THE WRONG APPROACH TO GANGS

No city has failed to control its street gangs more spectacularly
than Los Angeles. The region has six times as many gangs and double
the number of gang members as a quarter-century ago, even after
spending countless billions on the problem.

But unless Congress changes course quickly, the policies that seem to
have made the gang problem worse in Los Angeles could become
enshrined as national doctrine in a so-called gang control bill
making its way through both the House and Senate.

This issue is underscored in a study released this week by the
Justice Policy Institute in Washington. It shows that police dragnets
that criminalize whole communities and land large numbers of
nonviolent children in jail don.t reduce gang involvement or gang violence.

Law enforcement tools need to be used in a targeted way . and
directed at the 10 percent or so of gang members who commit violent crimes.

The main emphasis needs to be on proven prevention programs that
change children.s behavior by getting them involved in community and
school-based programs that essentially keep them out of gangs.

Prevention programs have worked extraordinarily well in New York,
where street gangs ceased to be a big problem decades ago. But these
prevention programs are difficult to sell in Congress, where
lawmakers like to show the folks back home how tough they are on
crime, even if it means embracing failed policies.

By some analyses, the gang control bill circulating in Congress
commits nearly 70 percent of the government.s resources to policing
and only about a third to prevention.

Proponents of the bill are assuring the rest of us that the statute
will be modified to provide more money in support of research-based
prevention programs and less for the failed policies of the past. But
this bill is shaping up to be a disaster . a policy that would do
little about the gang problem where it in fact exists, while filling
the jails to bursting with children who would have left the gangs on
their own in a year or two. Once jailed, these children will
inevitably become hardened criminals and spend the rest of their
lives in and out of prison.