28/05/2013 Newsnight Scotland

isolated on a daily basis. On Newsnight Scotland tonight: LA

Law - a Catholic priest and this former resident of death-row come to

Glasgow to share their experience of tackling violence and gang culture.

But is there any meaningful comparison to be made between cars

go and California? And he has been described as Scotland's Albert Camus

and the father of Tartan Noir. As he celebrated trilogy is republished I

will be speaking to William McIlvanney. Scotland has many

problems which we often described as intractable, drugs, alcohol and

poverty among them. Also on that list is violence and gang culture

yet there is no doubt there has been some success tackling the issue of

young men coming together and knocking lumps out of each other.

The violence reduction unit is not resting on its laurels. It is now

looking to LA and the scheme which diverts gang members away from jail

and into jobs, but can this experience really translate to

Scotland and if it can, can afford This is gang culture, Scotland's

style. Scenes of running battles between young men all too familiar

and it is a problem encountered in many Western countries. Los Angeles

has regarded as America's gang capital, not really the same league

as Scotland but can a drive tackling the problem their work here? Robin,

stealing, committing acts of violence. For James Horton, life as

a gang member was a rite of passage. He found himself spending 12 years

on death row following his conviction for the murder of a rival

drug dealer. The conviction was overturned and on his release James

decided it was time to change. starting to feel for people and I

started having sad feelings about people that I had wronged, so the

process was taking place and I wanted to be free. I did not know

what I would do. James now works with Homeboy Industries an

organisation providing support for former gang members. Its founder

says he was simply responding to demand. We started the programme

because gang members said they needed jobs. We started a school

first and once they came to our school, they said if only we had

jobs so we tried to find felony friendly employers. Scottish police

are now keen to see if the model can tackle gang violence here and it is

not the first time they have looked towards the US for help. In October

2008 a meeting was held at the Glasgow Sheriff Court building. More

than 100 gang members were brought face to face with police officers

and church leaders. They were offered help to find jobs and were

warned if they did not fight stop back stop fighting they would

pursued. Violence crime halved in two years leading to talk of a

Boston miracle. Police in Glasgow also saw a drop in violent scenes

like these but there were drawbacks. When I say to people, don't be part

of that gang, be part of our bus, they did not have the job skills,

the skills to get up in the morning and work. That is what is missing.

What about the cost of these services? Organisations like Homeboy

Industries need millions to run but the authorities in Scotland insist

they are not an imported gimmick but a tried and trusted approach which

they are confident will produce results. I met up with Father Greg

Boyle be founder of Homeboy Industries and asked him how turning

making tortillaturns someone away from crime.

95% of all gang members want what I think is offered at Homeboy

Industries which is a way out. Anything really that is a purposeful

activity and gainful employment. Does that proportion of gang members

want what you have to offer, why do they not turn up at the door?

Because most are stuck in a dark place or are traumatised. They find

it a hard time to transform their lives and their pain so they

continue to transmit its so sometimes it is difficult to make

that step. Those that come to you what proportion of them reoffend?

About 75% of them stay on the path where we would all want them to

stay, the retention rate. But that is the opposite of what the fat of

all levels and limits that measure success if active nationally in the

US. About 30%, that is the retention rate of those who stay programmed

and not able to go back to reoffend. If you are having so much

more success than official programmes, why doesn't government

invest more in what you do? would think it would be logical for

them to do that but sometimes it is difficult for them to see the forest

for the trees. They do not see the entire picture of how the jobs and

the help we offer is really contextualised, a therapeutic

community where people regain a certain amount of resilience and

repair their lives. You talk about a therapeutic community, for others,

people who have been offended by those you are working with, they see

this group not as people with needs but people who are criminals.

Shouldn't criminals be punished? Most of them have gone on to prison

and have, to us out of prison so the principle of Homeboy Industries is a

second chance and a healthy respect for what folks have to carry, which

is considerable. Anyone engaged in any crime is living out of some deep

wound and so we try to address that, that is why we are effective.

