User:MBratko/sandbox

A gang injunction is a court-issued restraining order prohibiting gang members from participating in certain activities. It is based on the legal theory that gang activity constitutes a public nuisance that prevents non-gang members from enjoying peace in their communities.

History
While Los Angeles experimented with gang injunctions in the 1980s, the first gang injunction to make headlines was obtained by Los Angeles City Attorney James Hahn against the West Los Angeles-based Playboys Gansta Crip in 1987. The move was hailed as an innovative way for law enforcement to crack down on gangs, allowing people to regain control of their neighborhoods. In 1993, the Los Angeles City Attorney's office filed for another injunction, this time against 500 members of the Blythe Street Gang of Panorama City. The American Civil Liberties Union joined other groups in opposing the injunction, arguing that it would outlaw such legal activities as carrying on conversations and possessing tools like pocket knives and screwdrivers, and that it would lead to injustices against people whose identity had been mistaken. The injunction was issued despite the efforts against it. It was followed by injunctions in the cities of San Jose, Burbank, San Diego, Westminster, Pasadena, Redondo Beach, Modesto and Oxnard.

In the reality of the community members, at times injunctions are called progroms adapted from the Russian use of it in where violent mobs attack a minority group. In these cases the Police and SWAT being the violent mob and the communities of color being the minority groups. It is called this for the reason that non affiliated gang members or even people who have no connection to gangs are highly also targeted.

In Los Angeles today, under current City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, there are 37 gang injunctions covering 57 gangs and 11,000 gang members in the City of Los Angeles. Many attribute the 33% decline in gang membership in L.A. over the past five years (from 57,000 members in 2001 to roughly 39,000 members today) to the effective use of civil gang injunctions by City law enforcement officials.

In 2010, the State of California surpassed the 150 gang injunction mark. The historical and legal progression of all California gang injunctions to date can be reviewed in the CRC publication Gang Injunctions and Abatement: Using Civil Remedies to Curb Gang Related Crimes. The history of the gang injunction began on July 22, 1982, when the Los Angeles City Attorney and the Los Angeles Police Department obtained a temporary restraining order against three named gangs; the Dogtown, Primera Flats, and the 62nd East Coast Crips gangs. Seventy two members (72) of the three gangs were targeted by police. This was the first gang injunction to sue a street gang as an unincorporated association. The injunction also named individual gang members as defendants. The injunction only had four restrictions aimed at reducing graffiti, including prohibiting graffiti on private and public property, trespassing on private property with the intent to place graffiti, and an order for the gang to clean up the graffiti that displayed the name of their gangs. The injunction also requested that the 72 named defendants be required to do five hours of community service to clean graffiti. On October 26, 1987, the Los Angeles City Attorney and the Los Angeles Police filed an injunction against the Playboy Gangster Crips gang. The injunction was a first of its kind in that it contained a wide array of provisions never attempted before aimed at restricting the ability of the gang to operate and commit gang related crimes. The preliminary injunction named 23 defendants. The injunction was ultimately limited in scope as the judge only allowed restrictions that were listed in the penal code as restrictions and struck down the primary law enforcement goal, the no association provision which the court deemed was not appropriate. The injunction was also the first to name does, or any other members of the gang not yet identified, to be added at a later date if deemed appropriate by the police. On October 7, 1992, the Burbank City Attorney and the Burbank Police Department sought an injunction against the Barrio Elmwood Rifa gang. The target area consisted of an entire city block that the gang called home. The injunction did not name the gang as a defendant, it did however name 34 members of the gang. This was the first injunction to include the “No Association” clause prohibiting gathering, or appearing anywhere in public view, with any other defendant anywhere in the target area. The no association restriction usually contains wording that prohibits the gang members from, “standing, sitting, walking, driving, bicycling, gathering or appearing anywhere in public view with any other defendant herein, or with any other known gang member”.

