BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In Los Angeles there's a new man trying to do something about the gangs that terrorize that sprawling region, and many other U.S. cities, too. He's an ordained minister who believes there is an alternative to gangs and their violence. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: The man they are trying to revive, unsuccessfully, is a victim of a war that has terrorized some Los Angeles neighborhoods for 30 years, a gang war where kids grow up killing and getting killed. There are now an estimated 700 gangs in L.A., with as many as 40,000 members.

The man Los Angeles officials selected to be the new so-called gang czar was a surprise appointment to many, because Jeff Carr is not a cop or government official or a sociologist. He's an evangelical minister with the Church of the Nazarene.

JEFF CARR (Deputy Mayor, Gang Reduction and Youth Development): And I don't actually particularly care for the gang czar title. Well, I don't think we're in a war on kids.

SEVERSON: War on kids may be the wrong description, but the gangs themselves are most certainly engaging in warfare. A report released earlier this year said gang violence in Los Angeles has reached epidemic proportions, and unfortunately what happens with gangs in Los Angeles doesn't stay in Los Angeles. Deputy Police Chief Charlie Beck:

CHARLIE BECK (LAPD Deputy Chief): And, of course, L.A. is the, I hate to say leader because leader's a lousy word for this, but it is the trendsetter for gang activity in the nation. You know, we export gangs all over the country.

SEVERSON: The FBI says gang membership nationwide has tripled in the last 15 years to about 800,000, and if L.A. is the trendsetter, Jeff Carr has a big job.

Mr. CARR: There were a few people that questioned my common sense, and there were also some folks that said it's probably a good thing you're a minister because if you ever needed faith in a position, this is the one you're going to need faith in.

SEVERSON: Carr was chosen for this job not so much because of his faith, but because of his track record. He spent years working for, and then running, the non-profit Bresee Foundation, building this community center in one of the most gang infested sections of Los Angles, the Rampart District. He gave kids an alternative to gangs and then stuck with them. Thousands are better for it.

Mr. CARR: I lived with both the problem and the reality of the violence, but also saw the possibilities when you provided young people a different path.

Chief BECK: I don't think of him as an evangelical. He doesn't come across that way to me. What I want is to go to less places where there are young men dead in the middle of the street. That's what I want, and if I can get it through an evangelical minister, well, then I'll take it.

SEVERSON: City officials now admit that their old approach to gang violence, arresting kids and locking them up, just doesn't work because the kids go to prison where there are other members of their gang and where gangs are often very powerful, and then they're released back in their old neighborhood. It is L.A. police officers who are pushing for a new approach.

Chief BECK: There's no organization better at gang suppression than the Los Angeles police department because we've been doing it longer than anybody else. But that is not the solution. All that does is hide the problem. It doesn't eliminate it.

SEVERSON: The problem, most agree, begins at home in poverty stricken neighborhoods with high unemployment, broken families, and failing schools.

JESSE CORNEJO (LifeLine Outreach, Pacoima, California): I grew up in that kind of environment.

SEVERSON: Jesse Cornejo's story is typical of many gang members.

Mr. CORNEJO: My father was an alcoholic. My mother would go from bar to bar when I was a young kid, and it was difficult for me. It was hard.

Chief BECK: The gang gives structure. It has a reward system. It has a rank system. It has all these pieces that most folks that you think about get out of their family or out of their school or out of their occupation.

Mr. CORNEJO: I shot people and I carried guns and did what I had to do.

SEVERSON: But unlike most street gangsters, Jesse Cornejo turned his life around. He now pastors a small worship center where members often speak in tongues, and he runs a branch of a faith-based prison ministry and rehabilitation program called LifeLine. Some here are former gang bangers who, like Jesse, had given up hope.

Antonio Loera Jr., survived his teenage years, but just barely, before he found LifeLine. His parents fought. His dad was an alcoholic. The gang became his family.

ANTONIA LOERA Jr. (Former Gang Member): I lost my wife, my kids, my house, car -- everything.

Mr. CARR: In South Los Angeles they estimate that as many as 30 percent of the kids have been diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome, which if you think about that, you know, that would rival probably some of the returning soldiers from Iraq.

SEVERSON: Some of these men had lived their nine lives before they found the Lord through Jesse's tough love program. Now they have a new family. Still, there's the constant pull to get back with the only other family they ever knew.

Mr. LOERA Jr.: See, the thing is when you belong to a gang you're part of something. You belong to someone. You belong to somewhere. You feel wanted, and sometimes that's all we have. You've still got to watch your back, you still got to -- everywhere you go there's a neighborhood somewhere. There's a gang somewhere.

SEVERSON: Jesse says one reason his program works is because gang members will listen to one of their own. It's why LifeLine sends former gang bangers into neighborhoods looking for gang members who want to get out.

Mr. CORNEJO: Most of them do want to change. They just don't know how. I'm proof of what could happen. The Lord has changed my life. A judge court committed me to the program. I went back into his chambers and thanked him, and told him thank you.

SEVERSON: Jeff Carr doesn't think faith-based programs are the only answer but believes it will be easier to change the gang mindset if churches get more involved.

Mr. CARR: I think one of the things we need to look at is how can we get more churches engaged in the struggle Monday to Saturday? How can they throw open the doors of their churches, you know, co-locate programs in their facilities? How can they engage an army of volunteers as parishioners to get them involved in mentoring young people? I think they could be a hugely potent force for good and for change around this issue.

SEVERSON: Carr believes some gang members should be locked up -- the 10 percent who commit most of the crimes.

Mr. CARR: We ought to focus the bulk of our suppression efforts on those 4,000 young people who are committing some of the most heinous crimes, and, no question about it, they need to be incarcerated, and hopefully we can have a prison system that begins to change, where we actually rehabilitate people rather than just incarcerate them.

SEVERSON: It's the kids who can be turned around that interest Carr, like the ones here at the faith-based Bresee Community Center he helped build as a minister. The place offers, among other things, a computer center, which may not seem like much to a family who owns a computer, but many around here don't.

Mr. CARR: It's like a Kinko's. We used to think of this as like a Kinko's for low-income folks.

SEVERSON: The center also offers health care, academic counseling, and employment services, and those who stick it out, like Andy Rodriguez, become mentors for the younger kids.

ANDY RODRIGUEZ (Counselor, Bresee Foundation): It's about giving them opportunities. It's about being able to interact with them in ways that they've never interacted with, I guess, authority figures, because for me, I'm like an authority figure for them. I think it just gives them a broader sense of what the world's about, because they think the world is about, you know, about that street corner, about that gang, you know.

SEVERSON: In the youth center, kids can learn how to use a guitar instead of a weapon, how to build a credit rating instead of a rap sheet. Over the years about 20,000 kids have gone through the Bresee Center, according to the center's director, John Huffman, who now has Jeff Carr's old job.

JOHN HUFFMAN (Director, Bresee Community Center): Bresee's about second chances and third chances and giving an opportunity, and the result is changed lives. And, of course, Jeff is the one who modeled that.

SEVERSON: Now he has a model for the whole city of Los Angeles: first to target the worst neighborhoods and to crack down on those committing the violence, and offer hope and opportunities to those who are not beyond hope.

Mr. CARR: It's very hard emotionally, but also it fuels a fire in you to be reminded that this work is about life and death, and it pushes me to break through the bureaucracies and the things that would stop us from actually doing things differently and new, so that we can actually make an impact on the problem.

SEVERSON: Carr figures he's got 18 months to show some progress before elected officials and the bureaucracy give in again to public and political pressure to simply lock them up.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Lucky Severson in Los Angeles.