Loving, Valuing, Understanding and Changing the Youth We are Loosing to Gangs
By Christopher Anne Easley, Ph.D.

Introduction: The Issue of Youth Gangs

Youth gangs have been and continue to be a very serious problem in this country and abroad. Ten years ago I wrote a doctoral dissertation that investigated alternative ways of intervening with youth who had gravitated to gangs. For a number of years I was on the lecture and consulting circuits sharing my work with different entities in an effort to address the problem of escalating growth of youth gangs. In 2002, I presented my research abroad on the international growth of youth gangs, which had already permeated every inhabitable continent. Many of the international gangs were mimicking Chicago, New York and California gang organizations to such an extent that it was hard to distinguish them. Yet, over time, I gradually changed my research and consulting focus and moved away from this work. I still question that move, and have had to look deeply within and ask if I was equally as guilty in my abandonment as those I critiqued in my work?

Yet, I also know that while we may have our agenda, God has His. In the last two months, I have had several requests from sources I never even imagined…requests to write, present and provide technical assistance on the topic of youth gangs and the application of Appreciative Inquiry as an intervention strategy…all activities that would require my re-engaging with this work. Ironically, one of the requests came as far away as New Zealand; one of the countries I researched in 2002.

So, what is the significance of these calls? What is God possibly calling me and others to do? Is He telling me that there is a need to resurrect the conversation I began ten years ago? Intentional listening as well as intentional dialoguing is going to be critical in turning a situation around that has had time to mature as a major problem. Yet, we always know Who is in charge. We have to listen to God as He directs us in our journey of change.

If we quietly listen, we will begin to understand what our young people feel is missing in their lives, as well as what we, as parents, community and concerned citizens can do. The tried and true strategies are not working. Now is a time for real change. We are continuing to loose too many young and innocent youth to gang violence.

In this article, I am going to frame the issues as I experienced them. In following months, I have promised to write more and share the results of the work I did over the course of those years as well as propose propositions for change; all in hopes of sparking a different dialogue and resulting strategies for addressing a problem that continues to plague us.

Keeping it real: The continual growth of youth gravitating to gangs

Street gangs have been the object of study within the behavioral science field for years, with research roots that span from the early 1920s, beginning with the prominent sociologist, Frederic M. Thrasher whose study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago is considered the first serious academic treatment of gangs in the United States (Decker and Van Winkle, 1996). However, a review of the literature continues to suggest that much of the research on gangs and the resulting gang intervention strategies fall within the categories of empirical analysis or action research, both with a problem-solving orientation. The growth of gangs also suggest that this guiding praxis of focusing on what is wrong, what is broken and what is not working with youth results in a negative dialogical environment that not only plagues them, but brings forth a universal feeling within our global society of helplessness and hopelessness about our most precious natural resource - our youth.

Ten years ago, the results of a national survey in the United Stated indicated that only 30.2 % of law enforcement agencies nation-wide had a strategic plan for dealing with gangs (The Governor's Commission on Gangs Final Report, 1998). However, one of the more compelling points made in this report was the call for alternative strategies. Just recently, I read comments from California law officials that stated similar conclusions. We need to do something different because the prevailing strategies are only evoking temporary change.

When we examine gangs, we first have to understand that a gang is a very complex and organized entity, with structure, personnel practices, and organization development strategies that can compete with some of our more sophisticated corporations. So, when we lock out youth, either inadvertently or deliberately, these organizations are poised and ready to replace us and have very sophisticated strategies for enveloping our youth with "love".

My 2002 research revealed an equally critical international problem. While in 2001, it was reported that over the past twenty years, the United States had a tenfold increase in the number of cities that were experiencing gang problems, the United States was not the only country experiencing this pattern. Domestically, gang migration patterns were extending to smaller cities, towns and villages in the United States where the average size of the city population had fallen from 182,000 to 34,000 (Miller, 2001). Those same patterns were being seen in many European, Asian, South and Central American countries as well as in Australia, Africa and New Zealand.

For example, many Cambodian-Americans who left Cambodia to escape the violence fell into the violent culture of American street gangs (Isett, 1994). Yet, within Cambodia, violent crime had outpaced all other forms of homicide; and the number of youth gangs participating in these violent crimes significantly increased (Sivaraman, 1998).