Effectiveness
In March 2011, a study entitled the "Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Gang Injunctions in California" was published in the Journal of Criminal Justice Research (JCJR). The purpose of the study was to determine whether gang injunctions reduce crime, when compared to baseline and matched control areas. Twenty-Five (25) gang injunctions from four California counties were evaluated by extracting crime data from court records and police agencies. The control areas (communities with a similar gang problem, but no gang injunctions) were matched for similar gang ethnicity, gang size, proximity, and gang activity. Criminological deterrence, association, environmental, and economic theories served as theoretical foundations for the study. Calls for service were evaluated for one year, pre-injunction, and one year, post-injunction, using paired t-tests which revealed that gang injunctions reduce crime. Calls for service were significantly reduced compared to baseline and compared to matched controls. It was found that Part 1 (violent crime) calls decreased 11.6% compared to baseline, while controls averaged an increase of 0.8%, a net benefit of 12.4%. Part 2 (less serious) calls decreased 15.9% compared to baseline, while controls averaged a mild increase of 1.6%, a net benefit of 17.5%. Total calls for service decreased 14.1% compared to baseline, while controls averaged an increase of 2.3%, a net benefit of 16.4%. This study confirmed that gang injunctions can be a very beneficial tool if used and implemented correctly and that they can have a corresponding impact on reducing gang crime in the communities they are implemented.

However many studies show that gang injunctions only deter violence for a limited amount of time. Four neighborhoods under the jurisdiction of the LAPD saw a 5-10% decrease of violent crime after the first year of implication, while Oxnard, California saw a decrease in homicide over the next 3 years. However, a separate study of five San Bernardino neighborhoods showed that the imposition of gang injunctions spurred conflicting results. While most neighborhoods experienced immediate benefits of fewer homicides, violent crime, or gang presence following an injunction, the benefits did not persist. Alternatively, one of the San Bernardino neighborhoods saw an increase of gang activity immediately post-injunction. A 1991 – 1996 ACLU study on the Blythe Street Gang revealed that violent crime tripled in the months immediately following the issuance. Additionally, Myers has concluded that gang repression leads to increased gang cohesion and police-community tension as well as dispersion. Additionally, while gang injunctions might lead to diminished crime in their specified locations, they can also divert crime into the surrounding areas, as was the case with the Blythe Street Gang. In the months following the institution of the gang injunction, violent crime almost doubled in the surrounding districts. Critics also note that the 1990s also saw a sharp downturn of violent crime throughout the nation, which many studies that report decreased crime fail to acknowledge. Thus, simple calculations of before and after statistics may be exaggerating the effects of gang injunctions. Other studies take on a more systemic approach to problematizing the gang. As Barajas writes, the gang emerges as a response to social, economic, and political repression experienced by low-income people of color. As the state function as a site of violence and disidentification for particular populations, the gang constitutes a community through which youth can collectively furnish identity and social needs. For these reasons injunctions are severely limited in their capability to bring about lasting social change since they don't challenge the social arrangement from which gangs emerge as logical ends.

Criticism
Gang injunctions form the most important aspect of what is referred to as the "suppression model" of anti-gang enforcement. The suppression model was criticized in a 1994 report by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which stated that in communities where suppression is used, alternatives and diversion programs for at-risk youth diminish, and that the labor market is not sufficiently able to absorb under-educated adults who were involved in gangs during their youth. It also stated that while injunctions may be effective in decreasing gang activity in neighborhoods and small towns, they have little effect on gang activity in large cities such as Los Angeles. Gang Injunctions have been further criticized as a zero-tolerance policy used to condemn, not rehabilitate, at-risk youth

Cost
Another critique for gang injunctions rests on the high cost. Gang injunctions constitute increased policing and therefore, divert resources that could be used for youth social programs. As Barajas notes, gang injunctions in Oxnard came at a moment when after school programs were being underfunded, and more and more children were funneling into gang culture as a result. To date, the gang injunctions in Oakland have cost the city over $1 million, while several elementary schools have simultaneously shut down.

Legal challenges
In 1997, the case of People ex rel Gallo v Carlos Acuna challenged the constitutionality of gang injunctions. Lower courts had held that provisions disallowing gang members to associate with one another violated their first amendment right to free assembly. However, the Supreme Court of California upheld the constitutionality of the provision against association on the grounds that it was not constitutionally vague - it only applied to named gang members and only covered four square blocks - and found that gang activity fell under the definition of a public nuisance. Nonetheless, a dissenting opinion authored by Justice Stanley Mosk warned that "The majority would permit our cities to close off entire neighborhoods to Latino youths who have done nothing more than dress in blue or black clothing or associate with others who do so; they would authorize criminal penalties for ordinary, nondisruptive acts of walking or driving through a residential neighborhood with a relative or a friend." In addition to limiting public association, many new injunctions include provisions against "otherwise legal behavior" like being outside after dark, possession of various objects, making gang related hand signals, and wearing gang colors These later injunctions have come under criticism from academics and law practitioners for violating gang members' due process rights by not naming individual defendants, administering criminal penalties for essentially being guilty by association, and vague wording. . Suggested solutions to these critiques include implementing procedural safeguards and gang-specific pleadings to protect defendants' due process rights and avoid the "void for vagueness".

