Good Gangs

Over the past few years, the phenomenon of youth gangs has spawned
its own field of criminology-part social science, part political
spectacle. Police have been declaring war on gangs for decades,
officials have deployed social workers, teachers and "gang specialists"
in the fight; think tanks have churned out reams of research on the
sociology of gang violence... and yet gangs continue to proliferate and
thrive.

Sarah Garland, in an article in the American Prospect (an excerpt of her book Gangs in Garden City), parses the roots of the gang boom,
focusing on the burgeoning Latino community in Hempstead, Long Island.
The story of Jessica begins with a stereotypical pathology:

Until middle school, Jessica had lived in a house that
neighbors dubbed the "crack house" for its often drug-addled residents
and visitors. Her uncles were members of Mara Salvatrucha, a gang
originally formed in Los Angeles by refugees of Central America's civil
wars, and Jessica's living room was one of their main hangouts.

But
Garland reveals deeper layers in Jessica's story. She started school in
a class for English language learners, since her teachers overlooked
the fact that she spoke fluent English. She continued to struggle in
school and earned a reputation as a troublemaker. She joined
Salvadorans with Pride in seventh grade "as a gesture of defiance"
against the man who sexually abused her-an uncle who belonged to a
rival gang.

The lure of gang life, according to Garland, isn't just economic
hardship, a desire for excitement, or social frustration, though all of
those may play a role. In many cases, gangs are a pathway to
self-determination when every other road is a dead end.

the truth was that the gangs' rise to power revealed
not what they offered to a new generation of immigrants and their
children but what America did not: safety, dignity, and a future.

Garland notes that Salvadorans with Pride is an offshoot of an
earlier group that had sought to protect the community. In response to
threats from local American gangs, as well as fears of police, Latino
immigrants formed a collective as an ad-hoc self-defense force. But
their hopes of becoming a grassroots security and self-help
organization were eventually eclipsed by violent rivalries and other
street crime.

Nobody likes to see their neighborhoods overrun with violence. The
dissonance emerges when officials decry gangs as a criminal scourge,
yet many youth seem to think they're the most worthwhile recreational
activity in the neighborhood.

The reported surge in gang activity on Navajo territory
exemplifies the role of segregation and social alienation in the spread
of gangs. In an interview on National Public Radio, Natay Carroll, a
former gang member, suggested that a sense of being under siege
actually pushes gangs toward violent escalation:

we've always heard [in anti-gang messages] the term,
'let's fight back. Let's take back.' And these are real combative words
when you put it out there into a community, you know, let's fight for
this. Let's fight back. Let's take back. You know, it's almost in a
sense you're egging on the gang to resist you....

That was one of the main things that I saw that I always
resisted against when I heard, oh, we're going take back the streets or
whatever, you know, and we're like yeah, come and try it. I dare you.

Under more enlightened policies, gangs and their surrounding
communities might present each other with a different sort of
challenge. Currently, dueling bills in Congress propose contrasting
approaches: the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act would ramp up criminal penalties for gang-related offenses. The Youth PROMISE Act, meanwhile, focuses instead on prevention initiatives and community-based intervention programs.

Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles
has helped pioneer the movement from anti-gang to pro-youth strategies
for community safety. The organization steers youth away from gangs by
offering them something more rewarding: a chance to finish high school,
publish their writing, or run their own business.

As the public dialogue on gangs grows increasingly professionalized and clinical,
lawmakers might be quick to dismiss such interventions as "soft on
crime," syrupy do-gooderism. But Homeboy Industries doesn't have to
worry about proving the program's effectiveness to skeptics: the kids
who run the place every day already know it works.