HOW TO FIGHT GANGS AND WIN


How to Discourage Gangs and Stop Them

by

John Dewar Gleissner



The secret to ending gang popularity among young American males is simpler than many realize. A host of scholars seek the answers in more understanding, better policing, government programs, better education, less discrimination and any number of ideas to make society better. All of those are worthy goals and undertakings, but the problem of gangs persists. Organizations study, assess, recommend, heighten awareness, make reports, classify, communicate, coordinate and advocate reforms. Initiatives spring forth to attack the high crime rates caused by gangs. The decline of stable families is an obvious cause of gang popularity, along with urbanization and poverty, but those conditions and trends today are almost impossible to reverse. Mix in the allure and power of money from illegal drug sales, and the weapons used to survive in the illegal drug business, and the current disaster survives all initiatives to stop it.
Public opinion, not science, drives reform. Some decades ago, the American public demanded a war on drugs, three-strikes legislation, mandatory minimum sentences, new criminal statutes and the abolition of parole in the federal system. We ended up with mass incarceration and are still losing the war on drugs. The American public thinks crime is increasing, when it has actually been declining for 20 years.
In most instances, criticism of the criminal justice system serves as a mascot for our own cultural, social, political and economic views and incentives. Intellectuals say they prefer the latest studies, new technology and logical answers, but they invariably prefer solutions and experiments consistent with their own political and cultural beliefs and knowledge. Academics are not supposed to look backwards, study the Bible for answers or analyze justice systems in nations considered more backward than ours. Most people, whether they are liberal or conservative, are stuck firmly in the incarceration paradigm, the only system they have ever known, one that for the last 100 years has dominated punishment for serious crimes in Western nations. Prison systems are notoriously difficult to run or reform, and over time tend to suffer from overcrowding, underfunding, inefficiency, abuse, corruption, disease and violence. After prison, most prisoners are worse off, not rehabilitated. Convicted felons are so unpopular that most voters do not care if prison is harmful, and unrealistically worry that prisons will take on aspects of country clubs. Many give up and say “nothing works.”
But there is something that works and always has worked: public judicial corporal punishment. This form of punishment, complete with due process protection and proportionality, is right out of the Bible, Deuteronomy 25:1-3. All of the presidents carved into Mt. Rushmore believed in it, to punish citizens, not as often slaves. It has never been held unconstitutional, and was abolished because it was too effective in enforcing racial supremacy. Due process and equal protection guarantees, all the protection criminal defendants now have in the United States, would distinguish modern judicial corporal punishment from what we see on TV and in movies, and what we read about this punishment in countries that use it to punish behavior we do not regard as criminal conduct.
Using this punishment on older teenagers and young adults, rationally, and often as an alternative to the loss of liberty, jobs, family, spouses and education, would be better for offenders and distinguish judicial corporal punishment from the abuse we see in parental corporal punishment. A little bit of public judicial corporal punishment goes a long way towards maturing young attitudes and convincing them a life of crime is not for them. We need to punish young gangsters when they commit their first few crimes, starting out at maybe three lashes with a whip. Offenders will eventually figure out that crime does not pay; a public whipping speeds up the process, avoiding later grief. The greatest fear of young gangsters is appearing weak to others, and a public whipping is exactly that. Many will cry; all will be helpless and weak for about one-half of an hour. History shows most offenders will obey the law rather than take the punishment again. Public punishment keeps mere witnesses on the straight path, which might be its greatest virtue. Judicial corporal punishment is very repeatable, especially during suspensions, expulsions, probation or parole. It will keep some offenders in school, away from drugs and guns, and out of gangs. Incorrigible criminals will always exist, and at some threshold judicial corporal punishment is too light a punishment.
Academics, social scientists, and those with good intentions are appalled at the very mention of judicial corporal punishment. Most refuse to discuss it. They purport to already know or suspect what offenders want and need. Whipping seems so unscientific and barbaric, a relic of an awful past. Few consider behavioral and neurological research in this context. Politicians fear public opinion, but are now aware of huge prison costs. Society debates parental corporal punishment, if anything. But increasing numbers of us are appalled at gang violence, what it does to families and neighborhoods, our inability to limit it, and the expensive and harmful incarceration regime we’ve built as the default method to control crime.
One patronizing view of criminal justice reform has so-called experts advocating on behalf of downtrodden and suffering offenders. These experts will never be sentenced to prison. They hate mass incarceration and advocate strongly for community sentences. Well, judicial corporal punishment is a community sentence. And if they ever start asking criminals whether they would prefer 20 or 40 lashes to a year in jail or prison, they will learn that guilty offenders prefer judicial corporal punishment as prescribed in the Bible!
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” Logic brought us to mass incarceration. The original logic of the penitentiary, that caging humans would make offenders penitent and reform their lives, is largely false. Logic today leads many to believe nothing works. Gang violence stymies politicians, intellectuals, academics and social scientists. Most have no immediate effective solutions and simply do not think like criminals. And that’s the problem: we want to think our way out of the problem rather than rely upon a proven biblical method of the past. Offenders need to do more than think their way out of the criminal lifestyle. That doesn’t work. Criminals need to feel it.
         

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