they will now come to order and i'm pleased to welcome you today to this hearing before the subcommittee on crime terrorism the moment security on making community safer youth violence and gang interventions that work recent news reports cite increases in crime in several major cities particularly violent crimes much of the crime much in the rise in violent crimes reported is attributable to youth including youth associated with gangs even before the recent reports suggesting increases in violence committed by youth we've seen reports of increasing gang violence and other criminal activities on a local as well as international scale a few years ago the washington d c area reports of gang violence attributed to gangs such as m s thirteen there are also reports of gang rivalries resulting in murders in several youths in the district in the maryland suburbs congress ought to respond to these reports as we usually do with legislation calling for more death penalties more mandatory minimum sentences and treating more juveniles as adults we faced a similar situation in the mid one nine hundred ninety s with legislation such as the violent youth predator act you can tell from the title what the bill call hearing similar to this one and decided to propose bipartisan legislation based on recommendations from the researchers practitioners and other experts we called as witnesses that legislation was the consequences for juvenile offenders act it called for a system of early interventions or graduated sanctions of services as the individual case required to divert juveniles from for the crime and violence the legislation was supported by all members of the subcommittee and most of the members of the full committee including the chairman and ranking member it was also supported by a broad spectrum of those working with juveniles including advocates researches juvenile judges juvenile administrators law enforcement local and state some called in some law enforcement officials and other experts and issued a report reflecting their recommendations which were similar to those received at the crime subcommittee hearings the legislation based on recommend registration and t legislation based on recommendation recommendations of the experts passed the house with near you with a near unanimous vote and was eventually passed into law of course the legislation took nothing away from the already existing tough law the law some approaches available to deal with juveniles and all those committing crimes juveniles were already being routinely transferred to adult court for the very serious offenses and nothing in the legislation stop us already locks up more people per capita than any any other country on earth by far the average lockup rate around the country is about one hundred four hundred thousand for example a strenuous rate of one hundred twenty six hundred thousand canada's one hundred seven england one hundred forty eight france eighty five china hundred eighteen japan sixty two india thirty per hundred thousand the us rate the second highest rate is six hundred eleven and russia the united states rate is seven hundred and thirty three and rates of a thousand two thousand and three thousand and inner cities has not heard of one hundred four hundred thousand international average rather than simply adding to the world's worst incarceration rate the legislation that we hope will be aimed at cutting off the pipeline for the next group of offenders it will be designed to add something else to the balance what research and experts say is needed and that is crime prevention unfortunately the funding that we authorized to implement the legislation was never provided we ended up with twenty percent of the level and the level is gone down over sense so we are once again considering what to do about the reports of juvenile crime without having done what we were told to do to begin with a lot of happen in the interim learned more about effective approaches to addressing youth violence and youth crime and we have an impressive panel of experts here today to tell us about that research the evidence and the experience to show what advice and hopefully they will give advice to congress on how we can do the right thing i look forward to their testimony and working with ranking member forbes and incorporating the testimony into legislative efforts at addressing youth violence is now my privilege to recognize ranking member of the gentleman from virginia congressman randy for his opening statement thank you mr chairman and let me also thank all the witnesses for being here today mr chairman thank you for holding this hearing today one of the things that i think has become clear to us although it wasn't clear to all of the members of the judiciary committee last year when we tried to begin to put forward legislation dealing with gangs is that we do have a gang problem in the united states and we had several of our members who  question last year we had this do we have a problem worse the problem i don't see the problem well i don't i think everybody across the country now understands the significance of the gang problem as you and i are sitting here today we have  hundred fifty thousand criminal gang the bers in the united states and if you put a touchstone that gives us a little better measuring device on that we would have approximately the sixth largest army in the world that is within our borders right now and the whole scope of gangs has changed enormously although many of you have dealt with this problem longer than i have dealt with it now about sixteen years and i remember when we started dealing with it back in the late eighty's in the early ninety's as we would go to groups and talk to them about what causes you to get in gangs that would be the same things that we would hear over and over again sensible longing warning to have a family connection the gangs were like our families as we have looked since the year two thousand that his metamorphosis quite a bit and it has changed dramatically now and more and more now we are hearing people tell us we need to be in gangs for protection because we are afraid that if we're not in a gang there's no way that we can be safe out on the streets one of the things that we all feel that we see in our offices is i have my door opened all the time to people coming in to chat with me who want funding and in almost every situation i can tell you it doesn't matter whether they're renovating an old school or whether they have a martial arts program one of the things that they always tell us as soon as they're in there and they told us their funding needs the next two things is they tell us this has something to do with homeland security or juvenile crime prevention and  my full remarks in the record but the chairman mention the that we need to cut off the pipeline and the greatest pipeline that we have out there today are these gang networks and sometimes we think that the gang leadership are fifteen sixteen year olds running around many of the gang leaders that we see in our country today are actually moving on up in age some are in their thirty's some forty's in fact it's so funny because we see some of the old gang leadership now going around and wheelchairs and you know we jokingly say they will be coming here asking us for retirement benefits later on down the road but we have if you're looking at the pipeline and you're looking at how do we really cut that pipeline off what can we do for gang prevention one of the things we have to keep on the table is reaching up in poland those gang networks down and the leadership down that's continuing to try to franchise their efforts and what they're doing because the gangs we have today that really fragments the most are no longer just local gangs they're international gangs and national gangs and they have networks of communication and travel like we have seldom seen before and the last thing mr chairman we have an unusual panel not just in your your talent your ability but it is almost impossible when you have logistically stage the way we have and you have eight members sitting out there to testify that we'll be able to ask you all the questions we want to ask you but we're going to try and if we can't get them in today we'll try to supplement that with maybe some written questions to you down the road to thank you for being here we look forward to being able to ask you some questions and hear your testimony as we move forward with the hearing and if you very much we're joined by the gentleman from north carolina mr coble and the gentleman from ohio mr chavis without objection all members include opening statements in the record at this point in response to the ability to question witnesses we would expect more than one round if necessary so that we can get in this many questions as we can we have a distinguished panel of witnesses here with us today to help us consider the important issues that are before us the first witness will be professor del elliot was the director of the center for the study and prevention of violence at the university of colorado where he's also the singer's professor emeritus with the department of sociology prior to holding its current office he served as the director for the university of colorado's program on problem behavior as well as for the behavioral research institute in boulder and recognition for his africa has received numerous national awards including the public health service medallion for distinguished service from the u s surgeon general an outstanding achievement award from the u s department of justice received his bachelor's degree and his master's degree and ph d from the university of washington in seattle drug and alcohol counselor with the juvenile court in eugene oregon and a sense served as a senior researcher at the national center for juvenile justice and the former director of the program for youth justice at the urban institute is a bachelor's degree from the university of oregon a massive degree in social work from portland state university and a ph d from the university of michigan next as professor lawn sherman director of the jerry lee center in criminology at the university of pennsylvania where he's also a professor in the apartment of sociology and criminology riotous current proposed he was the chair of criminology and criminal justice at the university of maryland at college park and also taught at yale the state university of new york at albany because university and the australian national university you know it's a bachelor's degree from denison university master's degrees from university of chicago and you know university as well as a diploma in criminology from cambridge university next we'll hear from david kennedy mr david kennedy director of the center for crime prevention and control of the john jay college of criminal justice in new york city where he also a professor of anthropology position at john jay college mr kennedy was a senior researcher and edge a professor at the at the program in criminal justice policy and management she's a policy  management for the kennedy school of government at harvard university received his bachelor's degree with honors in philosophy and history of more college in pennsylvania and then we'll hear from chief james  missouri emergency response committee and the kansas city missouri crime commission a bachelor's degree from central missouri state and a master's degree from webster university is also a graduate of fernandez with a legal and strategy director for the latin america youth center in washington d c where she's also served as a special assistant to the assistant attorney general in the office of justice graduate of dickinson college receive their master's degree in public administration from harvard university and a law degree from american university next lochie locally locally german of the board of the national district attorneys association mr lovely currently serves as it's currently serving as an elected state's attorney in winnebago county illinois where he's also serves as vice president of the county bar association artist current position he serves as an associate judge for the seventeen judicial circuit in illinois and also as a member of the governor's commission on gangs in illinois is a graduate of los college and  program coordinator for the youth focused community initiative in dorchester massachusetts and a senior streetwalker for the city of boston dog in the israeli army reserves he received a semester of theology studies degree from harvard university bachelor fine arts degrees from tufts university and the school museum of fine arts in boston and each of the witnesses has a written statement which will be made as part of the record in its entirety each wouldn't to summarize as our testimony and five minutes are left and the help stay within that time period you have a little light g which will start off green and go to amber when it's time to start wrapping up and then it will go to red nothing draconian will happen when it turns to chairman scott and other distinguished members of the committee it's a pleasure to be here and to in to talk with you i'm the director of the center for the study prevention of violence at university of colorado and the editor of the blueprint for violence prevention series which is a series of model violence prevention programs at me a very high scientific standard good enough that we could implement those programs on a national level we've looked at over six hundred violence prevention programs and out of those six hundred programs seventy five eighty percent of those programs have no credible evaluation of the others that do have a credible evaluation the majority of those don't work that is the evidence that we have suggests that they're not effective fortunately we have also a number of programs not enough but we have a number of programs that are very effective and have very good effect sizes that is they can really have a significant effect upon violence and drug use in delinquen unfortunately i have to tell you we also find a few programs that are actually harmful that are doing more harm than good so the first recommendation i would like to make to the committee is that we deal with this huge expenditure of money invested in programs for which we have no idea whether they work or not that means we either need to mandate the use of effective programs research effective  programs or we need