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 Return to Society
Ex-offenders returning to their communities from the criminal justice systems are a very difficult transition and are very problematic for communities across the nation. Once an offender has paid his or her debt to society they should be afforded another chance to rehabilitate their lives and become productive members of society.
There are many non-profit agencies providing social services and job training services available to ex offenders, with little or no success. The changes have to come from community leaders as well as reentry program service models. Intensive Case Management should become Intensive "Care" Management if the goal is to make the streets and communities safer for our families to live in.
Our communities have been plagued by violence nationally due to violent crimes, gang activity and drug addiction. The SF Bay Area communities of Oakland, Richmond and San Francisco have experienced an increase in homicides and violent crime is on the rise. We believe the problems stem from long-term rivalries and retaliation against rival gangs they believe were responsible for killing members of their "families". Drug abuse and the war for control of the drug trade have also had a negative outcome on the community. The time for mediation and intervention has never been greater. According to former Deputy Police Chief of San Francisco Kevin Mullen's article published in the SF Chronicle newspaper here is his quote:
"In his 1980s novel, "Bonfire of the Vanities," Tom Wolfe introduced the reading public to the concept of "Manhattan makes it; Brooklyn takes it." By that he meant that Brooklyn-based thugs would take the subway to Manhattan, where they would commit crimes and then return via the subway to Brooklyn before the police got onto them. To their mind anyway, the thugs were adjusting the imbalance between wealthy Manhattan and the relative poverty of Brooklyn.
Now, according to The Chronicle's Dec. 17, 2006 report, we read that African
Americans in San Francisco are being arrested at several times the rate of African Americans in other large California cities.
San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong has invoked a version of the "Manhattan makes it; Brooklyn takes it" formulation to explain the disparity. She says that 60 percent of the African Americans arrested, according to an analysis by the Tenderloin Task Force, had "no local" address. Still, some experts contend that the disparities in the arrest rates are too great to be explained completely by out-of-town criminals coming to San Francisco. The implication is that San Francisco police might be profiling African Americans.
One factor that may help to explain some of the disparity is the relative criminality of African Americans in different cities. Despite widely held beliefs that Oakland is more violent that San Francisco, in 2005, the last year covered in The Chronicle's report, African Americans in San Francisco were twice as likely to be murdered -- most often by other blacks -- on a per capita basis as African Americans in Oakland.
Rates of incidence by race of crimes other than murder are not so easy come by, especially in a form that allows for comparisons between cities. (Until 1989, the San Francisco Police Department reported out criminal perpetrators by race for major types of crime in the "Analysis by Race" section of its regular Cable Incident Activity Report, a computerized crime-reporting system implemented in the 1970s to help manage crime information and report crime patterns. The data is still collected but has not been reported out since the early 1990s.)
If, however, as William A. Geller, associate director of the Police Executive Research Forum, and others contend, "murder rates are one of the more reliable measures of community violence," African Americans in San Francisco could then be expected to have generally higher rates of criminal incidence than African Americans in Oakland at least. Thus, the arrest disparity could, in part, be explained by the differences in rates of incidence.
A South Florida University expert on racial profiling has reportedly been hired to explore the reasons for the disparities in the arrest rates in San Francisco. To my mind, the not-yet-fully-explored possibility of San Francisco as a crime magnet for outsiders offers the best hope for an explanation. It would be an easy enough matter to check out. The data to
make such an analysis for any past period are contained in the arrest cards maintained in the San Francisco Sheriff's Office.
Just as Manhattan was a criminal magnet for Brooklynites, San Francisco attracts criminal predators from the East Bay and North Bay. When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton said famously, "because that's where the money is." The same sort of answer might be elicited from the transbay predators apparently making their way to San Francisco.
William Bratton, now Los Angeles police chief, is credited in large part with bringing down the crime rate in New York when he was police commissioner there in the 1990s. It's no accident that, prior to his appointment as New York police commissioner, he headed up the New York Transit Police. It was in that job that he started to put an end to the "Manhattan makes it; Brooklyn takes it" syndrome by providing a strong law enforcement chokepoint on the transit system.
