We the People

By Ron Meyer

WTP Commentary

Published in the Santa Barbara News-Press

One of the most popular topics for letters to the News-Press has been gang violence. Santa Barbara and Santa Maria residents seem to be growing more concerned on this issue, and I want to present a couple policies I think could help both of these cities.

The first major step would be to implement gang injunctions.

A gang injunction is a restraining order against a group filed through a civil suit; these injunctions create strict rules directed at the gang’s public behavior and activities. Oftentimes, these injunctions have proven to reduce the number of felonies in the areas they are implemented.

Police and residents in Los Angeles, and more locally in Lompoc, love the gang injunction policies they’ve adopted. They have proven to be extremely effective. The LAPD reports that it has been able to destroy gang activity in small areas and significantly reduce activity in the large, gang-entrenched areas.

One big concern about gang injunctions is that they will be too expensive. The LAPD has found a way to enforce injunctions in even the toughest of areas with a “small team of law enforcement officers.” Santa Maria and Santa Barbara may have to spend a little more money, but if they look at the LAPD model, they should be able to enact this program rather inexpensively.

While fighting the gangs above ground with injunctions, we should also address a root cause for gang involvement in the first place: poor public school systems. Parents and children need to have the choice to opt out of gang-infested schools.

Our children are mandated to attend school; if parents cannot afford private schools or home-schooling, these kids have to go to their local public school.

The problem is that gangs have taken over the social scene at many of the public schools in our cities. For students, sometimes the only way not to be threatened, harassed or hurt by a gang is to become a member. Gangs rely on this intimidation to build numbers. This is a pressure that should never be forced on our children.

No child should ever fear going to school, but unfortunately this has become the harsh reality for many students whose parents cannot afford better schooling.

We need to offer these kids a ladder out.

Some form of a school voucher program would be the most effective way to help these children. A voucher program gives parents a government-issued certificate that they can use to pay for their kid’s education at the school of their choice.

Instead of school funding going directly to public schools, part of this funding would go to these vouchers. Parents would then decide if they should send their child to any public, private or charter school in the area. The vouchers may not completely cover the cost of private school, but it would certainly help a lot of families.

Many folks are skeptical about these programs; they fear public schools will lose all their funding because not enough parents choose to send their kids there. For one, this should motivate public schools to be more competitive; and secondly, a voucher program could still allocate a mandatory amount to public schools before dividing the rest of the funding for vouchers.

Another substitute for vouchers is a tax credit that would allow parents to deduct the costs of sending their children to private school. This program is not as effective as vouchers because parents would have to pay the costs up front, leaving out many low-income families that cannot pay the initial tuition. The tax credits would also be predictably more expensive for the cities, but it is still a viable option.

With both vouchers and tax credits, the same principle applies: Give parents more freedom to choose where to educate their children.

Once parents and children are given this freedom, the cornerstone in the gangs’ infrastructure will be removed. The first day a parent finds out about gang activity, they can have the means to move their kids out of harm’s way. Not only that, this reform would allow these children to access a better education and gives them reasons and incentives not to join a gang.

If we mix vouchers/tax credits with new gang injunctions, we will start strangling gangs from both the inside and the outside. Residents of Santa Maria and Santa Barbara — who have been searching for solutions — should demand these proposed changes be implemented by our city councils. We can be the new standard for how to fight gangs in California and across the country.