Views > August 23, 2007

The Counterproductive War on Gangs

The conclusion of the report, “Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies,” persuasively argues that punitive policies of policing that specifically target gangs increase rather than decrease gang violence

By Salim Muwakkil

When it comes to America’s criminal justice policy, the cure is often worse than the crime. Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the war on drugs, which has inflicted more social damage than drugs themselves. So too with the war on gangs, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, released this July.

The conclusion of the 108-page report is evident in its title, “Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies.” Written by Judith Greene and Kevin Pranis, the report persuasively argues that punitive policies of policing that specifically target gangs increase rather than decrease gang violence.

“The current preoccupation with gangs is a distraction from very real problems of crime and violence that afflict too many communities,” Pranis said in a press release announcing the study. “Gangs do not drive crime rates, and aggressive suppression tactics simply make the situation worse by alienating local residents and trapping youth in the criminal justice system.”

More police, more prisons and more punitive measures have not stopped the cycle of gang violence, the study notes in the executive summary. The study compares gang suppression efforts in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and found that gang problems are worse in Los Angeles and Chicago, where police employ stricter enforcement tactics. The authors conclude there is “no evidence that gang enforcement strategies achieved meaningful reduction in violence.”

Los Angeles is cited as a graphic example of the failure in the war on gangs. For at least the last 20 years, the nation’s second largest city has used gang injunctions, special task forces, and databases and enhanced prison sentences to specifically target gangs. But Los Angeles now has six times as many gangs as it did 20 years ago and twice the number of gang members. The authors conclude unequivocally, “Los Angeles is losing the war on gangs.”

The study also reveals that Chicago’s attempts to stem gang violence have had the opposite effect, noting, “a cycle of police suppression and incarceration, and a legacy of segregation, have actually helped to sustain unacceptably high levels of gang violence.”

New York City employs a different strategy. Rather than trying to eliminate gangs, the city focuses on reducing gang violence. Its approach stresses community policing and gang intervention programs that provide jobs, counseling and prevention activities. Gang crimes in the nation’s largest city have decreased dramatically.

The report also examined efforts in Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, St. Louis and North Carolina. It found no evidence that increased enforcement efforts “had a positive impact on target neighborhoods.”

The authors also criticize politicians who overstate the threat of gang crimes and urge tougher sentences to bolster their tough-on-crime image. Such political posturing is especially egregious, considering the perverse social effects of punitive police policies.

But pushing tough law enforcement is politically popular among constituents inundated by crime-soaked media coverage, and politicians gain little from resisting that push. The corporate media abets punitive policing by inflaming the public’s fear of crime.

One example of this furor is Chicago, where major media has been feasting on the fact that 32 school-aged children have been murdered so far this year. A number of national news shops came to town to “investigate” what they characterized as an epidemic of youth violence. CNN’s Anderson Cooper, for instance, spent a few days in the city to document and dramatize the damaging effects of this “growing culture of violence.”

Predictably, most of the stories focused on “new” reasons kids are killing kids, focusing especially on the spread of gangs, the availability of guns, fractured families and a violent media culture of video games and rap music.

However, in reality, Chicago’s youth are safer from murder today than at any time in at least 40 years, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control. In 1968, there were 50 murders of youth ages 5-17 in Chicago. In 1994—the peak year of urban violence in Chicago—the number of murdered school-aged youth was 152.

Since 1995, when the total reached 115, the number of youth murders has stayed below 100. The years 2003 through 2007 have seen some of the lowest numbers in several decades. Rather than focus on this improvement, the media is awash in blood, gore and gang fears.

I make this point not to minimize the unacceptable levels of interpersonal violence that plagues the African-American and Latino communities, but to place that violence in a more realistic context. What’s more, this inaccurate portrayal of new levels of violence, combined with the inordinate focus on gangs and rap, tends to demonize a youthful population already bearing the brunt of social disinvestment.

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• Reader Comments

  I would have to agree with your point-of-view.  As an African-American male I notice the ‘demonization’ of the culture-music, clothes, language.  And have noticed that instead of finding the source of the communites (Black & Hispanic) disengagment with the status-quo it has been much easier for lack of a better term to incarcerate and attack these communities.  Gangs are the tip of the iceberg which is a direct result , in my opinion, of the eradication of the black leadership in the 60’s & 70’s by the federal government. Now they are trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up the mess they created.

  Posted by C. LyOns on Aug 23, 2007 at 2:01 PM

  Somehow my memory fails me —when did we first decide the individual has no responsibility for his own life?

  Behavior such as drunkenness now a disease.

  This week it was annnounced that obesity is due to a virus.

  Women have been having babies by multiple fathers and fathers decline to support the women or children.

  Children have “behavioral problems” and receive drugs — not a spanking.

  Presidents while in office lie, cheat on their wives, pander to special interest groups at the expense of the rest of the citizens and go on to charge big money for books and speaking engagements based on their time in office.

