Rethinking the Role of Gangs

John Hagedorn is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His most recent book is A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture.

We read every day about the arrest of gang members or statements by police that some bust “crippled” the local gang.  Zero tolerance policies in schools and communities have as a goal the complete elimination of gangs.  In several Central American countries, a policy of “mano dura” or the iron fist, aims to smash gangs.

But despite these policies, filled jails, and one police campaign after another, gangs haven’t gone away. In fact, a quick glance at press reports from around the world finds gangs everywhere. What’s up with this? Do the failure of “hard line” policies mean that we should ignore gangs or treat them nicely and they will go away? What should we do?

Here’s what I think: Gangs aren’t going away no matter what we do. In other words, no matter if we crack down or lighten up, gangs are with us to stay. Let’s examine first why I’d say something outrageous like this and then think about what it means for what we should do.

There are six billion people in the world today and half are under the age of 24. More than a billion are between 18-24, prime gang age. In a world that has 1.2 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, the UN’s standard for extreme poverty, there are a lot of poor, and understandably angry, young people. The sad truth is the 21st century is not so much a century of hope but one of shattered dreams. It’s not that individually, you or your friend can’t make it — hard work, determination, and getting a few breaks can give even the most “down and outs” a way up and out. But looking at the big picture, for the one billion plus people living in extreme poverty, the good life will remain out of reach for this lifetime, at least.

That’s really where gangs come in. Gangs are destructive and violent, alienated and armed young men and sometimes women. But they are also rebels in the face of a world that is even more violent, unforgiving, and cold.  Unfortunately the response gangs most often choose is one that only makes things worse.

Cheap Justice

Maeve Hickok is a writer and the managing editor at www.Earthzine.org, an online scientific and environmental journal, supporting the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

Imagine President Obama holding a news conference to announce a federal buyout that would actually save taxpayers billions instead of costing taxpayers billions. And this buyout would not only save taxpayers money, he would say, but improve the quality of millions of American lives as well.

 

Wouldn’t that be something?

 

Well he could do that if the states—we, the voters and taxpayers—adopted the recommendations of the Pew Center for the States and redesigned the criminal justice system, which costs taxpayers $68 billion annually. We need to put more emphasis and financial support into “inexpensive” community-based intervention and remediation, and less into building more “expensive” prisons, and legislating stiffer penalties for non-violent offenders. 

 

So why haven’t we done this already—don’t we see this as just common sense?  Apparently not, explains the Pew Center, which points to dramatic increases over the last twenty years in prison population and construction, and in widely divergent judicial and corrections policies. State-by-state analyses show our corrections systems are our second largest expense after Medicaid.

 

Changing Lives through Literature is one of those “inexpensive,” community-based programs that should be part of the President’s plan, but more on that later.

 

Instilling Hope with After-School Programs

LaVerne DaCosta is a Ph.D. student and faculty associate, teaching education and society courses at Arizona State University.  Her Master of Science research focused on youth services.  Her current research interest is in youth culture and technology.

 

From my brief profile above, I am sure you already know where my passion lies.  I believe in the creative potential of young people, and I believe strongly in the value of after-school programs as a resource to help foster and sustain that potential. 

 

The research on after-school recreation programs, which includes my own Master of Science research, has shown that after-school programs can be beneficial to students, particularly children from underserved communities and/or adolescents who are trying to form their individual identity and are particularly vulnerable to structural or environmental factors that leave them exposed to risk.  Such students tend to act out their aggressions, mistrust and hopelessness in a myriad of counter-productive ways. 

 

The public school classroom is the one place that such students seldom get the help they need.  The structure of schools and classroom discipline only serve to exacerbate the problem.  Regular participation by young people in after-school recreation programs, however, can have an impact on reducing their negative behaviors.

 

Additionally, the numerous literature indicate that because the factors that affect young people’s behaviors are inter-related, after-school recreation programs which help to reduce negative behavior, juvenile delinquency, and violent crime also help to build self-esteem, ego-resiliency and ultimately impact their academic achievement.  After-school recreation programs can help maltreated children and transitional foster-care children cope with a variety of issues in their lives and contribute to goals such as self-efficacy and positive development.  Practice is the key to building confidence and these programs provide this space through enrichment curriculum with the exclusion of any grand theory of success and failure.

 

Bibliophilia in the Electronic Age

Flurije Salihu is a PhD candidate and instructor at Arizona State University currently researching New Media and terrorism. She is currently reading Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series during her summer “vacation” and is waiting anxiously for the next Charlaine Harris book. 

