Five Point Strategy Plan, Essay Example

Background

According to reports, the MS-13 gang originated in Los Angeles during the 1980s. There was a civil war in El Salvador and thousands of citizens fled to America to escape the violence. They banded together as a brotherhood of sorts and began using their combat experience and brutality skills to invoke terror and mayhem upon the areas in which they lived. During this time, the gang began recruiting new members and, by the beginning of the 1990s, there was an unofficial estimated membership of over 60,000 gang members of the MS-13 (Franco, 2010).

Generally, gangs are classified as first generation, second generation, or third generation. First generation gangs are the traditional street type gangs. There is a loose leadership structure and criminal activity is often not sophisticated. Second generation gangs are more business oriented and normally have a more centralized leadership. These gangs also are the gangs who are responsible for most of the drug trafficking that happens in this country. Third generation gangs run on a more global scale and have more political connections. They can even have terrorism ties and are very high sophisticated with their choice of weapons and violence tactics (Franco, 2010).

While the MS-13 gangs have not reached the third generation class of gang warfare, they do exhibit some characteristics and definitely operate on a second generation status in the United States. In addition, an assessment report by the National Drug Intelligence Center warned that the gang was further organizing its structure between Los Angeles, Northern Virginia, New York, and Washington, D.C. (Franco, 2010). The concern is that the MS-13 will continue to increase in its number and eventually develop into a third generation gang with terror cells located throughout the United States. This could be a problem of epic proportions. Because of the unethical practices and brutal violence practiced by the gang on a daily basis, there is no limit to what measures the gang would take to see its demands put into action. Currently, there are a couple of ‘hot spots’ which have been found and controlled, but without adequate surveillance the gang could theoretically escalate out of control quite rapidly and chaos could reign.

Due to the increased violence and infiltration of the MS-13 gang within almost every state in the nation, it is imperative that we take immediate action and begin implementing procedures to counteract the violence and terror this gang has caused the innocent citizens of our many regions over the course of many years. Because of the MS-13 gang’s increasingly growing numbers, there are all age groups involved; however, it seems to be only logical that if new policies implemented will begin targeting younger groups of individuals, this could start to decrease the number of members and soon we may notice the gang’s numbers begin to decrease.

Although these actions will hopefully cause a decline in numbers, it is a known fact that the gang has infiltrated almost every state in the nation and the official membership numbers are in the tens of thousands. The project to be undertaken is enormous and, with that comes a large expense, a thought that is not taken lightly. Nonetheless, it is of dire importance to implement a strategy as soon as possible in order to reverse the actions caused by the gang’s horrific presence and help to alleviate the trauma they have inflicted upon society.

The Strategy

It has actually been found that it is less costly and more effective to prevent young people from joining gangs in the first place than it is to attempt to extract them once they have become gang members. Often, it is almost impossible to leave a gang and due to the monetary circumstances, things on the other side do not look as bright when one is dealing in drugs and reaping the short term cash benefits of such (Greenwood, 2006).  Positive results depend on the individual, however, rather than the gang that person is involved in. Because of the MS-13 gang’s tactics and the ability of the gang to infiltrate almost every business and entity in a neighborhood, often they can prey upon children and teenagers long before these adolescents are ready to make a decision to commit the kind of crimes that the gang prides itself on every single day. However, once these crimes have been committed, it does not matter whether they have been committed by a child or adolescent or adult, if the person committing the crime is captured he is going to pay the price. This is the consequence of  a bad decision. It is important that these decisions be stopped or controlled before more adolescents fall through cracks in the legal system and become property of the gangs and statistics in reports.

The majority of programs which have had the best results for positive outcomes are those that have combined a variety of methods, such as disciplinary and community approaches, in order to touch upon all aspects of the issue. A program that uses primary, secondary, and tertiary methods to touch the entire community could prove beneficial at decreasing violence in the neighborhood. The primary prevention focus would be on the child and youth population. Education focused on preventing youth from joining gangs in the first place could help decrease those numbers over a period of time. Secondary prevention would target an entire group of individuals who are at the highest risk of getting involved in the gangs. The tertiary prevention targets specifically gang members and attempts to rehabilitate them. While tertiary prevention does not work in many situations, it is important to mention because when it does, the numbers are dramatically reduced. The programs listed below incorporate various elements of the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention methods in their strategies.

Offering the youth of the city an alternative to crime is often a good first step in helping to solve a problem. If there was a youth center in a centralized area of the city or perhaps several youth centers located around the city that offered various activities for teens and young adults, this might prove somewhat effective in bringing about positive change in those areas. These centers could have daytime and afterschool schedules with programs and activities such as sports and homework help, parenting skills, babysitting assistance, and English tutoring skills. While this alone will not solve the problem, it will be one step closer then where we presently are (Implementing a citywide gang violence reduction strategy: Three promising examples).

