Proactive approach to gangs needed - by Judge Jim Gray

Do you want to have a disturbing experience? Then read the book "This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang" by Samuel Logan (Hyperion, 2009). The word "mara" is Spanish for "gang," and the word Salvatrucha in El Salvador is slang for "street smart."

This juvenile gang was formed in 1980s Los Angeles by immigrants who were fleeing the civil war in El Salvador. But since many of the founders were former guerrilla fighters, they brought with them a cavalier attitude toward life and death. This in turn facilitated their use of extreme violence that even shocked other gangs in the area. But it also enabled MS-13 eventually to take control of large amounts of gang territory.

By 1996, the U.S. government adopted a policy of deporting MS-13 members back to their countries of origin, in many cases after serving jail or prison sentences here. Unfortunately in many ways that strategy backfired, because it resulted in the deportees using their knowledge, experiences and prison connections to form similar MS-13 gangs around the world.

Today there are estimated to be somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 members of MS-13. They range all over our country from Alaska to New York, with strongholds in the D.C. area, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Charlotte, New Orleans and Knoxville, in addition to Los Angeles. They are also found in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Spain. All of this makes MS-13 almost as organized and all-pervasive as the Mafia.

The initiation process conveys the depths to which this gang has descended. Males mostly go through the initiation process of receiving the brutality of a full-on assault with unrestrained punches and kicks from the gang members for 13 seconds. The females, who make up about 1% of the membership, can either be initiated in the same way as the males, or they can be "sexed-in," which means that the girl is repeatedly raped by all of the males present until the males are satisfied. But this process also gives those young women almost sub-human status in the eyes of the other members.

The MS-13 makes its money the same way most other criminal gangs do, which is by being involved in extortion and dealing in human, arms and drug trafficking. But due to their reputation for gruesome violence, MS-13 members are also often hired by other gangs as contract killers.

The story of the book centers on a personable and bright young lady named Brenda Paz, who was sent by her parents from Honduras to live with her uncle in Texas. But since this uncle had little time or inclination to treat this "additional mouth to feed" with any affection or caring, she soon sought her "family support" elsewhere, which happened to be with the MS-13 gang.

The book told us that Paz was present when numbers of other crimes were committed, including a time when her boyfriend first beat severely and then killed a casual friend of hers. Eventually Paz was arrested by the FBI and questioned about the murder, and after a while she decided to become a government informant against the gang.

Unfortunately, it was obvious to everyone but Paz that being an informant was an ultra hazardous thing to do. So even though she was thoroughly warned, given a new identity and placed in safe quarters in a different state, she went back to her "friends" in the gang because of boredom and loneliness. But once the gang learned of her cooperation with the government, they lured her out to a lonely place, and brutally knifed her to death, notwithstanding the fact that she was pregnant.

Why am I using this column to discuss things like this with you? Because gangs like this can only thrive, or even exist, by default, which is to say that they fill the void when we don't show enough caring to provide positive role models for all of our children. The truth is that someone will always mentor our children, and if it is not people like parents, basketball coaches, boys and girls club leaders, or school teachers, children will be mentored by people like Charles Manson or gangs like MS-13. These malignant people are always out there recruiting, and when they get hold of children it doesn't take long to get them into a "Lord of the Flies" mentality, which can quickly result in the brutalities and initiation rites used by MS-13.

With this understanding, when I see in the news that people have rallied to raise enough money to preserve the "Hollywood" sign, but positive programs for youth mentoring and employment like Homeboy Industries instituted in gang territories in Los Angeles by Father Gregory Boyle die for lack of funding, I really get frustrated.

So we should address and be pro-active with these problems right now, because ignoring them will result in them becoming more severe. Thus if you want seriously to reduce human tragedies in our communities, as well as crimes and the costs of putting so many people in prison, help to support programs that provide positive mentoring to all of our children. You know where they are, and most of them desperately need our help.

Do you remember the comments printed a few weeks ago in this column from my friend Dr. Earl Fuller about the young men in Pelican Bay State Prison? They told him that they expected to be dead by the age of 25, so under those circumstances it really didn't matter what violence they inflicted upon others, or what violence was inflicted upon them. Why? Because they would be dead soon anyway. Is this the way we want our communities to be? I know that we can do better than that!

JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of "Wearing the Robe: the Art and Responsibility of Judging in Today's Courts" (Square One Publishers, 2010), Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It, A Voter's Handbook, Effective Solutions To America's Problems and can be reached at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or http://www.judgejimgray.com. Judge Jim Gray is also currently offering his 25 years of experience on the bench to ADR Services in Orange County for Arbitration and Mediation services.

“WHAT TO DO ABOUT GANGS AND POVERTY” - by Judge Jim Gray

“WHAT TO DO ABOUT GANGS AND POVERTY” - by Judge Jim Gray 05/18/08

What should we do about the criminal and antisocial acts and other aberrant behavior of young people in gangs? It’s a tough issue. Law enforcement obviously has its limitations, so instead we need to get to the root of the problems. So what can we do?