to invest in evaluations of those programs to continue to fund programs that we have no knowledge about whether they work or not is not a good idea particularly when we know in some cases although well intentioned they actually do harm the ethics of delivering programs requires that we know whether those programs are effective or not secondly i would like to recommend that we stop funding the programs that we know don't work that is of those programs that we've looked at where the evidence is compelling that they don't work we need to stop funding those programs and there are a number of those programs unfortunately which we are continuing to fund the traditional dare program shock probation programs waivers out of the juvenile system and into the adult criminal system all have either no effect or negative effects and we need to stop investing our dollars in those kinds of programs there directly invasion i would like to make is that whenever it's possible we should mandate that federal funds be used for effective programs  the evaluation are invested in the evaluation of promising programs to bring them up to the level that they can be implemented on a wide scale with certainty this will not require any major increase in funding it involves first of all a reallocation of the dollars which we are currently spending the vast majority of which right now are going into programs that aren't effective if we reallocate those dollars that's the first way that we can implement good programs without creasing increasing the necessary funding secondly if we are funding evidence based programs that need a high standard they do not need to have outcome of valuations and we see money with respect to evaluation dollars those programs have been demonstrated effective at a level and they're continuing evaluations of them so local commit local agencies do not need to engage in evaluation if they're using evidence based programs third these programs are so cost effective that they will be paying for themselves in a very short period of time the state of washington has done an analysis in which they looked at a very modest portfolio of these seven space programs and have demonstrated that within four years those programs are paying for themselves they estimate it would cost sixty million dollars to implement that portfolio state in four years the taxpayer the taxpayer benefits and savings would equals sixty million dollars at ten years the taxpayer savings from reduction in crime costs would be one hundred eighty million dollars and twenty years later the savings would be four hundred eighty million dollars for a sixty million dollars investment in evidence based programs these programs are also very cost effective if we look at  a model program like life skills training which can reduce the onset of illicit substance use by fifty to seventy percent that program if we were to put that program in every middle school in this country it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred fifty million dollars that program could cut the onset of illicit drug use fifty to seventy percent that five hundred fifty million dollars represents one and a half percent of our current spending on drug control and finally i would simply like to recommend that we establish a federal standard for what it means to be certified as an evidence based program a lot of confusion right now because the standard used on all of these lists which are available is very very different we need a standard there is a federal working group on the federal collaboration of what works which has proposed a standard and i recommend that you look at that standard carefully it's an excellent standard and it would resolve all of this confusion about what it means to be an effective effective program thank you a good morning mr chairman members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today to be a part of this panel and i also apologize i had a cold last week and my voice is still not what it was as part of my testimony i provided the subcommittee with a chip in whole issue brief that i wrote three months ago with my friend and colleague howard snyder of the national center for juvenile justice in that report titled soon to tell or too soon to tell the ciphering recent trends in youth violence we reviewed the past thirty years of data about youth crime including national arrest estimates based on the f b i s juvenile arrest data for two thousand and five which is still the most recent year for which national data are available when we look at trends thirty two thousand and five we found that it is too soon to predict a national increase in violent crime overall crime remains at a thirty year low according to the crime victimization surveys conducted by the u s department of justice and america's chances of being the victim of a violent crime are still lower than at any point since the one nine hundred seventy s violent youth crime has increased at the national level but only slightly between two thousand and four and zero five the violent crime arrest rate for youth under age eighteen grew by just one percent the total increase amounted to one twelve new violent arrests for every one hundred thousand juveniles in the population this is about one twentieth what it would take for violent crime to return to the level of one thousand nine hundred for the most recent peak in violent crime in other words we would have to see the same increase from one thousand more years before we would return to the scale of vinyl seem just a little more than ten years ago obviously we should not wait one thousand years to respond to rising crime rates but it is too soon to characterize the recent data as a national trend what the data do suggest is that we have a number of cities and probably neighborhoods within cities that are starting to experience rising serious violence the question for policymakers is how should we respond to these increases at some point in every conversation about violent youth crime someone will make the observation that to truly ensure public safety we have to intervene earlier with youthful offenders we cannot wait until young person is already involved in serious violent crime and then try to stop it raiding is not only ineffective it is expensive i've heard this throughout my twenty five year career in juvenile justice i'm sure everyone here has heard it many of you have probably said it at one time or another why don't we ever seem to make good on this promise why are we still unable to intervene effectively with young people as soon as they become involved in crime i don't believe it's a matter of resources that we can't afford to do it we have decades of research showing us that high quality early intervention actually saves money i think we fail to intervene early and effectively with  continue to base our policies and programs on the wrong theories for some reason we seem to believe the best way to change the behavior of a fourteen year old is to use fear and domination we use the threat of punishment to instill fear and then a series of increasing restrictions to establish dominance over you certainly there are some young offenders for whom this is the only feasible approach but fortunately that number is very small for the vast majority of young people involved in crime this is simply the wrong approach we also apparently believe that young people who commit crimes are defective and that they need to be fixed by professional therapist social workers and psychiatry s much of what passes for intervention in the juvenile justice system today is based on the deficit model of adolescent behavior whether it's family therapy drug treat anger management training our first response to young offenders seems to be fix their pathology again for some youth therapy may be exactly what they need but for many juveniles and i would argue most in the juvenile justice system this is just bad theory criminologist will tell you that all people are capable of committing crime given the right circumstances the impulse to take advantage of other people is nearly universal the critical question is not why are some people criminals the critical question is why are most young people not criminals researchers have started to answer this question by identifying the protective factors and social assets that reduce the young person's chances of getting caught up in crime we are learning that youth with positive and supportive relationships are less likely to engage in crime violence and substance abuse we're also finding that being rewarded for learning and trying out new skills helps to keep young people attached to conventional institutions such as family school and work and we are discovering that just like everyone else young people value their communities when their communities value them in other words youth are less likely to get involved in crime when they participate in community affairs and when they have a voice in public dialogue all of these lessons are now known as positive youth development or the youth development approach using the youth development approach with young offenders makes obvious common sense it is essentially an effort to abort the benefits of a middle class upbringing into high risk and distressed neighborhoods the youth development approach suggests that even poor and disadvantaged youth should experience the social bonding that comes from having an adult mentor from knowing success in school and from being involved in civic activities sports music and the arts if we had a juvenile justice system that brought these assets into the lives of more young people we might be able to head off the next wave of rising youth violence and make our community safer certainly while we will always need a justice system that deals aggressively with dangerous you but we should also want a system that responds effectively to young offenders before they are violent looking this sort of juvenile justice system is hard work but thankfully research shows that it will be cost effective early intervention does pay one strategy that we know does not pay in fact the most expensive form of juvenile justice is delay and punish where we put off doing anything serious and meaningful with a young offender until he or she does something truly horrible yet that is still the most common form of juvenile justice system we have today thank you for your time and i look forward to the discussion murders of americans on the streets of our cities since nine eleven two thousand and one a problem that i'm delighted this committee is addressing especially with its focus on youth and gangland what i'd like to focus on is what we've found in philadelphia and appears to be true in many other cities which is that homicide is heavily concentrated among people who are operating under court supervision much of my data pertains just to the adult probation and parole department but if we had pretrial supervision youth probation state parole boards we estimate that as many as three out of four murders in the city philadelphia may be committed by people who are under court supervision and what i'd like to propose is that this committee offer legislation that would create a federal grants and aid program to support probation parole and free trial services agencies that would undertake an evidence based approach to the prediction and prevention of homicide within people on their caseload this problem includes both victims if i could get the number i think we'll see that the sixteen percent of the murder victims in philadelphia last year were on adult probation at the time twenty two percent the arrests in philadelphia were people who were on adult probation at the time this doesn't include state parole or juvenile probation and what we may find is that if we look for the needles in the haystack among the fifty fact that that three percent of that group is eventually going to be charged with murder attempted murder and that with new advanced data mining techniques and supercomputers coming down in price it's now possible for every community supervision agency in the country to do what professor richard berke has done and we recruited him to philadelphia from u c l a precisely to help us work on this problem which i think we can all straight best with the  predictors that start with something's already been mentioned and that is age of first arrest and arrest that is that is prosecuted as an adult by direct file to two adult course courts along with current age those seem to be the two biggest factors in predicting who is likely to be charged with murder or attempted murder while on probation or parole within the county adult system in philadelphia and if i could just focus the committee's attention on the age that first adult prosecution whether or not the offenders convicted the younger that age the more likely it is that this person when they go on adult probation will be charged with murder or attempted murder within a several year time frame so starting with age fourteen which is absolutely the highest risk of murder controlling for other factors that we have in this model we see a rapid falling off with people being charged at the old rage but it's precisely as mr brett said said it's precisely at those early ages that what we do is delay and we try to come to some other accommodation or even fail to get a conviction or an adjudication because the witnesses won't come if we could say that what this graph tells us is that seventy percent of all murders or attempted murders were committed by people who were charged as adults  before the age of twenty one and forty percent of them were committed by people who in their previous life were charged as adults before the age of eighteen another way of looking at this is the falling likelihood of being charged with homicide based on age so the committee's focus on the youth is absolutely right and the problem is that the juvenile justice system cuts it off at age eighteen where is the risk is really heavily concentrated under twenty one twenty five  in philadelphia have set actually a twenty five year definition of youth which is consistent with that graph showing us that offenders committing a murder on probation overheats forty five in a very large sample zero  but those who are under twenty fifteen percent we're going to go on to be charged with murder we're tempted murder and so what i would like to do is to agree with dr butts is assertion that most people