harder to be a good parent alone and it is harder to earn enough money to provide for children alone.
What I was trying to point out is that “Marriage†makes raising child easier and most children benefit from two involved parents. Promoting married two-parent families should be an important policy of our government implemented using monetary incentives and public education.
While this is not the only solution,, it is an important one and one that can be implemented nationwide legislatively.
The study referenced at the top of the blog deals with what they call “Multi-systemic Therapy†(MTS). See web site — http://www.mstservices.com
All the above is well and good, but very expensive and hard to justify while we have no after school programs and few school sports.
I agree with you Maggie that our money should be spent on “after-school sports, tutoring …â€Â. In a previous post I had made a list of resources that could be tapped to enable school programs with a little leadership and a small amount of money. (see blow)
In any case it seemed absurd to me that we would spend millions on MTS while we can’t seem to fund our public pools or after school sports.
After School Program Personnel:
1) College students who are education majors (part of the curriculum)
2) College students who are physical education majors (part of the curriculum)
3) College students as a condition of financial aid (juniors and seniors).
4) AP high school students as academic peer coaches.
5) Stay at home moms (bring children with)
6) Environmental activists who want to improve our urban environment
7) Community activists who want to improve the community.
8) Local businesses who want to clean up their neighborhood of graffiti.
9) Teachers who really care
10) Parents and Grand Parents who want to participate.
11) Rotary Clubs, Masonic Clubs, Sertoma, etc.
12) Local building contractor volunteers
After School Program Resources:
13) Donations of equipment and materials from Rotary Clubs, Masonic Clubs, Sertoma, etc.
14) Fire 50% of administrators and Physiologists
15) Local and corporate business donations of used computers and printers (thousands are available).
16) Student Fund Raisers (car-washes, Xmas wrap, child care etc. for
17) http://www.fundraising-ideas.org/
18) Donation Games – http://www.skratchers.com/ppc/index.html
19) Building Supply and Manufactures – (help kids and parents fix their schools)
20) Hardware Stores – (help kids and parents fix their schools)
Pokey and Celeste, thanks for your kind words. Pokey, I’d still quibble with you on the emphasis on marriage, insofar as a lot of the people giving birth to gang members are young people not qualified to be parents, married or single. If two people are themselves not mature, urging them to get married isn’t going to solve anything — the dad will probably split, or teach the kids the same cycle he grew up in.
My emphasis would be — as it is in many middle and high school programs — to urge the kids to think about the long- term consequences of becoming parents: how the financial and time constraints/ obligations will severely hamper their own abilities to pursue an education, career competence, etc. It’s people who have kids before their own educational and career goals have been met, and who have achieved the financial wherewithal to educate their kids and give them the “stuff” they need in our consumer society, who put themselves and their kids in danger — and become a burden on society.
Pokey, even those of us who are highly educated make mistakes when marrying young — for the uneducated, growing up in this cycle of violence-poverty, it’s pretty hopeless.
Listener, I hope we didn’t discourage you in the dust-up here. Surely you know you are the soul of thoughtfulness, and intelligent comments.
“Urge the kids to think about the long- term consequences of becoming parents…”
I agree strongly with your points regarding teaching children the constraints /obligations of parenthood.
BTW – before I got married a second time, eleven years ago, I attended a 6 week course on the subject so I do not feel that marriage education is just for children.
Maggie as you noted – “young people not qualified to be parents…” — studies show “a predilection toward gang involvement is also evident in young men whose fathers have been present but detrimental in their lives.â€Â
But, — “The relationship between single-parent families and crime is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime.” – Atlantic Monthly.
“Fathers have become viewed as optional to parenting, kind of like a sunroof on a car, nice but not really necessary.”
“Fathers teach their boys how to control their aggression and show their boys how to relate and respect their mothers. Father’s provide their daughter’s greater self-esteem, confidence and restraint.”
Links to my May 29 tirades about Gangs & Marriage: http://tinyurl.com/2abo92 and http://tinyurl.com/25l8uo
Pokey: Your para re: fathers teaching boys how to control their aggression and respect their mothers, providing their daughter’s greater-self-esteem, confidence and restraint,” sounds ideal. But of course, the former doesn’t happen in bad marriages, nor the latter even in many seemingly “stable” homes (I don’t want to get autobiographical here, but I had a very strict dad — and mom, for that matter — who destroyed my self-confidence no matter how much others may have thought I looked successful, even to be envied.) But we sure fit the definition of a “traditional family.”
(This is filmmaker’s David Lynch territory.) I’m convinced many people feel compelled to put on a happy face, or just persuade themselves not to question too deeply.
Anyway, I appreciate looking at research, but I’m also very much a pragmatist, looking at empirical evidence, life.
By the way, re: filmmakers and gang culture: the director of Boyz ‘n the Hood is a parent I’ve come to know well. He and his wife are both terrific parents, but separated; if you’ve seen his film(s), you’ll appreciate the chasm between the kind of single, African-American parents they are, and their subjects. (His protagonist does, in fact, have a dad who comes back into his life to “teach him to be a man,” something the other kids don’t have. Virtually all of the other men depicted, even if they are around, are indeed “detrimental” to their kids’ lives.)