Like many of the other contributors to this blog, I’ve had a long and prosperous relationship with reading. One of my first memories, in fact, is of going to the public library with my mother and sister at the age of four (at which point I climbed onto a low shelf of books and yelled like Tarzan, much to my mother’s embarrassment).

 

My father has never been much of a reader, but my mother and sister and I have always shared books – even to this day, when I am a graduate student in Arizona, my sister a consultant in far-off Virginia, and my mother a plastics colorant manager in Tennessee, we swap texts, e-mail suggestions for new reads, or stick paperback copies of the latest Janet Evanovich into the mail. 

 

This connective property of literature is what I have noticed most in my own life, especially in the past few years, throughout which most of my network of friends and family has become more frequent users of the Internet. It would seem as though this use of the Internet would be an anathema to the circulation of physical objects like books, but this is not the case. Facebook, especially, with applications like the Digital Bookshelf and Books IRead, puts our love affair with reading on display for all of our friends to see.

 

In fact, this medium gives us a wider audience to which we can declare that existing love affair. On my digital bookshelf you will find a diverse collection of authors, including Marshall McLuhan, Tamora Pierce, Nora Roberts, and Don Delillo, all of which declare my rather strange taste in literature to my diverse network of both strong and weak ties. 

 

Criminalization of Urban Space and Formation of Identity

Chris Magno is a doctoral student and teaches Radical Criminology in the Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University Bloomington. He is now writing his dissertation on how crime becomes political capital in Philippine politics. He is the author of the book Corruption and Revolution: Joseph Estrada and the Uprising of the Urban Poor in EDSA III, soon to be published by Ateneo de Manila University Press.

 

“Criminal community” is the popular identity of a place within the larger urban poor region where I conducted research for my Masters Degree at the University of the Philippines. Although I completed my thesis after one year of living and working in the community, I am still contemplating how the community acquired the image of criminality.

 

The community is located on the public land of North Triangle, Barangay Pag-asa Quezon City, in the Philippines. It is surrounded by many governmental, commercial, and transportation establishments.

 

Despite the fact that the community is surrounded by commercial establishments, governmental social service offices, and headquarters buildings, 60% of the adult members of the 5,000 families (as of 2001) who live in the community are unemployed, 40% are employed.  Seventy percent of the employed work in private companies, 25% is self-employed and 7% work in governmental offices. All of the people who live in the community lack security of housing, 70% have no health care and, and 30% of the children ages 5-16 are illiterate. Among the unemployed, the most common modes of survival include prostitution, pick-pocketing in the nearby mall, stealing, drug dealing, and illegal gambling games such as jueteng.

 

The community started to gain its criminal identity when President Ferdinand Marcos criminalized squatting through Presidential Decree 772 in 1975. During this time, the North Triangle community experienced demolition and the burning of their houses. Many were put in prison for violent resistance against demolitions. When P.D. 772 was repealed after the lifting of martial law, the community’s criminal identity was retained and reinforced by the illegal activities of some community members in surrounding establishments. For example, a gang member who lived in the community killed a Philippine Science High School student for refusing to surrender his wallet during a robbery. There were also weekly incidents of hold dapping of buses, taxis and jeep-neys (Philippine public transportation) that stop around the community.

 

The image of criminality has a huge impact on the lives of the community. The daughters of a resident named Sonia, for example, were not accepted as sales clerks in a nearby department store when its human resources officer learned that they were living in North Triangle. Teodora’s son was not accepted in Philippine Science High School even though he passed the school entrance exam and had a high GPA. I also observed that Catholic residents cannot go to church in nearby high class subdivision because they are usually halted by community guards and chased by dogs. Most of the time residents cannot acquire care in the highly specialized hospitals because they are not capable of paying the required deposit, which only residents of upper level subdivisions can afford.
 

Switching Gears for the Summer

From now until the end of August, Changing Lives, Changing Minds will feature one essay per week instead of our usual two. Check in with us every WEDNESDAY for the week’s newest post and be sure to share your thoughts in the comment section!

Want to write a guest essay for the blog? Send an email to jbaker1@umassd.edu for more information.

Emerson’s Theory of Books and Changing Lives Through Literature

Carl Schinasi enjoys teaching at Miles College, a historically black college, in Birmingham, Alabama. His recent works have appeared in Ducts, Slow Trains, Southern Hum, and the essay collection, Baseball/Literature/Culture. Most summers, he can be found lolling around any baseball field anywhere.

