THE HIGH COST OF GOOD INTENTIONS

*UPDATED*
Strange cuts got made in this post late Thursday night when I originally put it up. Was in Skid Row all day Friday researching a story that will be appearing here soon, so didn’t see my techno-glitch. All is properly restored now. (In the spirit of personal responsibility—and today’s date—I blame leprechauns for the whole thing.)

“Gang contracts” are a new and growing fad among school officials in various states, including parts of California.

Now several Los Angeles schools, a progressive urban charter school among them, are thinking about using gang contracts to handle their edgiest students.

The document is, in essence, a behavioral contract that lists a bunch of objectionable activities—things like flashing gang signs, carving gang initials into your math class desk, jumping other kids at nutrition, and other unpleasant actions of that ilk. The kid, in signing the contract, agrees not to engage in those unseemly behaviors. And the contract spells out the consequences that will kick in if the student violates any of the rules.

Similar “behavior contracts” have often proved successful in other contexts—like, say, adolescent substance abuse programs—in helping troubled kids get a grip on their self-destructive conduct.

With a gang contract, however, there’s an extra little hitch. In signing the contract the kid has to admit that he’s a gang member and, in most cases, list the name of the gang to which he allegedly claims membership.

Setting aside the questionable psychological value of enshrining a kid’s gang membership—or putative gang membership—in a formal document, in today’s law-and-order world, the gang contract presents a minefield’s worth of potential unintended consequences, none of them good.

To help explain what I mean, here’s a quick story..

On the first day of the school two years ago, a 13-year-old freshman at Salinas high School—let’s call him Javier— instigated a fist fight with another kid whom we’ll call Danny. The fight didn’t last long, and the school principal soon hauled the two brawlers off to the office for questioning and the reasons behind the fight quickly spilled out. It seems that, at the end of previous school year, Danny and his friends, several of whom happened to be gang members, had jumped Javier outside his 8th grade classroom, and beat him up. All summer, Javier mulled about the beating, and about the possibility of getting back at somebody for the incident. When he spotted Danny, he went for it.

Two days later, Javier was again called to the office again. This time he was asked to sign a gang contract.”

At first he balked, unsure what the thing might mean. His father says that Javier was threatened with suspension if he didn’t sign. So he gave in. According to George Sanchez, the Monterey Herald reporter who covered the story, the father was also asked to sign, and warned that his son would be arrested if he refused.. So both father and son went ahead and wrote their names on the gang contract

There was one slight problem with the strategy: Javier wasn’t a gang member.

He knew gang members, but he had no criminal record of any kind, no gang tattoos, no gang moniker, nothing else that suggested gang membership but that single fight.

But from that day forward, on paper anyway, Javier was a gangster. Ironically the gang he was supposed to have joined, was the gang that beat him up.

If Javier never gets in trouble again, the gang contract, while perhaps stamping him with an unjust label at school, will likely not affect his life in years to come. But if he should run afoul of the law in any way—now or in the future— the gang contract he signed as 9th grader can be brought into court and used against him with potentially drastic results.

Put another way: in the hands of school officials, a gang contract is a tool used to persuade a kid to behave better.

But in the hands of a criminal prosecutor, a gang contract is a weapon. It can be used to ask for—and get– higher sentences called “gang enhancements” after a conviction—whether the kid is really a gang member or not.

(And, in case you assume that a school could decline to turn over the paperwork, forget about it. According to a 1977 California law, school records of a minor may be subpoenaed into criminal court. And the kid’s school can’t do anything about it.)

Here’s how the Monterey-Herald’s George Sanchez explains a few of the possible consequences:

___________________________________________________________________________
__
With a gang enhancement, juveniles can get a three-year sentence in the California Youth Authority for fighting. That same charge, without a gang enhancement, amounts to a 90 day sentence
.__________________________________________________________________________

“You can have a simple fight turned into a felony by virtue of this enhancement,” said [Cate Brennan, of the Monterey County Public Defender’s juvenile unit.] ___________________________________________________________________________

The California Youth Authority is the juvenile division of the state’s prison system. If a youth is identified as a gang member and is taken to juvenile hall for any offense, she or he is housed with gang members.

___________________________________________________________________________

And then there’s the case of a 16-year-old Southern California teenager named Michael Duc Ta, a boy who had no previous record of gang activity. But, he often hung out with the wrong people and, on the night in question, Duc Ta was with two other young gang members when one of them unexpectedly pulled a gun and fired it at so-called “enemies.”

Luckily, no one was hurt. Nothing was even hit. Without the gang membership allegation, Duc Ta would have, at most, done a year or two in a juvenile facility for his presence when the gun was fired. Once gang membership was “proved,” the gang enhancements kicked it. Duc Ta was sentenced to 25 to life. He will be eligible for parole when he’s 51 years old.

With these kind of legal consequences hanging in the balance, a Santa Cruz mother sued and won last year when her son’s school persisted in labeling him a gang member. Other law suits over gang contracts are rumored to be coming.

Bottom line: Behavioral contracts? Fine, no problem.

Gang contracts? Run them all through the shredder. Now. Please.