The diagnosis is right. It is not about and ask for them, they are

folks who are incredibly traumatised people and that is what their crime

and their gang life was all about. But if there is carrot, is there not

also the need for a stick? Is that not the lesson from Boston, people

who are in gangs and following a path of offending behaviour also

need to be confronted? I have my issues with the Boston model because

a lot of times it does not understand what this is about and

that is why there has never been a healthy treatment plan that was born

of a bad diagnosis. You would want to get this right. The outsider view

is they made choices but not all choices were created equal. Some

were very difficult to embrace especially when you live in

communities like that I work in. wait for people to come to you but

does that not mean that some of the most needy, the hardest core of

offenders always beyond reach? one is beyond reach and redemption

is possible to anyone who is still breathing. But if you do not look

for them, some of them will not come to you? It takes what it takes for

someone to take the step towards health. They have to take that step.

Otherwise it will not work. You could drag them in or the police

could drag them in but if he is not willing to work on himself and to

come to terms with his own past and to redirect his life, it will never

work. Why do you think that what has had some success in LA but also work

in Glasgow? I do not pretend to Glasgow. You are always trying to

find the connective tissue, the thing that will connect the two

cities and the common denominator is this lethal absence of hope. If you

cannot infuse a sense of hope into children, that is the route that

joins our two cities and the two different cultural realities from

the gangs that you have here and the gangs there. Given those differences

might we need to do things differently here? Los Angeles is an

anomaly, it is the gang capital of the world so it is a different

reality. It would not be that you would do think so much differently

as you would apply the things that we do here inasmuch as they work and

make sense. There are a lot of things that would not make sense,

but it is there. It is an obstacle to employment and it is very

dominant. Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. You William

McIlvanney is, without doubt, one of the great Scottish writers of the

20th century. His contemporary Alan Massie recently described him as

"both moralist and artist, and a writer to be cherished." He is, he

says, Scotland's Albert Camus. Well, McIlvanney's celebrated Laidlaw

trilogy has just been republished and I'll be speaking to him about

that in a moment. But first, this extract read by the author himself

from Suffragettes for Decency, an essay about the lives of three

sisters growing up in Kilmarnock. One of those girls, ill and, with

her four children. Like so many women of third generation she had

formidable strength of character and endurance, living until she was 95.

Apparently towards the end of her life, she had a nightly ritual,

settled in bed, she would read the cards she had received from her

extended family, a small story of love she had inspired. It was her

version of miser's store. What she had instead of money. One card

contained a small podium I had written for her. -- small thorium.

It is called, visiting my mother in my mind. I do not know the thoughts

that come in companions to your syncing, whether your heart was

raging. I've even ghosts of past they? Do you doubt they are in the

dark the meaning of your living? If it has been a waste and unrequited

giving. I have come here to see that all your thoughts are... You have

been an island in a sea after wild waters. You have been a lesson in

how to be and noble as before. clause.

It sounds that your mother was a big influence on you. She was huge. Like

so many working-class women of that are, they were the linchpin of

family. They were the coherent element in your life. They taught

you right from wrong and frequently in very subtle ways. My mother would

just say, that is not what you do, son. That was like the 11th

Commandment. It sorted you out quickly. You are a lot younger than

your mother was when you wrote that. I do wonder what thoughts have

become your companions at this stage in your life. I suppose one of the

obvious things, since I try to write, is the awareness of the

diminishing of time. If I'm going to write anything else, I had better

get on with it. The other is, I think it is true of just about

anybody, the realisation of what you have not achieved. Such as?Places I

wanted to go to, things I wanted to do, books I wanted to write and

haven't. But you are going to write more, aren't you? Thanks for telling

me. I am going to try. I am notoriously slow in writing. I write

from compulsion and unless I get the compulsion, I do not write. I write

endlessly, but it is snippets of ideas. I have two weeks for them to

cohere into what I believe could be a book. When you reflect on what you

have written before, and the Glasgow you have put down in print, how does

that guy is goal of the 1970s and 1980s computer with the Glasgow of

today? -- that Glasgow. Like anywhere, vastly different. I

recently did an audio version. For the first time I reread it sentence

by sentence. It struck me, I have written a historical novel here.