A second strategy for helping decrease gang numbers could come in the form of community mobilization. Community mobilization is helpful and directly involves the residents of the community in order to create opportunities for the youth and existing members of gangs to have access to other positive avenues in which to channel their energy. This strategy would be helpful to implement in an urban neighborhood where there were many families and young people, possibly in an area where there was a park nearby that could be utilized for a play area or other such gathering spot for basketball games or community events. Positive events such as this would increase the desire of young people to belong and thus they would likely choose to belong to this rather than belong to a more negative atmosphere of drugs and violence (Spergel & Grossman, 1997).

The urban youth center and community mobilization strategies are different points because of the way they would be structured. The urban youth center would be geared more for adolescent age groups and would concentrate on more academic and life skills. While there would be activities such as sports, these would be offered above and beyond the key implementation of tutoring and babysitting, two of the most important concepts needed to focus on in order to help those individuals who do have children and have no one to care for them if they have the desire to find legitimate work. Also, for those adolescents who desire to finish high school or even attend college, the tutoring skills offered at these urban youth centers would be helpful in obtaining the GED or preparing for the ACT if college was something that was within reach. In addition, there could be seminars held about financial aid in order for individuals to learn about grants and community scholarships that might fit their needs or even about certain vocational areas that may be a desirable fit for them.

The community mobilization strategy would be more of a family structured environment. While it would be open to all, the events would be held on weekends and holidays mostly. There would be various block parties and games that families and groups of neighbors could take part in which would be free for the neighborhood. Cook outs could be held and community officials could show a presence in the neighborhood, thus defining their presence and further showing support for a positive change to the area. While both of these strategies in theory sound useful, it would take hard work and dedication in order to have them realistically help improve the community and decrease gang numbers, especially when the MS-13 is concerned.

A third point to this strategy would be the social intervention of the actual gang members themselves. Stinchcomb (2002) believes the gang members are more apt to respond to programs that are brought to them rather than programs they have to find themselves. In other words, if a group or organization specifically designs a positive program implementing work or other positive skills and targets a gang with the intentions of helping them acquire this skill in order to find a successful job or earn a higher degree, even a high school diploma, the gang member will be more apt to become involved in this rather than if he had to search for something like this himself. Some examples could be advocacy work with the police and court so the gang members could better understand their rights and implications of what will happen when they do break the law, individual counseling about problems they are currently or may have had in the past, services for their family, or even tutoring services for those wanting academic help. Some of the MS-13 members likely got involved due to curiosity, especially if there are legal questions to be asked. This may be the first step in opening the doors to welcome in the gang members in order to show them where they can inflict positive change on others and rehabilitate themselves in the process.

The fourth key point of this strategy would be the provision of opportunities on social levels, academic levels, and economic levels. Most of the intervention strategies used in the past have not addressed educational and employment opportunities. They have attempted to target involvement in the community, but if there are no jobs or achievement opportunities for these gang members, how are they expected to stop what they are doing and earn a decent living from the streets? These young people have many times become involved in what they are doing because of money troubles and it is not easy to turn away from this now. Implementation of these strategies would help members with issues such as poverty, malnutrition and other illnesses. There could also be educational and vocational opportunities offered on site for those interested in learning more and hours could be arranged to be conducive to families in order to provide every opportunity for these gang members to get back on track where education and legitimate employment are concerned.

A fifth key point of the strategy would be some sort of incentive for those gang members who participate in all of the programs offered by the community and successfully find work or return to school and continue to achieve satisfactory grades while not engaging in illegal activities. This incentive would come in the form of a reduced sentence of the gang member’s parole depending on what the circumstances were of that individual’s arrest conviction. If the gang member was arrested and convicted on something such as drug possession and was willing to commit to all of the elements of the program for the length of time it took for the gang member to graduate high school and obtain full time employment with a legitimate employer as well as perform a certain number of community service hours within the scope of services offered by the community programs, he most likely has made the conscious decision to live the life of a model citizen and turn away from his gang roots. Of course, this is not going to be the case one hundred percent of the time, but there are going to be circumstances when this will happen. When it does, these gang members should be rewarded with ‘good behavior’ time. The amount of time to be taken off of their parole would, of course, vary with every individual and be determined by a city official due to each crime being different and carrying a different sentence, but it would bring public attention to a positive change taking place in the area and these former gang members could serve as mentors to younger generations of children, possibly distracting them from a life of crime and violence.

