Lifting his Scarface sweatshirt, a lanky 19-year-old revealed the fresh surgical wound that spanned the length of his torso. A colostomy bag, visible on his left side, collected his body waste.
A street gang member, he said he has no idea who fired the gun that seriously injured him in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood in November. And he doesn’t want to know, he said, because then he might be tempted to retaliate.
“It would keep going ’round,” he told anti-violence worker Eddie Bocanegra as the two talked in the kitchen of his family’s meager apartment. Nearby, an oversize T-shirt memorializing a friend stabbed to death two years ago in a fight hung over the teenager’s bed.
“I don’t want some shorty gettin’ shot,” he said of other youths being hurt.
Those words were music to Bocanegra’s ears.
Bocanegra understands all too well the challenges of trying to change the thinking of young people who believe using a knife, gun or fist to settle a dispute is normal. A former gang member who spent 14 years in prison, he used to think the same way. Now, as a violence interrupter for CeaseFire, his job is to turn around that kind of destructive thinking.
Founder Dr. Gary Slutkin said the organization’s most immediate goal is to stop retaliation. But he said the group also aims to change the social norms that feed violence.
Many experts say many factors put children at risk for falling into a pattern of violent thinking and behavior, including growing up in poverty, living in violent circumstances, failing to read at grade level by third grade, not graduating high school and not being surrounded by caring, protective adults.
Interventions at critical stages can make a difference, especially during early childhood. But even for those who fall between the cracks, those experts say, some interventions can be effective even as late as the teens and early 20s.
Many violent lives do change course, said Margaret Hughes, a professor of social work whose doctoral dissertation focused on turning points in the lives of young men who abandoned their destructive ways. She interviewed two dozen men from across the country, including Chicago.
She found several factors to be key: maturity, fatherhood, mentoring, employment, feeling valued in the community and being removed from the negative environment.
The men she interviewed talked about the importance of having alternatives to crime, connections to their neighborhoods and an understanding, on a deep level, of the damage they were causing in their communities, said Hughes, of California State University, San Bernardino.
One former drug dealer told her he stopped selling the day he saw a crying baby in a soiled diaper being neglected in a crack house.
The teen shot in Little Village, who asked not to be identified because he fears for his safety, told Bocanegra he dreams of a better life, one with a good-paying job, a nice place to live and a girlfriend. As he spoke, mice could be heard squealing in the walls.
Bocanegra encouraged his ambitions, pushing him to finish high school.
“You can leave here and come back 10 years from now and maybe help somebody else,” Bocanegra said. The teenager nodded and smiled.
James Garbarino, a psychology professor at Loyola University Chicago, said mentors are most effective in helping to change thinking if they give specific, concrete advice on how to change, not merely lectures about straightening up. It helps when those mentors have walked down the same road.
Changing thoughts and beliefs about aggression is called cognitive restructuring, he said, and changing behavior requires practicing alternative responses, something known as behavior rehearsal.
“Either one by itself is not likely to do,” said Garbarino, author of “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them.”
People like Bocanegra who have street cred can challenge beliefs about the effectiveness and necessity of violence, Garbarino said. They also can model and teach alternative behaviors — for example, role-playing how to respond to a bump in the hallway, a disrespectful glare or a gesture perceived as threatening.
“You can’t train people well in emergencies just with oral presentation,” Garbarino said. “You have to simulate and role-play. That’s why firefighters are always practicing in real-life simulations. Lecturing people, even sharing your story, may be inspiring, but there’s no evidence that it motivates people to change their behavior.”
That’s why programs that attempt to scare troubled kids into behaving are widely criticized as ineffective.
“Practicing new behaviors bridges the gap between the moral message and what you should actually do,” Garbarino said.
Dr. Karen Sheehan, medical director of the Injury Prevention and Research Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital, said many young people have not been taught socially appropriate ways of dealing with conflict.
“Not everyone needs a 10-step conflict resolution class,” she said. “But a lot of young people have not learned how to walk away without losing face and that (violence) is not the best way to deal with problems.”
Janell Sails, a violence interrupter for CeaseFire, said the young people she works with watch to see if she practices what she preaches. They took notice, for example, that she didn’t retaliate after her car was shot up.
“It’s really not what we’re saying,” she said. “It’s what we show them.”
Tio Hardiman, director of CeaseFire, said the group trains staff on how to help young people get out of an aggressive mindset when violence is all around them.
“It’s about how to control yourself and back up out of the situation, how to start thinking about the future and place expectations and goals on your life,” he said.
Violence is a learned behavior that can be unlearned, Hardiman said. “We have to show people to reverse what they have learned all their lives.”
Several teens and young adults gathered recently at CeaseFire’s storefront office in Englewood to talk about why the group’s message resonated with them. One 18-year-old said all his friends had been locked up, and he expected his good luck would soon run out.
Martinez Henderson, 24, said a CeaseFire worker helped him to see the bigger picture.
“I’ve been shot before. I’ve shot at people before,” he said matter-of-factly. “I see a lot of stuff is unnecessary, so (now) I let a lot of stuff pass.”
Whether it is quitting cigarettes or giving up a life of violence, change isn’t easy, research on behavior change has shown — even for a motivated person.
Jermaine Rhodes, 21, joined CeaseFire as a volunteer, hoping to become a paid staff member. But at times he missed his old life.
“I enjoyed selling drugs. I had fun doing it,” he said. “I enjoyed the life. I had money on me. I always dressed nice.”
But he knew that life was a dead end, so he stashed enough money to keep afloat for a couple of years and called it quits.
“Now I’m broke, and I’m upset,” Rhodes confessed. “I need money so I’m really missing the life.”
Hughes said organizations can work on changing young people’s values, thinking and behavior, but unless they can offer employment, violence and crime will always be a lure.
Several weeks after Rhodes’ admission, he was hired as a violence interrupter.
The Rev. Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles, said that more than anything else, teens need hope. Boyle runs Homeboy Industries, one of the nation’s largest gang-intervention programs.
“It’s not about thinking or behavior. It’s about infusing a sense of hope so the kid starts to care,” Boyle said. “No one scares them straight — you care them straight.”
dshelton@tribune.com
‘All gasoline and no brakes’
Because neurobiological research has shown that the brain does not fully develop until the mid- to late 20s, changing the social norms of troubled youths is only part of the answer, one expert noted.
Teenagers simply are not biologically equipped to take full responsibility for staying on the right track, said psychiatrist Carl Bell, director of the Institute for Juvenile Research at University of Illinois at Chicago.
“The frontal lobes — the thinking, judgment, wisdom-oriented aspects of the brain — don’t develop until 26 years old,” Bell said. So adults play a critical role in controlling youth behavior — a role Bell describes as providing “a protective shield.”
“To a great extent, children are all gasoline and no brakes,” he said. “It’s incumbent on parents, families, schools and society to provide them with those brakes … with expectations, rules, monitoring and social-emotional skills.”