***
 

Note: Long before Dr. Waxler and Judge Kane started “Changing Lives Through Literature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson proposed, in fact, demanded his own version of the program.  Emerson framed his program not for felons, but for a population I’m sure he considered equally, if differently, incarcerated.  This short essay places “Changing Lives Through Literature” directly in the honorable tradition of “programs” that tie literature to life.    
 
 

At this late remove, it may be difficult to imagine Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ”The American Scholar” a radical document, the equivalent of a battle cry that inspired Oliver Wendell Holmes to proclaim it “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” Yet few literary efforts in America’s history so decisively throw open the doors for a generation as did Emerson’s exhortation to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge on August 31, 1837.  His speech with its declaration, “Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close,” liberated and emboldened the youth of his day to build an America in their own vision. The speech marks a watershed moment in American history and letters.  Though delivered over fifty years after the fact, it resonates as the parting shot of the American Revolution.

 

In “The American Scholar,” Emerson fumed aloud about a land peopled by ingenious and industrious folk who showed a profound lack of originality. In the speech, Emerson directs his listeners to unshackle themselves from their European ancestors’ ideas and traditions. He admonishes his audience and all Americans to turn this new land into a democracy of “Man Thinking,” not mere “thinkers.”

 

A simple distinction separates these titles:  “Thinkers” degenerate into victims of society as they parrot other people’s ideas. They devolve into individuals disconnected from each other and a larger purpose; they wind up materialists and solipsists.  “Man Thinking” creates and invents.  He produces an integrated society while drawing inspiration from and remaining connected to Nature, the larger world, which embodies a united, universal, and generative spirit. “Man Thinking” defines Emerson’s idea of the American scholar, his model for the American citizen. This individual would combine vision and action to establish a new government, culture, and society ultimately fulfilling John Winthop’s prediction this nascent country “shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, [where] the eies of all people are uppon us.”

 

Emerson outlines three criteria to forge this new American. Among these is a call for an engagement with books. With this admonition, not coincidently, Emerson catechized a theory of books we still find instructive in its power to challenge, shape, and change lives. To become a scholar, “Man Thinking,” the seer and doer, Emerson urges his audience to participate in a radical act—read! 

 

Lost Souls Gaining the World

While studying for the ministry, David G. Sarles began substitute teaching in the New Haven public schools and have been teaching since. He began running also then, up and down East Rock, and has been running more or less since then. But his running pales in comparison to those inmates who circle prison yards thousands of times to compete in marathons.

 

Last December, the high school writing class I teach read the CLTL post on “The Real Cost of Prisons.” One of these graphic stories was about a 15 year-old busted on a drug charge. It moved the students; however, they were anything but shocked. “Oh, yeah,” said Jermania, “That is just like my sister’s friend who got caught just talking to a friend who turned out to be a lookout. She’s in a juvenile home.” Delphine remarked, “Kids on my block are always offering me stuff.” Others replied with stories of crack houses, dealers, and runners they know from their exurban Long Island towns, most of them middle class communities.

 

They see some of their acquaintances getting sent up but can’t know what life behind bars is like. How much can those behind bars relate to prison life when they are back on the outside? The writing class can tap into the CLTL site and read and relate to the stories posted. Reading and discussing one of CLTL’s stories, Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” offers Delphine and her writing classmates an impression of what it’s like to fail to resist tempters. CLTL blogs provide a glimpse of writers who work with those who walk the line between the streets and prisons.

 

It’s all but impossible, it seems, for the bars to disappear for prisoners. One of our role models, the photojournalist Taryn Simon, documented lives of exonerated prisoners in her book The Innocents. Simon’s eye into the lives of former prisoners, many from maximum security prisons, piqued the interest of my writing class. How can those returned to society after years of time served for crimes they did not commit know what to do in life on the outside?

 

Starting and Maintaining a CLTL Juvenile Program: An Interview with Michael Habib

 

Allan McDougall is a graduate student from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Allan is a staunch believer in language as social action, with a focus on reading and writing. Allan is currently writing his MA thesis on Changing Lives Through Literature, and writes about professional and academic issues on his blog: allanmcdougall.wordpress.com.

Combined with the biological awkwardness of growing up, young offenders are often under added pressure at home, at school, and in their peer groups. I can say this because I’m a volunteer with young offenders here in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Furthermore, I greatly admire facilitators who run juvenile community programs.

