The fact that the report show how most of the youth gang members are
actually white is encouraging because now people will want to take a second
look at the problem.  Like the 3-strikes law, everyone was so eager to put
away the perpetrators who appear to be black or latino they could not get to
the polling place fast enough. Then they found out that so many white people
were being put away on the 3rd strick even though it was just stealing a
loaf of bread from the store and they created a stink and did all they can
to revise it.

Now with the gang issue showing young whites as the majority, who will be on
the receiving end of these unjust provisions, maybe the legislatures and
white people will once again be galvanized to the polling places to change
the law and protect THEIR young ones.

This brings me to share my observation that people only does something when
it benefits them.  The 3-strikes law is one example of that, but the most
recent and visible example is the war in Iraq, where as long as it is only
the Iraqi people dying the war can go on as long as this country wants; it
is only when our own military deaths are going up that we want the war to
end, or call a cease-fire.   Very sad, but true!

The Justice Policy Institute
The mission of the Justice Policy Institute is to promote effective solutions to social problems and to be dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration.

sure, sure, all those other ideas are good, no argument here. if you can nip the problem in the bud, by presenting viable, civilized alternatives to gang membership, go for it. it will more than pay for itself in the long run.

however (there's always a however!), for those that just insist on gang membership, where is it written in the constitution that they must be imprisoned on the mainland? it isn't. use the assets available, and take them out of our midst entirely, forever.

the dry tortugas housed a military prison. like alacatraz, it was nearly impossible to escape from, and there really are sharks in the surrounding waters. that pretty much eliminates the need for massive, expensive security equipment; they aren't going anywhere.

  Did you notice the failure to reconcile the assertion that the "heavy handed" policies have failed with the citing of statistics that gang membership has declined during the period? Now, I'm not arguing post hoc ergo prompter hoc and there may be other explanations but they are not provided even as hypotheses. It seems that the authors' agenda crossed them up-- the part about declining membership was raised in the section where they were asserting the problem is overstated and claiming the public is irrationally afraid due to media and law enforcement misinformation but not evaluated when they were attacking the law enforcement model for dealing with the problem

  Perhaps even more obvious is the exceedingly misleading exposition of the statistics. Gang members are responsible for only 5% of the homicides? That might be encouraging until you consider that means less than a million people according their statistics-- less than  0.3% of the population -- are thus responsible for that percentage. It would seem to suggest that gang members are more than 15 times likely to commit a homicide than the "typical" citizen. Phrased that way the same statistics sound pretty serious.

 Looking at the report again, I  misstated the report's statistics in my first post:

  Actually the report says:

"National estimates and local research findings suggest that gang members may be responsible for fewer than one in 10 homicides; fewer than one in 16 violent offenses; and fewer than one in 20 serious (index ) crimes."