A man in the city of Los Angeles (LA) in California, United States is reported to have created a crime intervention programme aimed at giving new life to ex gang-members and other felons who have been released from jail.
According to the LA Times, at the peak of LA’s gang wars in 1992, father Greg Boyle created the Homeboy Industries, currently the largest gang intervention program in the US. During that time, as many as 2,000 people were said to be dying annually from gang related violence in the city.
Local media also report that the compassionate father offers ex convicts and gang members something very hard to come by if even they had not gone to prison. Homeboy Industries have been turning lives around by offering gang-members and felons a full-time job.
The Plaid Zebra reports that father Boyle’s social enterprise began with a bakery, and has since grown to a cafe, a food truck, a catering service, a diner, a silk, and a sewing business.
Currently, Homeboy Industries is said to be employing some 200 men and women. The company also offers free counseling for trauma, and anger management. Parenting Classes are also organized for over 600 others.
There is also an 18-month program of work and therapy. At the end of this program, majority of ex convicts rebuild family ties, integrate into communities, and find full or part time work either in Homeboy Industries or elsewhere.
From 1992 till date when father Boyle started his initiative, more than 120,000 gang members and felons in the city have gone to him for help. And he has turned their lives around. His approach is to reduce crime by putting the precedence on community involvement and rehabilitation rather than segregation.
Father Boyle embraces neighborhood slang as his own. He addresses his staff as “dawg,” “mijo” and “homie.” Every person who walks into his office is given his cell phone number and he commonly presides over employees’ weddings and baptizes their children. He is also commonly seen laughing and interacting with his employees.
He also provides for free removal of tattoos that will prevent ex-gang members from going back to their old lifestyle.
According to statistics, 75% of youth gang murders in California occur inside LA County which is home to 34% of the state’s poor people. In order to break this vicious circle, father Boyle believes community development rather than mass incarceration is the key to solving the problem.
And despite suffering from Leukemia, father Boyle says he is determine to continue fighting to save the lives of others. He was quoted by the Fast Company as saying “Everyone is a lot more than the worst thing they ever did. This place is about redemption and restoration. I refuse to demonize a single gang member, and refuse to romanticize a single gang. Community trumps gangs every time”.
Father Boyle added that it is his dream to see Homeboy Industries become the “tipping point” for the acceptance and application of alternative rather than keeping people in jail without any support.
According to the Vice President of the LA Board of Police Commissioners, Steve Soboroff the last 12 years of declining crime rates in LA are largely the result of gang intervention programs such as that of father Boyle. According to the Plaid Zebra, the community development initiative of Homeboy Industries makes much more economic sense than the State’s prison policy. A single prisoner costs $46,700 per year. Probation costs $3.42 per day.
Currently, the US has more prisons than colleges. There are more than 2.3 million people in federal and state prisons. It is the largest percentage of incarceration on earth. This means one in every 100 American adult is in prison, which is equivalent to putting every resident of Houston in Texas behind bars.
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