One example of a successful intervention is the Multi-systemic therapy approach, which has proven effective with even violent and chronic juvenile offenders (Hagenbucher, 2003). This program utilizes therapy, supervision, and continual monitoring to help gang members with supportive strategies to overcome their current condition rather than the traditional probation approach. The intervention focuses on more than one factor of offense and the family plays a key role in helping with the intervention. This program obviously is not going to work in every situation; however, in instances where the conviction was a first time offense and was possibly for some charge that was not a felony offense, this multi-systemic therapy approach might be helpful in avoiding a future offense from happening. If the therapy, supervision, and continual monitoring of the individual can deter him or her from committing another crime, this would decrease the number of members in the gangs and thus help solve the overall problem and better the community.

Discussion

This plan is to immediately be implemented in a dozen urban cities across the nation where the MS-13 gangs are known to have infiltrated the neighborhoods and caused harm to the area surrounding the perimeter. All key points of the plan are to be put into place and the plan is to be carried out fully in order to ensure its success with the full effort of every person involved. There will be officials designated to oversee the daily operation of the various parts of the plan and these officials will report to a main official who will be supervising the overall process. This person will gather weekly data from each of the twelve cities during teleconferences that will be conducted every week in order to stay abreast of current situations and upcoming events. Any negative or positive comments should be reported during this time as well. It is also of vital importance to include any statistics of increased or decreased crime rates such as carjackings, assaults, murders, and such during this period of time in order for the head supervisor to keep a log of these statistics for quantitative purposes after the plan is completed.

If meetings are held once per week, this will give each area’s supervisor a chance to visit all facilities and hear comments and complaints from citizens about what is working and not working according to the hours the facilities are kept open, the activities and classes being offered at the facilities, and a host of other pertinent issues that will be of importance during the course of this three year period. Once the area supervisor has visited each facility and takes notes, the teleconference may be conducted with the other supervisors in order to report all findings to the head supervisor. This will be helpful in evaluating the success or failure of the plan as well as talking amongst one another for new ideas and insights into future classes and activities that might benefit the community or help certain groups of individual during various times of the year.

While the above plans have proven successful in their implementation across various cities throughout the United States, we must understand the group of mercenaries we are targeting is increasingly brutal and grows consistently more dangerous each year. This plan does not target members of the MS-13 who have been members of the gang for several years; rather, it targets those young and vulnerable members. It targets the adolescent men, and sometimes women, who have no father figure in their lives and live in a neighborhood where crime is a daily occurrence. It targets the adolescent boy who feels no hope when he attends school and questions why there is a reason to continue on the current path when he sees it leading nowhere. This strategy, if implemented in all stages correctly and fully, will deter many of these adolescents from immersing themselves into a life of crime and violence. It will help them to remain positive and will provide them with an example of something good that can come if hard work is applied.

As for the gang members who have been part of the MS-13 for many years, there is most likely a plan for those individuals as well. For the purpose of this strategy, however, we feel the need to focus on deterring individuals from becoming a part of the gang rather than attempting to rehabilitate those members who have been with the gang for years unless they choose to leave on their own accord. If that is the case, they will be welcomed into the community provided they abide by the same rules and policies as all other citizens of the neighborhood.

It is the hope that this strategy can decrease the number of MS-13 members in the urban area neighborhoods within the next three years. This plan may not drastically reduce the numbers, but will most likely cause them to decrease at a steady pace over the course of time as more gang members leave and become mentors to other adolescents during the crucial years of their lives when ‘hero worship’ is often held in high regard.  If the plan is a success, it will be rolled out to more urban neighborhoods across the nation and the hope is to see crime and gang numbers drop even more significantly. If the plan does not produce satisfactory results after the three year period, it will be reevaluated and redesigned as deemed fit by officials during that time.

References

Franco, C. (2010). The MS-13 and 18th street gangs:Emerging transnational gang threats? Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.

Greenwood, P. (2006). Changing lives: Deliquency prevention as crime-control policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hagenbucher, G. (2003, September). Progress: An enhanced supervision program for high-risk criminal offenders. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 20-24.

Implementing a citywide gang violence reduction strategy: Three promising examples. California Cities Gang Prevention Network, National League of Cities, Institute for Youth, Education and Families.

Spergel, I., & Grossman, S. (1997). The little village project: A community approach to the gang problem. Social Work, 42(5), 456-470.

Stinchcomb, J. (2002). Promising (and not so promising) gang prevention and intervention strategies: A comprehensive literature review. Journal of Gang Research, 10(1), 27-45.