  In my view, the best chance for success is to show these young people a better way. Show them that they actually can have a better life by having the security of a good job, the gratification of a strong family life, and increased longevity by leading a healthy lifestyle. Okay, that is probably obvious. But how can we so this in a way that will stick?


  Well by analogy to other problem behaviors, the most successful way to get drug-addicted people on the road to recovery is to partner them up with someone who has “been there” and is a recovering alcoholic or other drug addict. That is one reason why Alcoholics Anonymous has been so successful. And one of the best ways for our young people to see that things like ditching school, shoplifting and smoking marijuana aren’t “cool” is for them to hear that message at Peer Court from their fellow students. These people “speak the same language” as the addicts and juvenile offenders, and don’t accept their rationalizations and excuses.


Similarly, I believe the best way to get gang members to turn away from antisocial behavior is for former gang members who have evolved into a more healthy and productive lifestyle to share their stories, views and personal experiences with the present gang members. Actually this is now occurring in South Los Angeles with a group of former gang members called “The Businessmen.” It is also happening here in Orange County in a program sponsored by the Orange County Bar Foundation called “Shortstop.” These programs use former gang members and others who have been convicted of felonies to show the young people how the way they are going leads nowhere. And these programs are successful.


In fact, the same approach is now being used by our government in places like Iraq and Palestine, where former terrorists try to educate present terrorists about the futility of their actions, and how they are being callously manipulated by extremists along the way. In other words, someone with a common experience and familiarity with the aberrant behavior, whether it be drug addiction, gang involvement or terrorist activity, will have the best chance of communicating effectively with people who are presently stuck in that behavior.


But it takes more than that - it also takes hope. Most people realize that a person without hope is probably the most dangerous person in the world, because a person without hope has nothing to lose. And it is mostly people who don’t know any better and who have no hope that become drug addicted, gang members and terrorists. So how do we help to provide hope to those people?


In that regard, I will pass along to you something I observed when I was in the Peace Corps. Surprisingly enough, most of the merchants in my small town, which was in the southwestern part of Costa Rica, were Chinese. That included the owner of the place where I and the other high school teachers lived. His name was Chunga, and we lived on the second floor of his “Soda Interamericana,” which was the only place in our town large enough to hold a dance. So one day I asked him why most of the merchants in our town happened to be Chinese.


He told me that after the fall of Chiang Kai-shek in China, most of his supporters fled to Taiwan. But many others kept on coming. Some stopped in Hawaii, but others continued to most of the western coasts of North, Central and South America. And that included Costa Rica. And when they came, they brought with them a cultural tradition. 


At about the age of 18 to 20, young men would come to the Elders of the Chinese community and present to them what amounted to a business plan for a proposed business. The Elders would give some suggestions, and then if they decided that the candidate was sincere, able and had a reasonably good plan, they would provide the “seed” money to get the business venture started. (Yes, at least at that time the program was only available for young men.)  


This seed money was not a loan, it was a gift. But there would never be a second opportunity. If the young man was eventually successful, he would have the hope that one day he also could be a member of the Elders, and contribute his own funds to perpetuate the tradition. To him, it was a matter of cultural “face,” or pride. But if he was not successful, he might as well leave town, because the shame he would bring upon himself and his family would make his continued presence in the community hard to bear.


Although to my knowledge no other community in our country has this particular tradition to build upon, why could it not be developed? It works!  


Personally I deeply admire Bill Cosby. At the moment he is taking a lot of flack in the African-American community for speaking the truth. As you know, recently he has been saying that their community is suffering from unacceptable amounts of violence, single-parent families and a general lack of education. Furthermore, he is saying that it is their own responsibility to turn those conditions around. But that effort will be more successful if it also helps to provide some hope to the people who are involved.


Likewise, if our government would change its foreign aid programs to provide small loans to people at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, instead of grants of large amounts of money to the governments of these economically poor countries, much more tangible progress would be made.  


Private organizations do things like this quite successfully today. For example, a group called Oxfam provides small loans to people in poor countries so that they can purchase things like a sewing machine, and thus begin a small business. But Oxfam also ensures that the money is eventually repaid. That promotes personal responsibility. Similarly a group called Heifer International provides farm animals like goats, chickens and cows to families in poor countries, along with an education about how to care for them. These people then have the incentive to take care of the animals, because they can use them for milk, eggs and meat to feed their families. Then eventually the excess food products can be sold to others for the benefit of all. Instead of large amounts of our money ending up in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt government officials, these much smaller amounts of money actually promote and establish businesses, nutrition and self-sufficiency.


We should learn these lessons, and adopt them to our practices both governmentally and privately, and domestically and abroad. Like all economists say, “Incentives Matter!” And an infusion of positive mentors, incentives and realistic hope will have a meaningful chance of reducing gang and terrorist activity and otherwise changing aberrant behavior, as well as promoting a better, safer and more prosperous world. And, by the way, it will cost a great deal less money than we are now spending.

James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.