Crime & Gangs

Recent headlines have once again focused our attention on the bewildering phenomenon of seemingly random gang related killings. What we might have considered an aberration for Colorado has become a trend. Darrent Williams was not the first fatality and he won't be the last. Last summer, in the space of only two weeks, the Front Range saw four gang related murders. Almost two years ago, on June 20, 2005, we witnessed one of the most heartbreaking gang killings in Colorado history. Javad Marshall Fields and Vivian Wolfe, born and raised in a tough neighborhood, went to school, and found a way out. Fiancés, college graduates, solid citizens, young people who overcame the poisonous culture that infected their neighborhood: they were gunned down in an Aurora intersection shortly before Javad was scheduled to testify in a gang related homicide case. Javad and Vivian did everything right. They rose above their circumstances; they didn't forget their community. They stood up for law and order.

One murder, two murders, three murders, four. Five murders, six murders, seven murders more. When will it end? Will it end? Why is it happening? No one can answer these questions. But, we have to try. This is not a partisan issue. We all, every one of us, owe Vivian and Javad a debt. They followed our advice. They did what we asked them to do. They were walking exemplars of the Conservative premise that every person has an opportunity to succeed in our society, and beneficiaries of Martin Luther King’s dream to be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Our promises of equal opportunity are shallow at best if we turn away and shrug at their demise. But, our response must be reasoned. Our response must be informed. Our response cannot and should not be infected by ideological bias or empty campaign slogans. It must be driven by the facts.

THE PROBLEM

If gangs are a cancer in our community, the cancer has metastasized. Here are a few facts.
(1) Gang membership is large and growing. The last National Gang Assessment conducted by the Department of Justice in 2005 estimated that there were 720,000 gang members nationally, representing over 3,300 jurisdictions, and 22,000 gangs. Recent Colorado estimates are that there are as many as 12,741 gang members in Colorado. No one really knows how many gang members there are for reasons set forth below.
(2) The prison population in Colorado has exploded in the past 15 years. In 1992, the adult inmate population in the Colorado state prison system was 8,478. In 2006 it was just shy of 22,000. We are now discharging between 8,000 and 10,000 convicted felons annually into our community. These figures don’t include the federal prison population. Although crime rates fell for most of the past two decades, recent statistics indicate that the trend is reversing, no doubt in part because we are now seeing the effects of this extraordinary discharge rate.
(3) Prison gangs are a community problem, not just a prison problem. No one really knows the full extent of gang membership in prison. But, estimates by the Department of Justice and others range from 11% to 24%. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the rate is actually much larger. Prison officials will tell you that unaffiliated inmates often form gang affiliations while in prison. There are instances in which gang members seek particular sites for incarceration for the purpose of recruiting gang members. Gangs buy, sell, and import drugs into prison and have found ways to direct and control gang activities outside the prison. Gang members leave family members and associates in the community when they are convicted. Gang members in the community have relatives and friends in the prison. Prison debts are settled on the outside. Community debts are settled on the inside. We have increased prison populations ten fold. We have lengthened stays for most inmates. We are now discharging massive numbers of inmates, many of whom are more hardened, better trained, and more loyal gang members than ever before. In short, prison gangs are an extension of community gangs and are therefore a community problem, and not simply a prison problem.
(4) Local officials are loath to admit a gang problem. No community wants to be known as a gang or crime ridden community. Main Street and City Hall see eye to eye on this issue. But, a democratic republic solves its problems only when they are known and when political forces coalesce to force a solution. Without awareness, without consensus and without popular support, the gang problem will continue to be under funded, or sporadically funded.
(5) We are at a crossroads. It is unlikely that we can replicate the policy of the last 20 years. That policy has essentially stressed prosecution and incarceration as the solution to crime. Another three fold increase in the prison population is unimaginable. We are unlikely to tolerate, or pay for, even a doubling of our prison population to nearly 50,000.

