Combating Violence in St. Louis:

A Model of Gang Intervention, Prevention, and Desistance

Dennis Ellis

University of Missouri- St. Louis

Introduction

St. Louis is well documented as being a hub for baseball, technology, food, heroin, and

violence – which for a city of approximately 315,000 residents has been trending in the wrong

direction for the past five years. In fact, four of the past five years and in four consecutive years

including 2016 there has been an increase in the number of homicides from 113 (2012), 120

(2013), 159 (2014), 188 (2015), and 170 to this point in 2016 (St. Louis Police, 2015;2016).

While these numbers may not be as resounding as the 600 murders this far in Chicago, the

disparity in population-to-murder is a disturbing trend that the city and metropolitan area must

seek to reverse. For context, the city of Chicago has a population of about 8.5 times that of St.

Louis which would translate to about 1600 murders in St. Louis and 70 in Chicago if the

populations were reversed, although this is admittedly a weak and rough estimate.

Violence in St. Louis can be viewed on a variety of matrices but no matter which way

one slices the pie, young people are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime. St. Louis

Police Annual Reports for 2014 indicate that people age 10-29 were arrested 2,469 times for Part

I crimes and 6,710 times for Part II crimes with males outpacing females at a rate 3-5 times

higher in each category with the largest disparity coming in the age 19-29 category. The data

also indicate exponential increases in the number of offenses by each group and a severe drop off

thereafter. This is a less than surprising finding but one that is important for balancing the

notions of adolescent-limited and life course-persistent theories of crime. Furthermore, each of

these has some bearing on the individual and the propensity to incarcerate in St. Louis and the

United States more generally.

Criminal homicide statistics in St. Louis are further reflected in these categories as these

people represent 59 of 84 homicide arrests or approximately three-quarters of criminal homicide

arrests. The 19-29 age bracket also accounted for about 50% of homicide victims of which 44%

of those were African- American males between the ages of 18-25. Furthermore, 86% of

homicide victims were male, 90% were African-American, and 90% of homicide victims had a

criminal record in 2013 (St. Louis Police, 2014). This report has some serious implications as

both homicide offenders and victims are likely to fit into four demographic characteristics: being

male, African-American, between the ages of 17-29, and with a criminal history. These

demographics are eerily similar to the typical demographics of being a current or former gang

member as is being both a suspect and victim of homicide or other violence (Taylor, 2008).

Ironically, of these homicides in 2014 only 13-18% were committed by suspected gang members

known to law enforcement, although again there are a number of issues here as classifications by

law enforcement differ from those in much of the gang research which tends to find much higher

numbers of homicidal and other criminal involvement (National Gang Center, 2014).

Numerous programs have sought to deal with the gang issues found in urban centers but

few have attempted to bring together the efforts of law enforcement, social service institutions,

civil and criminal courts, and community members except for The Boston Gun Project also

known as Operation Ceasefire (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001). This program

successfully used these institutions as a framework for fighting violence and gangs and was quite

successful in doing so. Ceasefire will be used as the beginning and combined with civil

abatement procedures, social enterprise intervention, and Gang Resistance Education and

Training to develop a model that focuses on combating the threat of violence and gangs by using

the threat of intense legal action or the option of escape. The overall goal is to intervene and limit

current offending with the expectation to prevent, restrict, and eliminate future offending for

both the target population and future generations by using a circular model requiring those who

find desistance to go preach and teach resistance.

What Do We Know About Gangs?

Violent groups, criminal enterprises, organized crime syndicates, cartels, and gangs are

all terms used to describe groups of people whose focus is on crime and the potential profits of

criminal actions. Each of these operates in its own world of course, but street gangs hold a

special credence in the United States and while they have been the source of crime research for a

century or more, the past 30-50 years of media coverage and police actions have cemented the

place of gangs as a top fear monger among the public. Research indicates some validity to this

fear, but points to the fear being misplaced in the hearts and minds of women and the elderly

when fear of gang violence should be more prevalent in gang member and young, African-

American males in general (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996).