in the juvenile justice system do not need the kind of intensive therapy that we have found that the people who are most likely to kill or be killed need because they're suffering from monday knows than untreated post traumatic stress disorder they have chronic depression they have a good anxiety disorder they have things that are well known to be treatable within clinical psychology but they're not getting that kind of treatment and what philadelphia has done is to create both a special unit to provide those kinds of services  a randomized controlled trial to to find out whether that approach is effective in not only reducing homicide and other serious crime but also reducing the incarceration rate which is very costly to the state and  course a waste of human potential if we had a federal grants program that would reward through a peer review process and that we are mercs those proposals that develop an effective statistical prediction model and offer a randomized trial to evaluate the effects of their program we would not be guaranteed to lower the homicide rate but we would be guaranteed to develop a robust body of evidence on what works and what doesn't work to try to prevent homicide by young people thank you for this opportunity i'd like to begin by offering my sincere thanks to chairman scott into the committee as a whole for holding this hearing in allowing me to be a part of the individual lives the trajectory of families and communities in a very real way the success of the american experiment are at stake here for this issue is infused with race however much we might wish it were not getting this right means a new way of thinking and acting i know persuaded that we could put a hundred times more gang members in prison or fund a hundred times the number of prevention programs and that would not work either my simplest and most profound message is that we know today how to address this problem in a way that saves lives reduces incarceration strengthens communities bridges racial divides and improve the lives of offenders and ex offenders in  famous boston will cut youth homicide by two thirds and homicides citywide by half what boston did was both simple and profound boston assembled law enforcement social service providers and community actors and quitting  partnership the created sustained relationships with boston's gangs the partners stood together and spoke with one voice face to face with gang members the violence was wrong and had to stop that the community needed them alive and out of prison and with their loved ones  t was available to all who would take it and the violence would be met with clear predictable and certain consequences the new approach worked within existing law using existing resources the results were shockingly different the first face to face meeting with all over the country the nature of these interventions does not allow the strongest random assignment evaluation designs but in chicago a sophisticated cause i experimental evaluation by university of chicago and columbia researchers of the justice department project sho homicide reductions in violent neighborhoods of thirty seven percent when richmond in chairman scott's district had its first offender call and former virginia u s attorney paul mcnulty now deputy attorney general traveled back to richmond to address the gang members personally last year at this time there have been fifteen homicides in richmond this year there have been four i'm working with a team in cincinnati and congressman chaffetz district and with the u s attorney in milwaukee and congressman sensenbrenner district and i will say to them what i've said to their constituents we are now essentially certain from years of experience that if the work is done seriously the results will follow not all jurisdictions have implemented the strategies properly many that have including boston the first and still best known have led effective interventions fail this is highlighted the need for attention to institutionalization sustainability frameworks for adapting strategy to the most demanding jurisdiction such as los angeles need to be developed at the record is increasingly compelling in the most recent strand of this work was done in high point north carolina congressman cobol's district we for the first time faced squarely the toxic racial tension saturates these issues in high point law enforcement spoke honestly to community yes the enforcement was not succeeding but they knew that that they had never meant to do harm through innocent foresman but they had come to realize that they had communities looked inward and realized that in their anger over historic and present ills they had not made it clear to their own young people that gang and drug activity was wrong and deeply damaging to the community both law enforcement community came to understand that what they were dealing with was not so much to create individuals as it was out of control peer group and street dynamics so in the partnership that with high points drug dealers and the community voice was clear and amazingly powerful scores of community members including many immediate family told the dealers that they were loved needed vital to the future of the community would be helped but were doing wrong hurting themselves hurting others and had to stop overwhelmingly they have stopped this is transformational gang violence and drug crime is an obscenity but so is mass incarceration it is important that at risk youth get help what is equally important that season defenders get help it is important to have firm law enforcement but it is even more important to have firm community standards it is important that law enforcement take action when the dangers will not stop and that the community supports them when they do we now know that all of that can be brought to pass within existing law within existing resources and remarkably quickly the man for these interventions national enormous these demands cannot be met all of us involved in this work are swamped with pleas for help that we cannot answer there is no larger framework in place to go to scale to help localities understand how to implement these approaches learn from the constant refinements innovations that occur at the local level address key issues such as sustainability and enhance the state of the art the federal government should make creating and supporting that framework a priority we've learned profound lessons about how to address gangs gangs well it's the drug driven crime that and gurgly travels alongside and blessedly how to begin to address the racial divides that undergird and perpetuate all of that and make us all less than we should be enforcement leader i've been committed to community or to policing approaches and problem solving in kansas city this approach has served our city well especially the year before last when we faced a spike in homicide going from ninety one in two thousand and four to one hundred twenty seven in two thousand and five the homicides right went back down in two thousand and six groups of individuals typically neighborhood based groups rather than traditional gangs like crips bloods and m s thirteen were involved in many of those homicides that's why i'm grateful for this opportunity to share information with you about what works to reduce youth in gang violence i'm also a member of the fight crime investing kids an organization of more than three thousand police chiefs shearson prosecutors and victims of violence come together to take a hard nosed look at the research and what keeps kids from becoming criminals as a police chief i know there's no substitute for tough law enforcement good law enforcement leaders like myself know better than anyone that we cannot arrest and prison our way out of this crime crime problem fortunately research in our experiences show that targeted investments that help kids get  a good start in life and they intervene effectively to redirect juveniles onto different paths can prevent crime and make our community safer to reduce crime in our communities we should begin at the beginning beginning at the good beginning means offering services to do moms such as voluntary and home parent coaching and ensuring that kids have access to quality early education and childcare after school programs during the hours of three pm to six b n prime time for juvenile crime on school days can also help in  law enforcement doing the best job we can do to deal with juvenile crime happens and to make sure dangerous juveniles are taken off the streets most juveniles arrest or not like to become serious offenders nationally six and ten juveniles brought before a juvenile court for the first time will not return to court on other charge in recent years there have been approximately one hundred thousand juveniles in custody nationwide the vast majority of these troubled youth will will be released back into the community with the expected prime crime years ahead of them of up to seventy five percent but it doesn't have to be that way a significant amount of the research as a genocide several effective approaches to help young offenders avoid committing for the crimes thereby and hansen public safety for the most dangerous young offenders especially those who are involved in violent gangs a combination of tense a police supervision x but it's anxious for a repeat violence and expedited access to jobs drug treatment other services a carrot and stick approach as shown in a number of cities that can cut homicides among violen offenders and high crime neighborhoods in chicago for example in the carrot and stick approach to our area there was a thirty seven percent drop in quarterly homicide rates when the project was implemented well the decline in homicide and other similar neighbor doing the same perry was eighteen percent simply warehousing high risk offenders during their time in custody is not adequate they need to be at required to do the hard work of the confronting and changing or anti showed to police and behaviors aggression replacement therapy art and teach teens to stop consider the consequences of their actions to think of other ways of responding to interpersonal problems and exciter how their actions will affect others young people in brooklyn gangs without our service that four times a number arrests a similar young gang members receiving art for offenders  need high security lock up individual placement or multi dimensional treatment foster care in t c home can be used foster care may sound like a pass for juveniles who should be paying a more severe price for their crime they committed before teens who have often used to running the streets and you see you know see a month in custody is just another chance to socialize with delinquent friends or to learn new criminal behaviors this is a more controlled experience and a tough intervention the n t s c approach cuts the average number of  press for serious delinquent juveniles and half in t f c save the public an average of over seventy seven thousand for every juveniles treated similar effective cost effective models can be implemented in communities or functional family therapy program and multi approximately five hundred thousand juno's a year could benefit from evidence based like f f t m s t in t f c it only thirty four thousand are currently being served here are the steps that congress can take to implement those proven effect crime prevention strategies implemented effectively research proven preventive strategies such as voluntary and home parent coaching quality early childhood care and education and bully prevention programs ensure that any legislation to address gang violence provides funding for communities to implement comprehensive coordinated care and stick responses an act and sign legislation says the second chance act to enable juvenile acceptance of successfully read in their communities reauthorize strengthen increase funding for federal juvenile justice and  prevention programs being tough on violent crime is critical avar once a crime has been committed to police their prisons can then do the agony of crime victim and repair the victim's shattered lives thus prevention intervention programs that use research based techniques to prevent further crime and critical tools for making our neighborhoods safer i am my colleagues with fight crime invest in kids who are leaders of american law enforcement are grateful for that the subcommittee is holding today's hearing and we look forward to working with you in implementing these recommendations thank for having me here today and i'd also like to invite you all to the latin american youth center which is about a twenty minute cab ride here from congress so if you want to see a program that works get a cab go twenty minutes north and you'll be there i'd like to tell you a little bit about the latin american youth center where i work we we've been in d c for over thirty years and a little over a year ago we opened three sites in maryland we are community based multicultural multi lingual youth and family development center we provide educational programs and tutoring to enable us who are in school to stay in school and go on to college for young people who have dropped out we provide ged preparation and workforce training we offer alternatives to incarceration programs for youth inside the juvenile justice system and re entry programs for youth exiting it additionally we provide counseling and substance abuse assistance foster care and residential placement for use in need of such services through our different programs we serve about three thousand youth annually i think it's safe to say that many of our youth young people are gang involved or have been gang involved some point in their life however only a small number of our young people are involved in criminal activity let me explain many of our parents of our youth immigrated from united states of find safety and a better way of life for their children upon arriving in the united states many of the of these parents find themselves need to work two and three jobs just to make things to make ends meet keeping the family clothed fed and housed becomes the priority fortunately this means the children are not provided proper supervision as schools don't are not prepared to meet this need the lack of super up supervision often leads to borden boredom and a sense of insecurity which causes the children to join join gangs joining gangs