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GANG CRIME PREVENTION AND THE NEED TO 

FOSTER INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, 

AND HOMELAND SECURITY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

OCTOBER 2, 2007 

Serial No. 110–121 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

CHRIS CANNON, Utah 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

PERRY APELBAUM, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOSEPH GIBSON, Minority Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia, Chairman 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

BOBBY VASSAR, Chief Counsel 

MICHAEL VOLKOV, Minority Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OCTOBER 2, 2007 

Page 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Virginia, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, 

and Homeland Security ....................................................................................... 1 

The Honorable J. Randy Forbes, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Virginia, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security .......................................................................... 3 

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Adam B. Schiff, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 8 

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Maryland 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 11 

The Honorable Joe Baca, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 13 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 14 

The Honorable Nicholas V. Lampson, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Texas 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 15 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 17 

The Honorable Jerry McNerney, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 18 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 19 

The Honorable Charles W. Dent, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Pennsylvania 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 20 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 22 

The Honorable David G. Reichert, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Washington 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 23 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 25 

Mr. Brian W. Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow, Center for Legal and 

Judicial Studies, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 30 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 33 

The Honorable Jerrauld C. Jones, Judge, Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic 

Relations District Court, Norfolk, VA 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 43 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 45 

The Honorable Richard Roper, United States Attorney, Northern District 

of Texas 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 47 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 50 

Page

IV 

Mr. Paul L. Seave, Director, Gang and Youth Violence Policy Office of the 

Governor, Sacramento, CA 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 73 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 74 

Mr. Kevin Pranis, Researcher, Justice Policy Institute, Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 75 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 78 

Mr. Peter Scharf, Executive Director, Center for Society, Law and Justice, 

Austin, TX 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 82 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 85 

APPENDIX 

Material Submitted for the Hearing Record .......................................................... 127 

(1) 

GANG CRIME PREVENTION AND THE NEED 

TO FOSTER INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS AT 

THE FEDERAL LEVEL 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2007 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,

AND HOMELAND SECURITY

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:06 p.m., in Room 

2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Robert C. 

‘‘Bobby’’ Scott (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Scott, Waters, Delahunt, Johnson, Jackson Lee, Sutton, Forbes, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Chabot, and Lungren. 

Staff present: Bobby Vassar, Subcommittee Chief Counsel; Gregory Barnes, Majority Counsel; Veronica Eligan, Professional Staff 

Member; Michael Volkov, Minority Counsel; Caroline Lynch, Minority Counsel; and Kelsey Whitlock, Minority Staff Assistant. 

Mr. SCOTT. The hearing will come to order. 

Good afternoon. I am pleased to open the hearing today on what 

is effective in preventing gang crime and what is not. In working 

on crime issues over the years, I have learned that when it comes 

to crime policy, you have a choice. You can reduce crime, or you 

can play politics. 

The politics of crime calls for so-called tough on crime approaches 

such as more death penalties, more life without parole, a mandatory minimum, treating more juveniles as adults, or gang members, 

even cutting out cable television in the prisons. However, we can 

now show of our research and evidence that, while these approaches sound good, they have done nothing to prevent crime. 

Under the get tough approach no matter how tough you got last 

year, you have to get tougher this year. And we have been getting 

tougher and tougher year after year for over 25 years now. Since 

1980 we have gone from around 200,000 persons incarcerated in 

the United States to over 2 million, with annual prison costs increasing year after year. 

As a result of these approaches, the United States is the world’s 

leading incarcerator by far, with the average incarceration rates at 

seven times the international average. The world incarceration average is about 100 to 150 persons per 100,000 citizens. The average 

rate of incarceration in the United States is over 700 per 100,000. 

2 

In some inner city communities the rate isn’t 700 or 1,000. It is 

2,000, 3,000, as high as 4,000 per 100,000. 

The next highest incarceration rate in the world is 560 per 

100,000 in Russia. Everybody else is much lower than that such as 

India, the world’s leading democracy, the largest democracy with 

36 per 100,000 and China, the largest country by population at a 

rate of 118 per 100,00. 

And the United States has some of the world’s most severe punishments for crime, including juveniles. Of more than 2,200 juveniles sentenced to life without parole, all but 12 are in the United 

States. And some of those given this sentence were first-time offenders under circumstances such as being a passenger in a car 

from which there was a drive-by shooting. 

Under proposals before us to expand the definition of a gang and 

treatment of conspiracies and attempts the same as the commission, we will find that we have a lot more of fringe-involved young 

people serving life without parole sentences. So no one can say that 

we are not already tough on crime. 

All States have provisions which allow, if not require, juveniles, 

some as young as 12, to be treated as adults for trial and sentencing as well as incarceration. Most juveniles who are treated as 

adults are convicted of nonviolent offenses. So we are already very 

tough on crime, including crimes by juveniles. Yet crime persists 

and has been growing. 

Research and analysis, as well as common sense, tells us that no 

matter how tough you are on people you prosecute for crime today, 

unless you are addressing the reasons that got them to the point 

to commit crimes in the first place, the next wave developing in the 

system will simply replace the ones you take out and the crime 

continues. So just getting tough on sentencing has a limited impact 

on crime. 

And the impact for all of this focus on tough on crime approaches 

fall grossly disproportionately on minorities, particularly Black and 

Hispanic children. Many studies have been established that when 

compared to similarly situated White children, minorities are treated more harshly at every stage of the juvenile and criminal justice 

system. 

I am concerned that policies such as expanding the definition of 

gang and expanding gang databases would only exacerbate that 

problem without any impact on reducing crime. These are kids who 

are on a cradle to prison pipeline without appropriate intervention. 

When we see how simple it is to get them on a cradle to college 

pipeline, it is tragic and even more costly to society in the long run 

if we don’t do so. So all of the credible evidence and research shows 

that a continuum of programs for youth identified as at risk to involvement of delinquent behavior, and intervention for those already involved, will save much more than they cost when compared 

to the avoided costs in law enforcement and other costs by reducing 

crime. 

These programs are most effective when they are provided in the 

context of coordinated, collaborative strategy involving the law enforcement community, education, social services, mental health, 

nonprofit, faith-based, and business sectors working with identified 

children at risk of involvement in the criminal justice system. 

3 

I am developing a bill to incorporate these proven concepts and 

will be calling our bill the ‘‘Youth Prison Reduction Through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education,’’ or 

‘‘Youth Promise Act.’’ The bill is being developed in consultation 

with researchers, law enforcement, juvenile justice practitioners, 

and child development experts focusing on research and evidencebased preventive and intervention approaches which have been 

proven to reduce crime. And I look forward to working with my colleagues in adopting these proven concepts. 

I will now yield to my colleague from Virginia, the distinguished 

gentleman from the 4th congressional district, Randy Forbes. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. 

And I would certainly like to thank all of our very distinguished 

witnesses who will be here today. I guess I could sum it up with 

one phrase. Here we go again. 

You know, when we deal with gang problems and gang crimes, 

it is exactly like the end of the Casablanca movie where they look 

around and say, ‘‘Round up the usual suspects.’’ Every time we 

have a problem with gangs—well, I can’t say that. 

The first time we had a problem with gangs, and I brought a 

gang bill before the Committee, those that are now in the majority 

asked this question. They said, ‘‘Do we have a gang problem? We 

don’t really have a gang problem.’’ 

I don’t think anybody questions today whether or not we have a 

gang problem. I think at least that part of it is clear. But beyond 

that, we continue to do the same thing. 

We bring in the same basic arguments. We hear. We chat. We 

talk. And yet we don’t create the solutions that we need to to go 

out and deal with the problem. 

My good friend, the distinguished colleague, says that we can either reduce crime, or we can play politics. Playing politics is what 

we do. We talk, and we talk. And we don’t put any solutions in. 

The Chairman mentioned the fact that we want to have evidenced-based programs. The reality is that over and over again, 

based on witnesses that the majority has brought in to testify on 

these very issues, despite all the money we are spending on prevention programs, their witnesses have said very clearly. 

And, look, I understand. Everybody that has a program—it’s like 

after 9/11. Everybody that wanted to renovate an old building anywhere in the country was coming into my office and saying, ‘‘This 

is all about national security and homeland security.’’ And you 

know, I see people day after day who come before us, and they 

have programs and many of them are meritorious. 

But they are getting funding and money. And it is important for 

them to keep that money stream going. 

But based on the majority’s witnesses and the testimony we have 

had in here, less than 20 percent of the over 600 programs that we 

are funding for gang prevention and prevention of teenage crime 

have ever even been evaluated as to whether or not there was any 

evidence that they actually helped reduce crime. And, in fact, based 

on their witnesses, the testimony was that of the ones that were 

evaluated, some of them where we are spending money were actually harmful. 

4 

We have heard so much of the issues that surround gang violence and gang crimes and the increase in gangs in the country. 

And we recognize that we do have this tick up in violent crime. 

And a lot of it is related to gangs. But there are really two big approaches that we have. 

One of them is this. If I have a school and outside there are five 

individuals who are vandalizing cars and slashing tires, one approach says we are going to go arrest the people that are slashing 

the tires and vandalizing the cars and stop them from doing it. The 

other approach is let us go to the 1,000 that are in the school and 

have a chat with them and tell them why they shouldn’t be out 

there slashing tires and vandalizing the cars. 

And we support prevention programs. We have said that over 

and over again. But one of the things that we have also said is we 

are not going to stop the gang violence in this country until we create the partnerships between the Federal, State and local levels 

that are needed to go after these large gang networks that we are 

seeing across the country. We have got to do that. 

Number two, we have got to stop just waiting until we have 

crimes that are committed, because if we prosecute them, we are 

going to see 20 new people out on the street the next day for every 

one we prosecute. We have got to pull these networks down and 

stop the recruiting machines. 

And then we have also got to recognize that based on the testimony that we have had ad nauseum in this Committee—we have 

had testimony that a large portion of some of the most violent 

gangs in America were a result sometime between 65 and 80 percent of people who were here illegally, which means that most of 

the programs that we have that we are trying to get to prevent 

them would never have stopped them in the first place. And we 

have got to stop that door from continuing to remain open. 

So we thank you for your work. Thank you for being here. We 

are looking forward to your testimony. But I know that hope 

springs eternal. And I am still hoping that one day we will be able 

to actually get the solutions that we need, and get that bill passed 

out of the House and the Senate, so that we can stop this rising 

gang problem that we have across the country. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Forbes. 

I want to recognize the presence of the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Delahunt, and the gentleman from North Carolina, 

Mr. Coble, and ask that additional opening statements be made 

part of the record, without objection. We have two very distinguished panels of witnesses today to help our deliberations about 

Federal solutions to gang crime prevention. 

Our first panel will be a panel of Members. Our first witness will 

be the Honorable Adam B. Schiff. He represents California’s 29th 

Congressional District, serves on the Judiciary Committee and Appropriations Committee during his tenure in Congress, is focused 

on bolstering national security, strengthening our communities, 

and introducing a kids-first agenda of initiatives to improve education, safety and health care for children. 

In fact, among many awards that he has received from local organizations for his commitment to our community is the PresiVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:47 Oct 28, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\100207\38112.000 HJUD1 PsN: 38112
5 

dent’s Award from the Child Education Center Preschool in 

LaCanada for his work on his kids first agenda. He also has been 

presented with Day One’s Community Champion Award for his effort to protect youth through support of after school programs, drug 

prevention programs and children’s health care initiatives. 

Prior to serving in Congress, he was a State senator in California. And before serving in the California legislature, he was an 

assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles for 6 years. He is a graduate 

of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. 

Our next witness will be Elijah Cummings, from Maryland’s 7th 

District. He serves as a senior Member of the House Committee on 

Transportation and Infrastructure and is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation. He continues the work he began as Ranking Member of the now defunct 

Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. 

In that capacity he oversaw the reauthorization of the Office of 

National Drug Control Policy, better known as the drug czar’s office. And he was an outspoken voice of fair treatment-based solutions to the country’s drug problems, as well as for increased and 

comprehensive oversight of our Nation’s clinical laboratory inspection process. 

Prior to Congress, he served in the Maryland House of Delegates 

for 16 years, graduated from Howard University in Washington, 

D.C., and the University of Maryland Law School. He practiced law 

for 19 years before entering Congress. 

Our next witness will be the Honorable Joe Baca, from California’s 43rd District. He serves on the House Agriculture Committee 

and Chairs the Subcommittee on Departmental Operations Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry. He worked for 15 years in community relations with General Telephone and Electric. 

In 1979 he was elected to the board of trustees for the San 

Bernardino Valley College District. He was elected to the State assembly in 1992 and State senate in California in 1998. He earned 

a bachelor’s degree in sociology from California State University at 

Los Angeles. 

And our next witness will be Nick Lampson, from the 22nd District of Texas. He is a Member of the Committee on Science and 

Technology and Chairs the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. In addition to his Committee assignments, he has worked 

hard on behalf of children and education generally. 

He is a former high school science teacher. And his wife, Susan, 

is a special education teacher. He has two degrees from Lamar 

University in Beaumont, Texas, a bachelor’s degree in biology and 

a master’s degree in education. 

Our next witness will be Jerry McNerney, from California’s 11th 

District. He is a first term in the United States House of Representatives, and serves on the Transportation Infrastructure Committee and is a Member of both the Highways and Transit and 

Water Resources and Environmental Subcommittees. He also 

serves on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and House 

Committee on Science and Technology. 

Prior to Congress, he served as a CEO of a startup company that 

manufactures wind turbines. During his career in wind energy, his 

6 

work contributed to saving the equivalent of approximately 30 million barrels of oil. Given this unique background and dedication, he 

is appointed to the Select Committee on Energy and Dependence 

and Global Warming. He has three degrees from the University of 

New Mexico, a bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in mathematics. 

Our next witness will be Charles Dent, from Pennsylvania’s 15th 

District. He serves on the Subcommittee, and he is joining us just 

in time, serves on the Committee of Homeland Security and the 

Committee on Security and Transportation Infrastructure. 

During his congressional tenure he has also worked for urban redevelopment and crime prevention. He has a bachelor’s degree in 

foreign science and international politics from Pennsylvania State 

University and a master’s degree in public administration from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. 

And our final witness will be David Reichert, from Washington’s 

8th District. He is serving his second term as a representative from 

the 8th district. He serves on three Committees, Homeland Security, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Science and Technology. He also serves on the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology. 

Prior to Congress, he served in the King County, Washington, 

Sheriff’s office, and in 1997 became the first elected sheriff in over 

30 years. Under his leadership the county saw a significant drop 

in violent crime. He brought national recognition to the sheriff’s office as head of the Green River task force solving the largest serial 

murder case in United States history. He is a graduate from 

Concordia Lutheran College in Portland. 

And I would want to mention to each of our witnesses that your 

written statements will be entered in the record in their entirety. 

I would ask each of you to summarize your testimony in 5 minutes. 

You are familiar with the lighting devices. And so, we will begin 

with Representative Schiff. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ADAM B. SCHIFF, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having this 

hearing and for inviting us to testify. Those are probably the nicest 

introductions we have ever received by any Chairman. And we are 

very appreciative. 

I also want to thank you for allowing me to suggest a witness 

for the second panel, Paul Seave, who I had the opportunity to 

serve with in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, who then 

went on to become a U.S. attorney in Sacramento, who worked 

with our attorney general on gang prevention and now heads up 

Governor Schwarzenegger’s office of gang and youth violence policy. 

As the Chairman knows, I have long been interested in the gang 

problem, going back to my days as a prosecutor. And I welcome 

this opportunity to testify about H.R. 3547, the Gang Prevention, 

Intervention and Suppression Act, that includes strong prevention 

as well as intervention components. 

Los Angeles, unfortunately, probably has the distinction of being 

the gang capital of the country, maybe the gang capital of the 

world. Our problem is not only extensive in terms of numbers, but 

7 

it is multi-generational. We have seen not only the problem, I 

think, in Los Angeles, but we have also seen part of the solution, 

the positive role that gang intervention workers, such as Homeboy 

Industries in Los Angeles, play in helping gang involved youth find 

an alternative to a life of crime. 

When I was in the State senate, I authored a bill that was 

unique at the time that required that we invest as much in prevention as we are investing in suppression. As the time we were investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the COPS program, which 

I think was money very well spent. But we matched that through 

a bill I authored with Tony Cardenas with an equal amount of 

money for prevention. 

And Rand has subsequently done an analysis of this approach 

and found that this combination of prevention and enforcement has 

been very effective in attacking the problem of gang violence. And 

I think a model similar to that on the Federal level could be equally successful. 

For that reason, in 2005, I introduced a bipartisan gang bill 

along with Representative Mary Bono. And our Senate counterpart 

was introduced by Senators Feinstein and Hatch. Our bill was a 

comprehensive effort to strengthen gang enforcement and prevention efforts. It included numerous tools to help law enforcement 

and prosecutors combat gang violence. And it provided resources to 

bolster the fight against gangs through law enforcement as well as 

intervention and prevention programs for youth. 

However, the prevention components of my bill were stripped out 

last session. A number of death penalties and mandatory minimums were added, and the bill was reintroduced and marked up 

but with the elimination of all the prevention components of the 

bill. I was compelled to vote against the legislation. 

This year Representative Bono and I again joined Senators Feinstein and Hatch to introduce new gang legislation. During the Senate Judiciary markup, a number of changes were made to the Senate bill. And that bill has since passed unanimously. 

I have also been working with my colleagues here in the House 

and with numerous outside organizations interested in this issue to 

revise our legislation, which we introduced in its revised form 2 

weeks ago. And I appreciate the feedback that I have received both 

from the Chairman of the Subcommittee and his staff as well as 

Chairman Conyers. I very much appreciate having Chairman Conyers’ input and support for this legislation. 

The bill provides significant resources for evidence-based community gang prevention, intervention, and reentry activities. It revises 

criminal penalties for gang members who are convicted of gang 

crimes. And significant funding in the bill is directed toward the 

high intensity gang activity area program, which targets resources 

in areas where gang activity is particularly prevalent. 

Significantly, though, half of the funding supports prevention 

and intervention initiatives through schools, community service 

providers and faith-based leaders to provide gang-involved or seriously at-risk youth with alternatives to gangs. And the other half 

of the funding supports multi-jurisdictional criminal street gang 

enforcement teams and research to identify best practices among 

numerous gang prevention and intervention models. 

8 

Our legislation also provides new funding for community-based 

gang prevention and intervention programs for both communities 

with newly emerging gang problems and those with decades old 

issues. The bill also recognizes that education and jobs are critical 

to help gang involved youth and young adults that are reentering 

society from the criminal justice system. The bill has grants to help 

youth develop educational skills and enhance their long-term employability. 

Another grant programs works with young adults to develop the 

skills and education to be placed in an apprenticeship in the construction industry. These prevention programs total a $700 million 

authorization over 5 years. 

H.R. 3547 is a comprehensive bill that recognizes that enforcement efforts are necessary to address our gang problem and authorizes $500 million over 5 years for suppression activities. The 

legislation includes funding for DOJ’s Project Safe Neighborhoods 

anti-gang initiative. It expands the FBI Safe Street Program to 

support gang enforcement. It also provides grants to State and 

local law enforcement and prosecutors for hiring, technology, equipment and training. 

Legislation also amends the criminal code to define criminal 

street gang and gang crime and sets out penalties for commission 

of a gang crime and furtherance of the gang and for recruitment. 

The bill also addresses violent crimes committed during drug trafficking. And it also limits possession of firearms by adjudicated 

gang members and terrorists, and it raises the statute of limitations on violent crimes and terrorism offenses. 

I am proud of the efforts we have made in this legislation to comprehensively address the gang problem. And I believe this takes an 

important step toward providing the resources and tools to attack 

the problem at its roots. The legislation is supported by members 

and organizations across the political spectrum, from the Conference of Mayors to the National Association of Police Organizations, from L.A. Mayor, Villaraigosa to California Governor Arnold 

Schwarzenegger. 

Again, we made substantial changes from the earlier introduced 

version of the bill and from the Senate vehicle, which I encourage 

the Subcommittee to examine carefully. And I thank the Chairman 

again for the opportunity to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schiff follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ADAM B. SCHIFF, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to testify before the Subcommittee. This 

hearing focuses on gang crime prevention and the need to foster innovative solutions 

at the federal level. I have long been interested in gang crime prevention, and I am 

proud that my legislation, H.R. 3547, the Gang Prevention, Intervention and Suppression Act, includes strong prevention and intervention components. 

Since my days as a prosecutor, I have been concerned with the growing threat 

posed by gangs. I have seen the destructive impact that gangs have on families, our 

youth, and our communities. And I have the positive role that gang intervention 

workers, such as Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, play in helping gang-involved 

youth find an alternative to a life of crime. 

As a state Senator, I authored one of the landmark approaches to dealing with 

juvenile crime, and for the first time, we invested as much in the prevention of 

crime as in the suppression of crime. We put $100 million into preventive work to 

keep kids out of trouble, and we matched it with $100 million in the COPS program. 

9 

Analyses have demonstrated its effectiveness. I believe that such a model that invests heavily in prevention programs should be implemented at the federal level. 

For this reason, in 2005, I introduced a bipartisan gang bill along with Rep. Mary 

Bono, and our counterpart Senate legislation was introduced by Senators Feinstein 

and Hatch. Our bill was a comprehensive effort to strengthen gang enforcement and 

prevention efforts. It included numerous tools to help law enforcement and prosecutors combat gang violence, and it provided resources to bolster the fight against 

gangs through law enforcement as well as intervention and prevention programs for 

at-risk youth. However, the prevention components of my bill were stripped out, numerous death penalties and mandatory minimums were added and the reintroduced 

bill was marked up in this Committee. I offered amendments to add back in the 

prevention elements, but these efforts failed. I was compelled to vote against the 

legislation. 

This year, Rep. Bono and I joined with Senators Feinstein and Hatch to introduce 

new gang legislation. During Senate Judiciary Committee markup, a number of 

changes were made to the Senate bill and the bill has since passed unanimously. 