Street gangs have long been subject to definitional issues as numerous definitions have

been presented over the years and there tends to be some contrast and conflict between

researchers and law enforcement over what is and what is not a gang and who is and who is not a

gang member. Klein and Maxson (2006) offer an examination of five gang definitions and

ultimately settle on the Eurogang definition as the best for describing them from a research

position. The authors chose this definition as it allowed for the easiest differentiation between

street gangs and more general delinquent youth groups because of its minimalist approach:

“A street gang is any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its

group identity” – Klein and Maxson (2006)

This five-part definition brings together the key aspects of other earlier definitions and is one that

can and has been agreed on by law enforcement and the research community as one that

represents the key aspects of street gangs: durability, street-orientation, group, illegal actions,

and identity. This is interesting as St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the greater Metropolitan Area

are known for their neighborhood divisions which as Decker and Van Winkle (1996) indicate has

major implications for turf, affiliations, and names of the gangs that permeate St. Louis. The use

of this definition is sporadic though and police agencies use their own judgement and definitions

along with self-nomination and peer-nomination to develop gang databases and profiles. This

may then skew official data and statistics which may be a reason that gang-related homicides

make up only 13-18% of those in St. Louis (St. Louis Police, 2014). However, given that gang

desistance is typically done before age 20, it may be mere coincidence that those who offend and

are victimized in the 19-29 age group may be past their gang-membership days but still prone to

criminal involvement (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996). This then furthers the definitional issue as

desistance from the gang does not mean desistance from crime and it is possible and perhaps

likely that these victims age 15-34 who number 120 or 95% of the murdered populous in 2014

were in fact current or former gang members who had not been identified as such by the police

or who has not desisted from crime.

This then brings up a question: Does St. Louis have a gang problem? That issue is

difficult to define as well because gang violence during the 1980’s and 1990’s was perpetuated

by the news media. This led to the development of specialized gang units in police departments

which in a matter of speaking implies that the media created the gang problem more so than

gangs or their members (McCorkle & Miethe, 1998). This moral panic, a term referring to the

idea of moralists and the media creating a problem or making it worse through intense coverage

and public outcry lead to sweeping changes in policing gangs and legislating gang-related

crimes. In their study of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) McCorkle

and Miethe (1998) discovered that a few gang-related issues led to major news coverage and

eventually the formation of a gang unit within LVMPD which eventually became an intelligence

gathering operation but also lead to a boost in incarceration relating to gang crimes. This

hearkens back to the issue of law enforcement and designating gang membership as it becomes a

subjective exercise and can be something of a futile one as gangs tend to see a fairly large

amount of turnover due to desistance, arrest, and death (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996; McCorkle

& Miethe, 1998). Clearly violence is an issue in St. Louis, but is it all gang-related? This again is

somewhat unclear but if trends have continued from Decker and Van Winkle’s (1996) work and

Taylor’s (2008) review of victimization, it would be fairly easy to conject that while the

violence, particularly homicide in St. Louis may not be committed by current gang members,

there may be some motive relating to prior or current gang activity.

At this point, it is important to consider crime more generally as well as how we legislate

and pursue legal action for those involved with street gangs. The aforementioned moral panic

helped in part to lead to stricter and more specific legislation regarding gangs. States having

some flexibility to legislate as they see fit have for the most part fallen into two models for gang

legislation: the gang-member and the gang-motive definition. The gang-member definition calls

for additional charges and stricter prosecution for those who self-admit or have been identified

by law enforcement as gang members and given the subjectivity involved in law enforcement

designations, there has been some considerable abuses of this designation (National Gang

Center, 2015). States that use a gang-member definition include Illinois and Texas. The gang-

motive definition allows for additional charges if the prosecution can prove that the offender’s

act was in furtherance of their gang’s enterprise or agenda and is used in California and Missouri

(National Gang Center, 2015). The use of this definition in Missouri and by extension St. Louis

bodes well for those who have left their gangs and may have some influence on the discussed

homicide statistics. A number of states use enhanced penalties for gang-related crimes that can

range by offense, temporality of offenses, or other strata and these additional charges can be

classified as misdemeanors and felonies dependent on the state who is prosecuting (National

Gang Center, 2015). Missouri uses the following definitions for gang-related crimes and

homicide respectively:

“the commission, attempted commission, or solicitation of two or more of the following offenses, provided

at least one of those offenses occurred after August 28, 1993, and the last of those offenses occurred within

three years after a prior offense, and the offenses are committed on separate occasions, or by two or more

persons” (Missouri § 578.421)

“The murder was committed during the commission of a crime which is part of a pattern of criminal street

gang activity as defined in section 578.421.” (Missouri § 565.032).

Legislative changes should not be expected although the great variance from state-to-state might

warrant a relevant blue-ribbon commission someday. Luckily for gang associated people in

Missouri, their youthful gang ties might be overlooked should they choose to offend later in life

that is assuming they are not one of the victims beforehand.

