Iran hostage takes on California prison SHU's

"Free country" throwing thousands in hole for their beliefs

Shane Bauer spent 26 months in Iran's Evin Prison, four of them in solitary, after he and two fellow hikers were apprehended on the Iraqi border in 2009. Seven months after his release, he visited the segregated housing unit (SHU) at the infamous Pelican Bay Prison in his home state of California.

In Iran, his cell was twice as big as those at Pelican Bay. He slept on a mattress, rather than a thin piece of foam. And he wasn’t required to defecate at the front of his cell, in full view of guards. But, most of all, the investigative journalist noticed the lack of windows in the SHU cells:

"Without [the] windows, I wouldn't have had the sound of ravens, the rare breezes, or the drops of rain that I let wash over my face some nights. My world would have been utterly restricted to my concrete box, to watching the miniature ocean waves I made by sloshing water back and forth in a bottle; to marveling at ants; to calculating the mean, median, and mode of the tick marks on the wall; to talking to myself without realizing it. For hours, days, I fixated on the patch of sunlight cast against my wall through those barred and grated windows. When, after five weeks, my knees buckled and I fell to the ground utterly broken, sobbing and rocking to the beat of my heart, it was the patch of sunlight that brought me back. Its slow creeping against the wall reminded me that the world did in fact turn and that time was something other than the stagnant pool my life was draining into."

Bauer's investigative piece in Mother Jones is the most thoroughly documented report I have seen on the politics of long-term solitary confinement in California. The ex-hostage convincingly demonstrates that a tool supposedly created to staunch prison gang violence is being used to torture prisoners who engage in prison activism, hold Afro-centric worldviews, or simply read the wrong books.

As even prison administrators admit, only a small minority of those being held in long-term solitary confinement are classified as gang members; even fewer are gang leaders. Rather, most are so-called "gang associates." It's hard to see how a prisoner serving a lengthy term can avoid all associations with the ubiquitous prison gangs. But the evidence used to toss prisoners into long-term SHU isolation can be very thin, including possession of such written materials as:

• "Black literature" (including The Black People's Prison Survival Guide which, ironically, counsels prisoners to stay away from gang leaders)
• Publications by California Prison Focus, a prison reform group that advocates the abolition of the SHUs
• Bestsellers such as Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Machiavelli's The Prince

(A list of the types of items that can get prisoners thrown into solitary is HERE; a sample list of one prisoner's suspect materials is HERE.)


Most troubling is the lack of due process. Prisoners are not entitled to legal representation at the 20-minute hearings that decide their fate for decades. There is no judicial oversight to prevent trumped-up evidence from being introduced. Indeed, one judge ruled that it is not illegal for prison authorities to fabricate information in order to lock somebody away in solitary.

Click on image  to experience interactive SHU cell as narrated by Bauer

"Other than the inmate, there is only one person present -- the gang investigator -- and he serves as judge, jury, and prosecutor. Much of the evidence -- anything provided by informants -- is confidential and thus impossible to refute. That's what Judge Salavati [in Iran] told us after our prosecutor spun his yarn about our role in a vast American-Israeli conspiracy: There were heaps of evidence, but neither we nor our lawyer were allowed to see it."

In the wake of last year’s hunger strikes, California prison officials claim they are reforming the system. SHU prisoners are now allowed calendars, as well as handballs to use in the small concrete dog runs in which they can exercise, alone, for one hour each day. If they abstain from gang activity for a year, they can now get a deck of cards; three years earns them a chessboard.

But there's a major catch. The Department of Corrections is vastly expanding the list of serious rules violations. Mere possession of articles or pictures depicting "security threat groups" (the new name for gangs) will constitute "serious rule violations on par with stabbing somebody," Bauer reports. And the list of such groups has expanded to 1,500, including everything from Juggalos (followers of the popular hip hop group Insane Clown Posse) to "revolutionary groups” to "Black-Non Specific," a term that, as Bauer notes, suggests that "any group with the word 'black' in its name can be considered disruptive."

The rationale for this repression that has been repeatedly condemned by international and U.S. human rights groups is the need to reduce gang influence in prisons. However, Bauer explains,there is no evidence that such solitary confinement regimens reduce prison violence. To the conrary, prisons that have reduced or eliminated supermaxes have seen parallel reductions in prison violence.