I have also worked with my colleagues and with numerous outside organizations interested in this issue to revise our legislation. We introduced the revised legislation 

two weeks ago. I am proud to have Chairman Conyers’ support throughout the process. 

The bill provides significant resources for evidence-based community-based gang 

prevention, intervention and reentry activities, and revises criminal penalties for 

gang members who are convicted of gang crimes. Significant funding in the bill is 

directed toward the High Intensity Gang Activity Area program, which targets resources in areas where gang activity is particularly prevalent. Half of the funding 

supports prevention and intervention initiatives through schools, community service 

providers and faith-based leaders to provide gang-involved or seriously at-risk youth 

with alternatives to gangs. The other half of the funding supports multi-jurisdictional criminal street gang enforcement teams and research to identify best practices among numerous gang prevention and intervention models to develop best 

practices. 

Our legislation also provides new funding for community-based gang prevention 

and intervention programs for both communities with newly emerging gang problems and those with decades-old issues. The bill also recognizes that education and 

jobs are critical to help gang-involved youth and young adults that are reentering 

society from the criminal justice system. The bill includes grants to help youth develop educational skills and enhance their long-term employability. Another grant 

program works with young adults to develop the skills and education to be placed 

in an apprenticeship in the construction industries. These prevention programs total 

a $700 million authorization over 5 years. 

H.R. 3547 is comprehensive legislation that recognizes that enforcement efforts 

are necessary to address our gang problem and authorizes $500 million over five 

years for suppression activities. The legislation includes funding for DOJ’s Project 

Safe Neighborhoods anti-gang initiative. It also expands the FBI Safe Street program to support gang enforcement. The bill also provides grants to state and local 

law enforcement and prosecutors for hiring, technology, equipment and training. 

The legislation also amends the criminal code to define ‘‘criminal street gang’’ and 

‘‘gang crime’’ and sets out penalties for commission of a gang crime in furtherance 

of the gang and for recruitment. The bill also addresses violent crimes committed 

during drug trafficking. The bill limits possession of firearms by adjudicated gang 

members and terrorists, and it raises the statute of limitations on violent crimes 

and terrorism offenses. 

I am proud of the efforts we made in this legislation to comprehensively address 

the gang problem, and I believe this legislation takes important steps to provide resources and tools attack the problem at its roots. The legislation is supported by 

Members and organizations across the political spectrum from the Conference of 

Mayors to the National Association of Police Organizations, from Los Angeles Mayor 

Villaraigosa to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Thank you again Mr. Chairman for this opportunity to testify on my legislation. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. We have been joined by the gentlelady 

from California, Ms. Waters. 

Mr. Cummings? 

10 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF 

MARYLAND 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

To Mr. Forbes and to the entire Committee, I appreciate this opportunity. 

And to you, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your efforts 

to try to do some things to prevent some of the problems that we 

are now seeing in all of our communities. Today’s hearing is extremely timely. Last week during the Congressional Black Caucus, 

annual legislative caucus, I hosted a panel issue forum that discussed a group of gangs and drug-related gang activity and their 

impact in our communities. 

As you know, gangs are very real and a very serious threat 

which do not recognize geographical, socio-economic or racial 

boundaries. They are not just plaguing our inner cities. We are 

finding them in increasing numbers in the suburbs as well. 

In Baltimore City, gang activity has historically been limited to 

small neighborhood crews. But we are now seeing an alarming 

trend where these smaller groups are beginning to identify with 

the national gangs like the Bloods, the Crips and MS-13. If we do 

not stop this trend before it spreads, we will begin to see gang activity across the country that is comparable to many other cities. 

We must also address the allure of gangs to our children. The 

number one preventive action we can take to help our children 

avoid gang involvement is strong parenting. We must be active in 

their lives, whether it is helping them with their homework, eating 

dinner with them as a family or just talking to them, and as my 

mother would often say, keeping them busy in positive activities. 

It is also critical that parents learn the warning signs so that 

they might identify gang activity. While preventing young people 

from being lured into gangs is such an important part of addressing the crime problem plaguing our country, it is only one of many 

steps we need to take. 

One large part of reducing the violence in our communities is 

recognizing that without witnesses there will be no justice. I am referring to the conspiracy of silence associated with witness intimidation. Known murderers in Baltimore right now walk the streets 

because witnesses are too scared to come forward. 

I was motivated to address the issue of witness intimidation 

after the death of Angela and Carnell Dawson and their five children, ages 9 to 14. They lived only a few blocks from where I live. 

The entire family was incinerated in October of 2002, when their 

home was fire bombed in the middle of the night in retaliation for 

Ms. Dawson’s repeated complaints to police about recurring drug 

trafficking in her East Baltimore neighborhood. In my home town 

of Baltimore, it is estimated that witness intimidation occurs in 90 

percent, 90 percent of the cases. 

We must also combat the stop snitching movement spreading 

through our streets. And we must come together as a community 

to rise up against the campaign of intimidation and fear. 

Protecting witnesses is a core Government function. It is standard in the Federal system. And State and local prosecutors should 

have the same tools. Currently there is a great disparity between 

11 

funding and witnesses services, if any, that are provided by local 

authorities and the Federal witness security program within the 

United States Marshal Service that operates on a $40 million budget. 

For example, the witness assistance program in my home town 

of Baltimore, which has the unfortunate distinction of being one of 

the most dangerous cities in the United States, is only able to obtain $300,000 per year from the state of Maryland. This is why I 

introduced H.R. 933, the Witness Security Protection Act of 2007, 

that authorizes $270 million over the next 3 years to enable States 

and local prosecutors to establish short-term witness protection 

programs. 

Priority will be given to prosecuting offices in States with an average of at least 100 murders during the immediate past 5 years. 

However, smaller entities also have a chance to receive funding. 

H.R. 933 and H.R. 3547, the Gang Abatement Intervention and 

Suppression Act, introduced by the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Schiff, will assist in correcting this inequity and allow us to demonstrate our commitment to our constituents and the justice system. 

In closing, please know that I appreciate this opportunity to testify before you. But please keep in mind that, without witnesses 

and the cooperation of the public, our criminal justice system and 

our system of justice simply cannot function. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cummings follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Good Afternoon. 

Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, and Members of the Subcommittee, I 

appreciate the opportunity to testify before you regarding gang crime prevention. 

This is a very important issue to me. Just last week, during the CBC Annual Legislative Conference I hosted a three-panel issue forum that discussed the grip of 

gangs and drug-related gang activity, and their impact in our communities. 

Violent crime in the United States is on the rise nationwide. 

According to a report recently released by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting 

Program: 

• robberies surged in 2006 by 7.2 percent; 

• homicides rose by 1.8 percent; and 

• violent crime overall rose by 1.9 percent. 

Taken together, 2005 and 2006 represent the first steady increase in violent crime 

since 1993. 

We need look no further than my hometown of Baltimore City, where we are 

headed for record-breaking incidents of violence. 

Yesterday, the Baltimore Sun reported that since January 1st there have been 

231 homicides, eclipsing the rate set during the same period last year by 23. At this 

pace, it is conceivable that the City will regretfully reach 300 homicides by the end 

of the year. While this figure is significantly lower than the record-high 353 homicides in 1993, the current situation is simply unacceptable. 

I find these statistics to be deeply troubling, and I know that they are attributable, in large part, to the ravages of gang activity in our communities. 

As you know, gangs are a very real and serious threat, which do not recognize 

geographical, socio-economic, or racial boundaries. 

They are not just plaguing our inner cities—we are finding them in increasing 

numbers in the suburbs, as well. 

In Baltimore City, gang activity has historically been limited to small, neighborhood crews, but we are now seeing an alarming trend where these smaller groups 

are beginning to identify with the national gangs like the Blood and the Crips. 

12 

If we do not stop this trend before it spreads, we will begin to see gang activity 

across the country that is comparable to that of cities like Los Angeles, with whole 

generations affected. 

We must also address the allure of gangs to our children. It is time for us to come 

together as a community to minimize these risk factors. The number one preventive 

action we can take to help our children avoid gang involvement is strong parenting. 

We must be active in their lives, whether it is helping them with their homework, 

sitting down to eat dinner with them, or just talking to them about the events taking place in their daily lives. 

We must be proactive in knowing whom our children are befriending and what 

they do in their spare time. We must ensure that our children know they are loved 

and valued. We must keep informed of their progress in school and be in communication with their teachers. We must provide constructive activities to keep them 

engaged. 

It is also critical that parents learn the warning signs so that they might identify 

gang activity. The things our children say at the dinner table or to their friends on 

the phone or through the internet may be more than just harmless slang; they may 

be specific gang language. Likewise, a wardrobe filled with one particular color may 

not be indicative that the child merely favors it; it could be the color representing 

that child’s gang. 

Most gang members go through progressive stages of involvement, and early detection can play a key role in helping our children before it is too late. It is hard 

for any parent to believe that his or her child may fall victim to this epidemic, but 

the risk is real. We must be prepared to recognize and prevent the risk. 

In my Congressional District, I have teamed up with Mr. Frank Clark, the Director of Gang Intervention and Investigation for the Maryland Department of Juvenile 

Services, to hold three gang prevention summits. 

Mr. Clark gives an excellent presentation for parents, teachers, and other members of the community to educate them about the signs and language of gang activity to make sure that we do not mistakenly dismiss dangerous communication from 

our children as harmless or useless slang. 

While preventing young people from being lured into gangs is such an important 

part of addressing the crime problem plaguing our country, it is only one of many 

steps we need to take. 

One large part of reducing the violence in our communities is through recognizing 

that without witnesses, there can be no justice. I am referring to the ‘‘conspiracy 

of silence’’ associated with witness intimidation. Known murderers walk the streets 

because witnesses are too afraid to come forward. 

I was motivated to address the issue of witness intimidation after the death of 

Angela and Carnell Dawson and their five children, ages 9 to 14. The entire family 

was killed in October 2002, when their home was firebombed in retaliation for Mrs. 

Dawson’s repeated complaints to the police about recurring drug trafficking in her 

East Baltimore neighborhood. 

Witness intimidation is a plague on our justice system. According to the National 

Institute of Justice, 51 percent of prosecutors in large jurisdictions find witness intimidation to be a major problem. These prosecutors also suspect that witness intimidation occurs in up to 75 to 100 percent of the violent crimes committed in 

gang-dominated neighbors. In my hometown of Baltimore City, it is estimated that 

witness intimidation occurs in 90 percent of the cases that are prosecuted. 

We must combat the ‘‘Stop Snitchin’’ movement spreading through our streets, 

and we must come together as a community to rise against this campaign of intimidation and fear. 

I have been working closely with the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City Patricia 

Jessamy to help curb witness intimidation and spread the message that coming forward as a witness to a crime is not snitching—it is the right thing to do. In fact, 

we are working on putting together a public service announcement to air throughout 

Baltimore encouraging witnesses to come forward and educating them about how to 

effectively do so without becoming the victim of retaliation. 

Protecting witnesses is a core government function. It is standard in the federal 

system and state and local prosecutors should have the same tools. 

Currently, there is a great disparity between funding and witness services (if any) 

that are provided by local authorities and the federal witness security program 

within the U.S. Marshals Services that operates on a $40 million budget. 

In comparison, the witness assistance program in my hometown of Baltimore 

City, which has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most dangerous cities 

in the United States, is only able to obtain $300,000 per year from the state. 

This is why I introduced H.R. 933, the Witness Security and Protection Act of 

2007 that authorizes $270 million over the next three years to enable state and local 

13 

prosecutors who demonstrate a need for funds to protect witnesses in cases involving gangs or other violence to establish short-term witness protection programs. 

Improving protection for state and local witnesses will move us one step closer 

to alleviating the fears and threats to prospective witnesses and help safeguard our 

communities from violence. It is time that we show our commitment to our constituents and the justice system—because without witnesses, there can be no justice. 

In closing, please know that I appreciate the opportunity to testify before this 

Subcommittee. I also commend each of my colleagues on the panel for their work 

in the area of gang prevention and awareness. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. I think that is a recess. So it wasn’t a 

vote, so we are not in as much hurry as we thought we were when 

the bells went off. 

I want to recognize the gentlelady from Ohio, Ms. Sutton, and 

her presence. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Baca? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOE BACA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. BACA. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman Scott and Ranking 

Member Forbes and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. 

I am pleased to present testimony today in behalf of H.R. 1069, the 

Mynisha Law. 

This bill serves two primary purposes. First, it directs the attorney general to review an application from cities wanting to be designated as comprehensive gang prevention and relief areas. 

Second, it establishes an inter-agency gang prevention task force 

where Federal agencies will coordinate efforts focused on gang prevention. I would like to share with you a sad story behind the creation of the Mynisha Law. 

Senator Boxer and I became involved with a local anti-gang 

group called Mynisha’s Circle that was formed in the wake of a 

killing of an 11-year-old named Mynisha Crenshaw, who died on 

November 13, 2005. Young Mynisha was from my district in San 

Bernardino, California. 

She was killed while eating Sunday dinner with her family, after 

gang members shot at the Crenshaw home located in Cedar Apartment in the Del Rosa neighborhood. Another young, innocent life 

was lost due to gang violence. And there are 24,500 gangs operating in the United States. 

These acts of violence are not uncommon for city streets. Young 

people regularly claim that they live in the world of domestic warfare. 

We hear about the devastation happening in Iraq. And we honor 

the soldiers fighting for freedom. But are we not giving the necessary tools to young people here in our own country to avoid gang 

problems? We are willing to provide those in Iraq. But are we willing to provide the tools for those that are right here in the United 

States to fight gangs? 

We do not hear about the mother who has to bury the young son 

or daughter. We do not see the elementary, middle school aged children who are recruited to join the ranks of gang members for sisterhood. And after Mynisha’s death, I am proud to say that our 

community did unite. We came together and vowed to find solutions to gang violent crisis. Mynisha’s Circle was created as a 

forum to address this issue. 

14 

Senator Boxer, with the help of Reverend Beamon and Steve 

Lambert and other members of the Mynisha’s Circle created S. 

2671, Mynisha Law. I am proud to sponsor the House companion 

to the Senate bill. 

This bill is critical to fight against gangs. It creates a Federal 

task force with members from the Departments of Justice, Education, Labor, Health, Human Services, Housing and Urban Development. This task was to create a comprehensive national prevention strategy that would focus on all aspects to fight against gangs 

from early childhood intervention to at risk youth intervention, literacy, employment and community policing. 

By allowing the attorney general to decide which city has the 

highest gang activity, many communities where gang violence is 

growing or is out of control will have a newfound resource to combat the issue. Anyone who thinks this bill is unnecessary or that 

gang violence is no longer a problem in America is wrong, and I 

state, is wrong. 

There are currently an estimated 24,500 gangs operating in the 

United States. Gang violence and drug trafficking remains a serious problem throughout the country causing injuries and death to 

innocent victims and too often, children that will never fulfil their 

lives. 

According to the National Drug Threat Assessment, criminal 

street gangs are responsible for the distribution of much of the cocaine, methamphetamines, heroine, and other illegal drugs 

throughout the United States. I thank Chairman Scott for your 

leadership and your support. 

I thank Reverend Schiff and others for including the Mynisha 

provision in the gang prevention bill. It is important that we explore all avenues, and I state, that we explore all avenues, in addressing the issue because the cause of inaction, I state the cause 

of inaction is too high. 

We cannot forget that we are fighting for the future to make tomorrow a better and safe place for our children. We want our children to fulfil their lives. We want our children to have a better 

quality of life, and we want our neighborhoods to have a better 

quality of life. 

I yield back the balance of my time. And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this important hearing. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Baca follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOE BACA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Good afternoon Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, and distinguished 

members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to present testimony today on behalf 

of HR 1069, Mynisha’s Law. 

This bill serves two primary purposes: first, it directs the Attorney General to review applications from cities wanting to be designated as Comprehensive Gang Prevention and Relief Areas; and second, it establishes an Interagency Gang Prevention 

Task Force where federal agencies will coordinate efforts focused on gang prevention. 

I would like to share with you the sad story behind the creation of Mynisha’s Law. 

Senator Barbara Boxer and I became involved with a local anti-gang group called 

Mynisha’s Circle that was formed in the wake of the killing of eleven year old 

Mynisha Crenshaw, who died on November 13, 2005. 

Young Mynisha was from my district, in San Bernardino, California. She was 

killed while eating Sunday dinner with her family after gang members shot at the 

15 

Crenshaw home, located at the Cedarwood Apartments in the Del Rosa neighborhood. 

Another young, innocent life was lost due to gang violence. 

These acts of violence are not uncommon for city streets. Young people regularly 

claim they live in a world of domestic warfare. 

We hear about the devastation happening in Iraq and we honor the soldiers fighting for our freedom. But, we are not giving the necessary tools to young people here, 

in our own country, to avoid gang life. 

We do not hear about the mothers who have to bury there young sons and daughters. We do not see the elementary and middle-school aged children who are recruited to join the ranks of gang brother and sisterhood. 

After Mynisha’s death, I am proud to say that our community did unite. We came 

together and vowed to find solutions to the gang violence crisis. Mynisha’s Circle 

was created as a forum to address this issue. 

And Senator Boxer, with the help of Rev. Reggie Beamon, Steve Lambert and 

other members of Mynisha’s Circle, created S. 2671 Mynisha’s Law. I am proud to 

sponsor the House companion to the Senate bill. 

This bill is crucial to the fight against gangs. 

It creates a Federal Gang Task Force—with members from the Departments of 

Justice, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. 

This task force would create a comprehensive national gang prevention strategy 

that would focus on all aspects of the fight against gangs—from early childhood 

intervention to at-risk youth intervention, literacy, employment, and community policing. 

By allowing the Attorney General to decide which cities have the highest gang 

activity, many communities where gang violence is growing or is out of control will 

have newfound resources to combat this issue. 

Anyone who thinks this bill is unnecessary, or that gang violence is no longer a 

problem in America is wrong. There are currently an estimated 24,500 gangs operating within the United States. Gang violence and drug trafficking remain serious 

problems throughout the country, causing injury and death to innocent victims, and 

too often children. 

According to the National Drug Threat Assessment—criminal street gangs are responsible for the distribution of much of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and 

other illegal drugs throughout the United States. 

I thank you, Chairman Scott for your leadership and support, and I thank Rep. 

Schiff and others for including Mynisha’s provisions in your gang prevention bills. 

It is important that we explore all avenues in addressing this issue because the 

cost of inaction is too high. We cannot forget that we are fighting for the future, 

to make tomorrow a better and safer place for our children. Thank you. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Baca. 

Mr. Lampson? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE NICHOLAS V. LAMPSON, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Mr. LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman Scott, Ranking Member 

Forbes, for taking our testimony today regarding our efforts to 

catch, prosecute, and incarcerate gang members. 

Gang participation has reached obviously unacceptable levels in 

our country. And it is threatening the safety and security of big cities as well as small towns. And according to the Department of 

Justice, 82 percent of police departments serving large cities have 

reported youth gangs while the DOJ also reports gang activity has 

been increasing in smaller cities since 1999. 

In my district in Houston, crime has been on the rise. FBI reports growing trends of murder, rape and assault from 2005 to 

2006. And according to law enforcement officials, much of this increase in crime in Houston is related to the relocation of street 

gangs and drug traffickers from New Orleans following Hurricane 

Katrina. 

16 

The New Orleans gangs are extremely violent and intimidate 

many of the established Houston gangs. As such, gang-related 

crime, particularly gang-related murders, has increased significantly. Additionally, New Orleans gangs have expressed intent to 

take over large portions of the Houston drug market, which could 

lead to further violence. We must be vigilant to protect our communities from these thugs and criminals. 

Recently, I introduced the Prosecutorial Tools Improvement Act 

of 2007, which will make our homes safer by providing greater latitude and resources to our Nation’s prosecutors to go after the gangs 

with the fullest extent of the law. 

H.R. 3462 protects families and communities by enhancing criminal penalties for violent felonies committed during and in relation 

to drug trafficking crimes. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, NDIC, high levels of violent crime in Houston, 

Texas are ‘‘closely associated with the distribution and abuse of illicit drugs, particularly crack cocaine and methamphetamine. 

Crack cocaine is the drug most associated with violent and property crime.’’ 

The NDIC affirms that gangs involved in drug crimes are responsible for violent assaults, car jackings, drive-by shootings, home invasions, robberies and firearm violations. They commit these acts 

to protect and to expand their drug operations. These criminal activities must be stopped. And my legislation sends a strong and 

clear message, ‘‘We will catch you, and we will put you in jail.’’ 

Texas highways have become thoroughfares for the drug trade. 

Unfortunately, Houston has become the on ramp. The Texas Highway Patrol leads the Nation in criminal arrests and seizures of 

drugs and in currency. Between 60 and 80 percent of all drugs pass 

through Houston alone. 

My bill imposes stiff penalties for crimes committed by drug traffickers and gangs that participate in drug trafficking. The Prosecutorial Tools Improvement Act of 2007 mandates a life sentence for 

incidents of murder or kidnapping that are in relation to drug trafficking. 

Other violent crimes will result in imprisonment for a minimum 

of 30 years. And crimes such as conspiracy to commit a violent 

crime will result in imprisonment for a minimum of 10 to 20 years. 

By instituting harsher penalties and strengthening the consequences for gang involvement prosecutors will be given the tools 

they need to pursue and punish modern gangs. 

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, the income drug trafficking provides for gangs 

serves to attract many young people, especially runaways and 

homeless children. The NCMEC has outlined that gang activity 

when combined with trafficking of crack or other drugs is ‘‘becoming increasingly involved in prostitution of youth,’’ which can prove 

to be very profitable for gangs. 

As co-chairman and founder of the Congressional Caucus on 

Missing and Exploited Children, this is an issue of the utmost importance to me. As a father and grandfather, I know that the protection of our children is paramount. We can deter our Nation’s 

children from joining gangs by imposing stiff penalties for gang acVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:47 Oct 28, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\100207\38112.000 HJUD1 PsN: 38112
17 

tivity, as well as providing opportunities for young people in their 

communities that keep them off the street. 