Gangs as a group have been defined as well as gang legislation and a framework for the

gang problem but who are the gang members? Decker and Van Winkle (1996) discuss

demographics on St. Louis gang members who tend to be neighborhood-based sometimes down

to the street block or small set of blocks. They tend to be African-American males between the

ages of 13-19, although most have left the gang by 17 and some join as young as eight or nine

years old. Most come from single-parent households, typically the mother as the parent as many

of the fathers at the time of publication were dead or under correctional management due either

to violence, the War on Drugs, or both. They tend to have few ties to social institutions such as

churches, schools, or athletic clubs and few have or maintain legitimate employment. These

demographics should be quite reminiscent of most violent offenders and juvenile delinquents but

what makes street gangs fascinating is their disproportionate levels of violent offending relative

to their non-gang peers (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996). These categories are also quite similar to

crime victims and there is often substantial overlap between victims and offenders as despite the

most named reason for joining a gang being protection from violence, gang members tend to

experience more violence in the gang including initiation rituals (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996;

Taylor, 2008). The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reported in

2012 that of 14,800 reported homicides, 2,363 (16%) were attributed to gang-members (National

Gang Center, 2014). The same report identifies 30,700 distinct gangs and 850,000 gang-

members as reported by law enforcement; this subjective reporting is problematic due to

potential biases but none the less indicates the numerical threat that gangs pose. These are

complicated issues and the picture of gang crime is quite unclear across the United States and

certainly globally as well but what should be clear is the great effect that deindustrialization, the

War on Drugs, media/moral panics, and strict enforcement have had on gangs, gang

demographics, and violence.

What Has Been Done to Combat Gangs?

Given the violence associated with gangs there have been a variety of programs which

aimed to combat their existence. Most of these relied on law enforcement and some sort of

intense efforts in the deterrence model – general and specific – that boosted the appearance of

crime being fought and enriched a variety of statistics especially arrest records and clearance

rates but they did not solve the gang and violence issues. Deterrence and incapacitation, the go-

to, Band-Aid fixes of the criminal justice system have long lacked the ability to provide long

term results as they aim to prevent future offending either through removal or threat of removal

from society without considering the underlying issues that may lead to crime. This hearkens

back to the strain theories as well and given the many issues such as poverty, broken homes, and

lack of legitimate employment found in places where one finds the most gangs and violence, it is

difficult not to find a correlation between strains and violence (Agnew, 1992; Messner &

Rosenfeld, 2013). A second form of gang prevention has been social skills programs that aim to

teach the various skills that may lead to gang membership. One of the more well-known of these

programs in Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) and is modeled after the

Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program. G.R.E.A.T. and D.A.R.E. are models

typically taught by local police officers which allows them to spread their expert knowledge of

gangs, drugs, and the like and mix it with a classroom curriculum that teaches social skills;

G.R.E.A.T. has been quite successful and is well regarded by Crime Solutions, researchers, and

law enforcement (Crime Solutions, 2012; Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, & Osgood, 2009). A third

model used to fight drug crimes, of which gang members tend to be involved on an individual

level, is the use of civil law specially for property abatement. The civil abatement measures are

those where local attorneys or governments put pressure on landlords to keep their properties

free of crime and drugs, which given the vast amount of renter-occupied property in urban

centers that also tend to feature more clustered gang activity and violence, is a novel program

and process that can be valuable in fighting gangs and violence (Mazzerole, Price, & Roehl,

2000). A fourth way of fighting gangs and violence is a tertiary model referred to as social

enterprise intervention and it focuses on building job skills which is important as lack of

legitimate employment has been implicated as a major source of crime over the years (Messner

& Rosenfeld, 2013). This list is not exhaustive by any means but does show the variety of

models that have been used over the years and sets a framework for an integrated model

featuring all four of these approaches.

The Integrated Model

Combining each of the aforementioned approaches gives each level of our justice system

an equal interest in combating gangs as well as giving gang members and those at risk of joining

gangs a choice of which route they want to go down. Targeting three separate but similar groups

is difficult but important as all three should work in concert if this is to be successful in the long

–term. The three groups will be those at-risk of joining gangs who will be identified through

home, schools, social institutions, and self-nomination, those who are in gangs who will be

identified though the same means but with law enforcement as added identifier, and finally

former or currently incarcerated gang member who again will be identified though the same prior

means as well as via court and correctional identifiers. This is again a large population and will

need to be further subdivided, perhaps by policing district or aldermanic ward, if the program is

to have long-term success. The combined approach will use focused deterrence and civil

procedures to identify areas where gun violence and drug use and sales are prevalent and begin

by offering those involved options to get themselves of areas plagued by these ills. This will

require the combined efforts of law enforcement and court officials as well as those with stakes

in communities such as school administrators, church leaders, athletic club leaders, and business

people willing to supply work experience and wages, and presumably others who hold a stake in

the community. These same people will also be asked to help identify those at-risk of gang

joining or to help organize and implement the G.R.E.A.T program in their local schools. The