gives youth in a group of friends a group of friends to hang out with and a sense of security which they cannot get elsewhere in their lives these kids are not super predators they are young people looking for a sensible belonging most most youth who are in gangs are not criminals having said this i'm a former prosecutor from manhattan and do believe that when a gang member gets involved in criminal activity there needs to be decisive law enforcement response three and a half years ago our neighborhood columbia heights d c where the you whether you center is located was plagued with a spree of latino gang related murders law enforcement acted swiftly in their investigation of these cases and apprehended the the perpetrators several of these young people are now serving life sentence the law enforcement response since a clear sent a clear message to other gang involved youths if you commit crimes you will be punished during this gang crisis both the community and the police realize they should not only respond to gang related criminal activity but should also work together to prevent it as a result the gang intervention partnership the gap was created to get brings together police probation officers prosecutors community based and social service providers and develop intervention strategies for use who are at high risk of committing crimes get has focused not just on reducing violent behavior but on addressing the myriad of social and economic issues such as family such as family situation employment status school attendance peer relations says and limited recreational opportunities which can grip create environments that lead violence lead to violence amongst young people gets holistic approach mary's prevention and interventions initiatives with intelligence gathering and law enforcement efforts providing a new model for reducing gang violence as a good community partner the latin american youth center has focused its efforts on outreach to gang related use working closely with gang involved young people to offer them educational arts recreational and leadership programs as well as other opportunities to help them live healthy lives  connect them with caring adults from its inception give has concentrated on a set of core strategies conducting intense intensive targeted police work and building on strong police community partnerships providing targeted outreach to gang related and their families educating parents and community members and improving and expanding access to services to critical families and strengthening and diversion what often occurs an in in a commute was is that a community member will find out that the young that a youth is in some kind of trouble the members of the get come together to ensure that the use is supervised and there he is she is involved in structured activities in instances where the user based real security problems arrangements have been made to place a youth in witness protection programs this last fall the get program was independent miller independently evaluated by the center for youth policy research the evaluations found that the gifts comprehensive approach dramatically reduce latino gang related violence in d c their finding cited that that there has not been alleged gang related homicide in the district of columbia since october ninth two thousand and three our results are significant in a four year period prior to forming the gap there were forty shootings and stabbings twenty of those victims died in the theory years since the gap has been developed there has been five shootings in stabbings only one has led to a homicide in a do in addition to reducing violence evaluation found that give to cheech each of the other four goals decreasing gang membership reducing the number of gang related suspens is in charge of schools increasing the involvement of at risk youth and recreational and productive activities and building community community capacity in consciousness about gangs thank you very much  thank you and i want to thank you chairman scott on behalf of the national district attorneys association for this opportunity to present our concerns about gang violence and to share some thoughts on what we as america's prosecutors and you the congress can do to counter this growing threat to public safety the views that i express today represent the views of our association and the beliefs of thousands of local and state prosecutors who have primary jurisdiction in the matter of violent crime and specifically in the area of youth and gang crime i was privileged to testify before this very same committee two years ago and i'm going to use some of that testimony as a basis for my  testimony today now after hearing many of the members of the stink distinguished panel there's not a whole lot new that we can add there are some very fine programs out there that i think america's prosecutors are embracing many of those programs wouldn't work except for the involvement of local prosecutors and so i want to disabuse anyone of the idea that i or any of the other local prosecutors are only concerned with trying and imprisoning gang members to counter the gang problem we need effective community partnerships to deter our children from becoming an amber with the gang life while we need strong and effective criminal prosecutions we also need those diversion programs to prevent young people from making bad decisions getting the trouble bringing back those have already started to make the bad decisions gotten into trouble and lastly we need to develop meaningful re entry programs so that those persons who have already been members two years later in the same report and that's for the report for two thousand and four it appears that there are now seven hundred sixty thousand gang members and i heard a figure this morning from the chairman that  that today two thousand and seven there are about eight hundred fifty thousand gang members so the problem continues to grow as we discuss this problem and try to define strategies but numbers don't tell the whole story if you talk to any local prosecutor you find out that more and more the gang members are increasingly young twelve thirteen years old we have an increasing problem with witness intimidation people who do step forward to testify against gang crime many times pay the price with their very lives we see the gang members are now using technology more and more they have their own websites major gangs have their own websites google up the gang names we have disputes that have begun in our community might my jurisdiction of rockford illinois where we think we've got the situation kind of calmed down well then the gang members use their pages on my space to further disrespect other gang members competing gang members and the fight begins again and what starts on my space are roughs into violence in the community we see gangs out of chicago moving into central wisconsin with the native americans in developing new drug markets by introducing cheap drugs and then eventually raising the prices when they get the young members of the tribes in central wisconsin addicted to drugs very effective marketing strategies these are sophisticated organizations we need the combined efforts of state local and federal law enforcement but local prosecutors can lead community involvement we are connected the community we can bring those resources together and combine effective prosecution for those gang members were already stepped over the line but also mobilizing the community to prevent it in the first place we welcome mr kennedy to our jurisdiction just recently and we are laying the groundwork for a program that he described this morning within my jurisdiction we in our team effort welcome the assistance from federal law enforcement the a f ice secret service f b i the local u s attorney's office and in fact the local u s attorney is working with us on mr kennedy's program and help to bring several of our local people down to the national advocacy center in columbia south carolina for training just in that program we could also use federal assistance in the area of preventing witness intimidation we support in principle i believe we support specifically h r nine thirty three introduced by mr cummings that would provide federal support for local efforts to protect witnesses to violent crime we need to be proactive in our communities to identify gang threats early and to respond decisively as we testified the game going problem is rolling on behalf of america's prosecutors and the national district attorneys association urge you to take steps to provide federal assistance to state efforts to fight our gang problems the provide us with the resources to effectively prosecute enter protect victims and the witnesses to violent crime thank you mr  aurukun embassy for the library every every tuesday to borrow books and i ended up marrying an american girl and ended up working in boston for ten years and now five years in providence rhode island  what happens in this civilization matters a lot this is the longest running them ocracy on the planet in history in fact the athenian democracy lives a lot shorter and it does concern a lot of us the levels of violence that absolutely astounding it is actually safer to be an israeli soldier in uniform in lebanon there is to be an african american man in washington d c between the age of seventeen to forty that's a staggering staggering statistic we have lost in the last twenty five years about five hundred eighty thousand people to homicide ten vietnam wars those are things that we live in i dream of speaking to social workers by doctors by police officers to mediate conflicts in the city ice i've studied in some very very fine schools in this country and i love philosophy but what i will speak about today's from pure experience of fifteen years in the trenches in two cities now particularly in boston and providence where we're seeing the smart group of a partnership by a very motivated and concentrated group of people like prevention like if you are condemning gang unit officers clergy and youth workers can make a huge amount of difference when you bring these five groups together you basically have the intelligence on the whole city who is committing the violence efforts of the david lead in boston was initially the problem was sixty thousand children were narrowed down to twelve hundred gang members three hundred are hardcore you see how becomes non rational problem to tackle  and then really we are the linebackers we're really the ones who are every day trying to hit those conflicts work on them mediate the violence is very very very rarely random it's between own people so philadelphia recently by november fifteenth i think i read in the inquirer picked up five thousand guns and still homicide peaked over four hundred we can't just go after the guns someone is using again against someone they know we do in providence now we have perfected the boston model it's a more sophisticated one any time there's a conflict in school little things we already jump on it we have meetings like police come stat where we look at the current conflicts we assign them to street workers street workers now different gangs they come from different gangs they come from different sides of town so we always as opposed to the social worker model where you know a client or you try to serve them we actually know your enemy the fact that turning our wants to go to college after he has inflicted pain on the city means nothing if my enemy doesn't let me do that you need someone on the other side and that's what we do when i want to recently about a year ago a major shooter of an asian to me away from his crew in the pakistani i'm exhausted i wish i could live in the suburbs well david has worked with him in that year and he has been taken away to job corps in another's in another state removed from their environment which is what he wanted you keep him in that environment he's going to continue to be a shooter has too many conflicts so there is no cookie cutter solution but we do know the solutions and it's go practitioners one of the things that i'm dazzled and when i come it's really morning back from an emergency room and i have to wind down i look on the internet we spend a lot of money on research we spend a lot of money on pilot programs we have no stamina i wish we picked up a little bit from the japanese and look a little bit a longer term solutions it's almost like sending the army to iraq just for having researchers at the pentagon you need people in the trenches and most of us working programs i have the greatest support of the of the mayor the chief is on our board the u s attorney has helped found us and it's still a massive struggle to find thirteen street workers so there are good programs and i'm here on a panel with people i admire and there's everywhere around the country great people and we all burning out with there's nothing to sustain us and so using congress actually also thing to talk to our elites in the funding community and foundations none of them really fun practitioners they have moved now to change policies they have no now to pilot programs we need to change the mo funding these people who need to be in this field and you cannot keep them it's an anomaly to have someone like me with a master's from harvard staying in this field at forty one with no retirement it's an anomaly it shouldn't be we need to rebuild if i would suggest research as well is to have a practice practical research that what we will take to build the infrastructure of youth workers around the country will wreck centers will have a library on the second floor there will be a jazz orchestra with the kids learn to do there will be a theater program we need to bring civilization back to the neighborhoods with violence ivan we have i was stunned in providence that only one full time person is in the rec center and the only training they had the last twenty years is c p s and those are the people who want to send a attitudes of the kids we absolutely shooting ourselves in the leg i have to stop here thank you i think all of our witnesses for tremendous testimony and recognize myself for the first round of questioning list only if you mentioned the need for research more as a research done this to gross mention where some of it could be done would be colleges national institute for science or where should we be looking for research in the area of violence