And finally, Mr. Chairman, my bill increases the ability for our 

law enforcement agencies to pursue terrorists by increasing the 

statute of limitations from 8 to 10 years. Terrorism is the greatest 

threat we face as a free Nation. Time should not stand between 

terrorists and justice. We must ensure that prosecutors have every 

tool they need to fight terrorism. 

Gang cause irreparable damage to communities and families 

throughout the United States. My bill gives prosecutors the tools 

they need to stop gang violence from invading our neighborhoods. 

Violent gang complaints are up 38 percent since 2002. But convictions have only increased by 12 percent. Clearly, we need more 

tools and resources to combat and stop gangs. This is exactly what 

my bill, the Prosecutorial Tools Improvement Act, does. 

I thank you for this important hearing and for listening to our 

testimony, Mr. Chairman and Committee. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lampson follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE NICHOLAS V. LAMPSON, A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, and Members of the Subcommittee: 

thank you for taking my testimony today about my efforts to catch, prosecute and 

incarcerate gang members. 

Gang participation has reached unacceptable levels in our country and is threatening the safety and security of big cities, as well as small towns. According Department of Justice, 82% of police departments serving large cities have reported youth 

gangs while the DOJ also reports gang activity has been increasing in smaller cities 

since 1999. 

In my district, in Houston, crime has been on the rise, FBI reports growing trends 

of murder, rape and assault from 2005 to 2006. According to law enforcement officials, much of this increase in crime in Houston is related to the relocation of street 

gangs and drug traffickers from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. 

The New Orleans gangs are extremely violent and intimidate many of the established Houston gangs. As such, gang-related crime, particularly gang-related murders, has increased significantly. Additionally, New Orleans gangs have expressed 

intent to take over large portions of the Houston drug market, which could lead to 

further violence. 

We must be vigilant to protect our communities from these thugs and criminals. 

Recently I introduced the Prosecutorial Tools Improvement Act of 2007, which will 

make our homes safer by providing greater latitude and resources to our nation’s 

prosecutors to go after gangs with the fullest extent of the law. 

H.R. 3462 protects families and communities by enhancing criminal penalties for 

violent felonies committed during and in relation to drug trafficking crimes. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), high levels of violent crime 

in Houston, Texas are ‘‘closely associated with the distribution and abuse of illicit 

drugs, particularly crack cocaine and methamphetamine. Crack cocaine is the drug 

most associated with violent and property crime.’’ 

The NDIC affirms that gangs involved in drug crimes are responsible for violent 

‘‘assaults, carjacking, drive-by shootings, home invasions, robberies, and firearms 

violations.’’ They commit these acts ‘‘to protect and expand their drug operations.’’ 

These criminal activities must be stopped. My legislation sends a strong and clear 

message—we will catch you, and we will put you in jail. 

Texas’ highways have become thoroughfares for the drug trade, unfortunately 

Houston has become the on ramp. The Texas Highway Patrol leads the nation in 

criminal arrests and seizures of drugs and currency, between 60 and 80 percent of 

drugs pass through Houston alone. 

My bill imposes stiff penalties for crimes committed by drug traffickers and gangs 

that participate in drug trafficking. The Prosecutorial Tools Improvement Act of 

2007 mandates a life sentence for incidents of murder or kidnapping that are in relation to drug trafficking. Other violent felonies will result in imprisonment for a 

minimum of 30 years. And crimes such as, conspiracy to commit a violent crime, 

will result in imprisonment for a minimum of 10 to 20 years. 

18 

By instituting harsher penalties, and strengthening the consequences for gang involvement, prosecutors will be given tools they need to pursue and punish modern 

gangs. 

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, 

the income drug trafficking provides for gangs serves to attract many young people, 

especially runaways and homeless children. 

NCMEC has outlined that gang activity, when combined with the trafficking of 

crack or other drugs is ‘‘becoming increasingly involved in the prostitution of youth,’’ 

which can prove to be very profitable for gangs. 

As co-chairman and founder of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children 

Caucus, this is an issue of the utmost importance to me. As a father and grandfather, I know that the protection of our children is paramount. We can deter our 

nation’s children from joining gangs, by imposing stiff penalties for gang activity, 

as well as providing opportunities for young people in their community that keeps 

them off the street. 

Finally, my bill increases the ability for our law enforcement agencies to pursue 

terrorists by increasing the statute of limitations from eight years to ten. Terrorism 

is the greatest threat we face as a free nation, time should not stand between terrorists and justice. We must ensure that prosecutors have every tool they need to 

fight terrorism. 

Gangs cause irreparable damage to communities and families throughout the 

United States. My bill gives prosecutors the tools they need to stop gang violence 

from invading our neighborhoods. Violent Gang complaints are up 38 percent since 

2002, but convictions have only increased 12 percent. Clearly, we need more tools 

and resources to combat and stop gangs. That is exactly what my bill, the Prosecutorial Tools Improvement Act, does. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. McNerney? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JERRY McNERNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member 

Forbes and distinguished Members on the Subcommittee on Crime, 

Terrorism, and Homeland Security. I appreciate the opportunity to 

speak here today about gang activity and about my bill, H.R. 3474, 

the National Safe Streets Gang Crime Prevention Act, which will 

provide law enforcement agencies across the country the tools they 

need to fight gangs and prevent crime. 

My constituents and individuals across the Nation are fighting to 

protect their communities, schools and children by taking strong 

stands against gangs. Unfortunately, the growth in gangs and gang 

activities shows that the existing enforcement mechanisms alone 

are not sufficient to stop the gangs. And in fact, the Ranking Member and the Chairman both pointed out the difficulties with our 

current system. 

We also need to establish strong prevention tools for our authorities to manage and reduce gangs and gang-related problems. We 

need to stop gang crimes before they get started. 

We should provide all levels of law enforcement the necessary resources to prevent gang activity. And one of the best things we can 

do is share information and work together. 

Gang activity does not stay neatly within one jurisdiction. It 

spreads out across geographic boundaries. Therefore, law enforcement officials need a mechanism to share intelligence and track 

crime. I have witnessed what this level of cooperation can do locally to prevent gang activity. 

19 

In my district, the city of Stockton Police Department coordinated efforts with the DEA, the FBI, and the ATF and other local 

jurisdictions to target suspect drug traffickers and gang operations 

in San Joaquin County. Impressively, these efforts have resulted in 

51 arrests since January. It is clear when law enforcement agencies 

share information and work together they can reduce gang activities. 

Inter-agency cooperation is critical to preventing crimes. That is 

why I introduced the Safe Streets Gang Crime Prevention Act of 

2007. My bill creates a strong gang national database to allow law 

enforcement officials nationwide and at all levels of law enforcement to share information and track gang members and their activities. 

The data will contain information on gangs, gang members, firearms, criminal activities, vehicles and other background information that can help solve crimes. This database will be accessible to 

law enforcement officers nationwide to prevent gang crime. 

Additionally, my bill provides funding to expand the FBI’s Safe 

Street Program, which has also been mentioned this afternoon, 

which conducts long-term investigations of violent gangs in coordination with other law enforcement agencies. This legislation will 

have a significant impact on reducing gang activity. 

Since coming to Congress I have seen firsthand how Federal, 

State, and local law enforcement officers have done an outstanding 

job in their fight against gang crime. In fact, just this weekend the 

city of Manteca Police Department’s gang unit discovered a large 

cache of weapons and was able to arrest the documented gang 

member who was responsible. Yet despite some successes, gang 

crimes still constitute a significant threat. 

In the largest city in my district there are at least 84 gangs and 

hundreds more in the state of California. With this level of membership and activity, information sharing is absolutely vital. 

Mr. Chairman, gang crime can be prevented if we work together. 

I thank you for this opportunity to testify. That concludes my written statement. 

I want to say that your comments have been useful. There have 

been many things that have been tried in the past. We need to be 

open to new ideas. And that is exactly what this panel is trying to 

produce. I yield back the balance of my time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McNerney follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JERRY MCNERNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Thank you Chairman Scott and Members of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security: I appreciate the opportunity to speak today about 

gang crime, and my bill, H.R. 3474, the National Safe Streets Gang Crime Prevention Act, which provides law enforcement agencies across the country the tools they 

need to fight gangs and prevent crime. 

My constituents, and individuals across the nation, are fighting to protect their 

communities, schools, and children by taking a strong stand against gangs. 

Unfortunately, growth in gangs and gang activities shows that existing enforcement mechanisms alone are not sufficient to stop gangs. We also need to establish 

strong prevention tools for our authorities to manage and reduce gangs and gang 

related problems. We need to stop gang crime before it gets started. 

We should provide all levels of law enforcement the necessary resources to prevent gang activity, and one of the best things we can do is share information and 

work together. 

20 

Gang activity does not stay neatly within one jurisdiction; it spreads across geographic boundaries. Therefore, law enforcement officials need a mechanism to easily 

share intelligence and track crime. 

I have witnessed what this level of cooperation can do locally to prevent gang activity. In my district, the City of Stockton Police Department coordinated efforts 

with the DEA, FBI, ATF, and other local jurisdictions to target suspected drug traffickers and gangs operating in San Joaquin County. Impressively, these efforts have 

resulted in 51 arrests since January. 

It’s clear: when law enforcement agencies share information and work together 

they can reduce gang activity. 

Interagency coordination is critical to preventing crimes. 

That is why I introduced the Safe Streets Gang Crime Prevention Act of 2007. 

My bill creates a National Gang Activity Database to allow law enforcement officials 

nationwide—and at all levels—to share information and track gang members and 

their activities. 

The database will contain information on gangs, gang members, firearms, criminal activities, vehicles, and other background information that can help solve 

crimes. This database will be accessible to law enforcement officials nationwide to 

help prevent gang crime. 

Additionally, my bill provides funding to expand the FBI’s Safe Streets Program, 

which conducts long-term investigations of violent gangs in coordination with other 

law enforcement agencies. 

This legislation will have a significant impact on reducing gang activity. 

Since coming to Congress, I have seen firsthand how federal, state, and local law 

enforcement officers have done an outstanding job in their fight against gang crime. 

I cannot commend them enough. In fact, just this weekend, the Manteca Police Department’s Gang Unit discovered a large cache of weapons and was able to arrest 

the documented gang member who was responsible. 

Yet despite some successes, gang crime still constitutes a significant threat to our 

nation. 

In the largest city in my district, there are at least 84 gangs and hundreds more 

in the state of California. With this level of membership and activity, information 

sharing is absolutely vital. 

Mr. Chairman, gang crime can be prevented if we work together. 

I thank you again for this opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee. I yield 

back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Dent? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE CHARLES W. DENT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, 

Members of the Subcommittee. I truly appreciate this opportunity 

for allowing me to come before you today to discuss H.R. 3152, the 

Anti-Gang Task Force Act of 2007. This legislation will help our 

local law enforcement communities combat the scourge of gang violence. 

It authorizes $20 million for each fiscal years 2008 through 2011 

to establish new multi-jurisdictional anti-gang task forces bringing 

together State and local prosecutors with Federal officials from the 

FBI, the DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, DHS, as well as others. 

Gangs, as you all know, are mobile, and they often cross jurisdictional lines in order to facilitate the dealing of drugs or to avoid 

detection by local law enforcement authorities. And providing funds 

to the different municipalities may, with Federal assistance, pool 

resources to track, combat, and prosecute gang activity and will be 

a major assist to the quality of life in communities that are plagued 

by this gang violence. A multi-jurisdictional approach is clearly 

21 

necessary in order to stop the proliferation of gang violence and 

gang activity. 

My district encompasses a good portion of what is called the 

Route 222 corridor. This corridor bisects five cities: Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading and Lancaster. 

They are located in four Southeastern and East Central Pennsylvania counties. It is uniquely situated in that it is linked directly 

to New York City approximately about 80 miles due east of the Lehigh Valley via Interstate 78 and through other easily accessible 

roads, including Route 222 to Philadelphia, which is about 60 miles 

due southeast of the Lehigh Valley area where I live. 

Gang violence along the Route 222 corridor primarily involving 

drug trafficking and armed robberies dates back more than a decade. There has been a chronic problem infecting each of the five cities within this corridor. And these are small to mid-sized cities, Allentown being the largest, about 110,000. 

The roadways that have allowed commerce to thrive in this region have also strongly benefited these gangs who can move between the cities with relative ease thereby making their operations 

much more difficult to detect and to track. As a result, the 222 corridor has been plagued by this insidious gang activity. 

Each of the cities in the corridor has a number of home-grown 

violent gangs, most of which are involved in drug trafficking. According to the United States attorney’s office for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, these gangs such as the Second Street Gang 

in Allentown and the Tenth Street Gang in Reading, usually operate in relatively small areas of their respective cities and use violence to control and defend their drug trafficking operations. 

While these gangs generally do not use symbols or dress similarly to identify themselves, they are often as violent as their national counterparts. And many gang members, according to the 

U.S. attorney’s office, are illegal aliens who migrate to the 222 corridor in the Southwest and New York City and join existing gangs. 

H.R. 3152, the Anti-Gang Task Force Act of 2007, would bring 

Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies together to help 

stop multi-jurisdictional gang activities in places like the 222 corridor. Further, 3152 would be a nice complement to a recent antigang initiative funded through the Project Safe Neighborhood Program in our area. And that Project Safe Neighborhood initiative involves a cooperative law enforcement effort between the counties 

and cities along the corridor. 

For the reasons I described earlier, I push very hard to make 

sure the corridor was one of six locations included in this $15 million comprehensive anti-gang initiative undertaken by the Department of Justice. The initiative has a three-pronged approach to 

combating gang violence: first, the prevention of gang affiliation; 

second, enforcement of existing laws; and third, the rehabilitation 

of gang members seeking to reenter society. 

And again, Mr. Chairman Scott, I commend the work that your 

Subcommittee is doing to curb gang violence. And I really want to 

thank you for providing me this opportunity to discuss this legislation. And I hope that you and the rest of the Subcommittee will 

be supportive of these endeavors in the future. And I thank you 

again. And I would like to yield back. 

22 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dent follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHARLES W. DENT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, and Members of the Subcommittee: 

Thank you for allowing me to come before you today to discuss HR 3152, the AntiGang Task Force Act of 2007. 

This bill will help our local law enforcement communities combat the scourge of 

gang violence. It authorizes $20m for each of Fiscal Years 2008 through 2011 to establish new multi-jurisdictional anti-gang task forces, bringing together state and 

local prosecutors with federal officials from the FBI, DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE), DHS, and others. 

Gangs are mobile and they often cross jurisdictional lines in order to facilitate the 

dealing of drugs or to avoid detection by local law enforcement authorities. Providing funds so that different municipalities may, with federal assistance, pool resources to track, combat, and prosecute combat gang activity will be a major assist 

to the quality of life in communities that are plagued by gang violence. 

A multi-jurisdictional approach is clearly necessary in order to stop the proliferation of gang violence and gang activity. My District encompasses a good portion of 

what is called the Route 222 corridor. This corridor bisects five cities—Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading, and Lancaster—located in four southeast Pennsylvania 

counties. It is uniquely situated, in that it is linked directly to New York City, approximately eighty miles away via Interstate 78, and, through other easily accessible roads (including Route 222), to Philadelphia, which is 60 miles to the southeast. 

Gang violence along the 222 corridor, primarily involving drug trafficking and 

armed robberies, dates back more than a decade and has been a chronic problem 

infecting each of the five cities within the corridor. The roadways that have allowed 

commerce to thrive in the region have also strongly benefited the gangs, who can 

move between the cities with relative ease, thereby making their operations much 

more difficult to detect and to track. 

As a result, the 222 corridor has been plagued by gang activity. Each of the cities 

in the corridor has a number of home-grown violent gangs, most of which are involved in drug trafficking, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the 

Eastern District of Pennsylvania. These gangs, such as the 2nd (Street) in Allentown and the 10th Street Gang in Reading, usually operate in relatively small areas 

of their respective cities and use violence to control and defend their drug trafficking 

operations. While these gangs generally do not use symbols or dress similarly to 

identify themselves, they are often as violent as their national counterparts. And 

many gang members are illegal aliens who migrate to the 222 Corridor from the 

southwest and New York City and join existing gangs. 

HR 3157, the Anti-Gang Task Force Act of 2007, would bring federal, state, and 

local law enforcement agencies together to help stop multi-jurisdictional gang activity in places like the Route 222 corridor. Further, HR 3157 would be a nice complement to a recent anti-gang initiative funded through the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program in our area. 

This PSN initiative involves a cooperative law enforcement effort between the 

counties and cities along the corridor. For the reasons I described earlier, I pushed 

very hard to make sure that the Corridor was one of the six locations included in 

this $15 million Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative undertaken by the Department 

of Justice. The initiative has a three-pronged approach to combating gang violence: 

prevention of gang affiliation, enforcement of existing laws, and the rehabilitation 

of gang members seeking to re-enter society. 

Mr. Chairman, I commend the work that your Subcommittee to doing to curb 

gang violence, and I want to thank you for providing me the opportunity to talk 

about the Anti-Gang Task Force Act of 2007 and the Project Safe Neighborhoods 

Anti-Gang initiative. I hope that you and the rest of the Subcommittee will be supportive of both of these endeavors in the future. 

Thank you, I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Reichert? 

23 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE DAVID G. REICHERT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON 

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to 

thank you and the Ranking Member for holding this hearing. I find 

myself a little bit confused. And that is because my world before 

this world was in law enforcement, 33 years in the King County 

Sheriff’s office, starting out as a patrol officer and now finding myself in this position here in Congress trying to construct laws that 

might help those that I was recently in the ranks and members of 

the ranks. 

Now I find myself also in a different position this afternoon, testifying instead of asking the questions. So I am happy to be here 

today, though. 

And I want to associate myself with all the comments that have 

been made by each of the Members who have testified and also, sir, 

with your opening statement and also the Ranking Member’s opening statements. We all recognize there is a gang problem here in 

the United States. 

It is not a new problem. It has been an old problem, one that I 

dealt with in my 33 years in law enforcement. 

I would like to mention, though, that, you know, we can rattle 

off all these figures and all these statistics. And we think about our 

role here and your role in this Committee in hearing our testimony. 

And we go about our political world, as Mr. Forbes said. We sometimes lose sight of the fact we are talking about lives here, human 

lives. 

I have seen the death on the streets as a cop on the streets. And 

not only young people who have lost their lives, but police officers. 

And every day this is happening in our Nation. 

And so, if there was a time, if there ever was a time for us to 

come together as a party, a party, an American party, this is the 

time. You and this Committee listening to the testimony of each 

one of us today in presenting our ideas and thoughts on legislation 

that can help our local community stop this killing. This is the 

time. 

And this really is not a part of my written statement, but I just 

felt compelled to share this with you. Please come together. Look 

at these bills. Add the language that you would seem to consider 

to be language that you would want to include in a bill that would 

be powerful enough to help people across this country end this 

murder, end the drug abuse, end the ripping and tearing apart of 

families. 

We all know that gangs are an increasing threat to safety. We 

all know that there is 25,000 gangs active. We know that there is 

3,000 jurisdictions across the country affected by gangs. We know 

there is 750,000 to 850,000 gang members here in the United 

States. That is larger than all but six armies in the world. 

We have got to do something today. And to make matters worse, 

they are going after our junior high and our grade school kids now. 

Gang members are going after junior high, 12, 13-year-old kids and 

grade school kids. We have got to do something today. 

You know, in order to become a gang member, you have to go 

through what some people see as a hazing. But it is called the 

24 

jump you. Gangs jump in—and maybe you have heard about this. 

They jump on young people, and they beat the holy living you know 

what out of them. 

They beat them, and they torture them. And then they become 

gang members. And there are some other things that they do, too, 

that I won’t describe. But that is the process our young people are 

going through in this country today. 

One of the officers that I knew from a police department in the 

county that I was sheriff of made a traffic stop one night, got out 

of his car and was greeted by a gang member and had a bullet put 

in his head. That was the end of his life and the end of his family’s. 

The influence of gangs has reached beyond our own communities. 

Gangs have become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics and 

worked with crime organizations across the globe bringing guns 

and drugs into this country and onto our streets. Drug gangs are 

now the primary distributor of illegal narcotics in the United 

States. And these international drug cartels now number in thousands across the city, the State and the national boundaries. 

Some gangs collect millions of dollars per month selling illegal 

drugs, trafficking weapons, operating prostitution rings and selling 

stolen property. These gangs are also directly linked with human 

trafficking, I.D. theft, fraud, violent maiming, assault and murder. 

In 2001, there were over 631 gang-related homicides in the 

United States. Many police departments in our Nation are not prepared to handle this problem. They don’t know how to address this 

growing threat. 

Across the Nation gang statistics are maintained sporadically at 

best. Our local law enforcement officials who are on the front line 

of this battle cannot win the war if they don’t have a clear understanding of what they are up against. 

My bill, H.R. 367, the Gang Elimination Act, would require the 

attorney general to develop a national strategy to eliminate the 

gang epidemic plaguing our neighborhoods. Specifically, this legislation will identify and target the three international drug gangs 

that present the greatest threat to the United States measuring 

their ties to terrorist organizations, the amount of drugs they import and distribute, and the threat they pose to our children. 

In essence, H.R. 367 creates a gang ‘‘most wanted’’ list. With 

these three gangs put on notice, we will be able to identify their 

members and aggressively pursue them. 

And I agree, again, with some of the other comments that have 

been made. We need to do this by communicating, sharing our information, partnering not only with law enforcement organizations 

across this country, but partnering with our community and social 

agencies and bringing everyone together who touches this problem 

to address it from the very beginning. 

And I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts, Mr. 

Chairman. And I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reichert follows:] 

25 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVID G. REICHERT, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much. And I would like to thank all 

of our witnesses for their testimony today. Members may have 

written questions which we will forward to you, ask you to answer 

them promptly. Without objection, the hearing record will remain 

open for 1 week for submission of additional material. 

