Sunday, May. 18, 2008

Showing kids a life outside of gangs

Luring a kid into a gang is easy. The gangs do it all the time.

They offer security in numbers, particularly when a youth is new to the area and finds himself in a rival gang's sights for torment and harassment.

They offer a sense of family, depending upon how you define the term, that a child isn't getting from his parents. Or parent.

They offer a sense of excitement and power through guns, drugs, intimidation and money.

They also offer a potential lifetime of violence, incarceration and hopelessness.

Getting kids out of the gang lifestyle, however, isn't so simple.

Center for Human Services employees Charlotte Mills and Amos Reyes spend their days working with high-risk teens and children, kids already entrenched in gangs, drugs, violence or any combination of the three. They can be destined for troubled and sometimes shortened lives if they don't want to change or if no one helps them to do so.

As part of a collaborative effort involving Stanislaus County Juvenile Probation and the Center for Human Services, Mills visits with them at Juvenile Hall, Elliott Alternative Education Center and the Petersen Alternative Center for Education. Reyes works with youths in Turlock, including those in mainstream schools.

"I'm not the police," Mills said. "What I do is not punitive. I tell them about the consequences, what will happen if they stay in the gang. Death. Jail. There's nothing positive that's going to come out of this."

The key, she said, is to show them alternatives to lives of violence and crime. She helps them work toward their high school diplomas. She helps them find jobs.

As novel as this might seem, Mills take them on field trips: to colleges, to museums, to tourist spots such as Alcatraz.

"Some of them have never left Modesto or Turlock in their lives," Mills said.

She teaches them how to behave in restaurants and then takes them to one.

"Some have never been to a sit-down restaurant," she said.

In other words, she tries to give them a taste of what other kids experience -- those who aren't hanging out in parks, flashing colors and dodging bullets.

The program includes visits to Deuel Vocational Institution, a prison in Tracy, for a peek at what their future holds if they don't change their ways.

"I tell them to imagine being there," she said. "There's no escape."

M ills and Reyes are more than counselors, said Stanislaus County Probation Chief Jerry Powers.

"The most good they're doing is being responsible adults and interacting with the kids," Powers said. "Most kids in gangs don't have good role models in their lives. That's where you get the greatest benefit."

Something has to change, Powers said. Prevention programs are far less expensive than the cost of keeping someone in jail.

"Just look at it from the cost to society," Powers said. "We can spend $40,000 a year to lock away an adult in the prison system or spend 10 percent of that to keep them out of the system."

The cost soars dramatically for juveniles, he said.

"There are more treatment issues," Powers said. "You have to provide educational opportunities. The state readily admits it spends about $220,000 on a kid (per year in the juvenile justice system) instead of spending $3,000 on sports programs or after-school programs."

A state that spends a little less than $12,000 per year for each K-12 student spends about $40,000 a year per adult prison inmate. And what's the return for its prison investment? About 70 percent of those released from prison eventually go back.