reduction of course i think that research ought to be in the justice department and department education is doing some of that but i think the primary location would be in the in the department of justice and you know a lot of the work currently going on is in the department of justice the national science foundation i think could also be funding used to general use development kind of programs like dr butts talked about but when we're talking about violence and crime reduction i think that research ought to be in the justice department and you mention several things that didn't work you test going through safely mentions waivers to adult court and what is the research on that  research on that suggests that waivers to the adult court increased the risk of victimization for those adolescents who have been put into the adult criminal system as compared to the juvenile system but there is a greater risk of re offending when they get and that there is also some evidence for discriminatory processing with respect to which kids get waived transferred and which kids don't when that's left up to the prosecuting attorneys that statement based on control groups because you would expect the more serious offenders to be waived to adult court so you might be talking about apples and oranges or are you talking about the modest risk people if they're treated in adult court they're more likely to offend now the studies have in fact controlled for that issue they are not randomized controlled trials which should be to the best evidence that they are cause like her mental trials in which they have matched the control group with the experimental group with respect to the seriousness of the that you need to ask another way in terms of what you do to the juveniles that are here today what does that do whatever you do to them what does that do for the next cohort of juveniles in terms of what they may be doing or what trajectory they're on i think you heard some of the other speakers refer to that changing a culture at the neighborhood level at the certainly the family level everyone you're exposed to as your as you're coming up as a young person influences you into extent we can surround people young people with positive pro social adults who see a role for families who have jobs who have faith in their own futures youth will pick up on that attitude and start to adopt themselves so stopping you know you've referred to the phrase before closing down the pipeline reducing the number of people that a young person's exposed to to advocate and enjoy a criminal lifestyle is critical for making those cultural changes and if you don't change the trajectory does it matter for the next cohort what you've done to the last cool the trajectory of individual young people are headed towards prison rather than college if you don't do anything about that trajectory what can we reasonably expect the next cohort to end up well that's some people refer to the little brother effect to explain the decline in crime during the late ninet and that that simply put is when you're twelve years old and you see your eighteen year old brother shot and killed go off to prison and a lot of your brother's friends are doing the same thing it changes you as a twelve year old and some people theorize that that is why that and many other factors including the declining in crack use contribute to the overall decline so the whole pipeline in fact stopping things early and reaching kids when they're young is most important and put the kinds of things actually make a difference in that trajectory but what i was suggesting might in my statement was that we pay attention to common sense none of us are here threatening each other with bodily harm right now and that's not because we were surrounded by a team of psychiatry when we were thirteen years old it's because we learned to play by the rules we learn to enjoy the benefits of living in society and to respect one another those are pretty simple lessons and you don't need skilled therapeutic professionals to do that we rely upon skilled therapeutic professionals because that's our funding mechanism and that's how we can create systems of intervention it's much harder to create neighborhood based volunteer base pro social  activities groups for young people but if we were going to focus on common sense and create service networks which made sense i think that's what we would do it just takes a long time and you need good community based workers like some of the young men sitting behind us chairman you indicated your entire research identified a high risk group of of offending those in supervision are there things we could do while they're on supervision to reduce the risk  as chairman there's a wide range of things we could do what we haven't done is to test the matching of certain responses to people with certain kinds of diagnoses we do have some ideas like cross the board provide frequent checks to make sure that these people have very high risk and and i should say with the new models we can identify the people who are forty two times more likely to be accurately forecast to commit a murder attempted murder than the average person on probation so by by focusing on a very tiny portion of that group we could then say even within that portion does everybody need to be monitored for whether they're carrying guns and that's currently one of the strategies that's being used that hasn't been evaluated carefully for those who have post traumatic stress disorder because they've seen a brother shot or they've they've seen their parents fighting in very violent ways does treatment of post traumatic stress disorder reduce their likelihood of killing somebody for people who are chronically depressed this treatment for depression reduce their posttraumatic stress disorder again these are not things that you i think should be doing across the board in either the juvenile or the adult system but where for the tiny fraction who based on their prior record are very high risk we could be said to be under serving them in terms of their mental health needs and not every city has a gang problem philadelphia really doesn't have the evidence of the kind of thing that we're hearing about in providence or boston so indeed we may be able to help these folks get their lives together get into high school completion some are in community college right now give them some parent training you know their fathers out there as well as david olds mothers who are raising kids and we've got some of them in this program and if in every way the probation officer possibly even on a one on one  basis can help to turn their lives around that could save an enormous amount of money if not in terms of gunshot wounds over one hundred thousand dollars per injury then in terms of thirty five thousand a year in prison for possibly forty years  we don't know exactly what to do but i think the progress we've made now that would support creation of a federal grant program is that we have a much better idea where to focus these efforts thank you mr chairman and first of all again i want to thank all of you for being here and thank you for what you're doing and with the possible caviar that mr elliott may tell us that one of your programs is harmful we just appreciate all of them that you're doing and  i want to just say a couple of things at the beginning because we hear a lot of buzz phrases and buzz words and let's just make clear for the record that nobody here thinks you can arrest or incarcerate your way out of the gang problem i've heard that language nobody seriously believes that nobody thinks that abusive or illegal law enforcement activities work well none of us think that nobody thinks we should not have a comprehensive program to address the gang problem which includes law enforcement tools and prevention programs nobody thinks the federal government can pass a single act that would deal with all the components of gang crime nor should we that's not you know that's not what we're best our goal is trying to strike a balance between what the federal government can and should what the state governments can and should do what communities can and should do what the private sector can and should do just to be a couple of examples one of the most popular gang leaders that i read about in the seventy's was a guy named nikki cruz who was a gang leader at nineteen teen challenge converted him to to a faith program nikki spoke and now to fort a million people about self improvement around the world i mean that was that was a winner federal government was german would say we should get involved in helping those kind of programs just this past week i was at a community center that combined elaborate a rec center to help prevent gangs and juvenile crime wonderful programs so  we think those programs are great what we're trying to do is say what should the federal government be doing and how should we do it now mr elliot i looked at your testimony and one of the things that i looked at was the bio he gave us and one of the things chairman and the chairman of the committee is encouraged us to do is oversight and as i was looking at the studies and the grants that you just listed down here and i'm sure there are a lot more that you were the principal investigator  they totaled over thirty eight million five hundred twenty six thousand dollars in grants programs just two programs that you listed that you were principal investigator that's a lot of money to research and evaluate programs and after doing that the conclusion that i read your written test might just want to read back to you that you identify there were six hundred programs that claim to prevent or did your violence drug use to delinquent behavior and less than twenty have any r evaluation was that your statement was twenty twenty percent and i'm sorry twenty percent the other testimony that you had written statement was the fact remains that most of the resources currently committed to the prevention and control of youth violence drug use and delinquen of both national and local levels has been invested in unproven programs based on questionable somethin's and delivered with little consistency or qualification troll fair statement and then the other thing that you indicated was that this was a complex behavior problem and we're looking at gangs that includes these things family neighborhood peer group and the media what you listed was that with a accurate components according to your testimony yes and then you also said any positive changes in the individual's behavior achieved in the treatment setting a quickly lost when the lose when the youth returns arm to his her family neighborhood no friends  so basically we're looking at a situation where all of those components are influential in what happens with any particular program that we have how strong the family unit is what the neighborhood looks like what the peer groups are how the media response fair statement each of those contexts does contribute to the incidents or the likelihood of violence but we have to look at each of each of those components when we're trying to measure asserting that's his testimony whether we agree with it or disagree with it and then we've had further testimony that between sixty and eighty five percent of the members of many of the image thirteen groups are here illegally can you tell me from that thirty eight million dollars a valuation of the programs that you've had in your examination of these prevention programs what prevention programs have you found that effectively works to stop gang activity from those individuals who are here illegally on the worst gangs that we have in the country today i'm not sure i can address that specific gang and those specific situations but we have two programs for example that we know are very effective in working with deep and offenders that's multisystem and family therapy and are they for illegal illegal they would work for illegals ok there are none there are programs which have been validated to work with various ethnic populations some programs unfortunately have been validated all mean with respect to the the majority population so you have to be careful when you look at the program to see that those are two programs for example that have out but that's one of the dilemmas we have of having so many people the panel we can't get everybody to ask all the questions we want to have and hopefully wet several rounds that is only thing i would follow up with you if you can submit to it some point time in writing from your evaluation specifically the programs that you've found to be effective in working with the illegal group of people that are here on groups like in this thirteen some of the other groups that seem to be suboptimal thank you we've been joined by the generated from california  testimony that is being presented to this morning but i wanted to come over for several reasons one is as you know urged and encourage that we focus some attention on the gun problem in america and shared with you the seriousness of the great gang problem in the greater los angeles area i have read all of the either convincing them or threatening them maybe both and it having some great impact i have a lot of experience working with gang started many years ago and some of the largest public housing projects in the greater los angeles area the nickerson gardens housing project and the imperial courts jordan downs and i think i've learned a few things i've learned that you cannot simply deal with the problems of gangs with the police in portsmouth than just miss johnson son who is not again member that doesn't school everyday and happens to be at the laundromat and illinformed and he will join police officers just see all black youths in the same light and they not only apprehend an arrest but create a lot of confrontation and friction and other kinds of things now our communities have marched they ha created a program for public housing projects it was a program that simply sat at my kitchen table and wrote and we took this discretionary money went into the public housing project and we ladders out we walk the neighborhood and we convince the public housing authorities to give us space where we open the offices and we use their gymnasiums for the programs that are ran for almost ten years we took this money we took the spring space we walked the neighborhood and we condensed city government who was running the private industry