Gangs
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No More "Nerding Out" in Prison
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Suburban Gangs: Overreported or Misunderstood?
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Gangs and Social Networks
New Approaches to Stop Gang Violence
Published July 14, 2009 @ 07:06AM PT
Cities across the country are trying alternative approaches to stem gang violence - from hiring former gangbangers to mediate disputes to offering life coaches and job training - and they're working.
In St. Louis, a program called Aim4Peace is borrowing a page from Chicago's Ceasefire, a non-profit initiative that seeks to treat violence like an epidemic and stem its spread through intervention at critical moments. I wrote about Ceasefire here.
In Kansas City, people like Jason Broom (above left) use their life experiences to intervene before violence can escalate.
"I've done everything they're thinking about doing," Broom said.
Broom and the other half-dozen or so Aim4Peace street intervention workers, also known as "violence interrupters," say they resolved 22 conflicts last year in Kansas City and at least 14 this year. And the east side — where poverty, gangs and drugs have conspired against residents for years — no longer leads the city in killings, according to crime data.
"The work they're doing in that area is having an impact," said Maj. Anthony Ell, commander of the Kansas City Police Department's violent crimes division.
And a great piece in the New Yorker last month profiled a program helmed by John Jay Professor David Kennedy, also called Ceasefire, that brings more of a carrot and stick approach and has been tried by 60 cities, with varying success.
Monday Map: Missing Opportunities in South Central L.A.
Published June 01, 2009 @ 03:46AM PT
The Crips and Bloods are still at war in South Los Angeles, and this map - from PBS Independent Lens - goes a long way toward explaining the causes of that war. People in disadvantaged neighborhoods join gangs because other opportunities simply aren't available.
Click here to check out the interactive map, where you'll find that south Los Angeles dwarfs the rest of the city is such undesirable statistics as unemployment (14 percent), available jobs (0.5 jobs per worker), health services, school dropout rate and the number of parolees living on each block. When poverty is concentrated in this way and opportunities are few and far between, gangs thrive.
Can't Beat Gangs? Sue 'em.
Published January 26, 2009 @ 04:03PM PT
The Los Angeles Police Department announced last week the first "success" of a new strategy the department is employing against gangs. Suing them. The Christian Science Monitor has the story.
Still a Slim Chance for California Gang Referendum
Published November 06, 2008 @ 05:58AM PT
California voters saw so many referenda on their ballots, it's hard to keep up. I wrote about the fate of Prop 5 and Prop K yesterday, but what about Los Angeles' Proposition A, a modest property tax increase to fund after-school programs and other efforts aimed at preventing gang violence? That one is losing with 99% of votes counted, but there's still a chance.
Prop A would have taxed property owners an extra $36 a year for job training and after-school programs for at-risk youth, aimed at preventing gang membership. This is the kind of crime prevention we need in our country; even if it fails to reduce crime, at least it provides some additional job training and education. Mandatory minimums and zero-tolerance crime fighting represent the opposite of this soft policy landing. The War on Drugs has failed to reduce consumption of drugs or drug-related violence, and the alternative has been 2 million people in prison - at a huge cost to taxpayers and resulting in the destruction of inner-city neighborhoods across the country.
But opponents of Prop K derided it as another layer of bureaucracy. The LA Daily News wrote "the only thing that the $36-a-year parcel tax would do for certain is funnel $30 million a year more of taxpayers' money into the black hole of Los Angeles City Hall."
The proposition could still pass. It is currently losing by the thinnest of margins: it needed 66.7% to pass, and it currently has 66.12%. Absentee ballots are still being counted, and they could make the difference.
And we're not quite done with with California ballot measures. The only crime-related question to pass in the state was Prop 9, on payments to victims and longer prison sentences. More on 9 tomorrow.
