When we were about to start looking into gang violence in Salinas as a case study, the first speaker we had the privilege of meeting with, asked us, “What do you think came first? Prisoners or prison?” By and in itself that question sounded ridiculous to me. My understanding was that there are bad guys and they are incarcerated for what they have done. This I realized later corresponds to the idea of negative peace i.e. the mentality of “if all the bad guys are put away, there will be peace”. But looking further into it, while it is true that some people need to be put away so that they are incapable of doing no harm to others in society, we should be careful of who we are putting in with them and around them, giving them ways to influence others negatively.
Let us go ahead and dissect this further. Using the case study of Salinas Valley as an example specifically in the broader context of the United States, mass incarceration is a problem. The United States has one of the highest rates of incarceration that is flooding its prison systems now and has reached a point of crisis where laws and policies are being put into place to reduce or release prisoners.
Where the problem here lies is, people from all ranges of crime and violence, of all ages of criminals (including teenagers due to the law of trying minors as adults in courts) are all put in the same place. When we were exposed to the prison system and how it works, we realized the system is mapped out with good intentions, but, it still has a few kinks where all these age groups and a range of criminals are lodged the same place. In such confined spaces with strong personalities, teenagers and younger individuals being incarcerated for crimes of lesser consequence are then influenced and “accepted” or taken in by gang members and trained and educated on the gang life. An important thing to emphasis on is, everyone in prison is scared. There are rival gangs living all day every day in such close proximity to each other and you do what you need to, to survive. This in a way, forms recruiting mechanisms for gangs or a training / bonding mechanism for members depending on where each inmate starts out in the system.
The prison system like mentioned above does it’s best to segregate rivals and maintain order in the prisons by dissecting the population based on survival and immediate life or death danger situations. However, the “danger” of influence is not taken into account mostly cause the facility and resource is not there. Then again, like mentioned from our sources, it’s not the prison system that’s broken. The duty of the prison is to house these inmates efficiently and maintain order, the system needs to stop sending these people to prison if rehabilitation is a promising possibility.
What people don’t pay much attention to, is by how much more the participation of people in violent crimes multiplies due to these contributing factors on top of other factors. Now, once in prison, if a person does want to truly accept accountability and responsibility for one’s actions, change and do better for themselves, there are a stream of resources made available to them via self help groups and education provided. However, once their name and records are scarred in such a manner, society is not ready to accept these individuals purely out of fear for safety of their community. And now, more than ever with policies being put into place to reverse mass incarceration, individuals are being released from prison at a much faster rate than society is willing or even ready to accept them. Which inevitably makes them a victim of the cycle and they find themselves back in the same situations, participating in violent crimes and gangs.
In my opinion, if one wants to break this cycle, we need to address the flaws of the system (which yes, is happening slowly), rehabilitate inmates to help them integrate back into society (which also, yes, is happening to a great extent). However, there are no programs and mechanisms that help society accept in a safe and cautious manner, these individuals into the community. This is a very important step and is initiated as well in Boston and Chicago via an Operation Ceasefire. If we do not start addressing these problems soon enough, the prisons are going to keep flooding up and society is going to be left with individuals who cannot contribute in any way to the community, which might adversely affect other socio-economic factors perpetuating the violent crimes cycle.