And so, I would like to thank each and every one of our witnesses. Thank you. 

The next panel will come forward. 

Our first witness in the second panel is Brian W. Walsh, senior 

legal research fellow, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the 

Heritage Foundation. He directs the Heritage’s project on countering the abuse of criminal law and criminal process, particularly 

at the Federal level. His work also focuses on the efforts to ensure 

that national and homeland security measures include protections 

for constitutional and other civil liberties. 

Before joining the Heritage Foundation, he was an associate with 

the Washington office of Kirkland and Ellis. And he served as a 

law clerk for Judge Bowman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 

8th Circuit. He is a graduate from Regent University Law School 

and holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Colorado. 

Our next witness will be the Honorable Jerrauld C. Jones, judge 

of the Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in Norfolk, 

Virginia. He is one of the few people in Virginia history to hold 

leadership positions in each branch of Government. 

Prior to his appointment on the bench, he was the director of the 

Department of Juvenile Justice for the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

As head of the youth authority, he was responsible for the incarceration, rehabilitation and transitional reentry of juvenile offenders 

in the State. 

He also served eight terms as a delegate in the Virginia General 

Assembly, where he oversaw many positive and progressive 

changes within the juvenile justice system. He is a graduate of 

Princeton University and the School of Law at Washington and Lee 

University. 

Our next witness will be Kevin Pranis, researcher of the Justice 

Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. He has more than a decade of 

experience as a justice educator and policy analyst and has produced educational materials, training materials, reports and white 

papers on topics that include corporate accountability, municipal 

bond finance, prison privatization and sentencing policy. He has 

two degrees from the University of Chicago, a bachelor’s in Latin 

American studies and a master’s in social science. 

Our next witness will be the Honorable Richard Roper, United 

States attorney for the northern district of Texas. He served as a 

U.S. attorney since 2004. He is a career prosecutor having served 

as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1987 to his current appointment. 

Prior to joining the U.S. attorney’s office, he served as Tarrant 

County assistant district attorney for five years. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Arlington and 

a law degree from Texas Tech University. 

Our next witness would be Paul Seave, director, gang and youth 

violence police office of the governor in Sacramento, California. He 

30 

served as the governor’s director for gang and youth violence policy 

since 2005. Prior to that appointment, he was a career Federal 

prosecutor, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for 13 years and 

a U.S. attorney for the eastern district of California from 1997 to 

2001. 

From 2001 to 2005, he served as special assistant attorney general until his current appointment. He has a bachelor’s degree from 

Princeton University and a law degree from the University of 

Pennsylvania Law School. 

Our final witness will be Dr. Peter Scharf, research professor of 

criminal justice and executive director for the Center for Society 

Law and Justice at the Texas University. Dr. Scharf is an expert 

in criminal justice and with numerous contributions to progressive 

policies. He helped found the BJA Community Policing Consortium, 

developed a risk assessment management system and served as a 

primary consultant to the governor’s report on the Crown Heights 

civil disorder. 

He has received a great deal of media attention in the past year 

related to his research in youth violence, particularly those involving gangs. He is currently conducting research related to the control of murder and violent crime risk, prison rape patterns and new 

technologies related with the potential of reducing homicide risk. 

He received his doctoral degree from Harvard University. 

So we will begin with Mr. Walsh. 

TESTIMONY OF BRIAN W. WALSH, SENIOR LEGAL RESEARCH 

FELLOW, CENTER FOR LEGAL AND JUDICIAL STUDIES, THE 

HERITAGE FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. WALSH. Thank you, Chairman Scott and Ranking Member 

Forbes for inviting me here today. I want to touch briefly on two 

topics: constitutional principles of federalism that apply to inherently local gang-related crime and the effective Federal funding of 

programs to reduce and prevent gang-related crime. 

Violent street crime committed by gang members is a serious 

problem in many States. But turning crimes that are fundamentally local in nature into Federal crimes is not the solution. 

Approximately 95 percent of the criminal investigations and 

prosecutions in the United States are conducted—not by Federal 

law enforcement—but by law enforcement at the State and local 

level. Unjustified Federal intervention into anti-gang activities dilutes authority and accountability and detracts from the most effective anti-gang enforcement strategies that are available to State 

and local law enforcement officials. 

The Federal Government does have an important role to play in 

combating gang-related crime. But that role is limited by the Constitution and should be further restricted to developing and funding 

programs that carry out traditional Federal functions. 

Several broad bills in recent Congresses have attempted to federalize gang crime, conduct which, in most instances, is nothing 

other than ordinary street crime. S. 456 and H.R. 3547, for example, would effectively transform a broad class of State-law crimes 

into Federal offenses. 

These Federal criminal provisions would invite serious constitutional challenges. The bills may in many cases unconstitutionally 

31 

attempt to extend Congress’ powers beyond the limits of the Commerce Clause. 

No power that civil government commonly uses against its citizens is greater or more prone to abuse than the criminal law and 

criminal process. This is a compelling reason to craft any new Federal criminal law with great care and attention to the limitations 

that the Constitution places on the legislative power. 

S. 456 and H.R. 3547 include language purporting to restrict the 

scope of their central criminal provisions to conduct and activities 

that ‘‘occur in or affect interstate or foreign commerce.’’ But to fall 

within Congress’ power to regulate commerce among the several 

States, a problem must not merely be common to the States, it 

must be truly interstate in nature and substantially affect interstate commerce. 

For this reason, Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause 

does not include the authority to federalize most noncommercial 

street crimes, whether or not they share some minor nexus with 

interstate commerce. In short, local violent crime that is not directed at interstate commerce, that is, the sort of crime that is at 

the heart of most gang-related street crime, is not a proper subject 

matter for Federal legislation. 

Not long ago the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Government’s ‘‘costs of crime’’ and ‘‘national productivity’’ rationales for 

asserting Federal authority over crime that is essentially local in 

nature. The court explained that if it were to accept these attenuated chains of but-for reasoning, the constitutional limits on congressional power would be obliterated. 

S. 456 and H.R. 3547 include similar rationales for justifying the 

assertion of Federal authority. Their findings sections state that 

gang presence, intimidation, and crimes ‘‘directly and substantially’’ affect interstate and foreign commerce—but merely saying 

so does not make it so, and such language adds little or nothing 

to the constitutional analysis. 

The good news is this should not be viewed as a failing of our 

constitutional system. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, my 

distinguished colleague at the Heritage Foundation, is a great 

friend of and advocate for State and local law enforcement. Ed 

Meese has frequently stated that unjustified assertions of Federal 

authority in State and local law enforcement dilutes accountability 

and responsibility and undermines rather than promotes effective 

law enforcement. 

Constitutional concerns, such as those that arise from the Federal criminal provisions in these two bills, generally do not apply 

to Federal expenditures for gang-related programs, including those 

in the Youth PROMISE Act. Congress’ constitutional power to 

spend Federal money to create programs involving State and local 

government agencies is broad and includes the authority to impose 

meaningful conditions on grant recipients. 

Federal funding to combat gang-related crime should be focused 

on programs that, one, carry out traditional Federal functions, two, 

are carefully crafted and evaluated to ensure they achieve their 

stated goals, and three, include sufficient oversight and auditing to 

minimize waste and abuse of Federal funds and to ensure that 

32 

such funds do not merely supplant funds that would otherwise be 

provided by State and local governments. 

I would like to direct the Committee’s attention to my written 

statement for a broader discussion of the principles of effective Federal funding, and focus just on the second item in this list. One of 

the best uses of Federal funding is for programs to research and 

promote so-called evidence-based crime prevention, that is, crime 

prevention strategies and methods the results of which can be 

verified empirically. 

Congress should set high standards for measuring effectiveness. 

No one other than the administrators of programs receiving Federal grants are well served by standards that are easy to satisfy. 

As in any well run business, such programs must have measurable results to demonstrate their effectiveness. The metrics to be 

used must be standardized if each grantee’s performance is to be 

readily compared with the performance of others. The Federal Government should also impose meaningful interim benchmarks to ensure that the gang prevention programs it funds are on target to 

meet the goals for which Congress has provided funding. 

Thank you again, Chairman Scott and Ranking Member Forbes. 

And I look forward to responding to any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walsh follows:] 

33 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRIAN W. WALSH


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

Judge Jones? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JERRAULD C. JONES, 

JUDGE, NORFOLK JUVENILE AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS 

DISTRICT COURT, NORFOLK, VA 

Judge JONES. To you, Mr. Chairman and to my friend and former 

colleague, Mr. Forbes, Members of the Judiciary Subcommittee, I 

say good afternoon. Let me begin by thanking each of you for the 

invitation to appear before you this afternoon in order to share 

with you my experiences and views on the issue of gang crime prevention. I am indeed honored to be included as a witness. 

I must apologize for the late submission of my printed remarks. 

But the invitation to appear today arrived when I was out of the 

country at a judicial conference without a laptop computer. And I 

did not return home until the wee hours of yesterday morning fully 

jet lagged. 

In any event, after hearing a full court docket of cases, I was 

able to gather my thoughts for this afternoon and reduce them to 

writing for your consideration. Again, please accept my sincerest 

apologies. 

I think I must add that I am not here today to speak for or 

against any particular bill or resolution pending before the Committee, in as much as that would be in violation of my judicial ethics and of my office. So I want to make sure that everybody is very 

clear about that point. 

But let me begin by applauding all of you who are focusing on 

this most serious issue by emphasizing prevention and early intervention in the lives of those children who are at risk of gang involvement. 

After many years as a professional in the criminal and juvenile 

justice systems and from different vantage points both in Government and the community, I have concluded that the only sustainable solution to the problems created by criminal street gangs and 

other security threat groups is to focus on the elimination of the 

criminogenic factors which are causing some our Nation’s children 

to become gang involved in the first place. 

Let me hasten to add that we simply must fully enforce the 

criminal laws and fairly and appropriately punish the offenders accordingly. However, such criminal law enforcement, and in this 

case, gang suppression measures, cannot and must not be our only 

rational response. Put another way, we must not only lock up children when absolutely necessary, but we must lift them up in every 

possible way. 

I know that what I am saying to you is not exactly rocket 

science, as the saying goes. However, sometimes even the most 

complex problems often have very simple solutions. Frankly stated, 

I draw this conclusion after over 27 years of experience as a juvenile prosecutor, juvenile defender, State legislator, as head of Virginia’s youth authority, and now as a juvenile court judge hearing 

hundreds of cases per month. 

Nothing that I have seen in all of that time has caused me to 

lose confidence in the belief that children, even those who are highly delinquent and criminalized in their behavior, are in need of the 

44 

same things that you and I, and I daresay, most everyone else in 

this room this afternoon, had as children growing up, the love and 

affection of a caring, responsible adult in their lives. Like many of 

you, I had parents and grandparents—today they would be called 

old school parents—who fully functioned as such, and who still vigorously and actively parent me to this very day. 

Like us, the children of today need parents and other caring 

adults who provide not only love, but who also instill the proper 

discipline, values, morals and boundaries in the life of a child from 

birth and beyond. The sad reality is that so many children today 

lack parents and-or guardians who perform these functions. In particular, we see the causes and effects of this condition in the juvenile and family courts every day. 

Each day that I sit as a judge, I adjudicate the cases of children 

who come from weak or even nonexistent family structures. Of 

course, we know that many children today are not born of marriage, as it is an institution in decline. It is not unusual for me to 

hear a full week’s worth of juvenile and family cases involving children whose parents were never married. 

Also, we know that many children do not live in homes where 

there are two parents or any parents at all. You may be surprised 

to know how many slightly older siblings are the primary caregivers for many of our Nation’s children. We also know that many 

children do not live in homes where there is any positive reinforcement by parents or other adults of the pro-social, pro-family values 

to which we all subscribe. 

I mention this situation first and foremost because I have concluded that this weakened family structure is one of the principal 

causes of children becoming gang involved. In essence, many of 

them are searching for a sense of belonging, an affiliation with others who care about them. 

They are searching for something that they are not getting elsewhere in their lives. When asked, many of these children openly 

admit to their probation or parole officer, their teacher or school 

counselor, and yes, even to the judge, that they affiliate with the 

Bloods because it is the Bloods who care about them. 

It is the MS-13’s who will be there for them when they need 

them, who have their back, so to speak. Arguably then, in many 

cases, gang involvement is a child’s cry for attention, the attention 

that you and I got from the Boy Scouts or the Little League or the 

youth group at church 

If this is, in fact, correct, then I respectfully submit that anything and everything that can be done to support and promote the 

family is gang prevention and crime prevention. I think that just 

one of the innovative solutions that the Federal Government or 

that any government, for that matter, can foster is to promote the 

establishment of mentoring and other programs which connect children and young adults with other adults who will establish positive, pro-social relationships with them. 

Many such programs and services already exist in many places, 

but, of course, more human and financial resources are needed. I 

am proud to report that the judges of the court on which I sit have 

worked to establish such a volunteer program with our court-involved youth, and the effort thus far is successful. 

45 

The volunteer mentors, many of whom are early retirees, are responding to the challenge. The mentees are responding by the 

avoidance of further acts of delinquency. Generally, our efforts to 

divert certain delinquent children from deeper penetration into the 

court system will include the establishment of a mentor-mentee relationship. It works, and it lasts, and it is cheap. 

At this point, I feel obliged to observe that the suggestions I 

make to all of you all today are the same or similar suggestions 

which many of us made to the State legislative judiciary committee 

on which I served as a member, along with Representative Forbes, 

back in the middle 1990’s. As you all are today, we were then seeking to find innovative governmental and public policy solutions to 

what was then seen as a rising tide of serious, chronic, and violent 

juvenile crime, including a perceived increase in youth gang activity. Virginia, like most other States, responded with a variety of responses, which included lowering the age of transfer to adult 

courts, automatic adult treatment for certain offenses, longer 

lengths of stay in secure confinement, and so on. 

In sum, the legislature responded by adultifying the juvenile justice system. I am obliged to observe that virtually every State, including Virginia, is now engaged in a comprehensive review of the 

long term outcomes of those changes. In many States, highly reputable and unbiased evaluators, many of them university-based, 

have concluded that such highly punitive policies have not been effective in reducing delinquency and criminality in juvenile offenders. 

Mr. SCOTT. Judge, I am going to have to ask you to kind of summarize the rest. 

Judge JONES. I will. I will conclude. Of course, I am used to having the gavel myself. But I am happy to be here, Mr. Chairman 

and Members of the Committee. And I will be happy to answer any 

questions that you might have. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Judge Jones follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JERRAULD C. JONES

To you, Mr. Chairman, and to the Honorable Members of the Judiciary Subcommittee, I say good afternoon. Let me begin by thanking each of you for the invitation to appear before this afternoon in order to share with you my experiences and 

views on the issue of gang crime prevention. I am indeed honored to be included 

as a witness. I must apologize for the late submission of my printed remarks, but 

the invitation to appear today arrived when I was out of the country at a judicial 

conference, without a laptop computer; and I did not return home until the wee 

hours of yesterday morning—fully jet-lagged. In any event, after hearing a full court 

docket of cases, I was able to gather my thoughts for this afternoon and reduce 

them to writing for your consideration. Again, please accept my sincerest apology. 

Let me begin by applauding all of you who are focusing on this most serious issue 

by emphasizing prevention and early intervention in the lives of those children who 

are at risk of gang involvement. After many years as a professional in the criminal 

and juvenile justice systems, and from different vantage points both in government 

and the community, I have concluded that the only sustainable solution to the problems created by criminal street gangs and other security threat groups is to focus 

on the elimination of the criminogenic factors which are causing some our nation’s 

children to become gang involved in the first place. Let me hasten to add that we 

simply must fully enforce the criminal laws and fairly and appropriately punish the 

offenders accordingly. However, such criminal law enforcement, and in this case, 

gang suppression measures cannot and must not be our only rational response. Put 

another way, we must not only lock up children when absolutely necessary, but we 

must lift them up in every possible way. 

46 

I know that what I am saying to you is not exactly rocket science, as the saying 

goes. However, sometimes even the most complex problems often have very simple 

solutions. 

Frankly stated, I draw this conclusion after over twenty-seven years of experience 

as a juvenile prosecutor, juvenile defender, state legislator, as head of Virginia’s 

youth authority, and now, as a juvenile court judge hearing hundreds of cases per 

month. Nothing that I have seen in all of that time has caused me to lose confidence 

in the belief that children, even those who are highly delinquent and criminalized 

in their behavior, are in need of the same things that you and I, and I daresay, most 

everyone else in this room this afternoon had as children growing up—the love and 

affection of a caring, responsible adult in their lives. Like many of you, I had parents and grandparents (today they would be called ‘‘old school’’ parents) who fully 

functioned as such, and who still vigorously and actively parent me to this very day. 

Like us, the children of today need parents and other caring adults who provide not 

only love, but who also instill the proper discipline, values, morals, and boundaries 

in the life of a child from birth and beyond. The sad reality is that so many children 

today lack parents and/or guardians who perform these functions. In particular, we 

see the causes and effects of this condition in the juvenile and family courts every 

day. 

Each day I sit as a judge, I adjudicate the cases of children who come from weak 

or even non-existent family structures. Of course, we know that many children 

today are not born of marriage, as it is an institution in decline. It is not unusual 

for me to hear a full week’s worth of juvenile and family cases involving children 

whose parents were never married. Also, we know that many children do not live 

in homes where there are two parents, or any parents at all. You may be surprised 

to know how many slightly older siblings are the primary caregivers for many of 

our nation’s children. We also know that many children do not live in homes where 

there is any positive reinforcement by parents or other adults of the pro-social, profamily values to which we all subscribe. 

I mention this situation first and foremost because I have concluded that this 

weakened family structure is one of the principal causes of children becoming gang 

involved. In essence, many of them are searching for a sense of belonging, an affiliation with others who care about them. They are searching for something that they 

are not getting elsewhere in their lives. When asked, many of these children openly 

admit to their probation or parole officer, teacher or school counselor, and yes, even 

to the judge, that they affiliate with the Bloods because it is the Bloods who do care 

about them. It is the MS13’s who will be there for them when they need them— 

who have their back, so to speak. Arguably then, in many cases, gang involvement 

is a child’s cry for attention, the attention that you and I got from the Boy Scouts 

or the Little League or the youth group at church. 

If this is, in fact, correct, then I respectfully submit that anything and everything 

that can be done to support and promote the family is gang prevention and crime 

prevention. I think that just one of the innovative solutions that the federal government, or that any government for that matter, can foster is to promote the establishment of mentoring and other programs which connect children and young adults 

with other adults who will establish positive, pro-social relationships with them. 

Many such programs and services already exist in many places, but, of course, more 

human and financial resources are needed. I am proud to report that the Judges 

of the Court on which I sit have worked to establish such a volunteer program with 

our court-involved youth, and the effort thus far is successful. The volunteer mentors, many of whom are early retirees, are responding to the challenge. The mentees 

are responding by the avoidance of further acts of delinquency. Generally, our efforts to divert certain delinquent children from deeper penetration into the court 

system will include the establishment of a mentor/mentee relationship. It works and 

it lasts. And, it is cheap. . . . 

At this point, I feel obliged to observe that the suggestions I make to you all today 

are the same or similar suggestions which many of us made to the state legislative 

judiciary committee on which I served as a member back in the middle nineties. As 

you all are today, we were then seeking to find innovative governmental and public 

policy solutions to what was then seen as a rising tide of serious, chronic and violent 

juvenile crime, including a perceived increase in youth gang activity. Virginia, like 

most other states, responded with a variety of responses which included, lowering 

the age of transfer to adult courts, automatic adult treatment for certain offenses, 

longer lengths of stay in secure confinement, and so on. 

In sum, the Legislature responded by ‘‘adultifying’’ the juvenile justice system. I 

am also obliged to observe that virtually every state, including Virginia, is now engaged in a comprehensive review of the long term outcomes of those changes. In 

many states, highly reputable and unbiased evaluators, many of them university 

47 

based, have concluded that such highly punitive policies have not been effective in 

reducing delinquency and criminality in juvenile offenders. Respectfully, I strongly 

urge the Congress to be informed in these matters by the experience of the states 

during the last fifteen years. 

I might also add that the costs of juvenile incarceration are staggering. In Vir- ginia today, it costs over $88,000.00 per bed per year to incarcerate a child, an increase of about $8,000.00 per year from when I headed the youth authority five 

years ago. As is often observed, one can do a whole lot of juvenile crime and gang 

prevention for a fraction of the cost of incarceration. 

I would respectfully make one other observation and recommendation to the Committee. It appears to me that one of the criminogenic factors to which I earlier alluded is the extent to which delinquent and criminalized children read below age 

and grade level. If one reviews the pre-sentencing report of most juvenile offenders 

or gang involved youth, you will find school records and/or test scores which bear 

out this statement. Of course, the reading level is an early predictor of conventional 

academic success or failure. As the academic achievement gap grows, so does the 

likelihood that the child will become delinquent and eventually criminal. I urge you 

to ask any prosecutor, lawyer, probation officer or judge about this common characteristic. I assure you that they will heartily and readily agree. I am even advised 

that some states now look to the reading levels of third graders when forecasting 

their juvenile detention and prison bed needs into the next decade as they age into 

the crime prone years. 

Therefore, one other innovative gang prevention strategy surely must be strong 

governmental efforts to promote reading proficiency among all children, but especially among delinquent children who are at risk of gang involvement. Again, I am 

proud to report that the Court on which I sit, does, indeed, understand the connection. Towards that end, we have recently established the LEAP into LITERACY program for court-involved youth in which a retired public school counselor volunteers 

every day of the week providing donated books and tutorials. Believe it or not, the 

‘‘Book Lady’’ is now getting telephone calls at home from the little brothers and sisters of children in diversion programs and on probation who want to know if they 

can have a book, too! Yes, reading is fundamental! And again, promoting literacy 

is one of the most important and lasting ways to lift up children so that we do not 

have to lock them up down the road. 