There are so many differences like the Internet and cellphones. Also

small differences which reflect your difference about the city, you do

not smoke in pubs now, there are no conduct tours on buses. It is all

automated. -- conductors on buses. The speed of change in our society

has been amazing. Looking at Glasgow, the physical differences

are profound. If you read Laidlaw tonight, talking about the big

housing estates as architectural dumps where they are and loaded

people. They no longer exist. think some are still there but they

are less dominant. I came here first as a student at the University and

fell in love with the town. There are a lot of thriving communities

that it seemed to me, it was Labour councils which didn't surprisingly,

ultimately there are working-class aspiration was an inside toilet.

There were whole communities like the Gorbals in places where I think

they could have reserved the tenements rather than reason to the

ground so that Glasgow had retained its identity, so much of it was

obliterated. They pushed people out to the edges of the time without

facilities. No pubs and shops. Politicians and others would say

that welfare is much better now, it is healthier and that is less crime.

Do you recognise these changes? they say that, I will believe it but

I am not sure about it. I am not sure that is less crime. There is

more apparent affluence but I would think there are still many people in

deep trouble. Is it better now than it was? I do not know. I think it

has always been a great city and it always will be. I do not think

anybody in Glasgow should be in kind towards self-satisfaction that the

job is done. You have seen a lot of political change in that period like

the Scottish Parliament, has it tackled the problem she would like

it to focus on? I do not know. It is still a very young parliament. I am

glad it is there and I voted and canvassed for it. I am glad it is

there, but I would say that if I have a disappointment with the

current Scottish Parliament -- Scottish Parliament, it is the lack

of vision. Even with the upcoming referendum, it is all about very

small practical matters. Many of these are not even clarified,

whether we get automatic entry into Europe for example, whether we have

to find another currency. Beyond that, I do not see a lot of vision.

It seems to me that politics in our time has become a paramedic

politics. Like when Labour came in after the Thule government, they

just decided that we would manage it more than a made but they did not

change the system. -- after the Tory Government. I did not think there

was any vision of trying to go beyond paramedic politics to see let

us find a cure by socialist means. Do you see Independence as a

possible route to your socialist vision being delivered? I would like

to think so but since Labour came in, after Thatcher, they decided

they would try to manage the system more benignly. I think the Labour

Party has evaporated. It has become, as every party seems to have

become, subject to the multinationals. The multinationals

now use the world like a Monopoly board. There was a case in Brazil in

2002, the elected left-wing government and within three months

the government said, we are not in power because $6 billion was removed

by multinationals which made it difficult to implement socialist

policies. What I would love for the Scottish government is to regenerate

the sense that you do not just manage society, she try to make it

better and cure it sells, not minimise them. Doesn't matter

whether we are Scottish state order UK state? That is a good question. I

do not know, I would hope if we can avoid what happened to a country

like Brazil, if we can avoid the money moving out because we are

independent, it would be a good thing. There is was been a stronger

tendency in Scotland towards a just society and towards fairness. If

that remains, if there is a vision to do that, it might help us to be

independent. How does a few to be back in print, for your life work to

be fully reprinted? It feels terrific. It's like being a

born-again writer. All the books were out of print. Fortunately,

Canongate came along and made a very decent offer to me. As a publisher,

they are Pentecostal. They publish with passion. I just feel very lucky

to be republished firstly and secondly to be republished by

Canongate because if it doesn't work with them, it would not work with

anyone else. Thank you very much for coming in to talk with us.