This has all become a more sensitive issue with the Mayor’s divorce, some saying it’s always wrong/a “sin,” and always leads to dysfunctional kids (e.g., Chris Weinkopf in the Daily News, with whom I had a dead-end disagreement on this), others, take a more individual and humanistic view.
Unhappy or downright dysfunctional couples who can’t or won’t divorce for religious reasons or to avoid social criticism, are inflicting deep psychological harm on their kids, and suffering it themselves. Even if they hide it.
Anyway, as long as these young kids in the ‘hoods continue to have kids they can’t raise responsibly, as a society, we have no choice but to offer the programs you also list, or else face the consequence of hardened adult criminals.
I have never seen MST ever work with “High Risk offenders” or juvenile gang members. I’ve seen great results with the “at-risk” kids that have almost no gang influence within or outside the home family structure. I’ve seen MSWs run out these gangsters homes saying statements like, “that’s family is beyond therapy.” I’ve even seen many completely change careers and pursue something more rewarding. I dont blame them.
I disagree with the report and I’m tired of these so called highly educated liberals that think they have the social answers for our gang problem. Connie Rice and her sister are pathetic examples of stupid highly educated lawyers that do the political ass rubbing and completely lack any life experiences to provide credible solutions to solving the gang issues in Los Angeles or any other major city.
Those that specialize in this field all agree that crackdowns are needed. You can not predict when a gang member is going to just jump up and say, “hey, lets go do a drive-by on the enemiga.” If I had the answer to this repeated action, I would be a billionaire – bigger and richer than even Bill Gates.
If parents, mothers, fathers, juvenile Courts or any other guardian can not stop a kid from killing another human life, you think a MSW/MST therapist is going to stopped these gang members.
The therapist always learns the hard way with these harder brain washed kids. They either get kicked in the head, the kid gets killed, or he kills someone else and ends up a lif-er in Pelican Bay. The respond from the therapist is always the same, “but he was doing so well, we were connecting” ….Right. Not until the therapist learns that that the manipulation skills of these kids is all a learned behavior attributed from an older sophsicated gang member. Giving these kids candy or special treatment will get you nowhere on changing their ideas and lifestyle but it sure shows your incompetency and straight dumbness.
There is one area where the money is being spent wrongly and the tax-payers are being taken for a ride. These so-called interventionist community based organization that say they can make a kid change his gang lifestyle with a parolee or ex-gangster tutor, so called role model. Another pathetic idea adopted promoted by the County Supervisors and County agencies like Probation and the Sheriff Department. Hector Marroquin took millions of dollars from tax payers, all compliments of Molina and the rest of the idiot County Supervisors that supported NO GUNS and who continue to support the Valley’s Communties in Schools organization. This is where all the wasted Millions went – to pay crooked organizations and their executives with staff that are somehow connected to the LA EME, relatives of LA EME, or still involved in some type of criminal activities. Look at that guy from the CIS program, Mario Corona, the head of Director of Job Placement at this CIS place, – caught with two pounds of methemphetamine and a handgun. Then there is rumors that he funded and opened a nightclub in Rosarito Mexico with many of these politicians and County employees visiting and being treated like kings with special accommodations. Pathetic. I blame our politicians for the failure of the city gang violence. Our politicians dont help they indirectly promote the slaughter of innocent lives and helpless children. Whether people like it or not – crackdown are needed to a certain extent but no matter what, prevention and intervention is always needed and only at the juvenile level but done right. I do not support playing daddy for any kid that is older than 18 years of age, I have my own to worry about.
PS – those two guys from Maravilla in that picture I think one is dead and the other is like in his early 30s serving life, if i’m correct.
Hey, Poplock. Thanks for coming by. You seem quite knowledgeable on this issue.
For the record, having reported on gangs for 18 years, I have seen therapists help gang members. But you’re so right; it ain’t simple. And most MFTs can’t—and frankly don’t want to—do that kind of work.
As for the role of gang intervention groups, anybody with any sense saw that Hector Marroquin was problematic from the get go. (Mario Corona’s another story. A much longer conversation.)
Unfortunately, those doling out money didn’t bother to ask people actually living and working in the communities who they thought was the Real Deal and who’s full of….cacita. Community members are inevitably the last people brought to the table when it comes time to decide who gets city and county money.
On the other hand, I’ve seen hard core guys who, according to conventional wisdom, would never end up anywhere but dead or serving 25 to life, turn things around after someone reaches out to them. Because of the work of some excellent gang intervention folks, those guys have become productive working men and soccer dads. I’ve been to a lot of funerals in my time over the years. But I’ve also seen a lot of miracle stories—close up.
So it’s complicated.
I imagine if we ever met, we’d argue about a lot, but also agree about a lot too.
PS: I don’t remember what happened to the guys in the photo. I think you’re right, one is dead. Rodgriguez tells what happened to them in the book’s narrative.
I just like the photo because it really captures the young, stupid and hardheaded nature of the gang members who do so much damage to themselves and others. Joseph Rodriguez is a fine photographer—and a good guy.
WELL HOW CAN I SAY THIS…..HMMMM….. YAL CAN TRY TO DO WAT EVER U WANT BUT GANGS AND GANG VIOLENCE WILL NEVER END…HAHAHA SOUTHSIDE FUCC KLOWNZ POR VIDA HOMES… ESA TREMENDA…1904.
This is a good read. If only authorities read it, we’ll make a noticeable dent in the gang problem.
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