SINS OF THE FATHERS

Since the mid-1990s, Long Island's gang membership has soared.
Activists like Hykiem Coney, a youth counselor gunned down three
weeks ago outside a Uniondale nightspot, have worked to reduce those numbers.

For those trying to leave gangs, the odds can be stacked against
them. Gangs have an often irresistible pull -- ex-members say they
become family.

What's more, the violence associated with gangs moves from one
generation to the next. Children of incarcerated parents are at least
four times as likely to commit crimes as those whose parents are not
in prison. Kevin Robinson, Victor Galarza and Sirvorn Edwards, all
fathers and all ex-gang members, are hoping to beat the odds by
participating in an unusual Nassau County program, the Community
Service Corps, which offers jobs and counseling.

"I owe my son."

Kevin Robinson is a bookish man with round eyeglasses that perch on
puffy cheeks when he counsels a son imprisoned for murder.

Never mind that Robinson is an ex-gang member and the libraries of
his wisdom were at Clinton, Elmira, Franklin, Oneida, Marcy,
Gouverneur, Southport and Five Points, all New York prisons.

As he visited his son, Devon Carter, 21, in a North Carolina lockup
where the young man is serving life without the possibility of
parole, Robinson said he was finally shouldering his responsibilities
as a father. The decade he spent away from his son while in prison
slowly pushed him toward change, Robinson said. But learning that his
boy may never again be free finally cornered him.

"That night was so much pain and hurting, the last person I thought
about was myself," Robinson said of the January evening when he
learned of Carter's conviction on charges of killing a suspected drug
dealer outside Raleigh. "My biggest worry became his state of mind,
his safety, his well-being," he said. "I owe my son, big time."

So at the Foothills Correctional Institution north of Charlotte,
Robinson told his son that it is never too late to embrace learning,
patience and faith.

With Robinson's mother, Jo Ann, 59, also weighing in, they offered
Carter a flurry of life lessons and reading tips, everything from the
pop fiction of Eric Jerome Dickey to the holy Bible. Carter said the
latter was filled with empty promises.

"I've been praying, but I ain't been reading the Bible. They say
something, and I think this not be applying to my life, and I put it
down," he said.

Robinson was once on a path much like his son's.

Carter was born when Robinson was 17 and a member of the Main Street
Crew in Freeport, a precursor to the more violent Bloods and Crips of today.

By age 21, Robinson had three disorderly conduct violations and a
conviction for drug dealing, for which he did his first year in
prison. Released in 1989, he was back the next year for weapons possession.

Alcohol, marijuana and cocaine were parts of his day, he said,
selling and using. His relationship with Carter's mother frayed as
they had two other children and she moved to the South.

Yearlong stints continued through the early '90s for drugs and
weapons charges. Then parole violations caught up to Robinson and he
was sentenced to 4 years for drug possession.

"People who I grew up with and had respect for, I sold drugs to," he
said. "I had no sympathy ... I was really like an animal."

Robinson was released Sept. 14, 2005, and called the Community
Service Corps, which put him up in a Roosevelt halfway house, the
Dismas House, that offers drug counseling for tenants who need it. At
first, his decision was purely practical, since he needed a place to
live to meet the terms of his probation.

But a month into his stay, his life began to change when the program
found him a job at a Carle Place store that sells light fixtures.
While visiting the program offices to meet other requirements,
Robinson grew close to Ashley Frederick, field supervisor for the program.