There are many other matters for your consideration but time does not permit 

any further remarks. 

I do sincerely thank the Subcommittee for your time and attention to this critical 

issue in the public safety of our fellow citizens. I commend you for your good efforts 

today and in the future. I am honored by your invitation to participate and I stand 

ready and willing to assist you in any way possible. I am now ready and willing 

to answer any questions which you might have. 

Thank you, again. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Roper? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD ROPER, UNITED 

STATES ATTORNEY, NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS 

Mr. ROPER. Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, and Members of the Subcommittee, I am Richard Roper, the United States 

attorney for the northern district of Texas. It is an honor to be here 

today to discuss this important matter. 

As a 25-year prosecutor who has worked at both the State and 

Federal levels, I know that violent crime and gangs present a critical public safety challenge that grips communities of all sizes and 

demands a strong and coordinated response from all of us. I want 

to discuss briefly the department’s efforts in this area and provide 

examples from my district, which I think demonstrate that we can 

work together with our State and local partners and with community leaders to implement an effective strategy to combat violent 

crime and gangs. 

The department’s comprehensive approach to gangs and violent 

crimes involves three prongs. First, the cooperative enforcement 

48 

initiatives which assist our State and local partners in identifying 

and incarcerating those involved in firearm and gang violence; two, 

innovative prevention strategies and public awareness campaigns 

designed to discourage gang membership, gun activity, truancy and 

violent crime; and three, prisoner reentry programs geared to keep 

former gang members and other violent criminals from returning 

to gang membership and criminal activity after they are released 

from prison. 

Now, first is the enforcement initiative. That initiative revolves 

around the Project Safe Neighborhood Program that started in 

2002, which is a cooperative effort among Federal, State and local 

law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to reduce gun crime. 

In the 6 years PSN has been around, the department has more 

than doubled the number of Federal firearm prosecutions compared 

with the previous 6 years. And the conviction rate has been high. 

For example, in 2006, the rate was 92 percent, which is the highest 

it has ever been. 

We have expanded PSN to include an increased focus on gang violence. The department’s comprehensive anti-gang initiative has 

been pushed out to now 10 jurisdictions across the country, including in my area, the Dallas, Fort Worth area. 

The department has also established the anti-gang coordination 

committee to organize the department’s wide-ranging efforts to 

combat gangs. At the district level each U.S. attorney is appointed 

an anti-gang coordinator to provide leadership and focus to our 

anti-gang efforts locally. 

In addition, the department has established a new national gang 

task force composed of the Federal law enforcement agencies, the 

Bureau of Prisons and the Marshall Service, to coordinate gang investigations and prosecutions both on a national level and also to 

deal with the threat posed by international gangs. Also the department has established numerous joint violent crime-related task 

forces. 

You have already heard about some of those, the FBI-led Safe 

Streets Task Force, the Gang Streets Task Force that focus on dismantling organized gangs. The U.S. Marshall-led Regional Fugitive 

Task Force and district-based task forces across the country that 

focus on fugitive apprehension efforts and, of course, the ATF Violent Crime Impact Teams, composed of Federal agents working 

with State and local partners to identify, target and arrest violent 

criminals to reduce the occurrence of homicide and firearm-related 

violent crimes. 

I wanted to give you some examples of how I think PSN and the 

gang initiative have worked. And let me deal with my areas. 

First, there is two initiatives I wanted to talk about. The Cymbal 

Street investigation involved ATF working with the Dallas Police 

Department. And they faced two street gangs who worked together 

to maintain control of a neighborhood in East Dallas for their drug 

trafficking activities. They excluded other drug dealers from even 

working in that area. 

The neighbors living there were afraid to go to their homes, come 

out of their homes or be seen talking to the police in public view 

because of fear of reprisal from gang members. Following the 2003 

49 

arrest and eventual Federal prosecution of these gang members, 

crime dropped in that area 47 percent. 

Another initiative was the fishbowl initiative where 41 gang 

members were prosecuted resulting in—in just 1 year since we 

prosecuted that case—a 10 percent reduction in the violent crime 

rate in that area. But it involves more than just enforcement. The 

prevention programs we have that we are pushing out, the gang 

prevention summits that U.S. attorneys offices have put on, the ad 

council ads that have been put out, the gang resistance education 

program has been successful in bringing to the schools training and 

to keep the kids out of gangs. 

In my district we have had a very successful program in the Dallas independent school district in reducing gang violence. It involves training and also reaching out to kids before they get in 

gangs all the way down to the elementary school. 

We have also worked with the Boys and Girls Club. And finally, 

let me just briefly mention first, just a few seconds. What I am 

proud of is our reentry program. In the Dallas, Fort Worth area we 

have had two reentry programs, one our Project Safe Neighborhood 

Program that essentially is an education program to essentially 

scare released probationers and parolees from engaging in gun 

crime. Our research partner found that there was a 48 percent reduction in the incidents of gun crimes among probationers and parolees in Dallas County since we started that program. 

And also we have initiated as part of the anti-gang grant that 

we received from the Department of Justice, a reentry initiative 

where we are taking 100 gang members that are released from 

prison and provide essential services to them. And that involves 

three areas: first, job training, job placement, and mentoring. 

And I am really glad we can partner. We are partnering with a 

faith-based group headed by the Potter’s House, in Dallas, to deal 

with that. And it is both in Dallas and Forth Worth. And I look 

forward to doing that. 

I think the key to success in this area is cooperation with our 

State and local partners. And I think opening the door wide to 

crime reduction involves employing that three-pronged approach of 

enforcement, prevention, and reentry. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Roper follows:] 

50 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD B. ROPER


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Seave? 

TESTIMONY OF PAUL L. SEAVE, DIRECTOR, GANG AND YOUTH 

VIOLENCE POLICY OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR, SACRAMENTO, CA 

Mr. SEAVE. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Forbes, and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Paul 

Seave. And I am California’s director of gang and youth violence 

policy, a position to which I was recently appointed by Governor 

Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Thank you very much for allowing me to be here today to testify. 

And I am here to express strong support of H.R. 3547, the Gang 

Prevention Intervention and Suppression Act, sponsored by Congressman Adam Schiff and Congresswoman Mary Bono. 

My support for H.R. 3547 derives directly from California’s long 

and tragic experience with street gangs. Before I proceed, however, 

let me explain by way of background. As the Chairman mentioned 

in part, before assuming my current position I was a Federal prosecutor for 15 years, including the last 4 as the United States attorney in Sacramento. And after, that I spent 5 years as director of 

the California attorney general’s crime and violence prevention center, where my staff of 40 promoted prevention and intervention 

strategies in a number of areas, including gang and youth violence. 

Now, if there is one lesson that law enforcement in California 

has learned after decades of gang violence, concentrated suppression efforts and more than 10,0000 gang-related homicides in the 

last 20 years, it is that we can’t arrest our way out of the problem. 

So says virtually every law enforcement leader in California. 

This does not mean that law enforcement shouldn’t pursue those 

who commit violence or that smart suppression efforts aren’t necessary to interrupt the escalating cycle of retaliatory violence that 

often attends gang disputes. Instead what it does mean is that suppression should be viewed as both a short-term fix to gang violence 

and the critical first step to a long-term solution. 

And that solution requires prevention and intervention activities, 

hopefully those that have been proven effective, implemented in a 

sustained and robust fashion according to a comprehensive strategic plan formulated by many sectors in the community. A strategy that overlooks any of these components, suppression, prevention or intervention, will inevitably allow the conditions that gave 

rise to the violence and the violence itself to reemerge. 

The primary responsibility for addressing gang violence belongs 

to local communities with the support of State government. But the 

scope, persistence, and effects of gang violence leave no doubt that 

Federal help and leadership are now needed if we are to bring 

about a long-term reduction in gangs and gang violence. 

H.R. 3547 delivers that help and leadership hitting all the 

marks. For example, Federal enforcement efforts are sometimes 

needed to supplement those of local and State agencies when street 

gangs are particularly dangerous or violent. This bill authorizes 

Federal agencies to prosecute those gangs for the types of crimes 

that they commit, particularly for acts of violence and for retaliation against witnesses. 

74 

Prevention and intervention must receive equal attention. And 

again, this bill does just that. 

The provisions in title 3 that allow designation of high-intensity 

gang activity areas promote the most effective approach, in my 

view, to reducing gang violence in the long-term. Targeting the 

areas most afflicted by gang crime, requiring each high-intensity 

gang area to create a multi-disciplinary working group of law enforcement, educators, faith leaders, community leaders and service 

providers, giving preference for funding to areas that have comprehensive strategies, requiring Federal, State and local law enforcement to work together, giving 50 percent of the funds to enforcement and 50 percent to intervention and prevention, and finally, creating a national gang research evaluation and policy institute to conduct further research on programs that work, programs 

that don’t work, and to facilitate and promote adoption of those 

programs that do work. This is an absolutely essential organization 

that is best situated at the Federal level. 

California has learned the hard way that suppression is a critically important part of the answer, but not the complete answer to 

reducing gang violence, that prevention and intervention are absolutely essential to any long-term strategy to reduce gang violence, 

and that Federal assistance and leadership across all three dimensions are necessary. H.R. 3547 promises to deliver the needed help. 

I would ask that the House move quickly to address the national 

problem of gang violence just as the Senate recently passed S. 456, 

a bill sponsored by Senators Feinstein and Hatch, that takes a 

similar approach to reducing gang violence. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Seave follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL L. SEAVE

INTRODUCTION

Good afternoon. My name is Paul Seave, and I am California’s Director of Gang 

and Youth Violence Policy, a position to which I was recently appointed by Governor 

Arnold Schwarzenegger. I am here to testify in strong support of H.R. 3547, the 

Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Act, sponsored by Congressman 

Adam Schiff and Congresswoman Mary Bono. 

My support for H.R. 3547 derives directly from California’s long and tragic experience with street gangs. Before I proceed, however, let me explain, by way of background, that before assuming my current position I served as a federal prosecutor 

in CA for fifteen years—the last four as United States Attorney in Sacramento. I 

spent the next five years as Director of the CA Attorney General’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center, where my staff of 40 promoted prevention and intervention 

strategies in a number of areas, including gang and youth violence. 

CALIFORNIA’S EXPERIENCE

Now: If there is one lesson that law enforcement in California has learned after 

decades of gang violence, concentrated suppression efforts, and more than 10,000 

gang-related homicides in the past twenty years, it is that ‘‘We can’t arrest our way 

out of the problem.’’—So says virtually every law enforcement leader in California. 

This does not mean that law enforcement should not pursue those who commit 

violence, or that ‘‘smart’’ suppression efforts aren’t necessary to interrupt the cycle 

of retaliatory violence that attends gang disputes. Instead, what it does mean is that 

suppression should be viewed as both a short-term fix to gang violence and the critical first step to a long-term solution. And that solution requires prevention and 

intervention activities—hopefully those that have been proven effective—implemented in a sustained and robust fashion according to a comprehensive strategic 

plan formulated by many sectors in the community. A strategy that overlooks any 

of these components—suppression, prevention, or intervention—will inevitably allow 

the conditions that gave rise to the violence, and the violence itself, to re-emerge. 

75 

NEED FOR FEDERAL ROLE

The primary responsibility for addressing gang violence belongs to local communities with the support of state government. But the scope, persistence, and effects 

of gang violence leave no doubt that federal help and leadership are now needed 

if we are to bring about a long-term reduction in gangs and gang violence. 

H.R. 3547 delivers that help and leadership, hitting all the marks. For example, 

federal enforcement efforts are sometimes needed to supplement those of local and 

state agencies when street gangs are particularly dangerous or violent. This bill authorizes federal agencies to prosecute those gangs for the types of crimes that they 

commit—particularly, for acts of violence and for retaliation against witnesses. 

Prevention and intervention must receive equal attention and again this bill does 

just that. The provisions in Title III that allow designation of High Intensity Gang 

Activity Areas (HIGAAs) promote the most effective approach to reducing gang violence in the long-term—1) targeting the areas most afflicted by gang crime; 2) requiring each HIGAA to create a multi-disciplinary working group of law enforcement, educators, faith leaders, community leaders, and service providers; 3) giving 

preference for funding to areas that have comprehensive strategies; 4) giving 50% 

of the funds to enforcement and 50% to intervention and prevention; and 5) creating 

a National Gang Research, Evaluation, and Policy Institute, an absolutely essential 

organization that is best situated at the federal level. 

CONCLUSION

California has learned—the hard way—that suppression is a critically important 

part of the answer, but not the complete answer, to reducing gang violence; that 

prevention and intervention are absolutely essential to any long-term strategy to reduce gang violence; and that federal assistance and leadership—across all three dimensions—are necessary. H.R. 3547 promises to deliver the needed help. I would 

ask that the House move quickly to address the national problem of gang violence, 

just as the Senate recently passed S. 456, a bill sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein and Orrin Hatch that takes a similar approach to reducing gang violence. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. We were joined previously by the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Chabot, and the gentleman from Wisconsin, 

Mr. Sensenbrenner. And we also have with us today the gentleman 

from Georgia, Mr. Johnson. And Ms. Jackson Lee was here. 

Mr. Pranis? 

TESTIMONY OF KEVIN PRANIS, RESEARCHER, 

JUSTICE POLICY INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. PRANIS. Good afternoon. I want to thank Congressman Scott 

and Congressman Forbes and the Members of the Subcommittee 

for the opportunity to address this important issue today. My name 

is Kevin Pranis. And I am here representing the Justice Policy Institute, a criminal justice think tank based in the District of Columbia. 

Youth crime in the United States remains near the lowest level 

seen in decades. Yet public concern and media coverage of gang activity has skyrocketed since 2000. Some policy makers have declared the arrival of a national gang crisis tying gangs to terrorism 

and connecting their formation and growth to everything from lax 

border enforcement to the illicit drug trade. 

Rising fears have prompted calls for a new tough legislation that 

would raise penalties for a vaguely defined gang crimes and spend 

millions of dollars on gang suppression. Two years ago in response 

to these fears the Justice Policy Institute commissioned my organization to produce an in-depth report on what is known about gangs 

and the efficacy of common gang control strategies. 

My colleague, Judy Greene, and I began with an extensive review of the social science literature on gangs and gang membership. We also interviewed a diverse group of stakeholders, includVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:47 Oct 28, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\100207\38112.000 HJUD1 PsN: 38112
76 

ing scholars, law enforcement officials, former gang members. And 

we conducted original analysis of youth survey and law enforcement data. 

‘‘Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics, and the Need 

for Effective Public Safety Strategies,’’ was released in July of this 

year. As the title suggests, we found that most common assumptions about gangs are inaccurate and that current gang enforcement practices are misguided. We hope that the report’s findings, 

which I will briefly summarize today, will help policy makers advance more effective approaches to reduce unacceptably high levels 

of crime and violence in some of our communities. 

You have heard gangs described as top down criminal organizations that are driven by their leaders’ desire to maximize power 

and profit often by recruiting an army of young men to impose a 

reign of terror on a geographic area. This conception of gangs gives 

rise to a common set of enforcement strategies: target and remove 

the leaders, disrupt the gang’s ability to function as a unit, deter 

youth from joining or remaining in the gang by exposing them to 

criminal processing and penalties. 

Unfortunately, our review of the research literature shows that 

such strategies have failed time and again to achieve meaningful 

reductions in the crime and violence associated with gangs. The 

reason? The assumptions that underlie traditional gang enforcement are dead wrong. 

Gangs are, for the most part, bottom-up associations formed by 

troubled adolescents who engage in self-directed disorganized 

crime. Gangs do not require leaders to get themselves in trouble. 

And they fear rival gang members more than they fear police or 

prison. 

Fortunately, for the rest of us, most quickly outgrow their gang 

ties without the help of law enforcement or gang intervention programs. The typical gang member joins between the ages of 12 and 

15 and quits the gang within the first year. Ex-gang members typically cite high levels of violence or maturation as reasons for leaving. Only rarely do they cite fear of arrest or criminal penalties. 

Leaving the gang early sharply reduces the risk of negative life 

outcomes. But current policies make it more difficult for gang members to quit by continuing to target former members after their 

gang affiliation has ended. 

Media reports are full of stories about cities where crime goes up, 

a crackdown is launched, and crime goes down. But a review of research on the implementation of gang enforcement strategies from 

17 jurisdictions over a 20-year period shows an overall record of 

failure. Problems identified in the literature include: a lack of correspondence between the problem, typically lethal or serious violence, and a law enforcement response that targets low-level, nonviolent misbehavior; evidence that the intervention had no effect, 

or a negative effect, on crime and violence; a tendency for any reductions in crime and violence to evaporate quickly, often before 

the end of the intervention period; and failure of replication efforts 

to achieve results comparable to those of the pilot program. 

Among our specific findings, police gang units are often formed 

for the wrong reasons and perceived as isolated and ineffectual by 

law enforcement colleagues. An in-depth study of four cities deterVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:47 Oct 28, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\100207\38112.000 HJUD1 PsN: 38112
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mined that the units were formed in response to political, public 

and media pressure and that ‘‘almost no one other than the gang 

unit officers themselves seemed to believe the gang unit’s suppression efforts were effective at reducing communities’ gang problems.’’ There is, similarly, no evidence whatsoever that other gang 

targeting programs, including task forces, prosecution units or 

gang sentencing enhancements have any impact on gang activity. 

Second, heavy-handed suppression efforts can increase gang cohesion and police community tension. And they have a poor track 

record when it comes to reducing crime and violence. 

Results from a Department of Justice-funded interventions in 

three major cities yield no evidence that a flood of Federal dollars 

and arrests had a positive impact on neighborhoods. For example, 

Dallas residents saw the incidents of gang-related violence fall in 

target areas, but ended up worse off than residents of other neighborhoods because overall violent crime went up during the intervention period. 

Third, so-called balanced gang control strategies have been 

plagued by replication problems and imbalances between law enforcement and community stakeholders. For example, replication of 

the Boston cease fire model in Los Angeles and Indianapolis produced no evidence that efforts to disseminate a deterrence message 

had changed the behavior of gang members. 

The evaluators concluded ‘‘We suspect that the carrot of the 

interventions will always lag far behind the stick side, in spite of 

the best intentions that it not do so, unless some extraordinary efforts are made.’’ Simply put, there is no balance in the balanced approach to gang enforcement. 

I want to contrast America’s two largest cities, New York and 

Los Angeles, to provide a case in point. New York City street work 

and gang intervention programs were fielded decades ago during a 

period when gang violence was on the rise. These strategies were 

grounded in social work practices that go outside the realm of law 

enforcement. 

No seasoned New Yorker would deny the existence of gangs, but 

gang-related offenses represent just a tiny blip on the New York 

crime screen. Comparing New York to Los Angeles where gang violence is epidemic, city and State officials have spent billions of dollars on policing and surveillance, the development of databases 

containing the names of tens of thousands of alleged gang members, and long prison sentences for gang members. 

Taxpayers had not seen a return on their massive investment. 

They now report six times as many gangs and at least double the 

number of gang members in the region. The crime statistics tell the 

story. 

LAPD reported 11,402 gang-related crimes in 2005. The same 

year the New York Police Department reported just 520. FBI crime 

reports indicate New York’s homicide rate that year was half of Los 

Angeles. 

Yet absent better alternatives, lawmakers across the country risk 

blindly following in Los Angeles’ troubled footsteps. I would make 

a plea that we let police do what they do best, to solve crimes, identify the perpetrators, and apprehend them, not chasing after kids 

78 

in baggy clothes under the assumption that gangs are the primary 

crime problem in the country. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pranis follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KEVIN PRANIS

Good afternoon. I want to thank the Chair, Congressman Scott, and the members 

of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security 

for the opportunity to testify on this important issue. My name is Kevin Pranis, and 

I am here today representing The Justice Policy Institute—a criminal justice thinktank based here in the District of Columbia. 

I have spent more then a decade working on criminal justice issues: as a caseworker, an educator, an advocate, and finally as a policy analyst with Justice Strategies—a nonprofit criminal justice research organization. During that time, I have 

authored or co-authored research reports and white papers on a wide range of topics, including prisoner reentry, sentencing policy, prison privatization, rising female 

imprisonment rates, and the use of substance abuse treatment as an alternative to 

incarceration. 

Two years ago, Justice Policy Institute commissioned Justice Strategies to produce 

an in-depth report on what is known about gangs’ contribution to problems of crime 

and violence, as well as the efficacy of common gang control strategies. My colleague 

Judy Greene and I began our work with an extensive review of the social science 

literature on gangs and gang membership, incorporating research that examined 

gangs from multiple perspectives (e.g. crime control, youth development) using varied techniques (e.g. ethnography, law enforcement data, youth surveys). We also 

interviewed a diverse group of stakeholders, including law enforcement officials, 

scholars, social service providers, and former gang members. Finally, we analyzed 

youth survey and law enforcement data to test common assumptions about the prevalence of gang membership and the relationship between gang activity and crime 

rates. 

The resulting report, ‘‘Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the 

Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies,’’ was released in July of this year. As 

the title suggests, we found that the most common assumptions about gangs and 

gang control lack foundation in the scientific literature. We hope that the results 

of our research—briefly summarized in this testimony—will provide an opportunity 

to pursue more fruitful approaches to reduce unacceptably high levels of violence in 

our communities. 

GANG WARS FINDINGS

Youth crime in the United States remains near the lowest levels seen in the past 

three decades, yet public concern and media coverage of gang activity has skyrocketed since 2000. Fear has spread from neighborhoods with long-standing gang 

problems to communities with historically low levels of crime. Some policy makers 

have declared the arrival of a national gang ‘‘crisis’’-tying gangs to terrorism and 

connected their formation and growth to everything from lax border enforcement to 

the illicit drug trade. Rising fears have prompted calls for new ‘‘tough’’ legislation 

that would raise penalties for vaguely defined gang crimes and spend hundreds of 

millions of dollars on gang suppression. Yet the evidence points to a different reality 

and suggests a more thoughtful policy response. The following are our key findings 

concerning gangs and gang members: 

Gangs and gang members 

There are fewer gang members in the United States today than there 

were a decade ago, and there is no evidence that gang activity is growing. 

