Dr. James Diego Vigil Professor, Criminology, Law & Society School of Social Ecology University of California, Irvine

BACKGROUND

1. We must advocate for a balanced anti-gang approach:

Mixing prevention, intervention, and law enforcement as needed;

2. How poverty and marginalization lead to “street

socialization” (i.e., raised in the streets)

Generation of street gangs and gang members;

Streets socialization, in turn, undermines and transforms the otherwise normal course of human development;

BACKGROUND

3. We must look to these gang roots by examining the

historical and cultural experiences of ethnic minority

youth;

Establishing the realities of time, place and people will shape the strategy;

FRAMEWORK

MULTIPLE MARGINALITY

“ACT AND REACT”

SOURCE: Vigil, 2002a

BACKGROUND

4. First, we must focus on the social neglect, ostracism,

economic marginalization, and cultural repression those

residents in gang neighborhoods confront daily;

a. Multiple marginalization;

b. Human development

BACKGROUND

4. TIME: Stealing time away from the urban youth most susceptible to street socialization can begin;

a. 3 most important social control

1. Homes and Families;

2. Schools and teachers;

3. Law enforcement and Police;

b. Time and Timing is key:

1. General Time;

2. Time pivotal to their growth;

c. Stealing time is a difficult Task;

d. Early and late Childhood for social and personal episodes

1. Adolescent years are “heighten” time for developmental crossroad: Good and bad choices, turns and twists, dead ends, free wheeling paths, etc.

BACKGROUND

5. Start with the home:

a. First target: The hoe is complicated at

so many levels largely a private matter;

1. Begin at the community level,

develop a collaborative and

coordinated strategy for local

homes and parents;

2. Pull together existing programs and practitioners;

3. Candidate homes select by indentifying problem homes: strains, inequalities, unsteady practices, help them reconnect;

4. Counseling centered on parents as individuals and parents as parents;

BACKGROUND

5. Counseling centered would augment counseling, Parental Education;

• Parents never learned what parenting is;

• Would go hand-in-hand with counseling above;

6. Should learn about the authoritative approach found in non-gang families;

• Attentive parents, firm rules, consistency, closed ended schedule;

• Community mothers could run it;

BACKGROUND

7. PLACE: Motivated offenders, suitable targets, and an absence of capable guardians converge in certain times and places to increase the possibility of a crime, known as “hot spots.”

• Ignore political debates and just set up SITUATIONS (i.e., social and personal outlets) and CONDITIONS (i.e., building and safe houses);

• Reestablish the character and identity of the neighborhood;

» Example of the 1960s War on Poverty, Teen Posts,

35 in greater Los Angeles

• Street socialization generally produces a street subculture of violence, neighborhood “hot spots.”

» Product of opportunity

» In short, motivated offenders, suitable targets, and

an absence of capable guardians converge in certain

places to increase possibility of crime;

BACKGROUND

• Hot spots and subculture of violence in area are volatile together;

• Street socialization generally produces a street subculture of violence, neighborhood “hot spots.”

» Product of opportunity

» In short, motivated offenders, suitable targets,

and an absence of capable guardians converge

in certain places to increase possibility of crime;

• Hot spots and subculture of violence in area are volatile together;

» In addition: level of street socialization and

type and amount of “locos” (i.e., “hot heads”)

also raises the degree and intensity; Hot Spots

and Contested Space

BACKGROUND

• Look at Places from 2 Perspectives:

» First: reality of streets as “hot spots;”

» Second: Contested turf between gangs;

Gang as a community protector

of homes and women;

Symbolic “turf” to defend from

pecuniary; market space;

• Goal: Lessen the impact of these elements to soften “hot spots”:

» Gangs no longer protectors of community;

lost its meaning in the context of high level

of violence today and drug trafficking;

BACKGROUND

• How to recapture the place: In 1950s, social clubs or car clubs in gang neighborhoods;

» Has to be rethought because of level

of violence;

» This strategy would integrate some of

the time dimensions above, parents,

teachers, police, etc.

» Refitted, community clubs for several things:

sports, recreation, social outings, youth and

parent counseling, job outreach, education and

mentoring, community service, etc.

