Viewpoint: Are gang injunctions worth the cost?
Recently, Oakland, Calif., joined the increasing number of public agencies making use of gang injunctions when its City Attorney’s Office announced that it would seek a gang injunction limiting street gang activity within a 100-block radius in North Oakland. Gang injunctions are public nuisance actions that aim to prevent and suppress gang activity, such as restricting people from wearing gang colors, associating with gang members and gathering in areas with high gang activity.
Not surprisingly, the media attention surrounding Oakland’s announcement shows that the strategy is still controversial. The most common criticisms are that gang injunctions: fail to address the root problems of gang activity; take valuable resources away from programs that would address those problems; give the police too much discretion to harass young men of color — even if they are not gang members; impose permanent probation-like restrictions on individuals who have never been tried for a crime; create an increase in “cohesion” among gang members; and cause a “spill-over” of gang-related crime into adjoining neighborhoods.
But criticisms of gang injunctions are often unsupported by recent research or practice. The increased “cohesion” among gang members and “spill-over” effect theories, for example, have been refuted by several studies. Further, no support has been provided for the premise that gang injunctions are used as a substitute for, or take resources away from, programs that would address the root causes of gang activity. In fact, gang injunctions are one of many law enforcement tools used to prevent gang activity; discontinuing the use of gang injunctions would only move the resources expended to other related law enforcement activities.
Moreover, the civil rights concerns noted above have been, and will continue to be, addressed. Those of us who have undertaken the task of assembling what is needed for a gang injunction work with police department personnel to gather evidence identifying individually named and documented gang members that have engaged in reported gang-related criminal activity within narrow geographic boundaries. All of that work-up is done before going to the courthouse. Courts will not enjoin individuals and create safety zones without that evidence. And city attorneys (in San Francisco and Los Angeles, for example) have already begun to work with civil rights organizations to create “opt out” provisions to allow individuals enjoined by a court to petition a city attorney’s office to be removed from the enforcement list.
So, are gang injunctions worth the cost and effort, even amidst all the criticism? Absolutely. Carefully crafted gang injunctions can decrease gang-related criminal activity — at least in the short term. Studies and relevant literature show injunctions may reduce the rates of certain crimes, reduce gang visibility, ease resident intimidation and fear of gang confrontations, increase residents’ sense of control over their community, and provide an excuse for some members to get out of the gang. The latter effects are particularly critical to improving neighborhood dynamics and community safety.
While gang injunctions alone may not be enough to eliminate gang activity, they are a law enforcement tool that can “crack the window of opportunity for change,” as Cheryl Maxson, an Associate Professor of Criminology, Law & Society at UC Irvine, wrote in “It’s Getting Crazy Out There: Can A Civil Gang Injunction Change a Community?” So, rather than eliminate the tool, a better city response to criticisms of gang injunctions would be to follow injunctions with programs such as skill-development and treatment resources that address the root problems of gang activity.
- Download a Los Angeles Civil Grand Jury report that mentions several studies on the use of gang injunctions.
- Download a report on gang injunctions written for the U.S. Justice Department by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Rand Corp.’s Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment division.
Moira O’Neill and Trisha Hynes are Oakland-based attorneys at Meyers Nave. Hynes specializes in issues affecting the law enforcement community.