My View: When we invest in youths' hope, we hurt gangs

By Leroy D. Baca and William J. Bratton - Special to The Bee

August 7, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A21

As law enforcement officers who have worked for years to suppress gang-related violence, we have learned that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. Law enforcement is indeed critical - and making real gains - but if we want to break the cycle of violence in our streets, we have to give the children who join gangs a better option.

In Los Angeles, intervention is a major part of a multifaceted plan against gang violence. Such a comprehensive approach is critical, considering that L.A. County has an estimated 1,100 gangs with 86,000 members.

But gang violence has actually fallen since the early 1990s, with gang-related murders down by more than half. Part of the downturn came because our offices work together more collaboratively and share a philosophy about what it takes to break the violence cycle. Intervention is a big part and we owe a lot to one man for getting at the root causes of gang terror.

Twenty years ago this year, a Jesuit priest named Father Greg Boyle took a chance and tested a theory. He put a half-dozen gang members to work cleaning and doing odd jobs at Dolores Mission Church with the idea that providing an honest trade could pave the way out of a life of crime and imprisonment. For young people who turn to gangs when they see no other viable alternative, Father Greg was offering one.

Today, those jobs have grown into Homeboy Industries, a $9 million enterprise that includes a bakery, cafe, silkscreen business, landscaping services and a retail store. It has employed thousands of former gang members with little education and no résumés, offering free job and life training, mental health counseling, housing assistance and tattoo removal to help them integrate into mainstream society.

Studies have shown gang members who join an intervention program are up to 60 percent less likely of going back to the gang lifestyle.

Father Greg has said Homeboy Industries is about fundamentally changing the community ecology that supports gang culture.

"Gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope," he says. "I've never met a hopeful kid who joined a gang."

Father Greg's approach shows that eliminating gang culture is not just wishful thinking. His model is powerful evidence that we can change the social environment in which violence is seen as a route to manhood. Every year Father Greg helps hundreds of youths turn around their lives and become examples to their peers by securing jobs and new skills.

If we want to change the gang culture in our cities, as Homeboy is doing in L.A., it doesn't happen overnight. Putting a permanent dent in youth violence requires a long-term approach.

Unfortunately, the long-term nature of this work makes it very vulnerable in times of budget deficits. But it takes a sustained investment for even the most innovative efforts to pay off.

That's why even in tough budget times, the governor and Legislature must maintain their commitment to programs like the California Gang Reduction, Intervention and Prevention initiative, which provides cities, counties and organizations competitive grants for job training and education targeted to youths at risk of joining gangs or seeking to leave them.

Because, to quote Homeboy's tagline, "Nothing stops a bullet like a job."

About the writers: Leroy D. Baca is Los Angeles County sheriff. William J. Bratton is chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Comments

[NDynamite]

How about all the fugitives and wanted gangsters good old Father Boyle habored? How bout all the investigations good Father Boyle hindered because he refused to help the police? Father Boyle is not a friend to the police. He would rather help his precious homeboys than protect the neighborhood from thugs.

[Loves LA LEOs]

NDynamite, what is it that you need to hear? What would you find to be right and good? I'm not being sarcastic; I really want to know.

[TMD]

I think that our prison system is ineffective and that is the primary problem today. Criminals are just not afraid of going to jail, because they get coddled there. They even get their traffic tickets forgiven. They also get free medical care, food, and R&R! Jail is a vacation for life these days! Instead, we should stuff prisoners 10 to a cell, no r&r, minimal medical care, and make money off them by putting them to forced labor. Prison should be something feared and should be cheap for us.
Rewarding them by giving them free laser tattoo removal and free job training when people who didn't do anything wrong can't get that just strikes me as unjust.

[b&wop]

The whole thing about prison issues in a leftist-liberal state like CA, begins with the name change made recently to corrections. The name was changed to the California Department of Corrections AND REHABILITATION.

Prison should be punishment for going against society's laws and civil behavior mandates. It should be a place where no one wants to return. It should be a place where inmates spend 8 hours a day doing manual labor either running a farm that grows their own food, or breaking rocks, or being part of a chain-gang that cleans roads or beaches.

There should be no time to work out in a gym set-up that rivals most health clubs, and there should be no time to watch satellite or cable TV, or play video games. After a day at hard labor, all the prisoner would want to do is go to sleep.

If we went back to the basics and treated prisons as a place where prisoners went to pay society insted of being rewarded by society, it would be a good start.

But that is a pipe dream. In CA not only would that never happen when you have socialist millionaires like George Soros, who wants to legalize drugs, financing Proposition 5. If that passes, I'll come back and show the readers the double digit percentual rise in crime by recidivists.

Hoodlums' rights first. Public second, or third.

[geez]

I have known of Father Boyle for years and have heard of his organization for years. However, I have never seen or heard success stories. I have heard possibilities and those on their way but I have not heard about people leaving the gang life or crime and becoming positive contributing members of society. For all the years that this organization has been around and for all the thousands and thousands of people that have gone through the program how does one measure success? Is success staying out of prison/jail for a certain amount of time? Is success getting your kids back from child services? What is the measure of success? How can something be called successful when there isn’t a level to reach. Have they expanded their organization? Yes. Does this organization make money? Yes. Do they employee those with criminal records? Yes. Is there the measure of success?