council at that time if any of you remember the so called judge job training programs of private industry councils that did not touch and said these public housing projects many cities do not afford the services to some of the poorest areas and certainly to public housing projects that they should be affording they act as if they're not in their city and so the job training programs never reached and so i started these programs because young people mostly young black males at that time were just hanging every day in public housing projects they didn't really live there because they were they did live there they were not on the rolls because of the policies of federal government they lived with girlfriends and grandmothers and wherever they could because they didn't have jobs and they didn't have homes and so the government we all pretend that they don't live there we recruited them in the gym nations and i had a program where in my book the way i structured it we m when they came in in the morning and i had something for lunch and we had their simple programs where we started out by talking about do you really want to work what do you want to do with your life we found out a lot about dogs we found out that surprisingly most of the people in the program in those days i graduated from high school in that area we also found out that most of them were involved in drugs in some way it was  started right at the height of the crack cocaine explosion in south central los angeles where everybody was trying to make a buck with small amounts of crack cocaine except for i discovered that the first day that i had this program we had standing room only it dispel the notion that these poor people these gang members did not want jobs they did not want to work we also did all of the regular stuff  four days of learning how to cut out a job application role playing but the most important thing was that talking and getting to know people and people getting to trust you and beginning to share with you people that come up to me after what paired up with them is one of i want to that i can read i mean that's that's something that they were able to really talk about some that dropped out of school have been just pushed on through despite the fact they could read an appalling tips and purposes their lives were kind of over others where the children of crack addicted mothers and there was no safety net others who had fathers and mothers who were in prison others who simply had no connections and they were living in vacant buildings at times so out of all of that what we did was we said to the city of los angeles in the private industry council you have got to get your people here we've got to have the job developers they've got to get not only into real training programs once they come out of what i'm doing a bug we've got to have job developers who really develop jobs and everybody who came into the public housing projects after that whether it was the housing authority itself attempting to do rehabilitation taking it and going on you know across town somewhere and or to another county while people standing there unemployed had nothing to do jobs will do a hell of a lot to reduce crime and violence out of those years we have homeowners we have people that got connected because we created that maxine waters a plumber preparation center under the unified school district to make sure there were alternatives and so i just came here to say that and i know you want me to wrap up this teacher i have a real appreciation for academicians and what you the research that you may have done and what you understand about gangs but i want you to know until you have been on the ground with crips and bloods a tres rolling thought in fifty's and sixt and gotten to know these kids and these young people and the anger and the disappointment and the lack of trust that they have basically in our society and in adults who have let them down time and time again the only power they have is the power of the gun and the power to threaten and the power to control some territory that you may not think is worth anything but to them that's their power to say that you can't come here you can't do this this is a complicated problem that requires money it requires  sustained training and development there should be no poor communities and housing projects that do not have social services do not have job training programs there should be no programs that do not have  don't ask poor people and gang members to sit and training programs every day hungry i made sure they had money of food to get close going to get grandmamma to watch the baby whatever so that they could listen and try and be a part of it i have found most people whether their gang members are just dropouts or poor people really aspire to everything else all americans aspire to everything that we see on that television they want homes they want cars they want it they will go to concerts they want that so i don't talk to people about just being good just saying no i try to empower people with real assets with real stuff to be able to live with if you do that and people see that they can get some money and they can pay the rent they services because i want  and will ask the witnesses to respond as part of your other responses a little over the gentleman from ohio thank you gentlemen i want to thank him for holding this hearing i think it's a very important and timely  he also wanted to let you know mr kennedy that his assistant chief of police back in high point north carolina sent his thank you for the work that you've been doing in their community and i also want to thank you for agreeing to work with the city of cincinnati in its efforts to decrease youth violence and i was honored to serve on cincinnati city council for five years this is quite a few years ago and live in the city and have a lot of as a citizen have a lot of concerns about the level of violence in our community last year we for example suffered the highest homicide rate that we've had in our city's history which is obviously most unfortunate and many of those were related to gangs and to violence relative to drug transactions and most are more in the city so we appreciate your input and hope that you're successful and i we had a chance to talk shortly before this hearing and i was encouraged to hear how certain you were that your you will be successful here assuming that that you get the cooperation of the community and their involvement and  i would start out by mentioning you had a an article that appeared by the national as to the justice titled pulling levers if you advocated the strategy could you describe what that strategy is what it  and to make it really complicated to get in and then i j it's actually pretty simple and not rebut but endorse what comes from the waters you're exactly right and this is what that's that's where i've gotten everything most important in my career and the the version that i just wouldn't publish it is is a version that my my mother goes to cocktail parties and says that i learned all this from her and she's fundamentally correct here we broke ties of this we we abstract it we put it in fancy language but any any good parent sticks with their kid establishes rules helps them learn punishes them appropriately when they need punishment but doesn't go away at that point you don't turn them over to somebody else and if we did good families the way we do crime we have one parent responsible for love and support one for rules and discipline you have to find a third parent for spiritual guidance and the parents would be forbidden by statute from speaking to each other mostly groups of the kind of really extreme offenders that larry's been describing he's absolutely right about what's going on out there and saying to them consistently over time there are things we won't put up with here exactly what's going to happen if you do these things people you respect want you to stop this and want to help you if you let them help you and the peace that we don't think about very much to say in a moral voice this is wrong and you know it's wrong and it turns out that even the most hardened offenders or  most of them really care a lot when their grandmother looks at them and says you're really disappointing you know i'm a deterrence theorist and deterrence theory tells me to find more free my grandmother than i know the police let's organize the grandmothers and that's that's in fact what's going on out there it's it's really very simple ok thank you very much second mr reese who was her chairman and mr logan if i could ask you the question for the for those that have shown by their behavior to be particularly violent and some that are predators on the community could you talk about the important aspects of law enforcement in dealing with those individuals and what we ought to do as a society and as a government i would start with making sure that they are not in possession of or carrying guns that nexus is very clear there is a lot of controversy about how to deal with that problem at large in the community i believe once people have been convicted and put under conditions of community supervision the opportunity exists for a judge to reinforce the existing law that says  convicted felons they were units adjudicated delinquent that they would not have any right to legal possession of guns the problem is doing that in a way that's respectful that doesn't provoke the resentment and further anger that congresswom waters has quite rightly drawn attention to and one of the things we're working on right now in the probation police partnership in philadelphia is trying to make the home visits both scheduled an unscheduled as dignified and supportive an experience for the offender on community supervision as possible so that even though there's two point close officers in  car who drive the probation officer to that house with the probation officer does primarily while looking around the house in addition to other things is to talk with the family to talk with grandmother to talk with whoever there about the hopes and aspirations the educational plans the occupational goals that the probation has so that the the attempt to monitor and regulate the critical issue gun possession is tied to an expression of concern for and respect for the offender and his home in the people in the home and by young again i mean under age twenty five so that we philadelphia probation officers have had one hundred eighty says professor so if an offender doesn't show up for drug treatment or doesn't go to alcohol treatment or even therapy programs or educational programs as required or is that as agreed to nothing happens there's no consequence so to lower that caseload especially with this high risk people and in the astonishing fact that in philadelphia we have only one fourth as many probation officers permit or as in the rest of pennsylvania we would need four times as many probation officers just to come up to that ratio in the rest of the state which is why you know in the short run something like a federal grants program to support this sort of a high risk community supervision would be extremely helpful and have i think an immediate possibility of reducing on the side rate in the nation thank you if i understand the question congressman it's it's it's what do we do with those people that already started to offend in the course as the local district attorney many times our first contact with somebody is a show up on our rashid district attorneys have been described as holding a quasar a judicial office and i take that terminology seriously every morning in my office we aaj of screening cases and making charging decisions and somehow we have to make wise choices we've got to at some point look at an individual say this person to still worth working with this person can still with the proper support turn his or her life around then we get to the other extreme this person by virtue of what we've seen and their actions in the community this person is beyond that point and our job now is to simply prosecute that person effectively and put that person away as long as we can there are hundreds of grid a sions in between those two extremes what helps us make those decisions is it we have available to us programs many of which have been described this morning that give us alternatives that that shows us that if this person can be put into that anti truancy program if we can work with that family to get that person to go to school and to learn how to read and write and how to develop job skills so that they can get a job the most important thing for many of these people is to have a job so they can support a family make their mortgage payments but if we don't have programs to bring them there then my job is tougher i don't need any more laws i've got all the criminal laws i need in the state of illinois i i don't need any more sanctions i said to some things that are plenty tough i've got all the discretion i need what i need is what denny talked about and that's programs on the street that have staying power and that have credibility and that will work with people that i can refer people to because what i do have is a hammer i have the coercion that might just make that person stick to a program whether you call it pulling levers or anything else  make that decision whether they're worth working with or it's just time to warehouse them and that's a real loss to society have more rounds of question i understand that makes it difficult for those of us who are in several committees to come here and at least ask questions of some of the i just just a suggestion it's just they all have excellent  ideas in perspectives and it would be good if we would have a chance to and some trait on several of them and other than all of them i'm not into rebuttals but but i am a little concerned that the only reference made to the los angeles police department was a negative one about officers exacerbating the situations maybe i take it personally because my brother used to be an l a police officer and i recall him responding to a call for drug dealers in nic gardens and i recall that it was a drug dealer who had vowed to kill a cop and i recall that he had my brother directly in his sights and my brother would have been a victim had not another officer come upon the scene cause the person to lead i think we have to understand that while there are bad cops and bad situations my