I highly recommend reading the Mother Jones report, "Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons."

My most recent blog post on the Pelican Bay SHU, focusing on an Amnesty report and a class-action lawsuit and containing links to prior related posts, is HERE.

Related: National Law Journal report, The graying of the penitentiary

My Amazon review of the new movie ARGO, about the 1979-1980 Iranian hostage crisis, is HERE; if you find it helpful, please click on "yes" at the bottom.

Killing and culpability: A reader participation exercise

A TALE OF TWO HOMICIDES

INSTRUCTIONS TO READERS: Below, I present two hypothetical scenarios. After reading both, please stop. Do not read further. Consider which killer you think is more culpable. By way of background, assume that both killers are young, white, and employed, with little or no arrest histories. Assume that both victims were also white, upstanding citizens, well regarded in their communities.

Case 1: Street Brawl

The killer, age 20, was walking with a friend after leaving a party when a group of about six drunken strangers surrounded the pair. Insults and challenges were exchanged. The killer yelled at the men to back off. Instead, they continued to close in. He pulled a knife with a 3½-inch blade and waved it around. A scuffle ensued. One man was stabbed and killed.

Case 2: Avenging a Wrong

The killer, age 32, armed himself with a .44 revolver and went to the home of a former neighbor whom he had known for many years. He confronted the man over past wrongs. Words were exchanged. The killer shot the victim once in the chest. Before leaving, he waited about 30 minutes to make sure his victim was dead.

STOP. Consider: Which killer do you think is more culpable, legally and/or morally? Why? What sort of punishment do you think would be fair?

Have you formed a tentative opinion? If not, what else would you need to know before deciding? Now, I will provide a few facts about the victims. See if they are relevant to your thinking.

Case 1: Street Brawl

The victim was a member of a college fraternity that was infamous for its rowdy partying. On his MySpace page, he bragged about an earlier fight in which he and his fraternity brothers beat up a man, “grind[ing] his face into the coarse pavement of the sidewalk while several of [us] are taking turns on his ribs and dome.”

Case 2: Avenging a Wrong

The killer told police that the victim had sexually molested him from the age of 11 until his late 20s, a few years before the homicide. After the crime, other men came forward to say that the dead man had taken advantage of positions of trust to sexually molest them, too.

STOP. Do these facts alter your opinion about culpability in any way? How? Why? What degree of guilt would you infer? What do you think would be a just resolution in these cases?

Finally, let's consider community reaction. Does this change your opinions about either case?

Case 1: Street Brawl

The university town is divided. On one side are the victim’s largely well-to-do supporters, who say he was a fine young man with a good reputation who was about to graduate with honors in nuclear engineering from a prestigious university. On the other side are supporters of the working-class defendant, who say that he was just defending himself.

In a perhaps unprecedented twist, residents of the fraternity row where the crime took place have filed a class-action lawsuit against the local fraternities. Claiming that nuisance behavior has left them living under a virtual state of siege, they are seeking an injunction against the fraternities through an innovative application of a California law banning "criminal street gangs."

Case 2: Avenging a Wrong

The small town is united behind the killer. Townspeople have held rallies and affixed bumper stickers to their cars. They say he did them a service by ridding the community of a child molester. Even the victim's wife thinks punishment should be lenient.

Recognize either case yet? Of interest is the different spins they are getting. A central theme in both stories is bad moral character. But in one case it is the victim's character that is condemned, while in the other case it is the killer's.

CASE 2:

This is the case getting national and even international attention. On Feb. 8, 2009, in the small California logging town of Fort Bragg, Aaron Vargas killed 63-year-old Darrell McNeill, a former youth group leader and popular furnishings salesman. Vargas is being portrayed as a victim and his crime as understandable or even heroic. His sister is even slated to appear on Oprah Winfrey's TV show to talk about his family's "ordeal."

The facts are being spun accordingly. News account focus not on the large (.44) caliber of the gun, for example, but rather its status as an "antique Civil War replica." (Hey, it still fired.) The gap of several years between when Vargas "broke off the relationship" and when he ultimately killed the older man is largely ignored. (Where was the immediate, heat-of-the-moment provocation?)

The case resolution? A lenient plea bargain. Vargas just pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter. He will serve no longer than 10 years in prison, and may even get probation.

