St. Louis CofCC Blog

AP:

LOS ANGELES - Anti-gang legislation and police crackdowns are failing so badly that they are strengthening the criminal organizations and making U.S. cities more dangerous, according to a report being released Wednesday.

Mass arrests, stiff prison sentences often served with other gang members and other strategies that focus on law enforcement rather than intervention actually strengthen gang ties and further marginalize angry young men, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

The trouble is, this report seems to assume that any arrest necessarily leads to a “stiff prison sentence.” As a lot of gang activity occurs in heavily non-white cities, with non-white or white liberal judges, and non-white juries, that is not always the case. Therefore, one can’t say that “crackdowns” aren’t working when they’re not even an option.

It cites a report this year by civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who was hired by Los Angeles to evaluate its failing anti-gang programs. Her report called for an initiative to provide jobs and recreational programs in impoverished neighborhoods.

The street gang, and its associated drug dealing, is a job for those who belong to it, and the revenue realized provides recreation for members.

Wes McBride, executive director of the California Gang Investigators Association, dismissed the findings of the report, which he said was written by “thug-huggers.” The investigators association is a professional organization for police officers.

“Are they saying we can’t put a thief in jail, we can’t put a murderer in jail, that we should spank them, put a diaper on them, pat them on the bottom, hug them and let them go?” McBride said. “It’s obviously a think tank report, and they didn’t leave their ivory tower and spend any time on the streets.”

(snip)

“Gang Wars” also criticizes politicians who overstate the threat of criminal gangs and seek tougher sentences.

If the Justice Policy Institute is as aloof as Mr. McBride states it is, then they obviously don’t view street drug gangs as a “threat,” much less a problem. In their minds, they are probably emblematic of the “struggle” against the big bad repressive right-wing corporate system, or at the very least, a result of the system’s ignorance, bigotry and insensitivity.