Other criticism includes the violation of gang members' civil liberties due to the broad geographic scope of some injunctions. In re Englebrecht upheld an injunction covering one square mile that included some gang members' residences. The 2005 injunction against the Colonia Chiques gang in Oxnard, California covers 6.6 miles, 24% of the city. Scholars have argued that these broad areas heavily burden gang members' liberties and need be narrowly tailored to the conduct that directly facilitates public nuisance. Others have critiqued the lack of an exit process to remove one's name from the list - a practice currently only used in San Francisco and Los Angeles - due to the fact that non-gang affiliated people often end up on injunction lists and the questionable constitutionality of injunctions. While the United States Supreme Court has not directly addressed the constitutionality of injunctions in 1999 in Chicago v. Morales it upheld the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling that a 1992 anti-"Congregation Ordinance" was unconstitutionally vague, violating due process and arbitrarily restricted personal liberties.

Racial-Profiling
See also Racial profiling

According to some critics, the vagueness of gang injunctions and gang identification give way to a system of policing that uses racial profiling to classify and criminalize civilians, even if innocent. Police are accused of using stereotypes that are perpetuated through the media to target potential gang members. Therefore, urban youth of color (often African American or Latino) implicitly become the targets of gang injunctions. Baggy clothing, gang affiliated colors, hoodies, beanie’s or sports caps, tattoos, and other tropes constitute reasonable evidence for police to harrass and register youth as active members under the gang unit sector of the police department.

Incarceration of Youth
The functionality of gang injunctions, particular when coupled with racial-profiling, has been said to over-criminalize youth. Youth who have been filed under an injunction or are suspected to be gang members can have their charges intensified from infractions to misdemeanors or misdemeanors to felonies. Mendel claims that juvenile incarceration does not help public safety but rather harms it: it actually exacerbates criminality and increases recidivism among youth. Supporting Mendel’s claims, Kiriakidis further argues that only a small fraction of offenders are given custodial sentences, most of which are too short to actually prevent juveniles from continuing their criminal activities. As a solution, he proposes counseling intervention to reduce recidivism.

There are two main types of prevention programs: primary prevention programs, which target the general youth population and attempts to prevent smoking, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy; and secondary prevention program, which target youth who are at more risk for such outcomes as delinquency or violence. David Old’s Nurse Home Visitation Program, for example, significantly decreased child abuse and neglect, and arrest rates for both the children and the mothers. According to Greenwood, programs that underscore family interactions are the most successful “because they focus on providing skills to the adults who are in the best position to supervise and train the child”. Therefore, youth offenders should not be incarcerated but rather be placed in programs such settings, so that they will not engage in further criminal activities.

Alternatives
Although gang injunctions can provide immediate deterrence of gang violence, studies recommend they should be used in conjunction with gang intervention and gang rehabilitation programs, which have also reduced the levels of gang activity within communities. Statistics provided by the LAPD and NYPD show that overall gang violence decreased in neighborhoods that implemented gang intervention programs without the use of excessive policing. Also, a study conducted on convicted criminals shows possible benefits of rehabilitation among both gang members and non-gang members: gang members who received treatment experienced a 20% difference in recidivism rate versus those who did not, and non-gang members who received treatment experienced a 6% difference in recidivism rate versus those who did not. Gangs serve as proxies for the after school programs that middle class take for granted. Studies have shown that there is less gang activity in cities where intervention programs are implemented, instead of gang injunctions. Statistics taken from LAPD and NYPD show that there was dramatic decrease in New York’s crime after city council implemented intervention programs. While, in Los Angeles, city council did the opposite and implemented more gang injunctions. In 2005, NYPD reported only 520 crimes that were gang related; while, LAPD reported 11402 gang related crimes. New York continues to see a decrease with the more recreational centers they open and job opportunities they offer for youth.

Gang injunctions today
Since 1999, to prevent rulings against injunctions in the name of constitutionality, city attorneys have carefully worded their filings so that they individually name every gang member, establish a designated area where the injunction applies, and enumerate the exact activities that gang members are prohibited from doing. These generally include association with one another, wearing certain clothes, making certain hand gestures, acting as lookouts, fighting, drinking, and using drugs. Some prohibited activities are already illegal, but the injunction means that violators can be held in contempt of court, which would demand additional sanctions. Violators who conduct activities that are normally legal are charged with violating a court order, which can carry a six-month jail sentence in California.