REFLECTIONS ON SOME SOLUTIONS

There are no easy answers. But, I can’t help but believe that we need to revisit a number of the public policy principles that have guided us for the past 15 years. As a general rule, we must do three things: focus our resources on the worst of the worst, raise the costs of gang membership, and reduce the benefits of gang membership.

We are spending too much time and too much money incarcerating non-violent offenders. Our scarce prosecutorial and prison resources need to be focused on this growing and metastasizing gang problem. We are introducing too many criminal defendants, who may have had no gang affiliation prior to prison, into the gang culture by placing them into heterogeneous prison environments and mixing them into the general population where gang affiliation is a mandatory element of simple survival. We are too politically correct because we are reluctant to treat inmates differently based on their mere associations, even when those associations are gang related. We are too soft on "innocent gang activity," even to the point of allowing gangs to have group photos and tacitly tolerating the creation and enforcement of gang territory within the prisons themselves. We are too quick to view longer prison terms, increased felony classifications, and more prosecutors as a solution to myriad social evils. We often repeat empty slogans about "law and order" without recognizing the fiscal and social costs of our crackdown on non-gang crimes.

These law enforcement and prison based changes address only two of three pillars that need attention to begin to address this problem. Reducing the benefits of gang membership is a social project, not a prosecutorial one. As such it will take more than government action to address. It will, however, require leadership from all our civic leaders, including government. Gang membership provides for gang members the same feelings of affinity and success that every one of us derives from our own civic affiliations. There are two major differences that government can address.

First, the gang provides amplified, exaggerated and pathologic psychological benefits for its members. When you and I pledge our loyalty to our civic, business or professional association, or to our company, our boss, our group or any one of the many "clans" to which we belong, the affiliation is loose. We easily replace it with family. We are able to compensate for the loss of affinity or membership in one group by relying on one of our other sources of support. In the gang world, intact families are scarce, financial and educational resources are scarce, and the support, protection and prestige that comes from gang membership takes on greater meaning. Government policies that destroy families and make it more difficult to grow and nurture alternative support groups in poor neighborhoods contribute to the problem. Government policies, and yes resources, that help to facilitate the creation of alternative community support groups are needed.

Second, gang culture is the mirror image of a healthy community culture. The classical philosophers and early catholic theologians had it right when they listed the seven deadly sins and the cardinal virtues. Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth look a lot like the seven pillars of gang membership. Humility, kindness, patience, prudence, temperance, courage, love, hope and faith are an antidote. But, are our public institutions fighting a full front war to promote the cardinal virtues?

Values are ideas. They grow when they are given "air time" and emphasis. They prosper when we display them in our private and public lives and discourse. They wilt when they are diluted by relatively trivial concerns. It is past time to get back to basics where values are concerned. The presence of love, kindness and hope for the future is important in families, however constituted. The lack of civility in public debate is not just annoying. Shouting heads in the media validate anger and pride as legitimate tools for solving problems. The corporate and public corruption meltdown at the end of the last decade is replete with examples of greed, gluttony and envy. Even when the good guys win in the popular media, it is because they are angrier than the bad guys and find a way to be more efficient killing machines. Professional sports tolerate bad boys, and we pay to watch! Is there any doubt that virtually every one of our public institutions, from churches and political parties, to business leaders and government officials can do a better job fighting the cultural war that lies at the heart of this cancer?

IN THE END

Gangs probably won’t ever disappear. But their relative strength, number and toxicity will depend on whether we are able to marshal our cultural, governmental and civic resources. Neither conservative slogans about crime and punishment, nor liberal slogans about a chicken in every pot will do much to solve this extraordinarily complex problem. There isn’t enough money on the planet to pay for either slogan. If we are serious about paying our debt to Javad and Vivian, it is going to take humility, patience, prudence, deliberation, compassion, and courage. It means we are going to have to seek out and fashion compromises that address both the social cause and the law enforcement effect of gangs. Compromise isn’t such a bad thing. Societies, like children, do best with both a mother and a father.

Bill Leone is the former United States Attorney for Colorado, now in private practice as a partner with the law firm of Faegre & Benson.