IT’S A GRAY AREA:

What should we do about the criminal and antisocial acts and other aberrant behavior of young people in gangs? It’s a tough issue. Law enforcement has its limitations, so we must get to the root of the problems.

So what can we do?

In my view, the best chance for success is to show these young people a better way. Show them that they actually can have a better life by having the security of a good job, the gratification of a strong family life, and increased longevity by leading a healthy lifestyle.

By analogy to other problematic behaviors, the best way to get drug-addicted people on the road to recovery is to partner them with someone in recovery who has “been there.”

That is one reason why Alcoholics Anonymous has been so successful. One of the best ways for our youth to see that things like ditching school, shoplifting and smoking marijuana aren’t “cool” is by hearing that message at Peer Court from fellow students. These people “speak the same language” as juvenile offenders and addicts, and don’t accept their rationalizations and excuses.

Similarly, the best way to get gang members to turn away from antisocial behavior is for former gang members who have evolved into a more productive and healthy lifestyle to share their stories, views and experiences with the present gang members. This occurs now in South Los Angeles with a group of former gang members called “The Businessmen.”

It is also happening here in Orange County in a program sponsored by the Orange County Bar Foundation called “Shortstop.” These programs use former gang members and felons to show the young people how their lifestyles lead nowhere. And these programs are successful.

Our government uses the same approach in places like Iraq and Palestine, where former terrorists try to educate present terrorists about the futility of their actions and how they are callously manipulated by extremists along the way. In other words, someone with a shared experience and familiarity with the aberrant behavior, whether it be drug addiction, gang involvement or terrorist activity, will have the best chance of effectively communicating with people stuck in that behavior.

But it takes more than that — it also takes hope. People without hope are probably the most dangerous in the world, for they have nothing to lose. And it is mostly people who don’t know any better and have no hope who become drug addicts, gang members and terrorists. So how do we help to provide hope to those people?

In that regard, I will pass along to you something I observed when I was in the Peace Corps. Surprisingly enough, most of the merchants in my small town, which was in the southwestern part of Costa Rica, were Chinese. That included the owner of the place where the other high school teachers and I lived. His name was Chunga, and we lived on the second floor of his “Soda Interamericana,” which was the only place in our town large enough to hold a dance. So one day I asked him why most of the town’s merchants happened to be Chinese.

He told me that after the fall of Chiang Kai-shek in China, most of his supporters fled to Taiwan. But many others kept coming. Some stopped in Hawaii, but others continued to most of the western coasts of North, Central and South America. And when they came, they brought a cultural tradition.

At about the age of 18 to 20, young men would come to the elders of the Chinese community and present what amounted to a business plan for a proposed business. The elders would give some suggestions, and then if they decided that the candidate was sincere, able and had a reasonably good plan, they would provide the “seed” money to get the business venture started (Yes, at least at that time the program was only available for young men).

This seed money was not a loan; it was a gift. But there would never be a second opportunity. If the young man was eventually successful, he would have the hope that one day he also could be a member of the elders, and contribute his own funds to perpetuate the tradition. To him, it was a matter of cultural “face,” or pride. But if he was not successful, he might as well leave town, because the shame he would bring upon himself and his family would make his continued presence in the community hard to bear.

Private organizations do things like this quite successfully today. A group called Oxfam provides small loans to people in poor countries so that they can purchase things like a sewing machine and thus begin a small business. But Oxfam also ensures that the money is eventually repaid. That promotes personal responsibility. Heifer International provides farm animals to families in poor countries, along with an education about how to care for them. These people then have the incentive to take care of the animals, because they can use them to feed their families. Eventually, the excess food products can be sold to others for the benefit of all. Instead of large amounts of our money ending up in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt government officials, these much smaller amounts of money actually promote and establish businesses, nutrition and self-sufficiency.

We should learn these lessons and adopt them to our practices both governmentally and privately, and domestically and abroad. As economists say, “Incentives matter!” And an infusion of positive mentors, incentives and realistic hope will have a meaningful chance of reducing gang and terrorist activity and otherwise changing aberrant behavior, as well as promoting a better, safer and more prosperous world.

And, by the way, it will cost a great deal less money than we are now spending.

JAMES P. GRAY is an Orange County Superior Court judge and author of the book, “Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It — A Judicial Indictment Of The War On Drugs.” He can be reached at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or at his blog site at www.judgejimgray.com.