Stopping and Preventing Gangs: There's No Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing

Paralleling the nation-wide growth of criminal gangs, is the growth of so-called gang prevention groups run by "former" gang members. The most well-known organization of this kind is Homeboy Industries of Los Angeles. Sacrilegious as it may seem to some readers, this venerated group of gangsters and its iconic leader, Father Boyle, are actually part of our (growing) gang problem.

The reason is, "There is no right way to do the wrong thing." Homeboys' practice of giving criminal gang members jobs, education, and respect without FIRST requiring that they totally "jump out" or disavow their gang membership, has NOT reduced gang activity in LA, because it's wrong in principle. It is the most misleading and harmful message you can send gang members.It suggests that moral lives can be built on immoral foundations. It reinforces the false belief that gang members' problems are caused by lack of education, jobs, money, or by a tough home life. These challenges are effect -- not cause. Gang members' problems are caused by nothing but their commitment to an evil, mutant lifestyle that abandons moral/spiritual values and sanctions racist, violent, promiscuous behavior.

Homeboy Industries' compassion for gang members is dangerously misdirected, because it emphasizes legitimizing -- rather than abandoning the gangster culture. Start with their name. A "homeboy" is a gang member. Move on to the appearance. Homeboys' employees are allowed to look and dress like the gang members they still are. Check out their proudly advertised product line on their website. Does anyone in the nation BUT gangsters want to dress themselves or their little children in "Homeboy" beanies and "I'm a Gangster "(homeboy) t-shirts? Finally, consider Homeboy Industries' ultimate goals. With LA's countless corporations begging for qualified workers, Homeboy Industries' mega-commitment to cottage industries encourages many of its clients to avoid joining the mainstream. Their employees are encouraged to permanently remain in Homeboys' sub-culture of racial exclusiveness and ultra-leftist/anti-law enforcement philosophy.

It's arguable that when organizations like Homeboy Industries sanitize, educate, and employ men and women who are still gang members in their hearts, they've actually created greater menaces to society, because now they have a legitimate 'cover' to work under.

I've worked in gang prevention programs longer than Homeboy Industries has been in existence. At my present school, West Valley Leadership Academy in LA's San Fernando Valley, we have what many feel is the most successful gang rehabilitation program in the nation. The difference between our program and all the others is quite simple. Programs like Homeboy Industries legitimize, glorify and hesitate to criticize the gang culture. West Valley Leadership Academy teaches its gangster clients to be ashamed of -- disavow -- and abandon every vestige of it. Organizations like Homeboy turn illiterate, unemployed gangsters into educated, employed gangsters. West Valley turns illiterate, unemployed gangsters into moral, upright, 'normal' men and women. There's no comparison.

Homeboys' motto, "Nothing stops a bullet like a job," is not accurate. Nothing stops a bullet like quitting the gang you joined. Not "laying low," going back to school or getting a job...but entirely disavowing your gang ties. Telling the fellow criminals you've always associated with that you are no longer a member, supporter, or friend of their illegal activity. Then, and not until then are former gangsters ready to begin rebuilding their lives with education, counseling, and job training, because not until that point do ex-gang members have any real foundation on which to build.

Organizations like Homeboy Industries will never truly contribute to our life-and-death struggle with gangs until they stop legitimizing, accommodating, and making excuses for this scourge. Gang members who are willing to quit and denounce their former gangs and lifestyles can be helped. Those who won't -- can't be. The only truly effective gang-prevention programs are those who find the moral courage to tell their clients that there is no other way.

Comments

[ljnelson]

As executive director of an LA youth organization, I understand that there are differences in philosophy and methodology in gang intervention. That’s to be expected. What I don’t understand is why Mr. White would write something so blatantly false about another organization and its director.

I am well acquainted with Homeboy Industries and can tell you that Fr. Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries are as far from glorifying gangs and gang culture as you can get. I honestly can’t think of anyone more opposed to gangs than Greg Boyle.

Fr. Greg would not do anything that would legitimize gangs or gang culture. When people describe him as someone who “works with gangs” he corrects them. He does not work with gangs; he would not work with gangs because gangs should not exist.