Was that what you expected, or thought fair? Why or why not?

CASE 1:

Meanwhile, 170 miles away in cosmopolitan Berkeley, Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield is on trial for first-degree murder stemming from a May 3, 2008 incident that began when the victim and a group of friends walked up to Hoeft-Edenfield and his friend and ordered them to leave fraternity row. Fueled by a deadly mixture of testosterone and alcohol, the incident "quickly escalated as Hoeft-Edenfield pulled out his knife and his friend Adam Russell began swinging an almost full bottle of Bacardi rum at the crowd," according to a news account.

While Hoeft-Edenfield claims he was defending himself from a drunken mob bent on violence when he stabbed fraternity member Christopher Wooton once in the chest, the prosecutor is trying to prejudice jurors against him by imputing his moral character.

"He has a persona, a wannabe thug or an actual thug," she told the jury in her opening statements. As visual proof, she held up his backpack with gangsta-rap-style writings such as "Thug Life," "Money, Guns, Marijuana," and "Killer Drew."

Hoeft-Edenfield's attorney countered that this depiction of her client's moral character could not be farther from the truth. Hoeft-Edenfield is "an example of what hard work can accomplish," she told the jury. A working-class young man from South Berkeley, galaxies away in social class from the elite university for which Berkeley is famous, he had overcome a learning disability, graduated from high school, gotten a job, and was attending college. The fight, she said, was "sparked by the fraternity brothers who were drunk and eager to prove they owned the street," according to a news report. "What he remembers is that he is surrounded by five or six guys, he's got guys stomping him, and all he hears is yelling."

If you were on the jury, how might you vote? Why?

In criminal responsibility evaluations, we forensic psychologists are charged with carefully dissecting an accused's state of mind at the moment of a homicide. Did he form an intent to kill? Did he know right from wrong, in that moment? Was he intoxicated? What were his motivations? These mental state inquiries are tricky enough.

Moral character is a much more elusive construct. Good and evil are never as black-and-white as partisans portray them. Yet, as these two cases illustrate, simplistic moral narratives can be constructed that either lionize or demonize a criminal defendant. These narratives then influence the decision-making of prosecutors, judges, and jurors as to the appropriate punishment, based on perceived moral blameworthiness.

It will be an interesting juxtaposition if Hoeft-Edenfield gets convicted of first-degree murder and goes to prison for a heat-of-the moment stabbing that appears to have been provoked, while a vigilante who proactively took the law into his own hands gets a light sentence for voluntary manslaughter.

If Hoeft-Edenfield is found guilty of murder, a working-class young man may want to think twice about sporting gangsta-style accessories while carrying a knife for self defense. Unless, of course, he kills a child molester. In that case, the public may applaud him.

A good yarn needs both a hero and a villain. The question is: Who gets which role?

POSTCRIPT: After a four-month trial, Hoeft-Edenfield was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 16-to-life in prison. That sentence was later overturned on appeal, and he accepted a plea bargain in which he would serve 12 years in prison with no credit for time served or good time. Meanwhile, in what the media dubbed "a crushing disappointment" to his family and supporters, Fort Bragg killer Aaron Vargas received a nine-year prison term.

Readers: I encourage you to post your reactions to this exercise in the online "comments" section of the blog.

My follow-up reports on the Hoeft-Edenfield case:

• Surprise reversal in "killing and culpability" self-defense case: Judge slams defense lawyer as inept, dishonest (May 1, 2014)
• "Killing and culpability" sentences handed down (June 16, 2010) 
• Race, class, and self defense: Berkeley fraternity case spotlighted (July 21, 2010) 

Further background on the unusual class-action lawsuit against the fraternities:

• American Lawyer: Suit Tries Gang Strategy Against Frat Boys
• Press release: "Lawsuit to curtail the culture of alcohol abuse and violence in the fraternities at UC Berkeley"

Related blog post: Vigilante justice against sex offenders (October 2007)

Photos: (1) Aaron Vargas, (2) Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield, (3) Christopher Wooton

What is a gang?

A group of violent thugs? A social club? Troubled, homeless losers who are "hard to love"?

And what is gang membership? Is it a fixed identity, or something fluid, which urban youngsters claim or don't claim according to external circumstances and the flow of their lives?

