Prisons Can't Solve Gangs
Rodr?guez, Luis J.
Prisons Can't Solve Gangs Writing to America Luis J. Rodriguez Mario Rocha spoke thoughtfully, but confidently, into the foam-covered mic while at KPFK-LA's Paci-fica listener-sponsored radio...
...Of course, but as part of a whole package that includes jobs, social recreation, cultural/arts programming, training, treatment, and more...
...Here's a sampling of what he recently wrote: young natives lost in the linguistic fortress of the settler without a home in our own homeland without a path in our own place learning how to speak in the diom of the other rather than sing in the spirit of the Mother...
...This should include an invitation to everybody, not just in law enforcement or city government, to voice, recommend, teach, and help...
...Los Angeles is at a crossroads in terms of dealing meaningfully with gang violence...
...Luis J. Rodriguez has worked with gangs and troubled youth for more than thirty years, as summarized in his book "Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times...
...His poetry is coming along...
...A community that centers itself on the troubles and gifts, the pains and dreams, the issues and assets of its youth is one that can flower into something authentic and whole...
...This was during the Divine Forces Radio show, hosted by Fidel Rodriguez, the premier conscious hip-hop program in the city...
...That's where the imagination comes in...
...Mario's defenders say he was innocent, but he was charged as an adult, leading to a much longer sentence than he would have ever received as a minor...
...Let's start with imagination...
...Existing research shows that this approach is neither cost effective nor effective at curbing violence in the long run...
...He talked about knowledge, about words, about being free...
...This is not a bad idea...
...We need an image that can convey the concept of true peace and justice throughout our communities...
...Bridges, to name a few...
...We need to hear from community leaders, parents, businesspeople, schools, young people, not-for-profit groups, spiritual leaders, and, I must add, gang members themselves...
...This has happened in cities like Chicago, where I spent almost ten years working with community peace efforts...
...I only met Mario that evening, but we had corresponded while he was in prison...
...It's time for our young people to sing in this spirit-of Mother Earth, of the creative womb, of new birth...
...What helped me most during incarceration was books," Mario said on the air in September...
...The report recommended establishing a central office to coordinate more than twenty scattered anti-gang programs that are currently spending more than $80 million a year...
...Many other groups and individuals have amassed vast experiences on the street and in the jails, juvenile halls, and schools...
...A decade later, Mario won release on bail after a California court of appeals declared he did not receive a fair trial because of inadequate counsel...
...The city was following a doomed strategy, it said...
...Los Angeles has for decades been called the Gang Capital of the World...
...In 2004, two city councilmen, Tony Cardenas and Martin Ludlow, formed the Los Angeles City Council Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development to design a comprehensive strategy that could eliminate gangs using techniques beyond law enforcement's suppression efforts...
...I sat next to Mario as Rodriguez questioned us...
...Mario had read and apparently been strongly influenced by my 1993 gang memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A...
...So is the whole country...
...In California, the price for this is an $8 billion prison budget, 58,000 employees in thirty-three prisons, and around 172,000 adult prisoners, 3,000 juvenile prisoners, and 110,000 parolees-the largest correctional system in the nation...
...He apparently wrote three books in all...
...Prisons Can't Solve Gangs Writing to America Luis J. Rodriguez Mario Rocha spoke thoughtfully, but confidently, into the foam-covered mic while at KPFK-LA's Paci-fica listener-sponsored radio station...
...Real community is about mutually beneficial and mutually labored social agreements-not just for "immediate results," but for the long haul...
...Mario, twenty-seven, had been out of prison for only two days...
...Pragmatic efforts without vision, direction, and connections just won't work...
...This office must also move vast amounts of social energy to where it's most needed, including real mentoring and strong rites of passages for youth into their own passions, destinies, and callings...
...Is there a role for law enforcement...
...Why not...
...Suppression is the city's predominant response to gang activity," the report noted...
...If anyone is worried about bloated taxes and gross public spending, this should be one of the first places they look...
...Los Angeles already has some amazing programs to address gang violence-Homeboy Industries, Homies Unidos, L.A...
...In fact, increasing numbers of people, including policy makers, are looking at valid and effective means of dealing with gang crimes and violence that would not involve more prisons and unwarranted and costly convictions...
...Remember: Gangs, like most social problems, do not exist in a vacuum...
...We now need the political will and full city support that in the past has not been brought to bear...
...Next, we're going to need to expand the conversation about gangs and their relationship to community (or, rather, the lack of it...
...It's time to try something positive and original...
...There has to be a better way...
...Meanwhile, documentary filmmakers have released a film about him called Mario's Story...
...As for Mario, he's now looking at ways to develop his writing, and he's apparently found a job at a movie studio lot...
...In 2005, the Advancement Project of Los Angeles, a nonprofit legal and social action organization, provided the Ad Hoc Committee a report that claimed Los Angeles was "losing the battle against street gangs because it has failed to properly fund and focus efforts to keep youngsters from joining gangs in the first place...
...The image I'm seeing is of a web with many strands reaching into every neighborhood, alley, park, school, and housing project, held together by a core that strategizes and evaluates what each strand is doing...
...It may help this city, despite its reputation, become a leader in imaginative, comprehensive, multifaceted, and community-based efforts to address the root causes of gang violence...
...He's also co-founder of Tia Chucha's Bookstore & Centro Cultural in the northeast San Fernando Valley...
...Like many working class youth (mostly black and brown, although there are a large number of whites and Asians, as well), Mario experienced one of the many miscarriages of justice in this country...
...I spent a lot of time reading and learning-and also writing...
...Key to all this is the conscious participation of young people...
...Too often they are attacked, abandoned, or alienated from programs and approaches...
...Healthy, resourceful, knowledgeable, cooperative, inclusive, and whole communities do not have gang problems...
...It's that simple-which is also why it's that difficult-and that's where we have to go...
...These include extra years if a gang is believed to be involved in a crime (although Mario is not a gang member, this played a role in his case), trying youth as adults, and "three strikes and you're out...
...The arts and literacy should be at the heart of such a community-for the real path out of chaos is not order, but creativity...
...Recently, Mario returned the favor by giving me a manuscript of his poems, which he had written in prison...
...At age sixteen, he was convicted and sentenced to thirty-five-years-to-life in the murder of a seventeen-year-old high school student...
...He may still be retried, but for now he's doing all the positive things he can to make the most of his freedom...
...Fractured, uncooperative, and poor communities do...
...We can finally imagine and organize "peace zones," where every major component in a community can agree to bring forth vital needs like jobs and training to the gangladen neighborhoods, while getting gangs to agree to stop the violence, drug sales, and criminal acts...
Vol. 70 • December 2006 • No. 12