Homeboy employees are NOT allowed to wear gang attire and they are definitely not encouraged to spend their lives employed at Homeboy Industries. A job at Homeboy is a beginning for most - an opportunity to redirect his or her life and become responsible and productive. Employees aren’t expected to stay at that first job any more than Mr. White’s students are expected to remain in high school forever.

Mr. White believes that only gang members would wear Homeboy Industries attire. Actually, the opposite is true. To wear a Homeboy Industries shirt is to advertise that you are NOT a gang member and that you believe in getting out (or helping others out) of the gang life.
I've worked with Los Angeles youth for the past 20 years and have witnessed the impact of Homeboy’s work. I have yet to see a more effective approach. Homeboy succeeds because it was created by a community that had seen more than its share of deadly gang violence. They knew the conditions that create gangs, knew the culture and understood what was needed to stop the violence.
I encourage Mr. White will take the time to visit Homeboy Industries and learn the truth about their approach to gang intervention. Maybe then he can write something more accurate about this worthwhile organization.

[wright42]

As you know, it's not solely about people's behavior. In addition what people are doing, it's about the motivating factors to those behaviors and choices. In life, if you never deal with those things, you never really get out of the cycles that you are stuck in. Without acknowledging, changing and fixing the circumstances in our lives (oppression, poverty, etc.) and focusing only on behavior, we are only applying a limited solution, not trying to change and improve a whole society and culture. We need to do both ask the individual to make changes in their lives, but also demand that larger changes in society be made as well.

Last, but not least, is the saddest part of this article (to me) -- that someone who works in this field believes that compassion could ever be misplaced.

Compassion means trying to understand the needs, feelings and motivations of everyone, not just those who are ready to subscribe to one possible solution. It doesn't mean you always like the choices people make or that you support those choices. It does mean that you open your heart to people and you don't give up on them, you keep trying to understand why they are doing what they are doing, why they are feeling what they are feeling. That you don't see them as people who are committed to evil, but as humans who are oppressed, hurt and angry (among other things) and are choosing terrible ways to deal with those feelings. We all know this is easier to say (or write) than it is to actually practice in the real world.

Again, you know all this. And that is what makes it so difficult to understand the context in which you'd write an articles that is clearly an attack on others also doing the work. Hopefully you'll be willing to share with us your whys and your context so that we can all have a better understanding.

[wright42]

It's difficult to understand your motivation for writing this article. Many questions spring to mind: You work in the field daily too, what's your motivation? Have you ever even spoken to anyone at Homeboy Industries? The impact that you're having in the West Valley is tremendous, as is the impact Homeboy Industries is having in East Los Angeles. So why the attack article?

Anyone who's actually known Homeboy Industries knows that they don't glorify gang life. They don't condone violence or violent behavior. It's about respecting people's true struggles, where they come from and what they are really dealing with in life (on a daily basis).

I know that you know this (but I'm going to say it anyway) - Gangs don't happen in a vacuum.

This does not mean to hold people unaccountable for their choices and actions (which Homeboy Industries doesn't do anyway) but it means you have to put those choices and actions into a larger context of a racist society where the disparity between the haves and the have-nots is HUGE (and growing).

It's puzzling that you believe that: "Gang members' problems are caused by nothing but their commitment to an evil, mutant lifestyle that abandons moral/spiritual values and sanctions racist, violent, promiscuous behavior." and that it has nothing to do with: "lack of education, jobs, money, or a tough home life." I know you work with youth in crisis on a daily basis -- you must have some insight about why they are in that situation to begin with. The 10 Rules help them learn different behavior patterns and another way to be, but I'm sure somewhere in there is the conversation about the context of people's lives.

I'd love to know how someone who works in gang prevention programs holds this type of attitude towards the people that they work with daily. It seems that there are no whys in this model - "Why did they get into a gang, why do they continue, why can't they stop?

[CelesteFremon]

Paul, I see you are a longtime teacher who runs a worthy program that serves approximately 25 or 30 kids in Canoga Park. For this you deserve to be warmly commended.

That's why I found your willfully malicious attack on Father Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries so surprising.

