It Takes a Village: Keeping Santa Barbara Youth Away from Gang Life

South Coast Leaders Combine Forces to Understand Gangs, Offer Better Options for Youth

Juvenile Probation Manager Erin Cross, left, and Futures for Lompoc Director Chuck Madson spoke at the South Coast Youth Safety Partnership workshop, “Understanding the Gang Ecosystem” at Santa Barbara Public Library’s Faulkner Gallery on May 29. | Credit: Ryan P. Cruz

While Santa Barbara may not be a hub of gang activity, the county is still home to a handful of organized gangs that grow their numbers by recruiting vulnerable youth, often from families in low-income neighborhoods with a history of gang involvement or problems at home. It takes a community effort to keep youth from falling into gangs and a countywide network of nonprofits, resource centers, and compassionate law enforcement personnel to help them find a safe way out.

Last week, the South Coast Youth Safety Partnership — a collective committed to combating gang activity in Santa Barbara County — hosted a workshop for more than a dozen organizations to connect under the shared goal of understanding the local gang ecosystem to help prevent young people from falling victim to its dangers.

“Gangs will take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you were ever willing to pay,” said the event’s host, Steve DeLira, South Coast Youth Safety Partnership coordinator and CommUnify family and youth services director.

Juvenile Probation Manager Erin Cross shared her perspective as a law enforcement official and fierce advocate for the youth she works with, many of whom have lived through “the worst childhoods” she’s ever seen. “I read these reports, and after all these years, my heart breaks for these children.”

Most of the young boys and girls that end up with the county probation department have committed serious offenses, but Cross said there’s a striking correlation between the crimes these youth have committed and the violence they’ve seen at home. Many of them, she said, have a history of referrals to child welfare years before they commit their first crime.

“These children that do really bad things, they’re gonna be held accountable for it,” Cross said. “But they didn’t just wake up and decide to do that. They have awful, awful childhoods. I’m talking about kids who have been sexually abused, physically abused, emotionally abused. I’m talking about parents doing drugs with their kids at age 8. What did we expect to happen from there?”

Cross remembers learning early in her career that many of the kids who fell into gang life were from low-income families or broken homes with overworked parents and a severe lack of supervision. When Cross worked at the now-closed Los Prietos Boys Camp, she would see youth flourish at camp, then fall right back into struggles when they went back home.

She told the story of a visit she made to a boy’s home when he had gotten into trouble after returning home from camp, where he had been excelling and showing progress. When Cross got to his home, she was shocked to see a family of a dozen stuffed into a one-room shack on a dusty dirt road on Santa Barbara’s Eastside.

“It hit me then,” Cross said. “Where are these kids coming from? And if we remove them from that, where are we putting them back to? If we don’t invest in those neighborhoods and those families, we’re gonna continue this cycle.”

Cross said it’s important for all the different agencies and groups to combine efforts to go into the areas to provide resources to those that need the most help.

“You can literally stop the trajectory of those kids if you help the family,” she continued. “You know that you have single parents who are struggling. You know that it is crazy expensive to live here. You know they’re missing role models. You know gangs recruit kids young. You know that’s all there is in some families. Give them something else.”

Few can connect to the youth on their level as much as somebody who lived through the same struggles firsthand. The event’s keynote speaker, Chuck Madson, director of Future for Lompoc Youth, recounted his roller-coaster life that led to a childhood of chaos and multiple stints in juvenile and adult detention centers. By the time he came out on the other side, he landed in Santa Barbara County, where he vowed to help the youth by giving them a brighter future. His nonprofit now has served more than 350 high-school-age youth since 2016, and he serves as a the Public Relations Officer for a new kind of motorcycle organization, Bikers Against Child Abuse.

As someone who navigated gang life himself, Madson said that young people are often pushed into gangs by desperation, poverty, fear, and a lack of safe places for them to turn to. Unraveling these roots, he said, will take an all-hands approach.

“We know what works,” Madson said. “We prevent kids from turning to gangs by giving them something to turn to instead. After-school programs, sports teams, mentorships, safe places, spaces where they can express themselves to be seen and be valuable. We need to surround our youth with positive adult role models who invest in their lives, not with judgment, but with care. We don’t need harsher punishments. We need to offer them alternatives, and we need to make it easier for them to walk away from violence than to stay in it. These young men and women often don’t believe they have options. It’s our job to show them that they do.”

For more information on resources available to youth in need, visit 211santabarbaracounty.org.