It is difficult to find a law enforcement account of gang activity that does not give 

the impression that the problem is getting worse by the day. Yet the most recent 

comprehensive law enforcement estimate indicates that youth gang membership fell 

from 850,000 in 1996 to 760,000 in 2004 and that the proportion of jurisdictions reporting gang problems has dropped substantially. The myth of a growing gang menace has been fueled by sensational media coverage and misuse of law enforcement 

gang statistics, which gang experts consider unreliable for the purpose of tracking 

local crime trends. 

There is no consistent relationship between law enforcement measures of 

gang activity and crime trends. One expert observes that gang membership estimates were near an all-time high at the end of the 1990s, when youth violence fell 

to the lowest level in decades. An analysis of gang membership and crime data from 

North Carolina found that most jurisdictions reporting growth in gang membership 

79 

also reported falling crime rates. Dallas neighborhoods targeted for gang suppression 

activities reported both a drop in gang crime and an increase in violent crime during 

the intervention period. 

Gang members account for a relatively small share of crime in most jurisdictions. There are a handful of jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and Chicago 

where gang members are believed to be responsible for a significant share of crime. 

But the available evidence indicates that gang members play a relatively small role 

in the national crime problem despite their propensity toward criminal activity. National estimates and local research findings suggest that gang members may be responsible for fewer than one in 10 homicides; fewer than one in 16 violent offenses; 

and fewer than one in 20 serious (index) crimes. Gangs themselves play an even 

smaller role, since much of the crime committed by gang members is self-directed 

and not committed for the gang’s benefit. 

Gangs do not dominate or drive the drug trade. National drug enforcement 

sources claim that gangs are ‘‘the primary retail distributors of drugs in the country.’’ But studies of several jurisdictions where gangs are active have concluded that 

gang members account for a relatively small share of drug sales and that gangs do 

not generally seek to control drug markets. Investigations conducted in Los Angeles 

and nearby cities found that gang members accounted for one in four drug sale arrests. The Los Angeles district attorney concluded that just one in seven gang members sold drugs on a monthly basis. St. Louis researchers describe gang involvement 

in drug sales as ‘‘poorly organized, episodic, nonmonopolistic [and] not a rationale 

for the gang’s existence.’’ A member of one of San Diego’s best-organized gangs explains: ‘‘The gang don’t organize nothing. It’s like everybody is on they own. You 

are not trying to do nothing with nobody unless it’s with your friend. You don’t put 

your money with gangs.’’ 

Most gang members join when they are young and quickly outgrow their 

gang affiliation without the help of law enforcement or gang intervention 

programs. A substantial minority of youth (7 percent of whites and 12 percent of 

blacks and Latinos) goes through a gang phase during adolescence, but most youth 

quit the gang within the first year. One multistate survey found that fully half of 

eighth-graders reporting gang involvement were former members. When former 

gang members cite reasons why they left the gang, they commonly mention high 

levels of violence, and that they just grew out of it; only rarely do they cite fear 

of arrest or criminal penalties. Most youth who join gangs do so between the ages 

of 12 and 15, but the involvement of younger children in gangs is not new. Noted 

expert Malcolm Klein observes: ‘‘Although some writers and officials decry the 8- 

and 10-year-old gang member, they haven’t been in the business long enough to realize that we heard the same reports 20 and 40 years ago.’’ 

Leaving the gang early reduces the risk of negative life outcomes, but 

current policies make it more difficult for gang members to quit. Gang involvement is associated with dropping out of school, teen parenthood, and unstable 

employment, but the risks are much smaller for those who leave the gang in a year 

or less. Yet little attention has been devoted to why and how youth leave gangs, 

and many gang control policies make the process of leaving more rather than less 

difficult by continuing to target former members after their gang affiliation has 

ended. Researchers note: ‘‘Police and school officials may not be aware of the decision of individuals to leave the gang or may not take such claims seriously, and 

records may not be purged of prior gang status. . . . When representatives of official agencies (e.g., police, school) identify an individual as a gang member, they are 

sending a powerful signal to rival gang members as well as to people in the community about the gang involvement of that person.’’ 

The public face of the gang problem is black and brown, but whites make 

up the largest group of adolescent gang members. Law enforcement sources 

report that over 90 percent of gang members are nonwhite, but youth survey data 

shows that whites account for 40 percent of adolescent gang members. White gang 

youth closely resemble black and Latino counterparts on measures of delinquency 

and gang involvement, yet they are virtually absent from most law enforcement and 

media accounts of the gang problem. The disparity raises troubling questions about 

how gang members are identified by police. 

Gang enforcement 

The conventional wisdom on gang enforcement is equally flawed. Media reports 

are full of stories about cities where crime goes up, a crackdown is launched, and 

crime goes down. But a review of research on the implementation of gang enforcement strategies—ranging from neighborhood-based suppression to the U.S. Justice 

Department Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Comprehensive 

Gang Program Model—provides little reason for optimism. Findings from investigaVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:47 Oct 28, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\CRIME\100207\38112.000 HJUD1 PsN: 38112
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tions of gang enforcement efforts in 17 jurisdictions over the past two decades yield 

few examples of success and many examples of failure. 

The problems highlighted in the research include: 

• Lack of correspondence between the problem, typically lethal and/or serious 

violence, and a law enforcement response that targets low-level, nonviolent 

misbehavior. 

• Resistance on the part of key agency personnel to collaboration or implementation of the strategy as designed. 

• Evidence that the intervention had no effect or a negative effect on crime and 

violence. 

• A tendency for any reductions in crime or violence to evaporate quickly, often 

before the end of the intervention period. 

• Poorly designed evaluations that make it impossible to draw any conclusions 

about the effect of an intervention. 

• Failure of replication efforts to achieve results comparable to those of pilot 

programs. 

• Severe imbalances of power and resources between law enforcement and community partners that hamper the implementation of ‘‘balanced’’ gang control 

initiatives. 

Among our specific findings concerning typical gang enforcement strategies: 

Police gang units are often formed for the wrong reasons and perceived 

as isolated and ineffectual by law enforcement colleagues. A survey of 300 

large cities found that the formation of gang units was more closely associated with 

the availability of funding and the size of the Latino population than with the extent of local gang or crime problems. An in-depth study of four cities determined 

that gang units were formed in response to ‘‘political, public, and media pressure’’ 

and that ‘‘almost no one other than the gang unit officers themselves seemed to believe that gang unit suppression efforts were effective at reducing the communities’ 

gang problems.’’ Investigators found that gang officers were poorly trained and that 

their units became isolated from host agencies and community residents. The chief 

of one police department admitted that he had ‘‘little understanding of what the 

gang unit did or how it operated.’’ The authors observed that the isolation of gang 

units from host agencies and their tendency to form tight-knit subcultures—not entirely unlike those of gangs—may contribute to a disturbingly high incidence of corruption and other misconduct. 

Heavy-handed suppression efforts can increase gang cohesion and police—community tensions, and they have a poor track record when it 

comes to reducing crime and violence. Suppression remains an enormously popular response to gang activity despite concerns by gang experts that such tactics can 

strengthen gang cohesion and increase tension between law enforcement and community members. Results from Department of Justice-funded interventions in three 

major cities yield no evidence that a flood of federal dollars and arrests had a positive impact on target neighborhoods. St. Louis evaluators found that dozens of targeted arrests and hundreds of police stops failed to yield meaningful reductions in 

crime in the targeted neighborhoods, even during the period of intense police activity. Dallas residents saw the incidence of ‘‘gang-related’’ violence fall in target areas 

but had little to celebrate because the overall violent crime numbers rose during the 

intervention period. Detroit evaluators reported initial reductions in gun crimes 

within two targeted precincts, but the apparent gains were short-lived: by the end 

of the intervention period, the incidence of gun crime in target areas was at 

preintervention levels and trending upward. 

‘‘Balanced’’ gang control strategies have been plagued by replication 

problems and imbalances between law enforcement and community stakeholders. Gang program models that seek to balance suppression activities with the 

provision of social services and supports have been piloted in Boston and Chicago 

with some success. But the results of attempts to replicate Operation Ceasefire and 

the Comprehensive Gang Program Model in other jurisdictions have been disappointing. Replications of the Ceasefire model in Los Angeles and Indianapolis produced no evidence that efforts to disseminate a deterrence message had changed the 

behavior of gang members. Meanwhile, replications of the Chicago model in five cities produced mixed results, with just two sites reporting reductions in participants’ 

violent behavior that approached statistical significance. Prevention and intervention appeared to lag far behind suppression efforts in the many sites. The Los Angeles Ceasefire evaluators concluded: ‘‘We suspect that the carrot side of these interventions will always lag far behind the stick side in spite of the best intentions that 

it not do so, unless some extraordinary efforts are made’’ (emphasis added). A recent 

81 

analysis concluded that two-thirds of resources expended on gang reduction in Los 

Angeles have gone to suppression activities. 

African American and Latino communities bear the cost of failed gang 

enforcement initiatives. Young men of color are disproportionately identified as 

gang members and targeted for surveillance, arrest, and incarceration, while 

whites—who make up a significant share of gang members—rarely show up in accounts of gang enforcement efforts. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office found 

that close to half of black males between the ages of 21 and 24 had been entered 

in the county’s gang database even though no one could credibly argue that all of 

these young men were current gang members. Communities of color suffer not only 

from the imposition of aggressive police tactics that can resemble martial law, but 

also from the failure of such tactics to pacify their neighborhoods. One researcher 

argues that in Chicago, for example, a cycle of police suppression and incarceration 

and a legacy of segregation have actually helped to sustain unacceptably high levels 

of gang violence. 

New York vs. Los Angeles 

The contrast between America’s largest cities—New York and Los Angeles—provides a case in point. In New York City, a variety of street work and gang intervention programs were fielded decades ago during a period when gang violence was on 

the rise. These strategies were solidly grounded in principles of effective social work 

practices that fall outside the realm of law enforcement, and they seem to have 

helped dissuade city policy makers and police officials from embracing most of the 

counterproductive gang suppression tactics adopted elsewhere. No seasoned New 

Yorker would deny the existence of street gangs. But gang-related offenses represent just a tiny blip on the New York crime screen. Gang experts conclude that 

the city’s serious problem with street gang violence had largely faded away by the 

end of the 1980s. Youth violence remains a problem in some New York City neighborhoods, but with crime falling to historic lows, the city’s approach to gangs and 

youth crime seems to be remarkably effective. 

Compare New York to Los Angeles, where gang violence is epidemic. City and 

state officials have spent billions of dollars on policing and surveillance, on development of databases containing the names of tens of thousands of alleged gang members, and on long prison sentences for gang members. Spending on gang enforcement has far outpaced spending on prevention programs or on improved conditions 

in communities where gang violence takes a heavy toll. Los Angeles taxpayers have 

not seen a return on their massive investments over the past quarter century: law 

enforcement agencies report that there are now six times as many gangs and at 

least double the number of gang members in the region. In the undisputed gang 

capital of the world, more police, more prisons, and more punitive measures haven’t 

stopped the cycle of gang violence. Los Angeles is losing the war on gangs. 

The contrast can be seen clearly in the crime statistics: The Los Angeles Police 

Department (LAPD) reported 11,402 gang-related crimes in 2005. That same year, 

the New York Police Department reported just 520. FBI crime reports indicate that 

New York’s homicide rate that year was about half of Los Angeles’, while the rate 

of reported gang crime in Los Angeles was 49 times the rate reported in New York 

City. Yet absent better alternatives, lawmakers across the country risk blindly following in Los Angeles’ troubled footsteps. Federal proposals—such as S. 456, the 

‘‘Gang Abatement and Prevention Act of 2007’’—promise more of the kinds of punitive approaches that have failed to curb the violence in Los Angeles. 

A better way 

Our report does not endorse any particular program or approach for reducing the 

damage done by gangs and gang members. Instead, it points toward actions we can 

take to reduce youth violence. The most effective route toward reducing the harm 

caused by gangs requires a more realistic grasp of the challenges that gangs pose. 

The objective should not be to eradicate gangs—an impossible task—but rather to 

promote community safety. As one community stakeholder observes, ‘‘The problem 

is not to get kids out of gangs, but the behavior. If crime goes down, if young people 

are doing well, that’s successful.’’ 

The lessons from the past and results from research on more recent innovations 

in juvenile justice policy point toward more effective public safety strategies: 

* Expand the use of evidenced-based practice to reduce youth crime. Evidenced-based practices are those interventions that are scientifically proven to reduce juvenile recidivism and promote positive outcomes for young people. Rather 

than devoting more resources to gang suppression and law enforcement tactics, researchers recommend targeting funding to support research-based programs operated by agencies in the health and human services sector. As Peter Greenwood, 

82 

former director of the RAND Corporation’s Criminal Justice Program and an evaluator of Operation Ceasefire in Los Angeles, notes, ‘‘Delays in adopting proven programs will only cause additional victimization of citizens and unnecessarily compromise the future of additional youth.’’ 

* Promote jobs, education, and healthy communities, and lower barriers 

to the reintegration into society of former gang members. Many gang researchers observe that employment and family formation help draw youth away 

from gangs. White youth have greater access to jobs and education, which may explain why there are many white gang members but little discussion of a chronic 

white gang problem. Creating positive opportunities through which gang members 

can leave their past behind is the best chance for improving public safety. This requires both investing resources and reforming policies and practices that now deny 

current and former gang members access to these opportunities. 

* Redirect resources from failed gang enforcement efforts to proven public safety strategies. Gang injunctions, gang sweeps, and ominous-sounding enforcement initiatives reinforce negative images of whole communities and run 

counter to the positive youth development agenda that has been proven to work. 

Rather than promoting antigang rhetoric and programs, policy makers should expand evidence-based approaches to help former gang members and all youth acquire 

the skills and opportunities they need to contribute to healthy and vibrant communities. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Scharf? 

TESTIMONY OF PETER SCHARF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

CENTER FOR SOCIETY, LAW AND JUSTICE, AUSTIN, TX 

Mr. SCHARF. Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Forbes, it is an 

honor to be here. I want to continue, I think, what Kevin started, 

which is to tear some of the assumptions apart as to how we deal 

with the gang issue. We really have two different paradigms at 

work. 

One paradigm—and many cities are using it—is the interdiction 

paradigm. In Las Vegas they have a Squad-Up program that sort 

of proactively attacks gangs. In other cities, such as Minneapolis, 

they attempt to work with kids, deal with some of the underlying 

social issues and ameliorate gang risk through prevention and 

early intervention. In truth, it is a 200-year debate. 

In the early 19th century there was a debate between people who 

believed in environmental stimuli as the cause of delinquency and 

those who believed in innate depravity. And you look in recent history we have things, programs such as Weed and Seed. We have 

community precincts with radically different assumptions. 

And I think it is important that, as we look at the different bills 

under consideration, we think about really what are the differences. But here are a few things I think that are different between what is being proposed in the Schiff bill and that in the 

Scott-Thomas bill, which is under development. 

In the Schiff bill, we have a balanced approach, but with a very 

strong interdiction approach that could result in large numbers of 

young people being sent to jail, sent to prison, especially those on 

the fringes of gang activity, as well as prevention efforts and some 

research efforts in the gang institute approach. In the Scott bill we 

have an attempt really to do four different things. One, to fund 

local communities with intensive early intervention and prevention 

resources to address and to provide a wide variety of evidencebased programming toward young people. 

The second is to support and refine what we believe to be evidence-based by continuing the research. And the third thing is to 

83 

train police officers in working with young people, not in terms of 

interdiction model, but in terms of understanding adolescent behavior and the legal and ethical issues related to diverting them 

from the criminal justice system. 

In the Schiff bill I think there is an emphasis, a belief, in the 

model of deterrence and incapacitation, that if you incapacitate 

large numbers of gang members, potential gang members and create general deterrence the public safety will be increased. In the 

Scott bill I think there is an assumption that, through reducing the 

underlying risks that lead to gang activity, that that will, in the 

long run, result in public safety. 

And looking at the two bills through two different lenses, I think, 

may be productive for these discussions. One is what is the evidence behind each of these two positions. In terms of the Schiff bill, 

there is a disconnect, I think, between increasing prosecutorial resources with the goal of increasing deterrence and incapacitation in 

the sense there may be minimal evidence that that, in fact, works. 

The most probable case, as we heard, in the crime summit on 

June 22nd, is that if you increase prosecutorial resources and you 

increase police capacity, what happens is you run up incredibly 

high criminal justice costs with the argument that, in fact, in the 

long run you increase public safety is almost nil. 

There is a study by Pontell of the capacity to punish, which argues that the reason we have the rise, as Chairman Scott said, 

from 200,000 in 1931 when I started work in the system, to 2 million inmates today, has very little to do with changing crime risks. 

What it has to do with is increasing the capacity to punish by facilitating prosecutions such as is funded under the Schiff bill. Is 

there a chance that, in fact, what will happen is we will increase 

our criminal justice costs with no concurrent increase in safety? 

If you just take—I developed a model in my presentation where 

I just assume, let us say, you have 2,000 kids a year who are incarcerated through the enhanced resources. Over the lifetime of a bill, 

a 10-year lifetime of the bill, the costs could be up to $8 billion. If 

we took that $8 billion and used it for other purposes, how many 

special education teachers, doctors in the inner city schools could 

be funded and schools built? 

So the argument that in one bill we know that, given the evidence—well, we haven’t been given the evidence of whether it 

worked. The one thing that is certain is we will increase the costs. 

The Scott bill under preparation, the PROMISE bill, if assuming 

reasonable success of the prevention measures, each year the bill 

becomes a better deal, a better bargain for the taxpayer, in the 

sense your underlying risks will be reduced and your criminal justice costs will be abated. I strongly support consideration of this alternative paradigm. 

Harry Lee died yesterday, the sheriff in Jefferson Parish. They 

took him to New York—from John Jay College he said, you have 

come here expecting the criminal justice to solve the problems we 

have in New Orleans, which are obvious to everybody. And in fact, 

the system may be the problem as much as the cure. 

And if you look at the bill, this hybrid bill that is proposed by 

Congressman Schiff, the risk is that, in fact, the criminal justice 

system becomes its own dynamic, more kids become involved in the 

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system, the costs become excessive, and also—the disease caused 

by the treatment, that kids who would otherwise not stay in the 

gang life will, in fact, through the criminal justice system become 

identified—and trapped into that system. 

Again, summarizing, what do I think? One, this is a huge problem, astronomic problem financially. The liability is enormous. We 

have two different choices, two different paradigms of how to proceed, one, of a focus on prevention, the other, the focus on interdiction and high-cost correctional alternative. I think the choices are 

profound and absolutely essential to be considered objectively. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Scharf follows:] 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF PETER SCHARF


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. And I want to thank all of our witnesses 

for their testimony. We will bring 5-minute questioning beginning 

with the gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And I would like to thank all of our witnesses who are here 

today. 

As I have listened, starting with Mr. Walsh, who thinks there 

are constitutional problems with H.R. 3547, Judge Jones, who 

talked about the lack of family support and children who are looking for love, support and attention, to Mr. Roper, who says they are 

doing a fine job, and they are being successful, to Mr. Seave, who 

said that you don’t believe that we can arrest our way out of this 

problem, to Mr. Pranis, who had just wonderful research based on 

gangs and got rid of for me a lot of the notions about who gangs 

are, how they operate, to Mr. Scharf, who talks about the two different approaches and how we could end up just increasing young 

people’s involvement in the criminal justice system and exacerbating the problem. 

I don’t hear any support for this bill, H.R. 3547, even though Mr. 

Seave said he supported the bill. And I don’t know if he has read 

the bill or not. I think the idea of some suppression, prevention and 

intervention as you described it, makes good sense. But when you 

take a look at the bill, do you know the definition of a criminal 

street gang in the bill? 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes, I do. 

Ms. WATERS. What is it? 

Mr. SEAVE. The definition of a criminal street gang has several 

elements. I believe it requires 5 individuals, each of them has to 

have committed a criminal street crime, as defined in the statute, 

which is one of the listed Federal felonies, or a serious State felony 

requiring 5 years or more of imprisonment involving violence. And 

these 5 individuals have to have collectively committed three serious gang crimes. So that is my understanding of the definition. 

Ms. WATERS. Does that definition bother you at all? 

Mr. SEAVE. The definition does not bother me. Perhaps I could 

explain why. 

Ms. WATERS. Does it fit any other associations that you could 

think about of people who may be in an association in some way, 

some of whom, at least three or more—let us see, as you have described, with 5 or more persons, each of whom have committed at 

least one so-called gang crime. And these gang crimes are being— 

a new definition of crime, some of which, I guess, overlaps with 

what is considered a State crime now. 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes. 

Ms. WATERS. Could this then fit other groups or organizations 

other than so-called gangs or certain associations? 

Mr. SEAVE. Well, as I read this, the creation of this new Federal 

crime, I read it as being somewhat similar to the RICO statute but 

different. I read this as a former prosecutor creating, frankly, a 

high bar to be able to bring a prosecution. 

Ms. WATERS. But all five need not have committed the three 

crimes. Is that right? 

Mr. SEAVE. No, all five need to have collectively committed three 

crimes, plus each individually needs to have committed one crime. 

111 

Ms. WATERS. That is not how I read it at all. 

Mr. SEAVE. Okay. I am focusing on the word collectively committed. 

Ms. WATERS. Let me just move on to the database collection, the 

collection of names where people will go into a database. Are you 

familiar with the database that in Los Angeles, for example, that 

has been created of gang members? 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes. 

Ms. WATERS. Would you feel comfortable in saying that everybody on that list is a gang member? 

Mr. SEAVE. No. 

Ms. WATERS. Do you think it is a good idea to create these databases that stigmatize young people for the rest of their lives who 

may not be in gangs? 