I've reported on gangs in East and South Los Angeles for nearly 18 years. (Google me.) In that time, I’ve observed Fr. Greg and his programs up-close. As it happens, I’ve also tracked several dozen young men and women who've come through Homeboy, over a fifteen-year period. Some have been lost to prison or violence, but more have turned their lives around against ferocious odds.

By the Sheriff's count, there are 40,000 gang members in LA. In order to get those young and women away from the gang life that continues to blow tragic and unendurable holes in the fabric of LA's families and communities, we need all hands on deck.

Unless you're a fool, you know that. So why in the world would you want to throw rocks at the program that's widely considered the most effective gang rehabilitation program in the U.S? Self promotion, perhaps? Hawking a book are we?

If you'd ever bothered to fact check, you’d know that the Homeboy program does the opposite of legitimizing gangs. It offers an alternative to gang life, a beacon of possibility away from the gang world.

What Homeboy Industries does NOT do---is to validate gang membership in ANY way.

In my years of reporting, I’ve known father Fr. Greg to officiate at 154 funerals of young men and women he knew and cared about. I watched fearfully as every dead kid took yet another chunk out of his heart. Yet, somehow his heart refills, and those deaths---those terrible deaths--seem also to strengthen his determination to stop future deaths, and to bring hope---both present and future---to those still alive.

Again, I appreciate the work you do with at risk young men and women.

But, as for this column, you should be ashamed.

[angel2010]

Anyone who thinks "homeboy" is synonymous with "gang member" is hopelessly out of touch with youth.

We use "homie" or "homeboy" or "homegirl" to mean friend or someone from our neighborhood. Not gang member.

When we call someone "dude" do you think we mean some city slicker who goes out West to learn to ride horses?

It's the 21st century Mr. White. Try to keep up.

[JScott]

Hmmm sounds like this is a commercial for Paul White's organzation. 'Mine's better theirs isn't'. Frankly to overcome this problem any help is needed and I think they outta ferget about making disparaging stories that what essentially seems like a propagandistic informercial to 'sell' their product. I would think they would know better that to pull something like this. The issue is too complex and too important to resort to what is really a commercial.

[realitytrumpsbull]

People tend to create opportunities for themselves where none exist, legal or otherwise.
That's how monopolies get broken up, that's
how companies get formed, that's how a lot
of things get done, and that's why there's
turnover, because the old way of doing business
gets plowed under to make way for the new.

You've got your Walgreens, and you've got
the guy on the streetcorner. If you've got
your health and your head screwed on straight,
you can stay away from both.

Larger gangs used to be called things like The Mob, and all the sub-groups of that. They're
out there, it's called 'organized crime', and
it won't be going away anytime soon, I think,
if anything it's become more prominent thanks
to the Digital Age, so here we go again with
the unintended consequences.

And then, you've got the ubergang, the
government...

[drblack]

I have a way to end gangs with the stroke of a pen.
Repeal drug prohibition and help people out of poverty.
Gangs cannot exists without the money they get from selling drugs. Look at alcohol prohibition in US history .
Repealing drug prohibition laws will cut murder, theft and violence in general.Repealing drug prohibition will end police and political corruption and stop enriching some very evil people.
Drugs are freely available now so there will be little difference in drug consumption.
Only the moralists , those making money on current drug laws and those ignorant of the facts around drugs(that the illegal nature of drugs causes most problems)will object.
When this is done gangs will fade out over 5 to 10 years and we can get down to real problems...not those which were artificially created.

[oldpotsmuggler]

You know, I was going to write this but got a little busy. You deserve thanks.

[jhNY]

Racist fear-mongering is repellant, however sincere.

The homeboy industry seems about as American as apple pie to me, another attempt at making money, marketing the 'homeboy lifestyle' and creating a production and sales force out of other like-minded former/current gangsters, most likely because that subgroup has almost no chance, given their criminal records, of gainful employment in the workforce. Sort of like Sean John only with revenue-sharing. But that's too good for them, as they will, by working amongst their fellows, never have to learn the most valuable of society's lessons: conform to our expectations or be crushed until you do.