By James Diego Vigil, a professor of social ecology at UC Irvine and anthropology scholar, gave a lecture Wednesday titled “Gang Redux: A Balanced Anti-gang Strategy.” In his lecture, Vigil, who has a doctorate in anthropology from UCLA, addressed gang violence in Los Angeles County.
Vigil is the author of articles and books such as “Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California” and “Personas Mexicanas: Chicano High Schoolers in a Changing Los Angeles.” He specialized in applied research to create his policy ideas on gang prevention.
Los Angeles County is the “gang capital of the world,” Vigil said. Guns and drugs have exacerbated the gang problem. Up to 300,000 gang members now proliferate the county, while they amounted to only 50,000 in the ’70s.
The term “gang redux” means to return to a former way of doing things, according to Vigil. Historically, there have been some successful programs put in place to reduce gang membership and other problems.
The gang problem shouldn’t just be “nipped in the bud” — it should be dealt with early on starting with children, Vigil said.
“Don’t let it get to the bud state,” Vigil said. “I want us to stop the gangs before they start.”
He said that “poverty and marginalization lead to street socialization,” which means that children are raised in the streets, thus generating street gangs and gang members.
Marginalized kids are the ones most prone to join gangs, Vigil said.
There are three essential elements to consider in preventing gangs, according to Vigil: time, place and people.
The time element is not only important on a chronological level, but more specifically in intervening early on in a child’s life. Gang prevention should start in the home, Vigil said.
The place element is important. There are “hot spots” loaded with criminal activity.
“What you got to do in terms of changing the place around is soften the hot spots,” Vigil said.
Vigil said there were programs in the ’60s and in the ’70s that were successful in occupying children positively and productively. These programs allowed them to work within their communities and earn money, but some have been discontinued due to a lack of funding, Vigil said. On-the-job training was successful in the ’60s.
“We have a welfare system right now, known as criminal justice welfare, ’cause we are babysitting hundreds of thousands of people in jail incorrigible by our standards,” Vigil said. “We don’t mind spending $40,000 to keep people in jail.” He added that the funds for prevention programs are scarce.
Public and private funding helps create programs in gang prevention, but Vigil said we also need to have follow-up programs.
There are programs like Green and Clean, allowing people from the community in the housing projects to work in order to keep the community clean.
Programs like Head Start and Strengthening Families, which help with child-rearing techniques, communication with other members of the community and coordination with other community entities. The problem with programs like Head Start, according to the professor, is that there’s no follow-up. It works well in the early years of a child, but then the students trail off on their own, Vigil said.
Then comes the people element. Individuals on their own can work out strategies, but groups working together can be doing a lot more, he said. The community needs to come together and get involved. Vigil said fathers and mothers should be recruited as surrogate parents for children in the community.
“Caring and well-trained people can make a difference,” Vigil said.
He also said there’s more time put in for street socialization when children are left to play in the streets with little parent oversight and guidance. Children need to be given something to do after school to prevent them from going in the wrong direction.
There are ways to “gang proof” a child, according to Vigil. Former gang members can be street counselors to prevent further gang membership, but “carefully crafted screening” needs to occur, along with the involvement of social control — “in other words, parents, teachers and law enforcement,” Vigil said.
Vigil is the first professor to teach at Cal State Long Beach as part of the Robert Harman Professorship. Professor Robert Harman, who retired from the CSULB anthropology department in 2005, recently established the Robert C. Harman Visiting Scholar series in the applied anthropology program, enabling the department to invite an applied anthropology scholar for one semester every two years.
The event was co-sponsored by the CSULB College of Liberal Arts.
“I can’t think of any speaker that is more qualified to help bring us together than Dr Vigil,” said Gerry Riposa, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts. “Not only is he a person of exceptional skills, but also he is a teacher scholar who never forgot where he came from.”