The same sort of thing has been tried in San Francisco. When police Capt. Greg Corrales assumed command of the Mission Station in 2002, the BART Station at 16th and Mission streets was a hive of East Bay dope dealers. Ninety percent of drug arrestees in the Mission District that year gave out-of-town addresses. By increasing patrols and implementing a zero-tolerance enforcement policy around the BART station, Corrales was able to run the drug dealers back across the San Francisco Bay.
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Correlation is not causation but it is interesting to note that Oakland's homicide rate went up thereafter, perhaps because street-corner dope dealers glutted the market in the East Bay and began killing each other in order to thin the ranks of the competition. As Oakland's homicide rate soars into the stratosphere in 2006, could the same thing be happening again?
To find out, the first step should be to make a close analysis of recent past arrest records to ascertain just how many outsiders are being arrested. (This can be done easily without the availability of the long-awaited computerized program, which is expected to solve a host of management information problems.) If it turns out that the racial arrest disparity is attributable to the interdiction of transbay criminals looking for easier pickings in San Francisco, the prescription then is for "more of the same."
Former San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Kevin Mullen is the author of several books about San Francisco criminal justice. The latest is "The Toughest Gang in Town: Police Stories From Old San Francisco" (Noir Publications, 2005). "
These and other articles published in major newspapers are key indicators that the problem is becoming increasingly more serious. The article in the bold quote marks were taken from the SF Chronicle website.
Reentry of ex-offenders into the community plays a big part in helping reduce violence. By distributing important information and having law enforcement meet with gang members on neutral grounds and with a negotiator that is not a stakeholder in their criminal activities we can make progress and help reduce the senseless drive by shootings that are injuring or killing innocent citizens of our communities. Together the people of the community and community leaders can make a difference, by helping violent offenders take responsibility for their past behavior and providing them with the tools they need to do something about it or the problem is going to get much worse before it gets better.
Crime and Drug use... Many statistics from both government and private organizations continually show how drug abuse and crime go hand in hand. Drugs and crime are related in many ways…it is a crime to posse, manufacture, or distribute drugs. Before the drug user has even committed a “violent crime” they have taxed our local and federal funds and police forces. Unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg. With the cost of illegal drugs being so high and many users unable to get and keep a steady job to pay for their habit many will turn to a life of crime, their only thought being their next fix and how to get it.
Statistics from 1997 show that drug users are 9% more likely to be involved in a violent crime such as assault or murder, 14% more likely to be involved in crimes such as driving under the influence and liquor law violations and 16% more likely to be involved in crimes such as theft and larceny.
Data collected in 1998 from men who had been incarnated showed that in some cities as much as 82% tested positive for drug use. In 1998 state prisons housed almost 1,200,000 inmates. It is impossible to say just how much the use of drugs influences individuals to commit crimes but evidence shows that those under the influence of drugs are much more likely than non users to commit crimes.
One answer to crime prevention and safer communities is treatment for those suffering from drug dependency. Are you ready to do your part to help those in need and to make your community a safer place to live, learn, play and work?
San Francisco’s Youth, Poverty & Crime over the past 14 years... The information in this article was provided from the SF Planning Commissions office. The compilation of information started in 1997. The poverty levels shown here are not to single out populations, but to emphasis the need to help members of these communities with adequate income. We believe that implementing a creative employment program that will earn the participants a livable wage will help reduce the crime rates associated with poverty and lack of education.
We are using these old statistics to point out how long these conditions have affected these S.F. neighborhoods and communities. We will focus on other cities and cultural problems associated with language barriers to obtaining gainful employment.
Women, Head of Households
Considering the California Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) profiles of TANF recipients and DHS statistics, we expect the following client profile
91% single-parent families headed by women, with an average of two children in each family
30 - 40% of recipients/clients having substance abuse and/or mental health problems.
In fact, about 50% of TANF families are headed by a single parent; most are woman between the ages of 25 and 55 with an average of two children. In San Francisco and across the USA this constitutes a large “Domestic Nation of Poverty” comparable to many third world and emerging world countries.
While San Francisco has a citywide per-capita income envied by others, our minority populations fall well below the city average.
-Read the entire article here.
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Krav Maga San Francisco
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