The poverty in places like Brazil, were confronting many Brazilian children, who were sent to the streets to make money for family support, often being recruited as foot soldiers for gangs, placing these children at heightened risk for AIDS and acts of violence (Jeffery, 199; Economist 1993). Across the globe, gangs were becoming an ongoing issue in parts of South Africa; exponentially growing over a 40 year time period. They were rapidly becoming well-organized criminal units that set up drug, extortion and international smuggling rings, building networks in neighborhoods, prisons and schools; similar to the gang profiles and their respective activities in the United States (Itano, 2001).

Police in New Zealand reported approximately seventy major gangs in the country with about 4,000 hard-core gang members and another 7,000 categorized as associates and prospective wanna-be members (Macko, 1996). New Zealand officials were concerned that these gangs were forming links with Asian triads, thus moving up the ranks of organized crime. Paris officials reported that their youth gang violence was moving beyond poorer neighborhoods and into the elite communities (Jeffries, 2001). The number of 13-18 year old youths jailed in Paris and its suburbs, between 1993 and 1999 doubled from 2,247 to 4,326 and in 1998, 3,825 teenagers were jailed for committing violent crimes, compared with 1,379 in 1994 (Jeffries, 2001).

In Finland, Norway and Sweden, researchers investigated the rise of racial violence, believed to be attributable to youth gangs associating themselves with Skinheads. Russia experienced increased racial violence, which was directed toward minority students studying in Russia by youth gangs also believed to be associated with the Skinheads (MacWilliams, 2002, Virtanen, 2001; Graff, 2002). In Australia, an intensive study was conducted by the Australian Multicultural Foundation to develop a better profile of growing ethnic youth gangs (White, R., Santina, P, Carmel, G, Rosario, L, 1999), and as a final example, in 2001, the BBC reported on the activities of the youth gang Haika, in Spain, which is believed to be the training organization for the violent separatist group, ETA, from which important terrorists are alleged to emerge (Botsford, 2001).

While these are older statistics, has the growth trend reversed? Unfortunately, the trend in the rise of gang violence and youth gravitating to gangs is still increasing. The Chicago Tribune reported in the first quarter of 2009 that Police Superintendent Weiss released the final crime statistics for 2008 in Chicago, which showed that both violent and property crime rose from 2007. Weiss pointed to continued gang crime as a major source of the violence, saying that 92 percent of murder suspects and 72 percent of murder victims had criminal records (Rosas, 2009). In 2007, a survey conducted by the National Youth Gang Center (NYGC), which is operated by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), revealed there has been a steady increase of gang problems since 2000. The survey questioned law enforcement agencies across the United States specifically about youth gangs. The results estimated that 788,000 gang members and 27,000 gangs were active in the United States in 2007 (Jacinto, 2009). Similar to the 2001 statistics on U.S. gang patterns, while large cities and suburban counties continue to be the primary location for 60% of gangs and 80% of gang members, there has continued to be an increase in gangs and gang members in rural counties between 2002 and 2007. One in five larger cities reported an increase in gang homicides in 2007 compared to the previous year, and two in five reported an increase in gang-related violence (Jacinto, 2009).

On the international front, the increase in gang activity also does not seem to be diminishing. For example, the New York Times reported in 2007 that two gangs that originated on the streets in Los Angeles, California have grown so large in El Salvador that there are two prisons in that country devoted exclusively to their members, one for each gang, according to officials who traveled there recently to meet with the local authorities (Cathcart, 2007).

The issues from the lens of a child

Internationally and domestically youth are still the primary recruits for gangs, yet we continue to utilize the same strategies that have historical evidence of either not working or sustaining change. In 1999, I wrote:

Recently, the Chicago Tribune published an article that talked about the biggest enemy of children today. Children have an enemy that can be as potentially fatal as child abuse. That enemy is indifference. Whether by social workers, teachers, police officers, judges or the public, to turn one's back on a child in pain is to guarantee the pain will continue (Greene, 1999). Throughout this research project, I have heard the pain of young people involved in gangs. At every level of their lives they are being told that they have no future, that they are less than other young people, that adults do not have time for them, and that they will not be able to succeed. They hear these messages at school, through the media and throughout their neighborhoods. Some, unfortunately, even hear these messages from home. Therefore, they turn to the gang environment, which appears to them to be the only environment that offers them any element of support (Easley, 1999).