 

For these reasons and others, I listened carefully to the words of Fall River’s juvenile program facilitator, Michael Habib, at the last two annual conferences. When a call for blog posts went out, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to interview Mike and get answers to some key questions that I could use in my own volunteer work: What tips do you have for other juvenile reading programs? How do you get kids to open up? What do you do when they don’t do their assigned work?

 

One of the first things Mike, a lawyer, will tell you about himself is he’s never been a big reader of fiction. “I read more non-fiction and history, but I’ve always enjoyed discussing books with my colleagues and I’ve always given books to kids because I believe in the power of literature. When I was a young lawyer, I was representing this kid who was charged with robbery. I didn’t believe his story, but it turned out he was telling the truth in the end. Well he got in trouble again and said, ‘okay, I did it. What are you going to do for me now?’  I worked out a deal for him so the charges were dismissed, but he had to attend a youth program. I also gave him Ellison’s The Invisible Man. A while later, he sent me a letter asking for recommendations on other black writers. That was the first kid I ever gave a book to.”

 

Mike’s reputation for giving books to juvenile offenders became well known in Fall River, and when one of his colleagues became a judge, he asked Mike to facilitate the court’s first CLTL program.“Not being an English professor, I had to do a lot of research on what kids read. I used the CLTL homepage as a resource, consulted with librarians, audited a session at the New Bedford program, and found a great website called www.theliterarylink.com, which I highly recommend.”

 

In Mike’s experience, a CLTL program for kids needs to run differently than a program for adults. “The stories have to pick the kids,” says Mike. “These kids don’t trust you and they don’t know who you are. Part of the facilitator’s task is listening to them and building relationships. Kids don’t respond well to classic literature. Contemporary works will be more engaging for them.”

 

“Before each class, I prepare a list of discussion questions and for the first hour we talk about the assigned reading,” he continues. “After a break, we spend the second hour reading aloud from where the previous week’s assigned reading ended. We keep on reading until the end of class, while pausing to periodically discuss questions. At the end, I assign the reading assignment for the following week, which is generally about 20 pages long. 20 pages doesn’t seem like much, but these kids have school, homework, and often problems at home—they don’t all read like average students. So a novel generally lasts 5 weeks.”

 

Arming the Courts with Research: 10 Evidence-Based Sentencing Initiatives

From the Pew Center on the States’ latest report:

 

Over one million felony offenders are sentenced in state courts annually, accounting for 94 percent of all felony convictions in the United States.  Sixty to 80 percent of state felony defendants are placed on probation, fined or jailed in their local communities. Although the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, there are nearly three times more offenders on probation than in state prisons. Recidivism rates among these felony defendants are at unprecedented levels. Almost 60 percent have been previously convicted and more than 40 percent of those on probation fail to complete probation successfully. The high recidivism rate among felons on probation pushes up state crime rates and is one of the principal contributors to our extraordinarily high incarceration rates. High recidivism rates also contribute to the rapidly escalating cost of state corrections, the second fastest growing expenditure item in state budgets over the past 20 years. 

For many years, conventional wisdom has been that “nothing works” to change offender behavior—that once an offender has turned to crime little can be done to help turn his or her life around. Today, however, there is a voluminous body of solid research showing that certain “evidence-based” sentencing and corrections practices do work and can reduce crime rates as effectively as prisons at much lower cost. A comprehensive study by the Washington legislature, for example, showed that greater use of these evidence-based practices would reduce Washington’s crime rate by 8 percent while saving taxpayers over $2 billion in additional prison construction. As the United States faces the prospect of its deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression, we cannot afford to ignore the opportunity to reduce offender recidivism and resulting high crime rates through use of these cost-effective evidence-based practices.  

 

The report praises the following ten initiatives:

1. Establish recidivism reduction as an explicit sentencing goal
2. Provide sufficient flexibility to consider recidivism reduction options
3. Base sentencing decisions on risk/needs assessment
4. Require community corrections programs to be evidence-based
5. Integrate services and sanctions 
6. Ensure courts know about available sentencing options
7. Train court officers on evidence-based practice (EBP)
8. Encourage swift and certain responses to violations of probation
9. Use court hearings and incentives to motivate offender behavior change
10. Promote effective collaboration among criminal justice agencies

 

To read the full report, including details about each of the above initiatives, navigate to the Pew Center on the States site.