G.R.E.A.T. program has seen substantial success and could possibly be more successful if those

who were former gang members or those who desisted through the enforcement part were

willing to work with law enforcement to teach the curriculum. Finally, using social enterprise

intervention specifically a model like Homeboy Industries, the program will aim to build

individuals with the social and work skills to be productive members of society with the ability

and the desire to resist drugs, violence, and gangs (Homeboy Industries, 2016). The people who

find success in this program will be asked and hopefully will have the desire to help those who

were in their positions much like the group seen in The Interrupters (2012) film. The

organization and costs of this are vast but if successful long-term, the general costs of criminal

justice processing would plummet and St. Louis may be able to move down the Most Dangerous

lists and compete for more business and tourism.

Review of the Four Models

Operation Ceasefire/The Boston Gun Project was a problem-oriented policing (POP)

strategy implemented in the 1990’s in Boston and eventually into other cities in various formats

(Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001). The program used a focused deterrence framework

and sought to interdict firearms and combat rising levels of youth violence in Boston by using a

“pulling-levers” approach (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001). Such an approach call for

the Boston Police Department (BPD) and other social service agencies and stakeholders to warn

youth and gang members of the police action being taken, offer then various options to remove

themselves from the violent situations, and if all else failed to “pull all legal levers” the enforce

strict punishments (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001). Initial findings were substantial

including:

- 63% decrease in monthly youth homicides

- 32% decrease in monthly shots fired calls

- 25% decrease in monthly gun assaults

Such results were questioned but similar models in other cities and a follow up by Braga &

Colleagues in 2013 indicates that they were accurate and that such strategies can be successful if

implemented with specific goals in mind (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001). Traditional

law enforcement practices cannot be the only step though as gang members face unique

challenges not seen in other populations.

Given the neighborhood and community based associations in St. Louis, gang members

are afforded a unique opportunity for underground drug markets – such neighborhoods or even

smalls blocks of streets act as a formal turf upon which a gang member may expect to make

money via said drug market (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996). Turf is an important concept for

gangs and their members and research has shown that turf disputes can be major catalysts of

violent offending and victimization (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996; Taylor, 2008). Civil

abatement procedures have successfully been used in Oakland, California to remove drug

markets from neighborhoods by focusing on civil codes and enforcement against property

owners (Mazzerole, Price, & Roehl, 2000). These can act as a “legal lever” by forcing property

owners to rent to tenants not involved in the drug trade and given the desire for economic

success these programs have been effective although some displacement and diffusion has been

found in adjacent areas (Mazzerole, Price, & Roehl, 2000; Messner & Rosenfeld, 2012).

The third layer of the program is one that recently made its way back into the St. Louis

Public School curriculum, Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.). Modeled

similarly to D.A.R.E., this program focuses on social skill development and the risk/protective

factor model attributed to much youth violence and delinquency (Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, &

Osgood, 2009). The program has seen some success in its evaluations although those have been

limited by small sample sizes but overall this primary prevention program seems to meet its two

main goals:

- Helping youth avoid gang membership and the violence/delinquency associated with

gangs (Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, & Osgood, 2009).

- Helping youth to develop positive relationships with law enforcement (Esbensen,

Peterson, Taylor, & Osgood, 2009).

This program fits well for the main target population, 12-15-year old’s and given its goal of

developing relationships, fits well into the community policing model desired by vast segments

of the public (Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, & Osgood, 2009). The police in our scenario could

also be supplemented by people who have seen success in the fourth part of the model: social

enterprise intervention.

“Nothing stops a bullet like a job” this tagline for Los Angeles based, Homeboy

Industries is a strikingly simple yet dark reality for much of the youth un urban centers today

(Homeboy Industries, 2016). As was previously mentioned, St. Louis is well known for its

murder and violence as well as the lack of job opportunities in its northern reaches that may

work as a strong generator for such violence. A model like Homeboy can by the game-changer in

this area much like it was and has been for southern California since the late 1980’s and it could

be the least expensive of all of these given that it would be run as a non-profit organization

(Homeboy Industries, 2016). The program focuses on former gang members who were recently

released from correctional facilities and it further focuses on reforming them with the skills they

need to survive outside of prison:

- Employment in blue-collar industries: food, warehousing, manufacturing, customer

service

- Social Skills: alcohol/drug recovery, anger management, parenting skills classes

