[1] The American Civil Liberties Union joined other groups in opposing the injunction, arguing that it would effectively outlaw legal activities such as carrying on conversations and possessing tools like pocket knives and screwdrivers, and that it could lead to injustices against people whose identities may have been mistaken.
The injunction was a first of its kind in that it contained an array of provisions, never before attempted, aimed at restricting the gang's ability to operate and commit gang-related crimes.
Maxson (2005) found that people living in the Verdugo Flats neighborhood in San Bernardino had less fear of crime following the implementation of the gang injunction evaluated.
[6] A 1991–96 study by the American Civil Liberties Union on the Blythe Street Gang revealed that violent crime tripled in the months immediately following the issuance.
These studies have claimed that the state functions as a site of violence for particular populations, and the gang can constitute a community through which youth can collectively furnish identity and provide for their social needs.
This finding supports the position that gang members are typically defiant and tend to continue their criminal activity until being stopped by arrest and incarceration.
Pranis also states that "Gangs do not drive crime rates, and aggressive suppression tactics simply make the situation worse by alienating local residents and trapping youth in the criminal justice system.
Jeff Grogger addressed the issue of cost effectiveness in his research, highlighting how difficult it is to put an exact price tag on a gang injunction.
Attaching a cost to gang crime can be difficult, as it includes not only easily quantifiable costs, such as the dollar value of damaged property, but also many economic externalities in the form of non-quantifiable, subjective, or indirect costs—for example, pain and trauma endured by victims of violence, depressed home and property values, and disincentives to business owners and entrepreneurs.
Lower courts had held that provisions disallowing gang members to associate with one another violated their first amendment right to free assembly.
Nonetheless, a dissenting opinion authored by Justice Stanley Mosk warned, "The majority would permit our cities to close off entire neighborhoods to Latino youths who have done nothing more than dress in blue or black clothing or associate with others who do so; they would authorize criminal penalties for ordinary, nondisruptive acts of walking or driving through a residential neighborhood with a relative or a friend."
In addition to limiting public association, many new injunctions include provisions against "otherwise legal behavior" like being outside after dark, possessing various objects, making gang-related hand signals, and wearing gang colors.
[11] These later injunctions have been criticized by academics and legal practitioners for violating gang members' due process rights by not naming individual defendants,[11] administering criminal penalties for essentially being guilty by association, and vague wording.
[12] Suggested solutions to these problems include implementing procedural safeguards and gang-specific pleadings to protect defendants' due process rights and avoid the "void for vagueness".
Scholars have argued that these broad areas heavily burden gang members' liberties and need be narrowly tailored to the conduct that directly facilitates public nuisance.
The Illinois Supreme Court concluded that the ordinance violated due process of law because it was unconstitutionally vague and lent itself to arbitrary enforcement.
The Illinois Supreme Court concluded that the ordinance did not provide sufficiently specific limits on the enforcement discretion of the police to meet constitutional standards for definiteness and clarity.
On April 24, 2005, the court of appeals for the sixth district upheld the issuance of the Sur Trece injunction but struck down every provision in the order that was not already a violation of statutory law (People v. Acuna, 1995).
The California Court of Appeal also ruled that the "harassing, intimidating and annoying" language of the injunction was unconstitutionally vague and overly broad and that the prohibition of the gang members congregating in Rocksprings violated their First Amendment right to free association.
The San Jose City Council authorized an appeal of that decision to the California Supreme Court, resulting in the opinion reported in People ex rel.
The appellate court upheld only those provisions that enjoined criminal conduct, as in the case of the Playboy Gangster Crips from 1987 in Los Angeles.
The California Court of Appeals found that the injunction against the Varrio Sureno Treces gang was overly broad and did not sufficiently define the prohibited activities or provide definite standard for police enforcement and ascertainment of guilt.
The 4–3 ruling, overturning a Court of Appeal decision, upheld a San Jose injunction that barred the gang members from "standing, sitting, walking, driving, gathering or appearing anywhere in public view" with each other in a four-block radius.
The judge stated, "I do not discount the serious threat to community values that criminal street gangs pose, nevertheless, we cannot turn a blind eye to the necessities of proof.
The ACLU argued the case before the high court, stating that San Jose's gang injunction was unconstitutionally vague and overly broad and targeted Latino youths without sufficient proof that they had committed any crimes or harassed residents.
The ACLU's stance was that because the defendants are suspected gang members, they are stripped of a variety of constitutional freedoms, including the rights to association, assembly, and due process.
[19] Supporting Mendel's claims, Kiriakidis further argues that only a small fraction of offenders are given custodial sentences, most of which are too short to actually prevent juveniles from continuing their criminal activities.
David Old's Nurse Home Visitation Program, for example, significantly decreased child abuse and neglect and arrest rates for both children and mothers.
According to Greenwood, programs that underscore family interactions are the most successful, "because they focus on providing skills to the adults who are in the best position to supervise and train the child".
[7] Further, a study conducted on convicted individuals shows possible benefits of rehabilitation: gang members who received treatment experienced a 20% improvement in recidivism versus those who did not.