Bush Anti-Gang Plan in Budget, Impact Questioned

Bush Anti-Gang Plan in Budget, Impact Questioned
(2005-02-09)

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A project to spend $150 million over the next three years to combat youth gangs was a rare new initiative in President Bush's budget this week but some experts are skeptical it can have much impact.

In last week's State of the Union address, Bush put his wife Laura in charge of the effort he said would "help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence."

The money would go to community and religious groups that mentor children, provide youth activities and work with former prisoners and drug addicts. At the same time, Bush's proposed 2006 budget, submitted to the U.S. Congress on Monday, slashed spending for several existing anti-poverty programs among more than 150 that would be eliminated or sharply curtailed.

"I'm very skeptical about this latest initiative. At best, it's a partial Band-Aid," said Greg Scott, a sociologist at Chicago's DePaul University who has studied gangs.
Scott said such initiatives have dated back to the 1960s with a record that is "spotty at best."

Michael Kharfen of "Fight Crime, Invest in Kids," a national anti-crime organization, said he also was dubious.

"It looks on the surface that the administration is taking money from existing programs already working on gangs and kids in trouble to fund this new initiative and that won't help communities," he said.

Kharfen said Bush's budget included a $56 million cut for the Juvenile Justice Accountability block grant that funded several such programs.

First lady Laura Bush has already begun traveling around the country to tout the initiative. On Tuesday, she was at George Washington Elementary School in Baltimore.
"Children who are overly aggressive in the first grade are more at risk later in life. Boys especially are a greater risk than girls for violence, learning disabilities and juvenile arrest," she said.

The Department of Justice estimates gang membership nationwide at around 750,000. Although crime rates have been falling for more than 10 years, gang violence is increasing as a proportion of overall violent crime.

Some gang experts applauded the White House initiative as a promising start.

But Steve Nawojczyk, a gang researcher and educator from North Little Rock, Arkansas, said, "We need much more. We need after school programs, community policing, more parental involvement, more in-school programs, more one-on-one mentoring and more neighborhood involvement."

Jared Lewis of "Know Gangs," a group that organizes education sessions about gangs for law enforcement officials and social service workers, said too much focus in the past has been on identifying gang members and sending them to prison. Ninety percent then return to their communities and many resume their activities. Some 650,000 will be released from prison this year.

"We've seen a tremendous amount of money invested in locking up gang members but very little for rehabilitation and follow up care," Lewis said. "Any sort of resources from the government is a benefit but we see to see much more money going into that."

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