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We need to send a clear message to gang members that violent crime will not be tolerated.

I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

Some people figure that if they're part of a gang then they have less of a chance of being killed, because they are in larger numbers. But the problem with this is that it will lead to people doing stuff that they wouldn't usually do.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.

A gang is the same as a wolf pack; gang members do not use their energies in friendship with one another, for they do not know what friendship is. If they are united, it is by the common bond of a desire to attack their world.

I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would've thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn't anticipate it.

I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

I've never been in a gang. None of my friends have been in a gang. I've never rolled around with big entourages.