Mr. SEAVE. I think having databases for law enforcement for intelligence purposes are important. I think, frankly, there is a lot of 

room for improvement in the database that you are talking about, 

the need to really look at how people who are in that database can 

exit out of it and to make sure that those provisions are applied. 

Ms. WATERS. Are you aware that there are young people who live 

in neighborhoods where there may be a gang, and if you ask them 

if they belong to the gang, they will say ‘‘yes,’’ but they don’t really 

belong to the gang? 

Mr. SEAVE. I am not personally aware of that, but I can believe 

that that is possible. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, do you understand why they do it? 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes. 

Ms. WATERS. Why? 

Mr. SEAVE. They do it perhaps out of fear of the gangs. 

Ms. WATERS. That is right. And they end up in a database because they say they belong to a gang to be a part of the neighborhood. I don’t mean to grill you. I just wanted to walk through some 

of this because I know a lot about gangs. 

I have worked in the Los Angeles area for the past, you know, 

30 years or more. And I have worked with a lot of young people 

in public housing projects, many of whom have been in gangs, 

many of whom, just as Mr. Pranis said, were in gangs who became 

productive members of our society. And while we are all concerned 

about gangs and want to do something about them, I think we 

have to be very, very careful that we understand, and that we simply do not move to criminalize or to stigmatize young people and 

whole communities with a bill like this. 

Because in this bill, the whole community is identified as a high 

gang activity operation, kind of. And I think we have to be very, 

very careful. 

Some of our Members not only are concerned about gangs, but 

they really do think it makes them a better legislator because they 

are tough on crime and they get reelected on these kind of issues. 

I don’t intend to sit in this Committee and not raise the kind of 

questions that I think should be raised about this serious, serious, 

serious leap into trying to come up with a bill, where many people 

don’t even understand what they are doing when they look at these 

definitions and these databases and all of that. 

112 

So I just simply wanted to say I appreciate that everybody here 

at least have shown that they understand that this is not an easy 

thing to do and that you really do believe in prevention and intervention and not simply suppression. And there is a lot of suppression in this bill, a lot of Federal intervention in ways that Mr. 

Walsh says would cause some constitutional problems. 

And so, even for my colleagues who were here today I intend to 

share with them that those of us who have worked on these kinds 

of issues are not going to easily support this kind of bill. And I 

yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

The gentleman from Virginia, the Ranking Member, Mr. Forbes? 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And once again, I want 

to thank all of you for being here and our previous panel. I apologize because I would love to sit down and talk with all of you. And 

I have worked on gangs a lot, but I know all of you have. And I 

would just love to by osmosis pick up some of what you have in 

your head. 

My good friend, Judge Jones, I know, has worked on these issues 

for a long time. And unfortunately, the logistics of how we are set 

up with seven previous panelists that we couldn’t even ask questions to and now we have seven new—and I have 5 minutes. I just 

can’t do it. 

So I want to try to hone in on some things that are here. I want 

to compliment Mr. Schiff. I don’t agree with everything in this bill. 

I think maybe there are some things I would like to take a little 

further. But he has worked hard in this area over years. And we 

may disagree, but I certainly recognize his expertise, as I do the 

other Members that were here before and all of you. 

But, Mr. Seave, I would like to follow up on some comments that 

you made, because you are now the California Director of Gang and 

Youth Violence Policy. You are the big guy there looking at the 

gangs. 

And I am sure you have spent a lot of time in an evidentiary 

base analyzing this and pulling data together. And you know, you 

are not going to make statements that are off the cuff without 

doing the analysis. And the other side brought you here. We didn’t, 

so I get to ask you, you know, some questions on that. 

And the one question—Mr. Walsh kind of feels like Federal Government shouldn’t be involved in this at all. You, I take it, since 

you support this bill, feel the Federal Government should be involved. And you are nodding your head, so I take it that is a yes, 

that Federal Government should be involved. Correct? 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FORBES. And you mentioned the concern with suppression. 

I know you were a Federal prosecutor before. Tell us what the Federal Government can do that the local and the State government 

can’t do in terms of suppression. Because I notice you said here 

that the primary responsibility ought to belong to the communities 

and the State government. What do you need the Federal Government to do, suppression-wise? 

Mr. SEAVE. Let me give you an example. And it was something 

that happened when I was United States attorney. I am sure that 

this Committee has heard testimony about Operation Cease Fire in 

113 

Boston. We did a similar operation like that in Stockton. Stockton 

at that time was suffering from an epidemic of gang-related homicides. 

And Operation Cease Fire is an effort to bring in, identify the 

dangerous gang members, not all gang members, not all members 

of the community, to bring them together and to essentially warn 

them if you continue the violence, then—— 

Mr. FORBES. I know. But why couldn’t a State do that? 

Mr. SEAVE. A State could do it. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. 

Mr. SEAVE. But the additional—— 

Mr. FORBES. But I want you to address—and I don’t mean to cut 

you off. It is just I have got a limited amount of time. 

Mr. SEAVE. Right. Sure. 

Mr. FORBES. The Chairman will gavel me. I want to ask you 

what do you have to have the Federal Government to do, suppression-wise, that the State and the local community can’t do. 

Mr. SEAVE. Sure. The Federal Government had more resources. 

Mr. FORBES. I know. I understand you can always pay more dollars to do it. But what do you need the Federal Government to do 

from a suppression point of view? Why is it important that the Federal Government get involved, other than dollars, just dollars? Why 

is it important for suppression? 

Mr. SEAVE. By resources, I meant, for example, investigative 

tools. We have the grand jury, which is a very effective investigative tool. The State and the local does not have that kind of investigative tool. 

Mr. FORBES. So you need a grand jury that can go on a larger 

multi-jurisdictional area. Is that a fair assessment? 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes, yes. In addition, we have the ability—the State 

has to some degree—we have a great ability to use wiretaps. And 

wiretaps are a very effective way to investigate a crime, not go in 

and kick down doors and alienate everybody, but to target your investigation, get your evidence, and effectually, your arrests, which 

is what we did. 

Mr. FORBES. And you have more venue opportunities with the 

Federal Government, correct? 

Mr. SEAVE. That is correct. 

Mr. FORBES. With prosecution. Now, you can quantify the dollars 

that are needed perhaps to do some of that suppression-type of activity. But now tell me on the prevention side of it. What is it that 

only the Federal Government could do, not because of money, but 

just because of the Federal Government that the State and the 

local government couldn’t do. 

Mr. SEAVE. They need to do research on programs, I think. 

Mr. FORBES. That is money. I am talking about what could only 

the Federal Government do that the State and local government 

couldn’t do. 

Mr. SEAVE. Well, I think it is money, but I think it is more than 

money because research is done nationally. To be able to collect national research, national evaluations, bring in experts from all over 

the country in order to conduct evaluations, find out what works 

and what doesn’t work requires a national effort. I mean, California itself—— 

114 

Mr. FORBES. How much money would you need to do that kind 

of effort? 

Mr. SEAVE. It would be millions of dollars. 

Mr. FORBES. How much, do you know? 

Mr. SEAVE. I am sorry, I don’t know. 

Mr. FORBES. Well, the reason I ask that is you were able to testify here that it ought to be 50-50 breakdown. Where do you come 

up with the dollars to make it 50-50 in terms of the allocation of 

dollars? 

Mr. SEAVE. The 50-50 breakdown in the bill at the high-intensity 

gang area is an effort to split the money in half. 

Mr. FORBES. I know what the effort is. But, I mean, how do you 

testify here today that that is the amount of resources you need? 

Have you done anything at all to calculate how many dollars you 

need to do what you think needs to be done? 

Mr. SEAVE. No, I have not done a calculation. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. 

Mr. Roper, I just want to ask you this question because as I understand it, when we come down to just looking at evidence and 

facts, if I understood your testimony, you stated that when you 

prosecuted gangs in Dallas, you had a 47 percent drop in murder, 

rape, aggravated robbery, assault. Did I miss—— 

Mr. ROPER. In that target area that we were looking at. 

Mr. FORBES. Where you prosecuted the gangs? 

Mr. ROPER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FORBES. How about Fort Worth? You had a 10 percent 

drop—— 

Mr. ROPER. Yes, that was—— 

Mr. FORBES.—when you prosecuted the gangs there? 

Mr. ROPER. And what I try to do is pull out some examples of 

success we have had by targeting these drug trafficking gangs and 

try to essentially get them off the streets. 

Mr. FORBES. Now, you have heard some comments today about 

mandatory sentences and how they are so horrible and so bad. As 

a prosecutor, mandatory sentences useful to you, not useful to you? 

What do they do? 

Mr. ROPER. In my experience, I think over the last 20 years as 

a Federal prosecutor, they have come in handy in dealing with— 

if they are used in the right way—to either obtain cooperation. 

That is a great vehicle, even if you don’t impose the mandatory 

minimum. 

You have that ability to garner cooperation. And also you have 

the ability to essentially take out of the community some really bad 

people. And a 47 percent reduction in that area—I went up to a 

Weed and Seed community meeting, and a lady came up to me in 

that area. 

And she said, ‘‘You know, thank you for doing that initiative in 

that area, because if we hadn’t had that initiative, I couldn’t go out 

of my house at night.’’ So sometimes there are some individuals 

that really you have to incarcerate to make the community safer. 

And that is when mandatory minimums come into play. 

Mr. FORBES. Last question for you, you heard the previous panelists, one of the legislators, talk about witness intimidation. What 

is more important, to give money to the witness to try to protect 

115 

them, or to keep the defendant incarcerated so they can’t get back 

out? 

Mr. ROPER. We obviously want to put the defendant in jail so 

they don’t deal with the person, the witness and intimidate him. 

That is the best deal. And I think our failed prevention—some of 

the provisions to try to strengthen the bill, the reform act, would 

go a long way in helping us deal with any witness intimidation. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay, thank you. My time is up. 

I yield back. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts? 

Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Seave, I mean, you mentioned that States 

don’t have investigative grand juries. Did I hear you say that? 

Mr. SEAVE. Not in the way that the Federal grand jury operates. 

The State grand jury is limited in its jurisdiction. The State grand 

jury—— 

Mr. DELAHUNT. How is it limited in its jurisdiction? Because I 

must have been, you know, living in a—— 

Mr. SEAVE. Outside of California. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. Outside of California? I happen to come from 

Massachusetts. I was a State prosecutor for 22 years. And I utilized grand juries in an investigative capacity frequently. As far as 

wiretaps is concerned, my office conducted more—let me emphasize 

this—court authorized wiretaps in a single year than the FBI did 

nationally. So with all due respect, sir, I have to vigorously disagree with those two observations you made about State jurisdictions. That is just inaccurate. 

Mr. SEAVE. Well, I believe it is accurate in California. I recognize 

that it is inaccurate for Massachusetts. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. I would daresay that my colleagues who served 

as State prosecutors all over the country would disagree with your 

conclusions. But having said that, let me just pursue the line of 

questioning that was being posed by the Ranking Member. 

My experience has been that street crime, crimes of violence are 

best prosecuted at the State level. My own sense is that the role 

of the Federal Government is to provide resources. When we talk 

about the FBI and the ATF in the vast majority of cases, the information in task forces and collaborative efforts are developed at the 

State level. 

The informants are the informant of, if you will, the detective bureau in the local police department. And most local and State jurisdictions will share that information with the FBI. The FBI rarely 

develops information independent of State and local prosecutors’ office and investigative agencies. That is just the reality. 

Most FBI walk around with suits on, very difficult to, you know, 

go up to a kid in an economically deprived section with a suit and 

a tie on and say do you want to be an informant. I mean, the reality is violent crime in this country is addressed at the local and 

State level. And they ought to be provided resources. 

And on occasion, I think you are correct about doing research 

and providing forensic services. But I am concerned in the Schiff 

bill—and I have great respect for my colleague—there are references about the FBI leading these task forces. I think maybe it 

116 

was the sheriff, David Reichert, earlier talking about FBI-led task 

forces. 

You know, we have a real problem here. We are having an FBI 

that, according to the director of the FBI, is reconsidering its mission and its emphasis in terms of anti-terrorism. And we are going 

to task them now with doing, you know, investigations into street 

crimes? Call it what you will, gang violence. But I daresay we need 

to hear from the director of the FBI as to what vision he has in 

terms of the future of the FBI. 

There was a recent report out that referenced a new intelligence 

effort mimicking, I think, M-15 on, you know, that the United 

Kingdom utilizes. So even before we get to these issues, you know, 

you can slap things together and yet it doesn’t coincide with what 

the reality is on the ground. 

And I always, you know, fall down on the side of prevention. I 

think it makes a lot of sense. And you know, I think one of you 

indicated—I mean, gangs—this is not a new phenomenon. Maybe 

in terms of the order of magnitude and the transnational aspects 

of it. But gangs have been around since I was a kid. 

I mean, we used to have gang wars back in my era. And I know 

there are programs out there that exist today, if we looked at them 

and did, I think, a real solid analysis based upon empirical data— 

not necessary to go reinvent the wheel and maybe tweak around 

the edges. 

So, you know, I believe in joint task forces. I mean, we talk about 

drugs being the fuel, if you will, for gang violence. And yet we are 

talking about the FBI. Maybe we should be talking about the DEA. 

You know, I just think we need a lot more in terms of having 

a single panel of, you know, seven, I am sure, preeminent individuals in the area of criminal justice coming. But take this thing one 

by one. 

Go out, analyze what works. Let us be smart about it. What has 

worked in the past? Let us not reinvent the wheel. And what is the 

reality out there today in terms of gang violence? 

We can update it. As far as mandatory sentences, are they a good 

thing? Of course, they are a good thing if you want to squeeze 

somebody. You know, you give them an option, and oftentimes they 

are going to tell you what you want to hear. 

And oftentimes it is not the truth, because when you have got 

somebody and you are saying I am going to give you 20 years, now 

tell me about Joe, well, he is going to tell you all about Joe because 

he is not a fool. And I bet he doesn’t carry around with him a copy 

of the, you know, United States criminal code to check the penalties. 

I will yield back. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Lungren? 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you for having this hearing. I find it very interesting, even though 

I wasn’t here personally. I was monitoring it from my office on television to listen to the various commentaries. And there is a little 

bit of truth in everything everybody says here. 

All I can do is my experience 8 years in California where we saw 

a drop in violent crime by over 35 percent. And we saw a drop in 

117 

homicides by 50 percent. Now, I don’t know how you stack those 

things up, but it seems to me that means people’s lives were saved. 

If you can cut the homicide rate by 50 percent, that means something to people on the street because half the people otherwise 

would be homicide victims or not homicide victims. And I think 

part of it was tougher laws. And I will even say some of the laws 

that allowed us to prosecute juveniles as adults were appropriate. 

But as I said then, and I will repeat it now. And, Judge, I think 

you are absolutely right. We can’t put everybody in prison. We 

can’t suppress our way out of a crime wave that affects our young 

people. And I understand how we are trying to solve the problem 

at all levels, the Federal Government level, the State government 

level, and every other level. 

And, Judge, I think you were right on when you talked about the 

loss of that connection that we call the family, because when I had 

a task force from about 17 different disciplines, including law enforcement and social workers, mental health workers who spent a 

year and-a-half looking at the problem, one of the conclusions we 

came to is exactly what you said. The gangs are for many of these 

young people the families that they miss. The authority that they 

don’t have anywhere else in their life is in a perverted way in the 

gang. 

The actions that they take that are anti-social, that are violent, 

that are destructive and that we see from the outside as being selfdestructive are, in fact, acts of affirmation within the context of a 

gang that serves as the surrogate family for them. And I am almost 

at a loss to see how we are ever going to successfully attack it 

when we are attacking it from the opposite side of where the problem is. 

Now, to describe the problem is a lot easier than to solve the 

problem, because we have a culture today that tells us families are 

not important, that adults are more important than children, and 

adult responsibility trumps responsibility to children every time. 

And it is reflected in our actions. And it is reflected in our culture. 

And so, at the one time we are sitting here worried about the violence that is going on and how kids are attracted to violence, kids 

have always been attracted to violence. But now it has been put 

on an altar of celebration by our culture. And we are trying to overcome that with tougher laws and greater sentencing and then also 

programs where we try and act as the parents that they are missing. 

And you know, the real thing is always better than the artificial. 

And so, what we are dealing with here is how do we construct 

those artificial mechanisms that might prevent the attraction that 

kids have, the young people have to it. At the same time, responding to the cries of the people in the community that are being victimized. 

I remember going and having a school safety program at one of 

the high schools in Los Angeles, and after it was all over, having 

a young girl come up to me. She was about 14 or 15, African-American. And she said why is it that it took the death of one of my 

fellow students before you adults got your act together. 

118 

Because a young man had been killed by another person who had 

brought a gun to school. It had discharged accidentally. He brought 

it to school to protect himself, he thought, from other things. 

And I understand why every governor in every State would like 

more money. In fact, I even thought I would be in that position one 

day. It didn’t happen. 

But that doesn’t determine what the appropriate Federal responsibility is and how we would parcel out our authority and our 

money. It is easier, I think, to justify us if we have the money, 

sharing the money than it is in some ways always assuming that 

the feds are best. 

And, Mr. Seave, I have got great respect for you, but I must take 

issue with your delineation of the difference between the ability of 

the feds to go after a certain crime and networks under their Federal grand juries in State. 

I remember my friend—I know you know him, George 

Williamson. I think the best, in my own opinion, the best prosecutor in California. He was my top criminal justice supervisor. 

And the cases down in Yosemite where the feds went in and copped 

a plea to the guy down there using their grand jury powers. And 

George went in there and got the death penalty after he got the 

California grand jury system to work to indict that individual and 

to prosecute him. 

I think at times what works best is multi-jurisdictional task 

forces so long as the State or local agency or department has at 

least a co-equal authority because I have seen too many task forces 

where the feds take over and only they know what is right and how 

to do things. And the gang problem is a national problem because 

it affects many parts of this Nation. 

But it is essentially a local jurisdictional problem. And it is one 

that we have to attack at that level. I know I am meandering in 

my thoughts, but I am just trying to respond to all the things that 

I heard here today. 

And, Judge, you are the one that hit me the hardest because I 

think you are absolutely right. We are going to continue to be the 

proverbial dog chasing its tail so long as we don’t understand what 

the destruction of the family unit has done to our society, but more 

particularly, to our children. And what we are all doing is trying 

to clean up after we have allowed tremendous problems to occur. 

And it is always tougher to try and deal with it. 

So I appreciate what you are doing. And I appreciate your sentiment. And at times as we—and I think all of us here want to deal 

with the gang problem. And we have some differences about how 

to do it and where emphasis ought to be. 

But I hope as we do that we will understand fundamentally 

where kids are denied the network that is the family, they are 

going to look elsewhere. And so long as that continues to be an 

acute problem in this country, we will have gangs. And we can do 

what we can to try and minimize the attractiveness of violence 

within those gangs. But if we are going to truly deal with the problem, we are going to have to get back to basics and figure out what 

we do as a society to give the kids what they need before they 

reach out and find this as that missing context in their society. 

I thank the Chairman. 

119 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

The gentleman from Georgia? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Behold, how wonderful, how good and pleasant it 

must be for politicians to make their way back to their respective 

districts and to be able to pound on their chests and say how tough 

that we have been on crime. And politicians have been following 

that track religiously since at least 1970. 

And after remaining roughly steady through most of the 20th 

century, the U.S. incarceration rate has soared 470 percent, about 

one out of every 133 U.S. residents is in prison or jail today, as opposed to one out of every 620 in 1970. Behold, we have been so 

tough on crime that it has had such a great impact it has actually 

reduced crime. No, I don’t think so. 

Many more people are on probation or parole. The current U.S. 

incarceration rate is the highest in the world and far exceeds the 

global average of approximately one out of every 602 persons. I 

mean, as we get tougher on crime, as these proposals do, we are 

not producing a decrease in crime. 

And it is coming at a great societal cost to those who choose to 

follow the law. There must be some other way that will actually get 

at crime reduction, a way that is different than levying new or I 

will say overlapping and harsher penalties against wrongdoing. 

Would anybody on the panel agree with that statement? 

Everyone? Or would anyone disagree with it? No one will admit 

to disagreement. But let me ask Dr. Scharf. 

Mr. SCHARF. Sure. Well, I mean, the irony—and I think Kevin 

said it so well. Here you have a decline in crime, and we have an 

increase in sanctions. And the numbers of people who would be 

projected to go through, you know, $400,000 experiences or 10 

years in jail. And just what you said, Mr. Johnson. And that is the 

absurdity of where we are right now. 

I mean, and the fiscal burden of the bill, I think, you know, you 

want the GAO or somebody to really look at this and really do a 

mathematical model. But, I mean, if you use this money for prevention, as everybody has said, for parenting, for childhood, with 

schools, with doctors, you would have a huge windfall. 

And why would you, just as you were saying, throw that money 

down the rat hole? And you know, the racial disproportionality, the 

human cost goes on top of that. I mean, why does society, in my 

view, want to invest in a great project for more jails? 

I mean, my daughter applied to UCB out in California, and she 

was told she couldn’t get a fellowship because the correctional costs 

were 19 percent of the California budget. You know? And this is 

true all over the country. 

This is the moral equivalent of the military bankrupting society. 

You know? And I absolutely agree with what you said. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. In light of that, I think I have no further questions or comment. I will yield back. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

The gentlelady from Texas? 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and the 

Ranking Member. 

And, gentlemen, thank you for your very instructive commentary. Forgive me for being detained in some other meetings. 

120 

But I think I have lived through this for a period of time. I was 

an associate municipal court judge in the city of Houston. And so, 

we saw a lot of the truants and others in the judicial system. 

And we have an interesting structure in Texas, which I think is 

replicated in many places. And I think my good friend, U.S. Attorney Roper—I am looking without my glasses, so forgive me. But 

welcome back again—is familiar with our TYC in Texas. In fact, we 

had made some inquiries of the U.S. attorney about some of the crises that we were facing there. 