How can we explain why, even in the roughest neighborhoods, at most 10 percent of youths belong to street gangs? Who are the other nine out of ten, and how do they negotiate survival without affiliation?

For answers to these complex questions, and more, I recommend a new book from New York University Press, Who You Claim, written by John Jay College of Criminal Justice sociology professor Robert Garot based on ethnographic researcher at a continuation school in Southern Calfornia.

Garot's nuanced analysis is a refreshing antidote to the kind of simplistic categorization that we see in corrections and in forensic practice, where young people being processed through the system are treated as if the label of gang member explains everything that we need to know about them.

His bottom-line message: Beware reifying gangs as fixed and essential components of identity, when even their members do not see them as such. As urban centers create increasingly fluid possibilities for identity -- exemplified by Polish-Brazilian and Mexican-Korean cuisines -- identity is becoming much more malleable and flexible than such a narrow and pejorative focus would lead us to believe.

My complete review, at Amazon, is HERE.

Sin Nombre: Of gangs and immigrants

This masterpiece of potential interest to forensic folks has it all -- great acting, beautiful cinematography, powerful themes, and amazing realism. The realism is no accident. Young filmmaker Cary Fukunaga spent months in Mexico, interviewing both immigrants and gang members about their experiences. He shot on location, and many cast members are nonprofessionals. For example, Edgar Flores, in the lead role as a member of the Chiapas chapter of the brutal Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, is straight off the streets of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Despite the specific setting of the tumultuous U.S.-Mexico border, Sin Nombre addresses powerful and universal themes of damnation and redemption. At least, that's how I saw it. In an interview, Fukunaga himself said he sees it as being about family -- "the disintegration and recreation of the family unit in its unique and varying forms."

The plot centers around a chance and fateful encounter between Willy and a 15-year-old Honduran girl, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), who is riding north atop a train. Through Sayra's journey, viewers get an appreciation for the intense dangers faced by Central Americans trekking toward the promised land.

Without giving away anything, I can give you a bit of background. Fukunaga, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, was in film school in New York when he saw a New York Times story about a group of Mexican and Central American immigrants who died of asphyxiation and heat exhaustion while trapped and abandoned inside a refrigerated trailer. (Remember that incident? It was front-page news a few years ago.) His short 2004 documentary about that case, Victoria Para Chino, won multiple film awards.

That project evolved into Sin Nombre, as Fukunaga explained in an IndieWire interview. Doing the research, he said, "I learned about the awful journey Central American immigrants went through in order to get to the United States -- crossing the infinitely more dangerous badlands of Mexico on top of (not in) freight trains bound for the US Border. It was like a world that belonged to the old Wild West."

Against the advice of friends, Fukunaga gained intimacy with his topic by taking the same harrowing train-top ride that he would film. (Folks cling to the top of the train rather than riding inside the box cars, because the cars are even more dangerous due to rapists and other criminals.) On his first ride, with 700 Central American immigrants, the train was attacked within three hours:

"We were somewhere in the pitch black regions of the Chiapan countryside. In the alcove of the next train car I heard the distinct pops of gunshots, always louder than they seem in the movies, then the screams of immigrants passing the word: 'Pandillas! Pandillas!' (gangsters). Everyone scattered, I could hear them running past our tanker car. Not having anywhere to run to, I stayed on…. The next day I talked to two Hondurans who were next to the attack. They told me a Guatemalan immigrant didn't want to give two bandits his money so they shot him and threw him under the train. [Later] I learned the police had found the body of a Guatemalan immigrant, shot and abandoned…. Nothing could have driven home the sensation of fear and impotence more than what I had felt firsthand with those immigrants."

Fukunaga's willingness and ability to see through the eyes of others probably owes much to his upbringing. (As Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor put it in her controversial speech, this DOES influence one's perspective!) Fukunaga is described in a Los Angeles Times article as "a wandering spirit with a Japanese father, a Swedish mother, a Chicano stepdad and an Argentine stepmom [who] can't be reduced to the sum of his parts, ethnic or otherwise. Growing up, he shuffled from the suburbs to the country to the barrio ('Crips and Bloods, people getting shot') to the East Bay's hillside bourgeois enclaves. His family, he says, always has been a 'conglomeration of individual, sort of displaced people,' recombinations of relatives and step-relatives, blood kin and surrogate kin, parents and what he calls "pseudo-parents" who treated him like a son."