judgment is most of them want to help the people in the communities that they serve when i was attorney general of california i changed the name of the program we had from the crime prevention center to the violence and crime prevention center because oftentimes if you wait till it's a crime it's too late and i really wanted to prevent create violence as well because we needed to have programs of education before you've got the intervention and then intervention and deterrence and punishment i mean it's a continuum it seems to me i hope that no one disagrees with that one of the toughest things i had when i put together a juvenile violence task force to get everybody to talk together i had a group that was about four times the size representing all the disciplines on the first time they came in the room it was kind of interesting it was kind of like dogs circling one another and not sure what they ought to do because everyone thought if that person gets money we're not going to get money and yet at the end of about a year process they found common ground as i think we have here i never forget going to a program in one of the high schools in los angeles they'd been the site of a shooting and talking about the safe ghouls program we had developed and urged on the other schools and after it was all over a young girl about fourteen or fifteen came up to me she happen to be african american she said why did it take the death of one of my classmates for you adults to take this seriously and her emphasis was why don't you do that which is necessary to provide a safe school environment for me and so that's why i take the comments of the representative of the prosecutors here very seriously we all i think want to do things that are in that continuum but that doesn't mean we don't understand that you have to have a sense of order backed up by a sense of enforcement backed up by the prospect of punishment if all else doesn't work ever really found  victim in a crime say to the responding officer or paramedic what was the socioeconomic background of the person who just beat me up basically please take care of my wounds please catch that person and make sure he or she doesn't do it to somebody else so i guess my question to the to the represent of the district attorneys  is been at least some reference of a critical nature to try and juveniles as adults i view that as an unfortunate but necessary part of the overall system and i wonder if you could give us the thoughts from your perspective on how you make that decision what it gives you the way of alternatives and whether or not you believe it is effective in certain circumstances i do believe it is one of the more difficult decisions i have to make and although i have forty seven assistant states attorneys any decision to transfer a young person into the adult system is made only with my knowledge in a sense that's how serious i believe it is some of that discretion has been taken away from us with recent legislative changes in my state and many other states and that is if you charge somebody who happens to be fourteen or fifteen years old with murder that's an automatic transfer if you charge somebody with a sexual assault a violent sexual assault at a certain age that's an automatic transfer there may be no discretion there there are still some discretionary transfers now i can still short circuit that state law because i can charge something less than murder i can charge a lower level sexual assault perhaps but sometimes you know  i'm not in the business of writing fiction you've got to charge what the conduct really is but in those cases where we have the discretion yes it's based on prior record it's based on threat to the community many times it's based on the fact that there are no programs in the juvenile system that is really going to have a credible impact on that young person and we really have no choice when we're looking at preventing future victimization and if we don't have it in the community that can really dress that young person's problems and in a specific way i'm talking about sometimes the fifteen six year old sexual assault and now i know we're talking about gangs but i mean that's one of the situations where there are very few alternative s just trying to protect the community when it comes to gang involvement i think we have a few more alternatives but again i mean you've got a you've got a i don't go out of my way to transfer aggravated batteries or or  the lower level felonies into adult court i think that we can deal with it in juvenile court when it comes to gang affiliation there and getting related criminal activity there have been effective programs i can deal with that would certainly prevent some of it transferring but in certain cases there's murder there's serious sexual assault it may be somehow gang related you know i think it's it's probably in me those cases a tough decision but we have to move  california that we are all sensible adults elected by the people because we have to demonstrate to some qualities that people support nobody suggest that all cops all police  bad police qualified my remarks somewhat about ill trained insensitive and there are those too so we understand that there are good cops to be a bad cop since i have to put that on the record because oftentimes  the papers of you know anything about los angeles we have a history of the tensions between the police and the community and that's not the channel that's real whatever the reasons are for  that i understand there was some discussion about the truce work i know that we have their programs in los angeles and we have some people who have been involved for quite some there's any permanency to it that sometimes you can put out a potential confrontation but there appears to linger the possibilities of revenge motive that does not go away easily who can tell me about you a successful truce work that is sustainable that has made a difference i think that the very right to and when there is a homicide it's a lot harder to come back than a simple shooting and anger is resides for a long time i think first you before you bring sides together  institute a mother who lost her son about twenty minutes later on t v says absolutely no revenge in my name we're still working together obviously more voices a lot of class has side has not retaliated it is now two thousand and seven we take very seriously funerals we go to funerals we just had a funeral of young bloods everyone was in red with support and we helped them get some funds  help with the family get them a refund from the funeral home we chordal them yes we do so there is a sympathy and help we have one of the one of the old uses on the side to one of our cumbrian street workers can you get me some mental health he wouldn't say it in front of his crew so there's a search and there's an understanding and the reason that do we need another life loss we use the parents look what they're going through the other side was also combo do you need to go through that ok another thing real quick if i can following monday we went to see one of the main shooters of this gang twice convicted of guns in jail had a conversation and he wanted he reached out to that he's there are examples of truces like that so here in the district the alliance of concerned men has has truces that i think are over ten years old now and they they work as is tending works there is no model for that there are examples but there are no examples of ways to consistently do the wall in the world both parties are willing and i think that's the start of your work may i ask a o if any of you with the connections or the work that you do called a meeting of shot callers from gang with the police allow you all to me let me hear from my friend my going and we're working very close collaboration with the police department here in washington d c and now that we're in maryland we've also worked very closely with them they know the gang members they they know that they come to our youth center they talk with them regularly they talk to their parents regularly so so you don't have gang injunctions where either one of several situations exist a condition of parole is they can i be in the company of other gang members or injunctions such as the one in the greater los angeles area they can't be in certain places they can't languish to canceling or they can't associate and a meeting with be considered a violation of that you don't have that situation there may be individual cases where that exists but that's not something that's been that we have used or i've known in my experience i also think that even if that injunction existed and that meeting was called by both community and law enforcement officials that it probably wouldn't be a violation of law enforcement community leaders program operators who really want to talk without intimidation without fear without the thought that the police is listening again call that kind of meeting would you have any kind of interference surveillance or intimidation no i mean i think because we've worked so closely with the police department and the public officials in d c we wouldn't so there's a trust that's developed between us and them that didn't always exist it existed probably if we've developed it over the last ten years thank you thank you mr chairman and mr but you've been the last man for a few minutes or so i want to come back to you with just some of your testimony that you mentioned earlier and i think i heard you right that did you saying one nine hundred ninety four was the last year we really had like a spike in violence or did i miss interpret that if you plotted out the the incidence rate of serious violent crime you would see it climbing throughout the late eighty's peaking about ninety four ninety five and then falling dramatically so if i had a graph and i c draw that would draw it up like this from the eighty's to ninety four and then from ninety four to today it's so about two thousand and four it's been been on a decline and then it starts to pick up again so the periods of time  other question not have missed sherman i just want to make sure i heard you correctly or read your testament that use it as many as seventy six percent of all murders in philadelphia involve convicted or charged offenders under supervision of community supervision agencies as either victims or suspects recognizing the fact that over half of the murders go on solved so we can measure a hundred percent of the victims but we're taking educated guesses based on the rest as of the rest that have been made as to how many of those in which no arrest is made were also committed by people who are either under supervision of the court because they were awaiting trial but in the community and that's thirty thousand people in philadelphia on probation or parole at the county level that's fifty two thousand on state parole that's nine thousand that were in juvenile probation which is six thousand the adds up to one out of every fifteen people in philadelphia is in the community at large under court supervision but only a tiny fraction of them are highly likely to kill somebody and what we're doing is trying to reinvent probation and parole at least at the adult level to focus on the very dangerous people and to use new york's model of using a simple computer with palm print identification to have a monthly visit with all the low risk for the predict to predict that and mr kennedy you know one of the statements that you made was about organizing the grandmothers to do that but one of the things that works for state of maryland now a gang prevention but he told me something that shocked me he said the number one group that works against his efforts in maryland he said you'd be shocked into this group this and that's it who he said it's the mothers he said the mothers scream at me and curse and they because they want their kids involved in these gangs because of the economic benefits they're getting from and mr lug i'm looking here at your testimony that you had earlier about this story of the mother in new orleans that was in your written testimony to as i understand it actually took the gun and put it in her son's hand and told him to go out and kill the person he was in a fight with and had a picture of it on her wall is that well she had a picture from a previous time of the young man holding a weapon and when that young man was beaten up arrival and came home she said we'll go out there and  twenty five years of doing this i have never ever seen any organized group in a community mothers or anybody else oppose efforts to get their kids out of trouble or oppose efforts and i hope that's what we were literally organize we would normally assume that that is unheard of but we're hearing testimony of that there was a case on t v not too long ago where a lady actually drove her son to a home to send him in to rob someone a gun points member of the gang came he was shot came back out and they had called nine one one to pick him up and she was arrested but whatever the case  that makes it very difficult some time of prevention programs if if we do have that this dog i want to ask you a question also you tell us that you know there has been this huge shift in gangs that we've seen in more of the international  gangs that are coming into the country now as i mentioned our testimony earlier we have happily synergise of gang members who are here illegally now and also the whole nest try to shift it in just the last few years used to be kind of a homegrown variety now we have these wal mart if you would cans of meth cartels that are being put in mexico with the gang networks coming in to the united states your written testimony talked about and the increasing use of sixteen and seventeen year olds to do their activity because quote the belief the juveniles will not get any time and not question to you is this we have heard testimony in here that if we simply arrest the sixteen or seventeen year old twenty more will pop up in their place because these gangs will continue to recruit and put them in there with the laws that you currently have the state prosecutor how are you going after those national gangs that may be located in other states with their headquarters in other places out there well i'm really that as a local prosecutor not in too much of a shape to go after the organization as an organization we deal with the  individuals we have unique challenges with those