But our TYC, our Texas Youth Commission—you are assigned to 

the youth commission. And then that is the end of you. I mean, you 

don’t really have a term per se, and you can enhance your term by 

chewing bubble gum or something else. But we have, I think, a crisis where we don’t sometimes know what to do. 

I see my good friend who worked with me and continues to work 

with me—a case which involved individuals of a differing age in 

Texas. And then I would like to offer the backdrop of the Jena six, 

which I think is one of the glaring—two incidences. 

The Georgia case, a young man unfortunately caught up in the 

system on an incident in the graduating year, an African-American, 

sexual case, still caught up in the system and then the Jena six, 

an individual tried as an adult. Thank goodness for the 3rd circuit 

in Louisiana who said that was wrong. 

So we have a crisis of huge proportions. And I raise these questions. And I am delighted that some of the Members who are here 

offered a number of legislative initiatives. But I am just going to 

go on the basic premise that there should be intervention. 

And I will give Mr. Walsh a chance. I am going to ask him a 

question directly. But I do think there should be intervention. 

Why? Because I think the Federal Government is a bully pulpit. 

And I think it has the ability to set the tone and maybe even, 

Judge Jones, copy from you because we are the bully pulpit. But 

we usually look at the State and say I like what Judge Jones is 

doing. Let me copy that. And we have had with the leadership of 

our Chairman, Chairman Scott, we have had that kind of interest. 

Let me go to Mr. Pranis because I just love what you said, if I 

have gotten the summary of it. Because this is what I believe. 

When you see gang exposes on TV, you see big guys with tattoos, 

and you see those guys, you know, also when you see prison stories, big guys with tattoos who graduated. You know, they are in 

their late twenties and maybe thirties. If you go to California, they 

have got grandpas. 

But you seem to be saying that we are losing the battle when we 

begin to just put a big umbrella or tent over these babies that call 

themselves gangs who are either following the big tattooed guys. 

We are chasing them down like regular mafia rather than intervention. 

For all we know, these kids are foster kids. These kids have not 

had the removal of the risk factors, which some Members have 

said. Help me understand that. And tell me where Federal intervention can work on understanding and responding to that population of which you can’t intervene on. 

Mr. PRANIS. Absolutely, I would be happy to. The profile of the 

typical gang member of the United States is between the ages of 

121 

12 and 15 years old. And most will leave the gang within a year. 

Right? Gangs are a transitory experience for most, a longer experience for some. And that is a concern. 

You know, I was part of a group discussion with a former gang 

member who talked about when these 20-and 30-year-old guys 

come around. And he said they are kind of weird. They are losers. 

They are these old guys who hang around us and they try to 

throw signs. But we don’t know why. They are like get a life. 

Right? Like, this is kids stuff. 

I mean, gangs are first and foremost kids stuff. And I think they 

only become, you know, serious adult problems when there is such 

a negative environment to grow in and a negative law enforcement 

response. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Or they get into the law enforcement system. 

Mr. PRANIS. Or they get into the law enforcement system. They 

go to prison. They come back out, and all of a sudden, you know, 

that is all they have. Right? 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well, what is your intervention? What would 

you offer? 

Mr. PRANIS. Several things. One is just to provide them—and the 

two things people cited before are families and jobs—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I just want to say can I get an answer 

on Mr. Roper and Judge Jones? 

Mr. PRANIS. Yes. Families and jobs are two very big things and 

opportunity. So if you engage youth in basketball teams, you know, 

in jobs, most people naturally graduate and have for decades from 

gangs into jobs. Right? 

They have kids, suddenly they have got a kid. They need to support them. Their parents won’t support them. And so, if there is job 

opportunities available, if there is housing available, if there is 

supports for families, including social workers to help the families 

do a better job with the kids, as Mr. Lungren pointed out, you 

know, those are the kind of things that are shown to work. 

New York is a wonderful model. But I also think, frankly, there 

is a whole lot of White kids in gangs. Yet we don’t hear about a 

White gang problem. 

And I think part of the reason is the opportunities available to 

most White suburban kids to transition out of a gang are very different. But law enforcement also treats White kids in the suburbs 

very differently than Black and Latino kids in inner cities. And I 

think if we looked at what small towns and suburbs do, that is 

probably a much better model than what Los Angeles does in terms 

of successfully transitioning kids out of gangs and not creating 

those institutional problems. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. May I have—yes. 

Mr. ROPER. I think my answer to this is, it is not just one solution. I always look at the model that we have now as the threelegged stool: enforcement, prevention and reentry. That stool with 

one leg doesn’t work if you just use one leg. 

I think one of the panelists is missing the point if he thinks that 

incarceration hasn’t had a positive effect in the drop of the crime 

rate. You look in Texas, Congresswoman, and remember the time 

when Texas had such a—everybody in the world could get parole 

at the drop of a hat. And we had a high crime rate. 

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When we started having sure, certain sentences, the crime rate 

dropped. And it dropped all the way until 2006 in historical proportions. So enforcement does have a role. 

But I do agree that prevention and reentry strategies have to be 

in place to make a difference. And I think that is what I like about 

the Department of Justice’s anti-gang initiative that it involves all 

three of that important legs of that stool for crime reduction. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Judge Jones, does that work, putting them in 

jail all the time? 

Judge JONES. Well, there are a lot of people who have to be incapacitated and kept away from all the rest of us. That is a basic, 

I think, reality that we have to understand. 

The thing that I would like to at least comment upon as an intervention that you suggest is the part of the written remarks I didn’t 

get to actually read. It just talks about reading, reading as a basic 

and fundamental skill that where reading deficiencies are the common characteristic of everybody who is delinquent and 

criminalized. 

And the courts that I sit in—and I have been involved as a prosecutor, as a criminal defense attorney, a juvenile defense attorney 

for 27 years, and I will tell you very few of the people that I ever 

represented were reading on their grade level. And to the extent 

that we can improve the reading and keep that achievement gap 

closed and thereby increase the opportunity that that person or the 

possibility, rather that that person will become significantly and 

gainfully employed. 

And if you talk to a lot of the kids who are out there getting in 

gangs, they will tell you, you know, I want a job. I would like to 

have a job. I wish I had a job that they can, you know, that they 

can support and sustain themselves on. 

So, I mean, I think that, you know, those are kind of—the basic 

academic achievement gap is one of the most important areas that 

all Government, all levels of government need to be focusing on if 

they really want to kind of eliminate these problems of delinquency, criminality of which gang crime and gang involvement is 

a part of it. It is not the whole thing. I will tell you it is certainly 

not the whole thing, but it is important. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So the baggy pants kids need to learn to read, 

the kids that Kevin is talking about, Mr. Pranis is talking about? 

Judge JONES. They do need to learn how to read. And we need 

to be reinforcing, you know, reading and other things, other prosocial values. We don’t get as much of that that we need. And these 

kids are not getting it from the significant adults, if there are 

adults in their lives, which is what I mentioned earlier. So we are 

behind the curve on trying to keep these kids moving in the right 

direction in the main stream toward the mainstream of society. 

And if they don’t, then, I mean, we are going to get what we get. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

And I had a couple of questions. I would recognize myself for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. Seave, there has been a lot of discussion about this definition 

of a gang crime. 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes, sir. 

123 

Mr. SCOTT. And you mentioned five previous crimes. Are those 

committed or convicted? 

Mr. SEAVE. The statute just says committed. 

Mr. SCOTT. So after you have got the requisite number of allegations, when you have a defendant charged with, say, armed robbery 

who is a member of the gang, five people, other people in the gang 

have committed crimes, so that kind of designates it as a gang. 

And you have some totally different person in the gang charged 

with armed robbery. 

In that trial, does the prosecutor get to bring in all of those five? 

Well, he would have to bring in all of those five predicate cases to 

show that it is, in fact, a gang. Is that right? 

Mr. SEAVE. Congressman, I thought about that question. The 

statute doesn’t answer that question. And I think it is really going 

to depend on the court. 

Mr. SCOTT. You have got to prove your case. 

Mr. SEAVE. Yes. But having prosecuted many cases, sometimes 

you have to prove it before the jury. Sometimes there will be a stipulation in order—the defense doesn’t want that to go to the jury. 

And there will be a stipulation. How exactly that will be proven I 

am not sure. But that is a good question. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, the question is that you are sitting up here 

charged with armed robbery. And before they get to your little allegations, they get in all the riff raff from all over the community 

and say, well, this is his friend, that is his friend. You have got 

murder, rape and mayhem. And then you get to his little allegation. All that is what the jury gets to see. 

Mr. SEAVE. Possibly and possibly not. It really depends on what 

the judge—on how the judge views the facts of the case and what 

is fair to the defense. 

Mr. SCOTT. If he wants to suggest that it wasn’t a gang crime, 

isn’t going to stipulate anything, you have got to prove all of the 

elements of the case before the jury. You get to parade in all the 

riff raff in the community and associate him with that riff raff. Is 

that not true? 

Mr. SEAVE. It could be true, yes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. And so, he is being tried by association and 

scare the jury to death. And I guess you would parade in all these 

guys and present the evidence and call them to let them plead the 

5th and let the jury see all that. And—— 

Mr. SEAVE. I don’t think that is the way it would proceed. I 

mean, if people are going to plead the 5th, that is not going to happen in front of the jury. If you remember, one of the elements of 

the crime is that the crime is committed to further the activities 

of the gang. So hopefully this isn’t just—I mean, I would not support and I don’t think the statute supports just charging somebody 

with a crime and parading in people for the sake of ruining their 

reputation. 

Mr. SCOTT. And well, you have to prove all of the elements of the 

case. You would parade in all of the riff raff, associate the defendant with that riff raff. And even if the jury were to conclude that 

this really isn’t a gang crime, they know all of his friends and associates and all of their bad deeds. 

124 

Let me ask Mr. Pranis and Judge Jones. Both got cut off. And 

I noticed in their written testimony they had specific recommendations as to what we could do. Why don’t you take a minute to go 

through, starting with Mr. Pranis, what some of your specific recommendations are that you haven’t been able to mention so far. 

Mr. PRANIS. Sure. The general tenor is that we should be focusing on the behavior and not, in fact, on the eradication of gangs, 

which I think history has shown us is impossible to get the kids 

out of the behavior rather than the gangs. But the three recommendations are expanding the use of evidence practices to reduce youth crime. And that includes sort of social work interventions, particularly with the family. 

There has been tremendous advances in juvenile justice in figuring out what works for kids. And a lot of the researchers we 

interviewed pointed out that, while there is no really good evidence 

of what works for gangs specifically, there is lot of information 

about what works with delinquent kids. And so, we should be focusing on those practices. 

The second would be promoting jobs, education and healthy communities and, specifically, lowering barriers to social reintegration 

of former gang members. And that is where, I think, gang injunctions and databases are particularly dangerous, because what they 

can result in is the sort of black list of people who really need to 

transition out of gangs. And this becomes a barrier to their reintegration, which is the best way to reduce crime. 

And then third, I think we need to end the use of failed gang enforcement strategies in favor of effective public safety. It is not an 

argument against doing law enforcement and enforcing the law. It 

is an argument against gang-focused law enforcement because 

there is no evidence that having law enforcement organized around 

gangs as opposed to around crime and public safety makes any 

sense. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Judge Jones? 

Judge JONES. Well, I did get a chance to at least talk about the 

literacy, I think, that we all need to be really focused on as a common, kind of, criminogenic factor, the lack of literacy. But I just 

think also as a former State legislator, as a former head of a youth 

authority in a State and somebody who was responsible for a lot 

of the juvenile reform legislation that we went through in Virginia 

in the 1990’s, which was a direct response to the rising tide or the 

perceived rising tide of violence and criminality, the predators all 

across the countryside, as they used to say in Virginia. 

You know, I think it just would be very helpful if we would just 

kind of take a step back, pause, and look very carefully at what the 

results and outcomes of that have been. The point that I always lift 

up is that it costs in Virginia today $88,000 per year per bed to incarcerate a juvenile offender in our juvenile correctional center. It is up $8,000 from what it was 5 or 6 years ago when I was 

the head of the authority. And we have got to look very carefully 

at where we are, what we have gotten for all of that money. And 

that is, I think, something that I would just caution. 

You know, these automatic waivers, reverse waivers, lowering 

the age of transfer, all of the things that were rushed to implemenVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:47 Oct 28, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00128 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\100207\38112.000 HJUD1 PsN: 38112
125 

tation in the 1990’s as a response for this has had a consequence. 

And it has had a very serious and expensive consequence. 

And a lot of places right now, a lot of States, are actually beginning to roll those policies back, because they have seen—and it is 

based upon, you know, very important research that has been done, 

a lot of it, as I said, university-based, a lot of it coming out of, you 

know, nonprofit, nonpartisan agencies that are looking at these 

things. 

And I just would hate to see, you know, that we kind of go down 

that road again in the allocation of significant resources, Federal, 

State and local into the kinds of things—I am not saying it has all 

been bad. And I am not saying, you know, that getting tough on 

crime—it has its place. 

The Lord knows I am not looked at as a soft touch judge, I will 

tell you that. But it is certainly, I think, informative that we kind 

of look backward and carefully look at how we have dealt with 

these things in the past because it is not all, you know, a great outcome. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. Roper, I asked Mr. Seave about how you would prove a case 

if this definition were into effect. Is there any way you can avoid 

being able to present to the jury all the community riff raff and associate it with the defendant as part of the trial, proving your elements of the trial? 

Mr. ROPER. Well, Mr. Chairman, of course, the department 

hasn’t taken a position on the bill that is under consideration. But, 

you know, spillover effect is always a concern for a Federal judge 

in any kind of case, in conspiracy cases, even, in RICO cases, in 

continuing criminal enterprise cases. We face that all the time. And 

I think judges are able to use their discretion to try to avoid that. 

For instance, you know, you can’t go in and claim the 5th in 

front of the jury. That is prohibited. You can’t do that. 

Well, I would say that, you know, I only have 90 prosecutors in 

my district. And I have 100,000 square miles, about 7 million people in that area. In the cases we bring, we can’t fill the Federal 

court up with every drug trafficker or every gang member. We have 

to be selective in what we prosecute because we have so many 

other priorities. 

And I think the people we bring in to Federal court to prosecute 

these cases are folks that need to be prosecuted in Federal court. 

At least I hope we are doing that. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, my concern was the conduct of the trial. Can 

you avoid having a defendant in a simple armed robbery case—can 

he avoid having everybody in the neighborhood who he has been 

associated with and all their crimes presented to the jury? 

Mr. ROPER. Well, I think we have done that with the RICO statute, tried to avoid a spillover effect about that. In continuing criminal enterprises we have had it. It is similar to that. And I am not 

familiar enough with the legislation to give you an answer. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, it is not law, so there is no judicial history on 

it. 

But let me ask one final question to Dr. Scharf. Can you explain 

the importance of having collaboration before you start figuring out 

126 

a strategy, local collaboration in the locality, before you start doing 

a strategy? 

Mr. SCHARF. Well, the research shows that, you know, it may not 

be the program effect, but it is the community effect, that the community is targeted on a goal of early intervention or prevention. So, 

you know, whether anger management or substance abuse training, multi-systemic therapy is better than something else we don’t 

know. What we know is that when a community focuses through 

education on reducing the risk factors of juvenile delinquency and 

gang involvement, it works. 

And it is success stories like Dan Lungren mentioned before, the 

success in California—what we don’t know was it the prisons or 

was it the community-oriented policing activities that you sponsored, you know, the community meetings that was the result. This 

is true in New York, Chicago, everyplace else that has done it. 

So the argument that yes, we increased sanctions and crime 

went down, we also increased community mechanisms, as Chairman Scott suggested. And as a criminologist, I think the answer is 

we really don’t know what was more important. The argument that 

it really is the kind of community partnership that Chairman Scott 

mentioned is there in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New 

York where these huge crime reductions in the 1990’s occurred. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much. And I would like to thank all 

of our witnesses for their testimony. 

Our Members may have additional written questions which we 

will forward to you and ask that you answer as promptly as you 

can in order they may be part of the record. Without objection, the 

hearing record will remain open for 1 week for the submission of 

additional materials. And without objection, the Committee stands 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:43 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(127) 

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SHEILA JACKSON LEE, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, AND MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this very important hearing on ‘‘Gang 

Crime Prevention and the Need to Foster Innovative Solutions at the Federal 

Level.’’ When crimes are needlessly being perpetrated against citizens of this country, we as Members of this body have a duty to use whatever measures necessary 

to curtail such criminal behavior and ensure that we provide the most effective 

measures possible to be implemented and enforced to ensure the safety of all members of this society. 

I am pleased to welcome our witnesses who have gathered here today to give us 

guidance and insights in our efforts to create innovative solutions at the federal 

level that will address the incredible challenges that we face in our attempt to curtail and prevent gang violence: Honorable Adam B. Schiff Representative, California’s 29th District; the Honorable Joe Baca, Representative, California’s 43rd District; the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, Representative, Maryland 7th District; the 

Honorable Jerry McNerney, Representative, California’s 11th District; and the Honorable Nick Lampson, Representative, Texas’ 22nd District. Panel II will include juvenile justice experts including: the Honorable Jerrauld C. Jones, Judge, Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court; Dr. Peter Scharf, Executive Director, 

Center for Society, Law and Justice, Austin, Texas; and Mr. Brian W. Walsh, Senior 

Legal Research Fellow, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, the Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C. I hope that your testimony here today will prove fruitful in 

guiding this Committee to craft creative and effective means to help to eliminate 

such unnecessary and intolerable acts perpetrated through gang crime. 

Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this hearing is to determine an appropriate response to gang crime in the United States. It is an opportunity for our witnesses 

to discuss several pending Congressional legislative proposals, alternative approaches to stemming violence, and the appropriateness of federal law enforcement 

in criminal activity traditionally addressed by the states. 

We are here today to address the increase in violent crime. The FBI’s Uniform 

Crime Reporting Program indicates that violent crime—specifically robberies, homicides, and aggravated assaults—has increased 1.9% over 2006; whereas some types 

of crime—rapes, burglaries and auto thefts have continued to fall, The overall crime 

rate—violent crime and non-violent crime considered together—is the lowest it has 

been in 30 years. The top five cities suffering from crime increases are St. Louis, 

MO, Detroit, MI, Flint, MI, Compton, CA, and Camden, NJ. 

According to the FBI’s report, some crime experts suggest that the increase in violent crime is linked to an increase in juvenile crime, specifically gang crime. In Oakland, police officials attribute recent rises to ‘‘an uptick in Latino gang violence, 

more turf wars between drug gangs and an increase in . . . ‘mindless violence’ 

among juveniles who escalate minor disputes to homicide.’’ However, other experts 

disagree that gang activity is on the rise. According to a recently-released report 

from the Justice Policy Institute: 

There are fewer gang members in the United States today than there were a 

decade ago, and there is no evidence that gang activity is growing. . . . [] the 

most recent comprehensive law enforcement estimate indicates that youth gang 

membership fell from 850,000 in 1996 to 760,000 in 2004 and that the proportion of jurisdictions reporting gang problems has dropped substantially. 

However, researchers Kevin Pranis and Judith Greene, authors of the JPI report, 

conducted a literature survey of all gang research. They found, paradoxically, that 

128 

there is no consistent relationship between law enforcement measures of gang activity and crime trends. An analysis of gang membership and crime data from North 

Carolina found that most jurisdictions reporting growth in gang membership also 

reported falling crime rates. Dallas neighborhoods targeted for gang suppression activities reported both a drop in gang crime and an increase in violent crime. 

Mr. Chairman, some believe that demography has played a role in the crime increase. Some cities with rising juvenile populations are experiencing a rise in juvenile crime. In other cities, criminals are being released from prison after serving 

lengthy sentences imposed in the 80’s and 90’s. Often these newly released people 

never received treatment while incarcerated and there are few, if any, services 

available to them on the outside. This is a serious problem that must be addressed 

if we are to help lead criminals to a path of rehabilitation and to a life of productive 

citizenship. 

Another explanation for the violent crime increase is diminished federal funding 

of local police forces. For example, under President Clinton the COPS program 

reached a high of $2.5 billion; in comparison to 2006 federal funding which was 

$894 million. The change in funding priorities is attributed to increased funding for 

terrorism instead of ‘‘bread-and-butter’’ crime fighting, according to Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton, past president of the Police Executive Research Forum. 

Though funding is essential to combating terrorism, we still must provide funding 

for what is essentially domestic terrorism, gang crime. 

Prevention saves lives and money. It pulls poor and minority children out of the 

Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline. While it saves enormous amounts in the long run, it can 

generate higher costs in the short run. Thus, garnering the political will among 

elected officials on two-, four-, and six-year electoral cycles to invest in prevention 

for at-risk youths is an ongoing and difficult challenge. 

There have also been drastic cuts at the federal level in funding support for community-level law enforcement that works alongside of prevention and early intervention to reduce crime. Effective law enforcement, such as the Community Oriented 

Policing Services Program (COPS), complements and supports prevention and intervention efforts for at-risk youths. The cornerstone of community policing is building 

relationships with community members, so that an effective collaboration between 

law enforcement and community members takes root and increasingly contributes 

to community stability and safety. The active involvement and concern of community members, sometimes referred to as ‘‘collective efficacy,’’ is critical to sustained 

crime prevention, particularly in low-income communities. All of these programs 

strengthen the core capabilities of law enforcement agencies and have greatly improved their ability to fight and prevent crime. Yet budget cuts are forcing layoffs 

of state and local officers. 

The combination of devastating cuts to critical prevention and intervention programs and to community law enforcement is a recipe for disaster for poor children, 

families, and communities. We spend on average three times as much per prisoner 

as per pupil. We don’t spend enough of the money when and where it can actually 

make a difference in the lives of poor children and families and prevent the need 

to spend more on after-the-fact law enforcement activities and prison. 

We need to continue to seek solutions that will put in place effective guidelines 

for combating, preventing and eliminating gang crime in all corners of the United 

States. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today in our attempt to gain 

some guidance on this very serious matter. 

Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time. 

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