Where Gang Members Must Behave--and Do

At first glance, nothing seems out of the ordinary with the lunchroom or its diners. There’s quiet conversation at standard-issue tables, an orderly clatter of silverware. And when the meal is over, the diners stand up almost in unison and march off for naptime on their bunk beds.

What makes the scene extraordinary is that the diners are rival gang members. Under real-world circumstances, most agree, they would never break bread together. But here, at Orange County’s Joplin Youth Center, learning to suppress hostilities is part of the rehabilitation process.

As one 15-year-old from Costa Mesa put it: “I don’t want to have no problems. I just want to do my time and get out.”

Of the county’s 351 recognized criminal street gangs, experts say, as many as 35--or about 10%--are represented here among the 64 teenage boys occupying the buildings at Joplin. It is easily the highest density of gangs in the county.

The boys share an old military barracks transformed into a dormitory. They take their meals in the same tiny cafeteria. They line up single file every morning and afternoon on the same basketball court and learn English and math in the same classrooms. Sometimes, center Director Joe Salcido said, they even serve on the same work crews, carrying blunt shovels and sharpened scythes into the fields surrounding the camp.

“It’s unavoidable that we have rival gang members sleeping in bunks next to each other,” Salcido said. “They have to interact with each other.”

And they do so with few altercations. It’s all part of the program at the center, operated by the county Probation Department in the hills of Trabuco Canyon overlooking Rancho Santa Margarita. The goal: to teach young lawbreakers how to live without violence or crime.

“Expecting them to turn their backs on their gangs is unrealistic,” Salcido said. “The best we can do is give them some strategies” for staying out of trouble.

The program has been under special scrutiny lately because of the county’s controversial plans to expand it into a new 90-bed coed youth treatment facility a quarter-mile away, a prospect that has drawn the ire of neighbors. “We’re tired of being the county’s broom closet,” one of them said last year when county supervisors approved the expansion.

The proposal to build that new facility, however, may have been dealt a death blow last week when a San Diego Superior Court judge threw out the county’s plans, saying the environmental impact report was inadequate and that the project was not in keeping with planning regulations for the area.

Joplin staff members insist, however, that the services provided by both the existing facility and the proposed one are necessary to the community at large. The program turns young lives around, staffers say, by forcing offenders “to interact with each other to get what they want,” Salcido said. “In the process they learn that they don’t have to share spit, but they don’t have to resort to violence either.”

As modest as it sounds, that goal was forged from years of experience.

In 1956, when the center opened on the once-private 240-acre Joplin estate, it was a working ranch on which wayward minors--mostly truants and runaways--raised much of their own food. The youngsters, generally about 17 years of age, also received training in such vocations as auto mechanics, cement work and carpentry.

About 1980, the center began dealing with more hard-core lawbreakers. Most of the farm animals were eliminated, and the age of participants began to drop.

A decade later, as juvenile crime rose and Joplin’s mission continued to evolve, job training was dropped in favor of a strong emphasis on academics. And in response to the increasing influx of young offenders in serious trouble with the law, staffers began focusing on building social skills, teaching values and instilling respect for authority.

Today, Salcido said, the age of Joplin residents ranges from 12 to 17, with the average about 15 1/2--all there by order of the juvenile court, usually for sentences of two to 12 months. About a third of the boys are incarcerated for property crimes such as burglary or auto theft; another third for probation violations; and the final third for serious weapons-related offenses, including assault, robbery and possession of illegal firearms.

Nearly 80% of Salcido’s young charges are in gangs. “Most of the kids up here are core gang members or associates,” he said. “About half the gangs here are rivals in the streets. If they saw each other in the community, the potential for violence would be there.”

To minimize that possibility at Joplin, the residents are divided into “family” groups of about 13 apiece, each accompanied at all times by a deputy probation counselor. The group members eat, work and bunk together. On the rare occasion that a fight breaks out, authorities said, it doesn’t have time to escalate. “Most of the altercations get stopped in 10 seconds,” said Mark Peeples, supervising probation counselor.

More than just keeping flailing gang members apart, however, the program is aimed at addressing some of the root issues fueling the violence. To help foster a sense of personal responsibility and consequence, residents are awarded status and privilege through color-coded shirts. Everyone starts out wearing green. Those presenting special disciplinary challenges descend to yellow, while boys cooperating and staying out of trouble graduate into the more desirable hues of red, burgundy and, finally, light or dark blue.

Each color represents a level of achievement and corresponding privilege. “We let out the line,” he said, “and then, when they mess up, we reel ‘em back in.”

The residents participate in a variety of seminars dealing with such issues as anger management, victim awareness, substance abuse, values and parenting. And, at the upper levels of the shirt color scheme, they go on field trips, such as touring area military bases, attending sporting events, visiting the Museum of Tolerance and feeding the homeless.

“We’re trying to point out alternatives,” Salcido said. “Most of these kids have lived their entire lives in a 10-block area--their idea of a good time is sitting on the porch drinking beer with their cousin who’s on parole from the Youth Authority.”

Even while trying to instill higher goals to work toward, however, program directors say they realize that the odds are against a resident abandoning his gang. So rather than encourage their charges to turn their backs on their homeboys, Salcido said, teachers, therapists and probation counselors at Joplin try to give them strategies to stay out of trouble. “We teach them how to make excuses for not being in that car touring a rival’s neighborhood with the .22 under the seat,” he said.

Although they don’t have hard statistics to prove it, Joplin officials believe they are achieving some success. About 70% of the kids, they say, never come back, 22% return one to three times, and about 8% make more than three returns. But even with the repeat offenders, he said, “You don’t know when the light’s going to come on. We tend to see a [reduced] severity of offenses. Who says that a kid’s supposed to get all this in 90 days?”

Seventeen-year-old Thang certainly didn’t. A Vietnamese gang member from Garden Grove, he entered Joplin the first time at age 12 after being convicted of attempted murder during a street fight with Mexican rivals. Two years later, he was back for making threats against another gang member. At 15, he was arrested for violating probation, and seven months ago returned for what he hopes is his last visit, for “a little argument between me and another group” ending in assault and battery.

For the first time in his Joplin experience, Thang is wearing a coveted dark blue shirt.

Thang said Joplin has made him more tolerant. “I’ve learned a lot about the other races,” he said. “When I was in the streets, I put them down. I thought that we were the best, but I was wrong--all of us are the same.”

But the real test of his resolve to stay out of trouble, Thang admits, will come when he gets back home. “The big problem with getting out,” he said, “is that all your homeboys are around. There’s lots of temptation. I’m going to keep myself busy--by the time I get out, I hope to have a job. I’m going to make my own decisions from now on because I’m on thin ice--this is my last chance.”

Garrett, 16, at Joplin for vandalism and illicit drug use, says he intends to never return. “This place gives you good discipline,” he said. “It’s nice here, but it makes you not want to come back.”

And, finally, there’s Rodolfo, the 15-year-old gangbanger from Costa Mesa recently convicted of assault. His plan to reform: “We moved away,” he said of the family waiting for him on the outside. “I have four brothers all in the same gang--I’m hoping to stay out of it and get a job.”

What was it about the Joplin experience that turned him around?

He gives the question some thought. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “After being here so long, you think about what you did and just change your mind.”