gangs in my community i have bilingual police officers and bilingual prosecutors were probably not enough and so there's a communication problem there is also a  not that we get tremendous cooperation from all gang members but we get we get less cooperation from the the latino or hispanic community especially recent arrivals simply because they came out of countries where the police were very corrupt and the government was very corrupt and they carry that distrust with them into our into our nation and so we have a long real problem getting cooperation and in terms of witnesses we find a lot of those gangs because of that will simply seek out their own revenge and i understand that and don't disagree with you at all in that but what i'm trying to get at specifically is how do you as a local prosecutor go after the gang networks on these national and international gangs that's as we say in the service that's above my pay grade so you really can't we really can't and we there's we rely probably in cooperation of the u s attorney's office they've got the resources they've got the network of officers in other states prosecute other states th they can really go after more the organization we really aren't direct at the individual and would you agree with me that it's important to go after the networks and try to pull the networks if we can certainly i mean that's if you can go to the head of the organization decapitate the head you'll you'll reduce  gotta tell you congressman i do not believe that the latino gangs that we're seeing are terribly organized i don't believe they're highly organized i think there's a lot of loose associations there they're not as organized as the bloods the crips the gangster disciples a vice lords there you've got almost a business organization we haven't quite seen that yet with the hispanic or latino and last two questions and then the much time has expired too but mr kennedy again and i'd love to sit down sometime talk with all length because you've all got some great ideas but one of the things that you did emphasize in terms of the balance of your testimony i think before is just a one time before that the use of federal sanctions was very important cease fire in knocking the homicide rate way down and you specifically talked about the effectiveness of the federal prosecutions if they were used properly and they're good issues and in the spring and as when you talked about the homicides in washington d believe this five eight eight but but those homicides were prosecuted in the people incarcerated when that correct yes and after that there were no additional homicides that she could report mothers first pregnancy it involves a nurse dissipation programme when she registered for prenatal care and continues with nurse visits to the home until the child is two years old so it's about a two and a half year intervention that intervention has proved very very effective it reduces the incidence of child abuse by almost eighty percent it reduces the unemployment rates on the part of the mothers to drug involvement on the part of the mothers and fifteen years later when those kids are adolescents it reduces the risk for arrest by sixty percent and conviction by almost ninety percent for those kids m s t has multi system a family therapy i mentioned that earlier it's a it's a program which is a clinical intervention six months it's a family based intervention which is proved to be very effective can reduce the risk of receipt of his and buys much as seventy five percent the multi systemic treatment foster care program is one of the most cost effective programs we have it three turns about thirteen dollars for every dollar we invest in it it's also offered deep in what we call deep and kids there to foster care program and it's it's one of the programs which we recommend as going to scale with across the country all three of those programs are programs we could put in across the country and the importance of bullet prevention the bullying prevention program it's a blueprint program is a wonderful by dental basis in norway and that program reduces the incidence of bullying on our elementary and middle school campuses by fifty percent and has a dramatic effect upon the social climber of the school and reduces and actually increases the performance as well produce aren't truces because we don't ask truces a voluntary this is not voluntary offering help and bringing in the community is not the same as saying if you don't go along with this we're going to let you do that there's there's an or else here it's very important but yes the fact is and i am now convinced that the absolute most important preventive action we can take is to define home the very  hardcore that is controlling the streets modern behavior for younger kids and making the community and all the rest of us look like idiots and if they will lose their standing on the street then that no longer becomes an attractive track for younger kids and the danger and the fear that drives them into banding together for self protection is is greatly eased and if i can refer back to mr forbes question thirteen at the local level sees the kind of organized purposeful structure that we're being told in this thirteen hands and i think the stories that are being told about in this thirteen particularly by the f b i are profoundly misleading and i don't know any gang researchers or any people in local law enforcement that agree with those pictures in this instance you mention witness intimidation is a problem what can we do to address that problem the biggest problem we have at the state level is resources and what would you do with additional resources we could read up to move people great distances we can move one side of town to another side of town we can move them temporarily into a motel we can get a cell phone so they can call the police of there's problems we don't need the new identities and move off into some community in arizona but our resources are really tight on that end of the if the if  the federal government could just good to provide some money to get these programs going and then through matching grants that type of thing encourage states does start their own funding stream that would be a huge step in the going to very constructive direction find out that the reason that they're in a gang is because they are bored they didn't have anything to do after school we got them involved in other stuff we have our programs we have dance programs we have leadership programs you name it we've got not turn it up for it it's that what the kids are looking for you know in the cases that they've dropped out of school they need jobs and so we help them get into those so it's really creating alternatives that's the key  see were in this thirteen and other hispanic gangs which is mostly what we're talking about with with ties generally through its three way tie as it's local in the u s has california connection and then there's a latin american connection what we see going on at the local level is very high levels of of crime including some extremely serious violence right so this is not to say it's not important it is important it's very real and it's very dangerous but what we see driving that is the same kind of local nonsense that we see with other gang structures the shots are not being called the either from california or from san salvador so that's all i can speak to is is don't need me right there if there are people in boston who know this inside out and the commitment to public this is a nasty story but boston has said in plain language we kicked this thing to have a question yeah i do well that's my question if i could hear from a gang member their thoughts about what they'd heard any advice that they may have and before you start to say to mr kennedy he missed one connection  would also if i may and i don't i don't like pushing this hard but one of the things that i've discovered working with young people is they don't think they get the chance at the table and they don't think we listen and they affiliation growing up in a housing project growing up in a city minority although i don't have the parents what i found is that in my upbringing there was a lot of negative influences it wasn't no big brother program for me although it existed it wasn't in my neighborhood there was no lawyers clergy or any positive basically male role model positive influences so what i've done in my occupation as a st work is to become that for youth and kids that have gang involvement is to come somebody becomes somebody who's been there done that and who also now is aspiring to live positively and to to try to get them to aspire to want to achieve bigger and better things versus living negative being reactionary rather than proactive so not only in my nonviolent street work i'm also a youth advocate i do job advocacy i do call advocacy i go to court an advocate when i can i'm a mentor i'm a mediator i'm a you know i'm a licensed mediator facilitator and i'm also more importantly i'm a positive role model somebody who's been there who's made who has overcome obstacles and is now willing to give back to the community and help young kids not make the mistakes i've made and what i've come to find is that the thing that strikes a chord with them the most what they need is people that have lived there people that are just like them but that live a whole different frame of mind now that of trying to steer them away from macon versus in their neighborhoods they have a drug deal of low level mid level they have people that are immersed in gang activity and those are the role models those of their peers those are the people they look up to go to peep they look to important information for guidance so i come and i try to intercede and i try to give them better information i try to give them real street knowledge element out there among them or had it how do you help them with that so you know it's one thing if you get a guy on the street that's trying to get them involved in band or selling drugs for monetary reasons but we're hearing a lot from gang members who say that they were just afraid if they didn't join one gang that they would be intimidated and threatened by another are you experiencing that and how do you try to protect them from that one of the ways that i am able to protect them is that i have no bones or problems with speaking to the opposition speaking to the other gangs i'm out at two pm or two am it doesn't matter anyway i can to try and better the life of a young individual what i'm going to do so if they feel if they say look you know i want to come out but i think of i have a problem because you know my needs over there or my senior he i'm really going to be looking to favorably at that i'll go talk to the individual and i will speak to the gang in itself and i let them know who i am what i do and basically people for the most part not just gang members they know right from wrong you know they know right from wrong so they know i'm actually caring and i'm coming with compassion and love for that individual more than likely they don't want any static or bad publicity or anything like that that can come upon them they might most of the time their live leave the kid alone especially because i work with a lot of kids that are under the age of seventy getting threats on you individually in doing this or not ye know violation of parole we can prevent some progress is very small you know it's not real big and we have gang members on all sides of town and it's been a small provinces they're going to meet they're going to run into each other problems come from that he said you know information gathering you know this person said this about me that person is that this about me and you know before it gets out of control etc let them each other out in the streets and public with gunshots and fight an i think the chairman very much this is a issue that i'd like to credit chairman scott for beginning even before one thousand nine hundred five my first year in the united states congress and certainly the work of congresswoman waters in a number of other members i remember flying around on field hearings asking attorney generals and law enforcement officers in  not to fall victim to the prime that and believe that a conservation was the only answer and we have reaped what we have so we literally ceded america to gangs and gang violence primarily because we left no other alternatives and opportunities for young people this may be the most historic and real opportunity for us to get real and to be able to confront many of these issues i would just ask two straightforward work can we explain or get the word by way of resources and prevention dollars to the folks on the street and folks like you were working to make a real decided change i'd just like to try and give you brief example i have a sixteen year old juvenile who's part of an african american gang and in providence that i work with on a constant basis i can follow up i can see outreach to him he called me about three weeks ago he was at a basketball game playing a rival team there were thirty or forty kids from another rival faction that he has beef with that all wanted to get in and because he was on the other side of town he had no protection he didn't have any of his companions women risk in his colleagues or whatever compadres and he called me and he said look david i'm at this basketball game i don't know what to do these dude really want to get at me what am i going to do i said i'll be right in s o s i shot right over the i sat in the bleachers with him because his game had already surpassed i sat in the bleachers with him at the conclusion of the game i actually had assistance from some of my colleagues and some of the faculty at the school to whisk him out of the back of the school and get him out of it now upon the conclusion of the game police came to the area responded because they heard the threat of gang violence potentially happening they pulled over a car and arrested for juveniles who were his potential enemies and confiscated a firearm in the car so what i'm saying it doesn't work of course it does he could probably got killed because he got stopped death you know but because he believed in a youth worker he believed in an adult that could help him and it's just him and get him out of that problem he's been right in since then he hasn't even hung with his excited buddies he hasn't been in any trouble