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.
Showing posts with label Dr. Earl Fuller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr. Earl Fuller. Show all posts
Monday, June 14, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Reality in Pelican Bay Prison - by Judge Jim Gray
A few weeks ago I devoted this column to the comments and observations of my friend Dr. Earl Fuller about his experiences while volunteering at the women’s prison at Chowchilla. The interest in the column was high, and I wanted to share two responses with you were posted on the Daily Pilot’s website.
The first one was: “Finally, some of the horror stories that those of us who have loved ones in prison will be told. I have been sending my son’s story to newspapers for over 2 years, but not one of them has printed it. Maybe now someone will listen to the truth and the people will understand that things are still not right in California.” The second was “What would I feel if a dear one were in prison? I am worried daily because I know someone in prison and he is sick and not being given adequate medical treatment.”
Because Fuller also volunteered to provide medical care at Pelican Bay Prison in Northern California, which houses the most dangerous male inmates, I asked him to give us his observations about the medical care these men received, and to compare it with that received at Chowchilla by the women. The following is a summary of what he told me.
The medical needs and wants of the male prisoners are really quite different than for the women, and I believe the difference is explained on a psychological basis. Women see medical care as a desirable and important adjunct to their life. Having regular visits and care by a physician confers both status and medicine, and both are considered to be a valuable commodity. The male prisoners have a different mindset because the need to see a doctor and take medicine is seen as a sign of weakness. Thus the male inmates try to limit or ignore illness until it can be ignored no longer.
The psychology also differs in another significant way. The male inmates all seemed to be convinced that they would be killed on the outside by the time they were 25 years old. So it didn’t really matter what you did or to whom you did it because you were soon going to be dead anyway. But when they were caught before they could be killed and they were sent away for 50 or 60 years to prison because of one or a series of horrible acts, they were stuck continuing to exist without really ever having learned how to live.
This resulted in most of the inmates existing almost in a vacuum. Their entire day involved being in their special violent offenders housing unit, with breakfast being brought in early, and then watching television until lunch. In the afternoon they were often handcuffed between two guards and taken down to the yard, and then put into a cage of 10-by-25 feet to run around outside for 90 minutes before they were returned to their cells. But this almost always means that when they are eventually paroled at age 45 or 50, they have no skills, no ambition and no abilities. As a result, they are poorly prepared to lead an independent existence, and often almost intentionally return to prison because that is the only place where they feel comfortable.
The prisoners whom I saw medically fell into several categories, which were those with battle injuries mostly from fighting that could not be ignored any longer, those with infections that were getting worse, and those who had contracted diseases. Mostly their sores, cuts and bruises healed quickly, as you would expect in these young people, and the infections were equally responsive, once the inmates allowed us to use medications.
The regularly established clinics ran reasonably well for those afflicted with chronic diseases like diabetes, lung diseases, hypertension and AIDS. But like with the women’s prisons, the need to keep everything fast and cheap was always present. The prisons medically could do a lot more for their inmates, but it takes money that does not seem to be available.
The process used to get them to us to be seen was interesting. First the inmate would back up to his cell door, whereupon a small barred window in his cell was opened and he would be handcuffed. Then he was walked between two guards in flak jackets to my clinic. If he had to wait, he was placed in a waiting box made out of metal and a metal screen, which was about 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide, and also had a small built-in seat inside.
The inmate would be locked into the box until I could see him. He would then be re-handcuffed and brought to me, but I would have about four to six guards around me at all times. When I would ask to have the handcuffs removed so I could examine the patient, the guards wondered about my sanity. Generally, these inmates were not nice people, and some were overtly psychotic. Yet they still got sick and they still needed to be treated humanly, if only for our sake — if not for theirs.
Those are some of Fuller’s comments. What he did not address was the organized sexual abuse and violence that is often rampant in these facilities. But from my standpoint, all of his observations again strongly reinforce the need for us to provide positive mentors to all of our children — early and often — so that they do not get caught up in the hopeless “well, I’ll be dead anyway” lifestyle Fuller described.
So continue to make special efforts to support things like the YM and YWCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, Scouting organizations, and after-school sports and academic activities. As was stated a few years ago in this column, a “stitch in time” truly does help to keep our children from this fate.
JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of Wearing the Robe – the Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today’s Courts (Square One Press, 2008), and can be contacted at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or via his website at www.judgejimgray.com .
The first one was: “Finally, some of the horror stories that those of us who have loved ones in prison will be told. I have been sending my son’s story to newspapers for over 2 years, but not one of them has printed it. Maybe now someone will listen to the truth and the people will understand that things are still not right in California.” The second was “What would I feel if a dear one were in prison? I am worried daily because I know someone in prison and he is sick and not being given adequate medical treatment.”
Because Fuller also volunteered to provide medical care at Pelican Bay Prison in Northern California, which houses the most dangerous male inmates, I asked him to give us his observations about the medical care these men received, and to compare it with that received at Chowchilla by the women. The following is a summary of what he told me.
The medical needs and wants of the male prisoners are really quite different than for the women, and I believe the difference is explained on a psychological basis. Women see medical care as a desirable and important adjunct to their life. Having regular visits and care by a physician confers both status and medicine, and both are considered to be a valuable commodity. The male prisoners have a different mindset because the need to see a doctor and take medicine is seen as a sign of weakness. Thus the male inmates try to limit or ignore illness until it can be ignored no longer.
The psychology also differs in another significant way. The male inmates all seemed to be convinced that they would be killed on the outside by the time they were 25 years old. So it didn’t really matter what you did or to whom you did it because you were soon going to be dead anyway. But when they were caught before they could be killed and they were sent away for 50 or 60 years to prison because of one or a series of horrible acts, they were stuck continuing to exist without really ever having learned how to live.
This resulted in most of the inmates existing almost in a vacuum. Their entire day involved being in their special violent offenders housing unit, with breakfast being brought in early, and then watching television until lunch. In the afternoon they were often handcuffed between two guards and taken down to the yard, and then put into a cage of 10-by-25 feet to run around outside for 90 minutes before they were returned to their cells. But this almost always means that when they are eventually paroled at age 45 or 50, they have no skills, no ambition and no abilities. As a result, they are poorly prepared to lead an independent existence, and often almost intentionally return to prison because that is the only place where they feel comfortable.
The prisoners whom I saw medically fell into several categories, which were those with battle injuries mostly from fighting that could not be ignored any longer, those with infections that were getting worse, and those who had contracted diseases. Mostly their sores, cuts and bruises healed quickly, as you would expect in these young people, and the infections were equally responsive, once the inmates allowed us to use medications.
The regularly established clinics ran reasonably well for those afflicted with chronic diseases like diabetes, lung diseases, hypertension and AIDS. But like with the women’s prisons, the need to keep everything fast and cheap was always present. The prisons medically could do a lot more for their inmates, but it takes money that does not seem to be available.
The process used to get them to us to be seen was interesting. First the inmate would back up to his cell door, whereupon a small barred window in his cell was opened and he would be handcuffed. Then he was walked between two guards in flak jackets to my clinic. If he had to wait, he was placed in a waiting box made out of metal and a metal screen, which was about 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide, and also had a small built-in seat inside.
The inmate would be locked into the box until I could see him. He would then be re-handcuffed and brought to me, but I would have about four to six guards around me at all times. When I would ask to have the handcuffs removed so I could examine the patient, the guards wondered about my sanity. Generally, these inmates were not nice people, and some were overtly psychotic. Yet they still got sick and they still needed to be treated humanly, if only for our sake — if not for theirs.
Those are some of Fuller’s comments. What he did not address was the organized sexual abuse and violence that is often rampant in these facilities. But from my standpoint, all of his observations again strongly reinforce the need for us to provide positive mentors to all of our children — early and often — so that they do not get caught up in the hopeless “well, I’ll be dead anyway” lifestyle Fuller described.
So continue to make special efforts to support things like the YM and YWCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, Scouting organizations, and after-school sports and academic activities. As was stated a few years ago in this column, a “stitch in time” truly does help to keep our children from this fate.
JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of Wearing the Robe – the Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today’s Courts (Square One Press, 2008), and can be contacted at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or via his website at www.judgejimgray.com .
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