CE Week #7: “Preventing gangs”
U.S. needs programs to keep kids out of groups in first place
The Baltimore Sun
October 16, 2007
The following editorial appeared Monday in the Baltimore Sun.
The proliferation of gangs in American cities has led to calls for new federal laws and tougher penalties to stem gang violence. Locking up more gang members may deplete their ranks, but only until the next teenager becomes the newest recruit. It’s the wrong approach to the real solution, which is keeping youngsters from joining a gang in the first place.
We question the need for new laws because there are few crimes unique to gangs. Their members – no matter their colors – murder, steal, sell drugs, extort money, beat up rivals and intimidate witnesses.
Prosecutors in Maryland and elsewhere have successfully used federal laws to convict and imprison notorious gang members, but what’s lacking is a sustained public effort to protect kids from the lure of gangs.
Federal legislation pending in Congress would commit $1.1 billion for law enforcement and prevention efforts to attack gang problems that are consuming manpower and money in cities as different as Baltimore and Boise.
The Senate bill, sponsored by Dianne Feinstein, of California, would criminalize gang activity that is already a crime and outlaw recruitment for the purposes of committing a crime for the gang.
While the Feinstein bill provides $447 million for prevention, its thrust is enforcement. But keeping kids out of gangs in the first place would save millions of dollars now spent to arrest, convict and imprison them as lawbreakers.
Experts say that kids who join gangs are looking for the family support or stable home they lack. They need comprehensive programs in and out of school that nurture kinship and camaraderie among youths and, more obviously, stronger families. Baltimore, like other cities, must rely on a patchwork of programs to serve kids at risk for gang membership.
The Feinstein bill would increase funding for prevention programs, but the effort should be robust enough to underwrite an extensive campaign to counter gang life.
The legislation rightly recognizes the increasing problem of witness intimidation and dedicates $270 million to combat it. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, of Maryland, has been a forceful advocate for this aid because of Baltimore’s experience with witnesses who have been victimized.
When House members take up the Feinstein bill and other anti-gang measures, they should remember that tougher enforcement alone leads to only one place – prison.
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I have never been in a gang, nor do I plan to be or want to be. I think we can all agree that gangs ruin lives. However, I have known people who are associated with gangs and understand their mentallity (but I don’t necessarily agree with it). A gang is a family to a gang member, and gang codes (they are mostly all the same) are like a rule of morals without morals. For example, respect and “stick up for” all members of your gang (”homies”), and promote your gang by wearing your color, usually gangs have one other gang that’s a top enemy sadly usually there is nothing against the use of violence, for example the branch of the bloods we have here in North Spokane (some of them go to our school or have gone to our school) are Red Boys, or XIV, or Catorce that represent the number 14. Their rival gangs are any crip section including the Treces a section of the crips, or otherwise known as the mexican mafia represent 13, and the italian gangs. The Treces believe in peace unless violence is asked for. If a member is attacked or called out the gang might retaliate by doing something worse than the last offense. Thus the result a gang war.
These kids are devoted, like they should be to the families many of them don’t have. In reality for a teenager growing up the culture has pushed us into gangs, we are supposed to be close to our friends, and when violence is introduced to that whether through a broken family or through TV, movies, or the poverty many american gang members have been raised to know the result is a gang.
I believe the easiest way to fight gangs and prevent them is to help poverty. Poverty causes the need to survive to come out of the people, it’s in human nature. When fear of violence being brought onto you is combined with your urgent need to survive the result is a violent reaction.
Gangs look appealing to gangs because they build trust. In order to counteract the gang crisis we have to put trust back into the people, we need to have after school programs in elementary school because most kids that lean towards gangs in their teenage years usually start doing drugs or other crimes in middle school. Once gangs have already appealed to the kids any school program isn’t going to reach them (why the hell would I want to stay longer after school to do somekind of more work?).
I honestly think the cituation looks hopeless, which I think is really sad because I know many people whose lives were absolutely ruined by gangs, people who had so much to crontribute to society but they are too busy getting high with the homies and protecting their turf. It reduces individual thinking and promotes group think, which is very dangerous.
It has been difficult to hear or see the things that have happened to people I love because of gangs, although Spokane doesn’t have as big of problem as some, many people laugh when they hear Spokane and gangs, but they are there, and for those whose lifestyles are way different they don’t always see what’s really going on in their own city.