- Personal Enrichment: Completion of high school and Associate’s degrees, tattoo removal,

religious services

Although these will not solve all of the issues at hand, they do offer a wealth of opportunities to

rehabilitate a person and prepare them for life outside of correctional management. The program

is unfortunately quite understudied but between their annual reports and a 2011 study it is

apparent that they have a success rate of approximately 70% and that their business model which

includes a café, bakery, grocery items, and silk-screen printing has seen substantial success in the

California and online markets (Leap, Franke, Christie, & Bonis, 2011). Father Gregory Boyle,

who started the program right out of Jesuit training has continued to be its leader and to meet

personally with most, if not all of its participants, while also taking on speaking engagements

and working to keep their mission of “jobs not jails” alive. This program would be the corner

stone of the St. Louis program and with the right people could be the strongest and most viable

of all four levels.

It is believed that we cannot arrest our way out of a drug problem and by extension we

probably cannot arrest our way out of a gang problem. This is where the G.R.E.A.T. and

Homeboy Industries models become important – we need to prepare people with proper

schooling, social skills classes, and job preparation and attack this gang issue from its source:

young men and women. Through services such as those offered by Homeboy, gang members

will be able to come together and develop skills to help them through life while also rebuilding

their families. They will be encouraged and perhaps expected to return this favor by working

with law enforcement in teaching the G.R.E.A.T. program by being mentors to individual boys

and girls who may be going through the same things they went through in relatively recent times.

This is admittedly a costly proposal, but with the many vacant and deleterious buildings in St.

Louis, it should not be difficult to find a center of operations. While the short terms costs of these

proposals are vast, the long-term savings are greater if successful and the combined use of four

successful models should produce the desired outcome: gang desistance, quelled violence, and

efficient use of tax monies.

Conclusions

Throughout researching gangs and intervention and prevention programs, I have become

keenly aware that there is little than can realistically be done to combat gangs, but more

specifically violence in urban centers such as St. Louis. The lack of blue-collar work, over

inflation of legitimate and illegitimate markets, and the destruction of the family have had and

will continue to have an enduring effect. Also the combined efforts of agencies and governments

as a whole to combat these issues is marginal and inefficient at best with cooperation being

limited and stakeholders seemingly only self-interested. I did find that my speculation that the

threat of police and legal action being the most useful of these methods was inaccurate and

perhaps these have the least effect. Gang members, juveniles, and criminal in general seem to

respond to threat mostly with threat themselves and as Decker and Van Winkle (1996) indicate

few of them see a great future for themselves even they even see a future at all.

I would like to have spent more time studying the implementation process of some of

these programs and wish there was more research on Homeboy Industries. The lack of research

there makes it difficult to vouch for the program but with their reported success rate, long-term

success, and general model focused on work skills, education, and social skills, it does seem like

the best method for combating gang, violence, and other social ill such as homelessness. Of

course a major issue will always be the availability of jobs that supply a reasonable wage. Jobs

have left urban centers, wages have not remained equal to inflation, and the jobs that are

available may be inaccessible for those without a personal vehicle – this is especially an issue in

St. Louis as our Metro system lacks the coverage needed to move people to and from blue-collar

jobs found on the outskirts of St. Louis and its neighboring Metropolitan counties. Furthermore, I

would like to view more research on civil procedures and its effects on drug markets in today’s

world. The research from Mazzerole and colleagues is dated and certainly with the housing crash

and changing drug markets there have been some adjustments that need to be studied. The

G.R.E.A.T. program was recently re-started in St. Louis schools and I will be interested to see

where that goes in a few years, hopefully it is well studied (by those who originally helped

develop it) and hopefully it is successful but the questionable education system in St. Louis

leaves me skeptical. Finally, police strategies in St. Louis need to be re-evaluated as our violence

levels continue to climb in the post-Ferguson world. There are a number of theories as to why

this is happening but based on some research, news reports, and ride-alongs, it seems that the

police are not open to being proactive right now and given the amount of violence against law

enforcement this year, this should not be surprising.

Left out of this discussion was an extensive look at the risk and protective factors

associated with gang violence and juvenile offending. These are important to consider but this

policy is more widespread and focused on the individual making to the choice to desist from

violence. Also lacking in this discussion is a real evaluation of what gang members do which can

be found in the Decker and Van Winkle book “Life in the Gang: Family, Friends, and Violence.”

This is certainly an important consideration but again with the less focused nature of this

program seemed unnecessary. Finally, further discussion of gang –related legislation was left out

as it does not seem likely to change in the next few years. Much of it has been pretty well set for

years and the media and films like Colors do not seem ready to scale back blaming gangs for

extensive violence even though much of the violence seems to come after the individual has left

the gang.

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