Report Title:

Crime Prevention; Youth Gangs

 

Description:

Appropriates $400,000 to be expended by the department of human services to implement a youth gang rehabilitation program applying the redirectional method.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

H.B. NO.

1871

TWENTY-FIRST LEGISLATURE, 2002

 

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

making an appropriation for crime prevention through the rehabilitation of youth gang members.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that youth gangs continue to be a serious problem in Hawaii. Frequently, members of these gangs are low-income minority males age eleven and older. These gang members do not believe they have a place in the American social, economic, and educational mainstream, and, therefore, feel alienated from it. The Honolulu police department estimates that one thousand five hundred youth are involved in these groups on the island of Oahu alone.

The prevailing view of youth gangs is that they are menaces to society, whether they are drawing graffiti, committing theft, using and selling drugs, possessing weapons, or engaged in violent acts that result in permanent injury or death. Since their acts are frequently criminal in nature, the common practice has been to treat these youths as law violators and to attempt to control their destructive behavior through the intervention of law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Increasingly, gang members have been viewed as incorrigible. Control and suppression are perceived as the only means of protecting society and deterring further destructive behavior.

Too often, responses to youth in gangs ignores how these youth became involved in gangs in the first place. An eleven year examination of the subject reveals that most gang youths believe that they are unacceptable in the mainstream because they look different from the racial or ethnic groups that appear to run things. This low self esteem is enhanced by poverty; a history of few successful role models; and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

Additional obstacles faced by gang members include living in high crime neighborhoods where alcohol and drug abuse, crime, and violence have become learned lifestyles. Youth who turn to gangs don't believe they will live long enough to graduate, so they see no point in attending school. Consequently, high school graduation rates are low and unemployment is high. Gang members often seek refuge on the streets from crowded living conditions; and since generations of family members have experienced second class status they perceive themselves as second class citizens.

Gang members appear to be aware that their lives are precarious. While they may hope for something better, they may be uncertain about what to do to improve their lives. The frustration and anger they experience results in destructive acts toward themselves and others. A study completed by adult friends for youth among gangs with whom it has worked revealed that over thirty per cent of the gang members surveyed had contemplated suicide. Many gang members have friends who have committed suicide. Not infrequently, they will put themselves in harm's way, not caring whether they live or die. One gang member was quoted in a newspaper story as saying, "I was just waiting for death to claim my worthless soul." Thus, the problem of youth gangs appears to be one that is at least as much a mental health problem as a police and juvenile justice problem.

According to the national resource center for youth services, Hawaii has the only replicable model for therapeutic youth gang intervention in the United States. This is the redirectional method described in the book Toward a Gang Solution: The Redirectional Method.

A survey conducted over a five year period revealed that the application of this model increased high school graduation rates of gang members from an average of twenty per cent in 1990 to an average of seventy per cent by 1995. For some gangs, the graduation rate reached ninety per cent. Gang members have also acknowledged a reduction in alcohol and drug abuse. Most have become successfully employed and have gone on to higher education, and gangs have come to an end. Thus, it has been demonstrated that youth gang members are not necessarily incorrigible lost causes and that they can be rehabilitated.

The purpose of this Act is to provide funds for the department of human services to develop a program utilizing the proven redirectional method to rehabilitate and integrate members of youth gangs and other high risk youth into the social mainstream, and to provide therapeutic prevention in schools, thus significantly reducing youth gang membership in Hawaii and the destructive and criminal behaviors with which gangs are associated.

SECTION 2. There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $400,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2002-2003, to implement the redirectional method for the purpose of rehabilitating youth gang members and other high risk youth.

SECTION 3. The sum appropriated shall be expended by the department of human services for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2002.

INTRODUCED BY:

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