With this background, Fukunaga was able to capture not only the immigrant experience, but the pathos of gang life in Central America and Mexico, with brutality and hopelessness transmitted from generation to generation. Sin Nombre doesn't give the history or context for the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), which at 100,000-strong is widely considered one of the most fastest-growing and dangerous gangs in the world.

In brief, the MS-13 is an outgrowth of the 1980s war in El Salvador, which led to a massive migration of up to two million refugees into the United States. Many settled in the Ramparts area of Los Angeles, where the gang was founded. Strict U.S. immigration policies in more recent years have paradoxically worsened the gang problem, allowing the MS-13 to gain footholds in Central America and Mexico. The MS-13 is known for its vivid tattoos, but some say members are moving away from tattoos because they so brilliantly illuminate gang membership for authorities. A documentary on the MS-13, Hijos de la Guerra (Children of the War), can be previewed HERE. A marvelous Los Angeles Times photojournalism project on the gang is HERE.

Sin Nombre is getting widespread acclaim, and richly deserves the directing and cinematography awards it garnered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It's in Spanish with English subtitles, but don't let that stop you.

Click on the above Movie Review icon to see other reviews of forensically focused films.

Top criminologists take public policy stances

In a special "gala" issue of Criminology & Public Policy, 27 of the most influential criminologists alive take policy policy stances on issues ranging from juvenile curfews and the death penalty to sex offender residency restrictions and police gang units. The goal of each invited essay was to suggest that enough empirical evidence exists on the topic to support one specific recommendation, and to provide a summary of that evidence. Unfortunately, the essays are not available online, but I'm sure that if you are interested in a topic you can Google the author and obtain a reprint.

The recommendations include:

IMPOSE AN IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS
JAMES R. ACKER

ABOLISH JUVENILE CURFEWS
KENNETH ADAMS

ABOLISH LIFETIME BANS FOR EX-FELONS
SHAWN D. BUSHWAY & GARY SWEETEN

ABANDON FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT POLICIES
ROBERT D. CRUTCHFIELD

MAKE REHABILITATION CORRECTIONS' GUIDING PARADIGM
FRANCIS T. CULLEN

EXPAND THE USE OF POLICE GANG UNITS
SCOTT H. DECKER

END NATURAL LIFE SENTENCES FOR JUVENILES
JEFFREY FAGAN

MAKE POLICE OVERSIGHT INDEPENDENT AND TRANSPARENT
JACK R. GREENE

BAN THE BOX TO PROMOTE EX-OFFENDER EMPLOYMENT
JESSICA S. HENRY, JAMES B. JACOBS

TARGET JUVENILE NEEDS TO REDUCE DELINQUENCY
PETER R. JONES, BRIAN R. WYANT

COLLECT AND RELEASE DATA ON COERCIVE POLICE ACTIONS
ROBERT J. KANE

MANDATE THE ELECTRONIC RECORDING OF POLICE INTERROGATIONS
RICHARD A. LEO, KIMBERLY D. RICHMAN

IMPLEMENT AND USE COURT PERFORMANCE MEASURES
BRIAN J. OSTROM, ROGER A. HANSON

JUST SAY NO TO D.A.R.E.
DENNIS P. ROSENBAUM
(One of my personal favoritess; it's high time to abolish harmful "Just Say No" messages targeting children.)

TRANSFER THE UNIFORM CRIME REPORTING PROGRAM FROM THE FBI TO THE BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS
RICHARD ROSENFELD

USE PROBATION TO PREVENT MURDER
LAWRENCE W. SHERMAN
(This is a provocative essay on forecasting homicide.)

REVISE POLICIES MANDATING OFFENDER DNA COLLECTION
RALPH B. TAYLOR, JOHN S. GOLDKAMP, DORIS WEILAND, CLAIRISSA BREEN, R. MARIE GARCIA, LAWRENCE A. PRESLEY, BRIAN R. WYANT

ELIMINATE RESIDENCY RESTRICTIONS FOR SEX OFFENDERS
JEFFERY T. WALKER

PROTECT INDIVIDUAL PUNISHMENT DECISIONS FROM MANDATORY PENALTIES
FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING

Ambiguous laws increase likelihood of racial profiling

The data are in, and – no surprise:

• Police do sometimes engage in racial profiling.
  