Juxtaposed against this veil of indifference, I took the perspective:

When we strip away the publicized concept of the gang, the images we see in the media and movies and the descriptions we read about in the newspapers, the answer becomes very simple: they are youth. In many cases they may be youth each of us knows who could be living next door. Or, they could be our own children. Unfortunately, they are a critical part of our population that we are losing to the death tolls that result from gang violence. Therefore, if we are serious about stopping the gang violence, we have to look within the hearts of these young people and beyond the "hardness" that they attempt to project and help them to find their inner beauty (Easley, 1999).

During the years that I researched why youth were gravitating to gangs, I found that many were running away from indifference. Many of the young people I worked with did not come from impoverished families. Many were from families who were in middle to upper middle incomes; but the demands of life was making it very difficult for them to spend time with their kids. I learned during the years of listening to youth in gangs that when stripped of all the bravado, many of them were young teens not much further beyond the psychological needs of a child, attempting to cope with their perceptions of reality. In many cases, this reality was very painful to them. I fully believe that a child is a gift from God that should be nurtured. During the course of my interviewing many of these young people, it was hard for me to believe all that they had to endure within their lives, which when I stopped to think about it, were a very short span of years. Many of the interviewees at that time were not much older than my son at that time who was living the carefree life of a young teen just beginning to embark upon his journey into manhood. Yet, the strife that these young people had been exposed to mind boggled me. I could not begin to conceptualize my own child having to work through so many issues in his short life and as a result, so many hardships and assaults on his sense of selfworth.

Every institution that theoretically should have been supporting them, they felt had abandoned them. Themes that emerged from interviews, interventions and self assessments communicated their feeling disenfranchised, not only from traditional institutions, such as their schools, but from their families, as well as their communities. The feelings of disengagement from family and community are what led to them the gang, yet the antithesis of this situation is that their disengagement from society accelerated, after joining the gang.

So, what were their major themes, needs, and concerns? "Respect me as a person", Spend time with me", and "Encourage me" were dominate themes throughout the years I worked with them. Second level themes were the desire to closely connect with family and have family members more engaged with their education, by visiting their schools and participating in events, as well as a desire for mentors, whom they saw as individuals who would help them with their academics, teach them what it takes to make it in the world as well as be a person they could depend on.

It has been suggested that because gangs and gang members are perceived as engaging in acts of violence that defies rational explanation, they should be viewed as threatening by society. Because of these perceptions, gang members become increasingly isolated from legitimate social institutions such as schools and the labor market. Isolation from mainstream activities, in turn, prevents gang members from engaging in the very activities and relationships that may reintegrate them into legitimate roles. Therefore, they become further marginalized because their membership poses a threat to other family members, schools, neighbors, and social institutions (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996). It's a very circular problem, and by no means am I diminishing the threats gangs pose to our society. These young people can and do engage in very violent and vicious acts. The questions are, how can we prevent them from gravitating to these alternative environments, as well as turn them around once they become members?
Concluding comments: A call for a paradigm shift?

When intervening with young people, we typically attempt to help them with issues of anger and trust, by starting with them as the central point of the issue. We teach youth to manage their anger through anger control techniques that focus on teaching them to understand the cause and effect of their anger, which is generally posited as issues emanating from them. We also focus on their developing coping strategies, teaching them how to apply those strategies (Goldstein, 1991). In other words, the total ownership for change is placed on the young person.

In addition to teaching youth to control their anger, we bombard them with clinical interventions that focus on moral reasoning development, self-instruction and social problem solving (Goldstein, 1991). Yet, arguments posit that the mind will often protect itself against anxiety by dimming awareness, a process that can typically create blind spots, blocked attention and self-deception. If we do not shift our dialogue with youth, they will continue to fight change. One's present affective state or mode will determine one's perception, learning orientation, and recall. Therefore, when solutions or analysis are posed in a negatively oriented framework, the responses will be similar (Barrett & Cooperrider, 1990). If we tell them in so many words they are a problem…they have already shown us that they do become a problem…a classic Pygmalion manifestation.

Youth in gangs are affected by many external influences, which are out of their control. As the adults in their lives, we have to be real about how broken the systems are that they look to for support. In most urban environments in the United States, the school systems need repair, due to over crowding, teachers who are ill-trained to deal with multiple learning styles, and other classic "isms". Parents who work extensive hours, particularly single parents, struggle for support. During my research, one student extensively questioned me as to why neighbors no longer engaged with youth in their community. He related the stories his mother shared about the "neighbor getting a switch to spank you when you acted up, and then you got another whipping when you went home." He sincerely wanted to know why people had stopped caring. I had no answers for him, but could clearly see the dichotomy that now exists relative to community intervention and support. While on one hand we may be afraid to pull out the "switch", could the failure to use the switch be a contributing factor to our insurmountable youth issues? Again, is this one of those circular problems? As a society, we are rapidly becoming extremely disengaged from one another.