BACKGROUND

6. Focus on the places that need them

the most:

a. Like Teen Posts;

1. Formulation, implementation, and evaluation

should be community based (social control

institutions) to set up a balanced strategy

2. Funds and resources drawn various

b. We need not put all our eggs into

1. Do other stuff too;

2. Structure internet

3. Neighborhood Safe Houses or Study Centers;

4. OR, look to existing clubs: Boy Scouts,

CYO, Woodcraft Rangers;

BACKGROUND

7. Focus on the places that need them the most:

a. Saturate Place: all kinds of positive influences

1. We must make new realities, scenarios, and

scripts and make new dramas and

performances;

2. Saying YES to options for a change;

BACKGROUND

b. PEOPLE: When time management is affected, Power of place reconfigured, than the essence of the equation is: PEOPLE!

1. Caring and well trained people can make a difference;

2. Identifying and recruit community people as supporting cast;

3. Recruit fathers and mothers there: surrogate caring program;

4. Young athletes in locale

5. The above cold help break the cycle: Street teachers and role models;

BACKGROUND

6. Select former “matured out” gang members;

7. Help gang proof a child;

8. Potentially large pool of people;

• Note: up to 70% of gang members “mature out.”

• There are ways to co-opt current and former gang

members to aid their “maturing out.”

9. Use of former gang members as street counselors;

• Need carefully crafted screening, SC involved;

GANG ENTRANCE 1995

GANG EXIT 2005

STRATEGY FOR

A NEW MILLENNIUM

8. Time, place, and people for a balance strategy:

Police overtaxed as a solution to a problem they did not start, only limited success;

a. Focus on roots of problem to help generate logical solutions, begin the long hard march to regain social control;

b. In tandem, and as needed, prevention,

intervention, and law enforcement

throughout life of a person, always with

eye on human development issues;

STRATEGY FOR

A NEW MILLENNIUM

c. Concentrate on what youth do with their time, with who they do it with and where, along with places where they occur and the people involved in them;

d. No difference how many jails are built, the anti-gang strategy we have now is not working;

e. Failed because it is not based on facts,

science, on human development or on

common sense;

• Focus on the roots;

STRATEGY FOR A

NEW MILLENNIUM

9. Breaking out of the box:

a. We need to brainstorm!

• Great, Boot Camp, Sports Programs,

Hire and Appoint Community People

b. First: Where does the social life of a gang

person begin?—deteriorated, rundown

sections of city;

• Places breed situations and conditions to push

children into streets and street gang culture;

c. Parent and home status low:

incomes, education, jobs;

STRATEGY FOR A

NEW MILLENNIUM

d. Initiate broad social strategy: coordinate and cooperate;

• Integrate M.M. framework to work from to provide broad and deep canvas, show how linkages shape SC and other changes;

• Factors: ecological, economic, and sociopsychological - → All M.M.

• To understand any of the forces at work here, it is necessary to understand all of them, and to target them in a broadly based strategy;

e. Thus, a macro approach is suggested for a partnership of public and private entities : formulate implement, and evaluate gang programs;

• Specific Micro facets: ecolo, economi, social, cultural, and psychological;

STRATEGY FOR A

NEW MILLENNIUM

9. Human Development Trajectories:

SS shapes human development to make a street subculture

a. Gang life ahs a whole set of different roadways, turns, narrow choices, and seductive draws, all of which shape their personal and social identity;

b. Especially affected during “psychosocial

moratorium” when poverty affects the

growth and maturity of a child;

STRATEGY FOR A

NEW MILLENNIUM

c. Human development— 5-9 years; physical needs are high for activities;

• Ghetto Reality: Crowded homes, space; less recreational space;

• Along with physical, there is cognitive side; learning by active participation, rather than way from home where irregular spontaneous street up;

• Social realm: ego formation is

just beginning; sense of self

requires more guidance;

STRATEGY FOR A

NEW MILLENNIUM

d. Later childhood: ages 9-14: physical changes even more marked, onset of puberty takes on a bumpy course;

• Need for positive anchoring experience;

• How to strive, aspire, and achieve gain status is a driving force at this phase;

• It is “machismo” in motion, need for gender clarification;

• Plays havoc with the cognitive side of a person;

» Social front comes into play;

• Become more peer dependent; Veteranos

are ones to look up to and emulate

STRATEGY FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM

Carrots and Sticks!!!

Start early in life, not late.