• People in general do sometimes engage in racist behaviors under ambiguous situations in which they can rationalize their decisions in some other way.
  

With those data in mind, here’s a great idea: Let's pass ambiguous new laws and see how they are enforced.

That's just what municipalities around the country are doing, in a recipe for increasing racially discriminatory arrest patterns.

Take "sagging."

Atlanta, the hip hop capital of the South and perhaps the world, is currently debating whether to follow other cities around the country that have enacted laws against wearing baggy pants that show one's undergarments. The ordinance would impose fines and even jail time for violators.

The ACLU of Georgia says that is unconstitutional. The issue is not just about baggy pants, but about the criminalization of young black men, says ACLU executive director Debbie Seagraves: "We are talking about creating one more ordinance, one more law that can be used to put more and more young black people into a system that is already eating them up."

Not so, says C.T. Martin, the 70-year-old city councilman who proposed the law.

"My legislation is designed to help young people, to enlighten them and help them understand," said Martin. "When the police pull you over, you can't say they are profiling you. You've already profiled yourself."

Would it surprise you to learn that Martin is a longtime African-American activist?

Not if you are familiar with the research on unconscious racism, which shows that African American police and probation officers, for example, are just as likely as anyone else to make racist judgments about black criminal suspects. What's ominous is that the underlying racist stereotypes are not conscious, so people don't even know they're relying on them.

Or, as another example of ambiguous laws, take anti-gang injunctions.

On the opposite side of the country from Atlanta, progressive San Francisco is enacting anti-gang injunctions that bar people named on a gang list from congregating, wearing gang symbols or clothing, or flashing gang signs in certain geographic areas. The injunctions, already in place but currently being expanded, also impose a 10 p.m. to sunrise curfew on these individuals, under penalty of jail.

Remember the research about racist behavior being most likely to occur under ambiguous circumstances in which it can be rationalized away?

Well, with gang signs and symbols constantly changing, police will be given the leeway to interpret which hand signals, clothing, or other symbols constitute evidence of membership in the Norteños and other gangs.

Criminal defense attorneys opposing the injunction argued in court that some of the people named on the list are not in gangs and are being targeted because they live in public housing or have rapped about gangster life.

Robert Amparán, who is representing four men on the list, went so far as to call the injunction "government-sponsored racial profiling" that gives police sweeping power to harass and arrest Latino men.

While that may be true, the social science data on modern racism predict that those involved will rationalize any racist conduct on other grounds. After all, no one in these modern times wants to be seen – or even to see themselves – as a racist.

Photo credit: "CR Artist" (Creative Commons license)

Attorney Neil Richards comments on the constitutionality of baggy-pants laws at the Concurring Opinions blog. The Chicago Tribune has a news analysis of those ordinances.

The San Francisco Chronicle provides coverage of the debacle over San Francisco's anti-gang injunctions.

Research data on unconscious racial stereotyping among police and probation officers includes: Graham, S., & Lowery, B.S. (2004). Priming Unconscious Racial Stereotypes About Adolescent Offenders. Law and Human Behavior, 28, 483-504.

A youth club in every 'hood?

That's the new plan out of Great Britain, whose young people have the highest rates of drinking, drug use, gang membership, and fighting in all of Europe.

But just having a center at which to congregate may not do the trick. Youths need organized activities and mentorship.

So says the Institute for Public Policy Research, a British think tank. Research by the Institute determined that young people who participated in organized activities at age 16 were less likely to be depressed, living in poverty, or incarcerated as adults.

The research is available online, as is a BBC report and commentary.

New Report: Anti-Gang Strategy Failing Badly

From today's Washington Post:

"Anti-gang legislation and police crackdowns are failing so badly that they
are strengthening the criminal organizations and making U.S. cities more
dangerous, according to a report being released Wednesday.

"Mass arrests, stiff prison sentences often served with other gang
members and other strategies that focus on law enforcement rather than
intervention actually strengthen gang ties and further marginalize angry young
men, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank
that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

" 'We're talking about 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds whose involvement in
gangs is likely to be ephemeral unless they are pulled off the street and put in
prison, where they will come out with much stronger gang allegiances,' said
Judith Greene, co-author of Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies."

Link to the full Post article.