Collaborative processes that are designed to evoke change in those systems, which include support for parents, teachers and school officials, who also struggle with a deficit-oriented view of youth in gangs, are very critical.

Inclusively, to begin a paradigm shift relative to working with youth in gangs, perhaps we should consider initially dislodging the deficit orientations and conversations that young people face daily. Unfortunately, the pervasive stance towards society's discourse is pictorial and we generally accept society's accounts of their subjective states as valid information. Therefore, parents, teachers, community leaders and other critical stakeholders have to shift from there is no hope for these kids, to a hopeful conversation with them. Perhaps, if we engage in a very different intentional dialogue, the negative paradigms that we contribute to youth will cease to be truth bearing.

Social transformation requires new visions and vocabularies, possibilities, and practices that in their very realization begin to change alternative courses (Gergen, 1994). Equally important, this change requires a universal commitment. When we make a commitment to work together, multiple resources can emerge as support systems for the youth, thus filling the voids of time, attention and mentorship. With a different paradigm, we can provide our youth with more pro-social alternatives to their gravitating to a gang environment. The time for change is truly now…but are we willing to utilize a different subset of strategies to evoke that change?

References

Barrett, F. and Cooperrider, D. (1990). "Generative metaphor intervention: A new approach for working with systems divided by conflict and caught in defensive perception". The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 222-224.

Botsford, F. (2001). "Spanish police hit Basque youth wing", BBC News, http://news.bbc.co, uk/hi/English/world/Europe/newsid_1205000/1205478.stm

Cathcart, R. (2007). Los Angeles Combating Gangs Gone International, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/us/26gangs.html?_r=1

Decker, S. and Van Winkle, B. (1996). Life in the gang, family friends and violence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Easley, C. A. (1999). The Role of Appreciative Inquiry in the fight to save our Youth. Benedictine University, Lisle, IL.

Gergen, K. (1994). Realities and relationships, soundings in social construction, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldstein, A. P. ( 1991). Delinquent gangs, a psychological perspective, Champaign, Illinois: Research Press.

Graff, P. (2002). "Moscow braces for skinheads on Hitler's birthday", India-Reuters, http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020415/wl_india_nm/india_69137_1

Itano, N. (2001), "Curbing gangs in Cape Flats", The Christian Science Monitor, August, 17, 2001

Isett, S. (Dec., 1994). "From killing fields to mean street", World Press Review, v. 41, pp. 34-35.

Jacinto, N. (2009). Survey Shows Rise in Youth Gang Problems. WireTap Magazine, http://www.wiretapmag.org/blogs/race/44147/
 

Jeffery, P. (Jan. 1993). "Targeted for death: Brazil's street children", The Christian Century, v. 110, pp. 52-55.

Jeffries, S. (2001), "Teen gangs terrorise chic Paris", The Observer, Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2001

Macko, S. (1996). "Street Gangs Come to the South Pacific…", EmergencyNet News Service, http://www.emergency.com/nz-gangs.htm

MacWilliams, B (2002). "Many Foreign Students in Russia Fear for Their Lives", The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 10, 2002, http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i35/35a04601.htm

Miller, W. B.,(2001)."The Growth of Youth Gang Problems in the United States, 1970-98", Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention, United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs

Rosas, A.(2009). 2008 saw increased violence in Chicago, statistics show, Chicago Tribune, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/jan/17/local/chi-chicago-crime-statsjan17.

Sivaraman, S (1998). "Development-Cambodia: Violent Crime Thrives in Wounded Society" World News, August, 1998, http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/aug98/04_04_007.html.

The Governor's Commission on Gangs Final Report (1998). http://www.acsp.uic.edu/~ag/gcpc. Gang Crime Prevention Center in the Office of Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.

Virtanen, T. (2001), Ed. Youth, Racist Violence and Anti-racist Responses in the Nordic Countries, The Finnish Youth Research Society, http://www.alli.fi/nourisotutkimus/julkaisut/virtanen/html

When death squads meet street children. (1993, July) Economist, p.39.

White, R., Santina, P, Carmel, G, Rosario, L, (1999). Ethnic Youth Gangs In Australia, Do they Exist? Australian Multicultural Foundation, 1999. Download http://www:amf.net.au/projects/ethnic.