homeboy industries

Homeboy Industries serves high-risk, formerly gang-involved men and women with a continuum of free services and programs, and operates seven social enterprises that serve as job-training sites.

OUR HISTORY AND HOMEBOY AS A MODEL

In the 1980s, the city of Los Angeles was struggling to deal with escalating gang violence and gang membership. At that time, Boyle Heights had more gang members per capita than any other place in the country. Around that time, Father Greg realized, with the help of many people in his parish, that he needed to provide jobs and education as alternatives to the gangs and the senseless violence they create. So, we started a small job program, “Jobs for a Future,” as part of Dolores Mission in 1988. We became Homeboy Industries in 2001, and have grown to become one of the largest, most comprehensive and most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry programs in the country.

“Homeboy Industries has been the tipping point to change the metaphors around gangs and how we deal with them in Los Angeles County. This organization has engaged the imagination of 120,000 gang members and helped them to envision an exit ramp off the “freeway” of violence, addiction and incarceration. And the country has taken notice. We have helped more than 40 other organizations replicate elements of our service delivery model, broadening further the understanding that community trumps gang — every time.”  – Father Greg

The tide of gang activity and law enforcement has turned in Los Angeles County over the past 25 years, and that couldn’t have happened without Homeboy Industries. We offered a simple question, “What if we were to invest in this population rather than just endlessly incarcerate?” that has redirected our attention away from suppression and onto treatment and education. Homeboy played an integral role in replacing the “tough on crime” mantra that predominated in the 1980s and 1990s with a “smart on crime” model that many police and sheriff’s departments have adopted.

What this place discovered was that it was a lethal absence of hope that leads kids into gangs, and the fact that there was no way out of the cycle of gang violence compounded people’s despair. So Homeboy offered this model, in the fullest sense, of community trumping gang. And the model has been sort of contagious already – element of our model have been adopted in 46 different programs across the country and internationally — from Alabama and Idaho to Guatemala and Scotland.

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