  Now… gangs need our sympahy and understanding.

  This country is more than energy dependent — it forgotten that independence requires with individual responsibility.

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 25, 2007 at 9:38 AM

  Very true, the gangs don’t deserve our sympathy.  They are violent, reprehinsible human beings that should take responsibility for their OWN actions.  But each one of these gangs operates as a function of individuals who are living in the same plight of society and can relate that situation with one another...thus they form gangs.  They come from a part of society, each one of the individual members, that lacks leadership, education and resources and become a product of this....in a not so obvious similarity to a tribe/clan...they are a reaction of the environment and they’re survival, by whatever means that maybe, is related to that.

  And what I’m suggesting is not necessarily passing the buck ,so to speak, off the gang members, but we as a nation should be look at why these conditions still exist despite the advances made in equality and openess to jobs and education and tackle that before we continue to build more prisons and put more young miorities in a very dangerous prison system.

  Posted by C. LyOns on Aug 25, 2007 at 10:28 AM

  C. LyOns,

  OK, I understand that unity can come of simiilar circumstances and problems, but instead of forming gangs (which requires leadership) why don’t they form a company, a union, a social club or some other association wiith a positive goal?

  Isn’t it just because that would require work? It’s much easier to join together and commiserate about how tough life is than to do something to improve it. It is easier to blame the system, some other people, or a lack of opportunity than it is to think of a service or product which people would be willling to pay for.

  The main thing I can think of for government to do to improve things is to do less.

  • Stop the stupid “War on Drugs.” It has not worked, is not working and willl never work. If people are truly free — they should be free to do stupid things.

  • Do not reward counter productive behavior by paying for having kids.

  • Do not subsidize farmers, corporations or anything else (including ethanol). Let us pay what we see as the value we place on each. The illegal alien issue is due to “subsidizing” by allowing cheap labor to increase profits.  If people won’t pay what an item costs, let them do without.

  Just because someone is not wealthy doesn’t mean they are dumb. One of these kids (or a group) may be able to coome up with an idea to employ a whole bunch and lower costs as well.

  The things the government provides never are valued as highly as what we do for ourselves.

  About the only thing JFK ever said or did which I agreed with was, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

  Something we can all do for our country is stop asking for more for ourselves.

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 25, 2007 at 12:50 PM

  Everyone has made valid points, and that very fact underlies the complexity of the enormous problem facing the pervasive culture of violence in our inner cities.

  The terrible mess we find ourselves in begs the proverbial “chicken or egg” conundrum.

  But as I see it, searching for answers to questions like “how did this happen” and “who’s responsible for it” are exercises in futility without also immediately asking questions like “how do we fix this” and “where do we start?”

  The statistics are grim:

  * Nearly 30% of minorities (Black & Hispanic) will drop out of high school

  * More than half will enter the penal system by age 23

  * Once in “the system” they will be sentenced and incarcerated to longer terms at far higher rates than any other race

  I could go on and on, but the point is that life in America is not good without both a solid education and a strong sense of responsibility. And that is where concerned community leaders need to focus their efforts.

  We can no longer sit around and wait/hope/wish that Uncle Sam will save us from ourselves. The cavalry isn’t coming!

  The global economy, with its demands of quality, tolerance, competence and skilled workforces, will wait for no one. 

  The longer we sit idly by shaking our heads at the evening news while young mothers are being left to raise babies on their own, the worse this viscious cycle will become, until, as Hurricane Katrina showed us, one perfect storm at the wrong time in the wrong place will be all that is needed to wipe out a once vibrant and influential culture.

  I believe the best way to attack this problem is ‘from the ends in.’ That is, take a super hands-on approach with respect to educating the very young on one end, and on the other end, approach those in the 18-24 age range with innovative “re-education” endeavours.

  If successful, this approach will have a simultaneous trickle-up and trickle-down effect, thereby rapidly spreading this newly-planted burning desire to succeed throughout the spectrum.

  My theory is that if you want to burn down a forest quickly, you don’t just light one end and hope the wind blows your way. You light it from each end, and the flames will meet in the middle.

  I’m going to try and do my part by starting up an after-school mentoring program for at risk youth where the focus will be on strengthening fundamentals in reading & comprehension, writing, math, science, and goal-setting while acting as a direct liason to each student’s teacher, guidance counselor and parent or guardian via weekly emails, phone calls, and/or face-to-face visits.

  There are many good programs out there already in most communities. But when 59% of Black 4th-graders are reading below the national average, more needs to be done to halt the potential of these persons from becoming future gang members.

  This is not just a Black or Hispanic issue either- with population numbers of nearly 75 million combined, it’s ultimately an American issue. 

  I believe the key to success is education…

  Posted by key2success on Aug 29, 2007 at 12:35 PM

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