This week on To The Contrary how advocates for female targets of all kinds of violence are offering support while working to prevent these tragic crimes.

Then, young women and girls who join gangs for different reasons than young men.

Intro Music Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Up first, new figures on violence against women.

Nearly half of women murdered in America are killed by a firearm with half of female homicides committed by intimate partners, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of federal domestic violence firearm prohibitions, which have been shown to save lives in cases of intimate partner violence.

Representatives Gwen Moore and Debbie Dingell are sponsoring a resolution recognizing the intersection of violence against women and gun violence and misogyny.

Representative Moore, a domestic violence survivor, says regulating possession for those with a history of domestic violence is critically important and saves lives.

The Violence Against Women Act, celebrating its 29th anniversary, has played a signify urgent role in addressing domestic violence.

Joining me today are Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat from Washington, D.C.. Hadley Heath Manning, senior policy analyst for the Independent Women's Forum.

Tiana Lowe Doescher commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

And Lori Jump, CEO of Strong Hearts Native Helpline.

All right.

Let's start with you.

As we are in the middle of a time when we're putting extra focus on the indigenous community and indigenous women.

When you look at these figures and we'll get into a new report that just came out.

But when you look into all forms of violence against women, it seems to be worst against women living on Indian lands or Native American lands.

Why is that?

Well, I think there's a lot of reasons that we experience such high rates of violence.

First of all, we look at colonization and our history in this country, which is not taught, of course.

But then you combine our very high rates of violence, which, you know, the most often cited statistic about violence against women is that one in three women will experience domestic violence.

Well, for my relatives in Indian country, that statistic jumps to more than one in two.

And so 56% I read somewhere 84%.

Well, I'm speaking specifically about domestic violence.

So intimate partner violence.

Right.

But, yes, violence across the spectrum, it's 87%.

So, okay, Colonization.

What else?

Loneliness?

Being so far away from, you know, other people, even there are certainly towns on native lands, but there's very small towns.

So there's a lot of different barriers that make, you know, that increase the violence for us.

You know, certainly being, you know, remote lands that our people have been pushed to.

One of the biggest statistics or the problems that we face, of course, is jurisdictional.

Our relatives have not been able to prosecute, you know, perpetrators of violence due to, you know, laws that have been passed in this country.

You know, when you are not able to prosecute and hold somebody accountable, there's nothing to stop them from continuing their use of violence.

Usually, I think of perpetrators of violence against women as needing psychological help just to you know, for somebody to hit somebody with less strength.

And clearly be not as strong, not as whatever else.

That is, to me, a disconnect from reality as opposed to just being isolated and not being able to prosecute one's own crimes.

And clearly, alcoholism, we know, is at pretty high rates on native lands.

Well, all of these impact the rates of violence.

But to be clear, you know, alcohol doesn't cause domestic violence.

Right?

You know, that comes from a belief system that says, I'm bigger than you and more important than you, and I can do whatever I want to you.

Women are clearly not able to, you know, defend themselves in some of these situations.

And so we do have to look to other people to help deter the violence.

And that's where the justice system comes in.

Certainly, I think that, you know, we we need programs that mitigate the behaviors of people who cause harm.

You know, that might include, you know, some mental health help.

But at the end of the day, accountability is what changes people's behavior.

Eleanor, your thoughts?

Probably after Native women, African-American women are are most affected by domestic partner violence and just violence, period.

Why is that?

What do they need for this to stop?

Well, I think native women are in tribes and tribes are often self-governing.

That may have something to do with with tribes.

But one of my colleagues has been affected by domestic violence so that the Supreme Court case is going to be very important.

That has to do with whether a person had been convicted or not.

This person had not been convicted of domestic violence, only had a protective order after assaulting women a number of times.

The concern is limiting regulation of firearms only to those who are criminally charged with abuse.

So you certainly have to step in before that final step.

And do you think this obviously conservative, you know, majority on the Supreme Court is going to go for additional bans on weapons possession by people with a history of being charged with or convicted of intimate partner violence?

In other words, anybody looking at that?

Well, not anybody, but lots of people looking at that would say, why not?

You certainly would.

But it's a very conservative Supreme Court and it's been conservative on guns as well.

So I'm not very optimistic about how the court will rule.

A lot of this comes down to a law enforcement problem and also this progressive prosecutor issue.

Look, coming from D.C., where that murder rate is continuing to skyrocket, even though it's finally decreasing around a lot of the country.

A lot of this has to do with these very poor judges.

You know, the cops can try and follow a case, challenge a case, bring all the goods to get a conviction.

And if the judge just let someone off, then what are we supposed to do about it?

And we know that the most violent offenders begin in the home.

We do know that there is a direct correlation between a lot of these mass shooters who are their first victims, their families, disproportionately wives and girlfriends.

Look, I am a Second Amendment absolutist.

I do care about due process.

When we look at a lot of these cases of people who have graduated from intimate partner violence to mass shootings, mass killings or serial violence of some kind.

In large part, it's a lack of enforcement of the rules on the books.

You're saying the Second Amendment, quote unquote, protection should go to people, mainly men, who have used firearms and beaten up their intimate, usually female partners in the past?

if you haven't been convicted.

Right.

If you still do deserve due process.

So end the court backlogs, hire more law enforcement, hire more people to work for the courts.

So that way these domestic violence cases aren't waiting in the pipeline for two years.

three years.

Look, in [Washington, D.C.], the amount of time it takes to get a violent case in front of a judge and then finally reach a conviction, it takes too long.

If the prosecutors even want to go forward, well, that's more of a spending issue on the congressional and on the local level than it is a judge issue.

Bonnie, It's not just a spending issue.

If you look and again, this isn't true for everywhere in the country, but if you look at a place like D.C., these judges will decide oh, this person had only been an offender two or three times to the point where most murder suspects in D.C. have been arrested a full 11 times and they've usually gotten a slap on the wrist.

And if you don't punish people the first time when they start with their wives and girlfriends, then they graduate to entire schools and communities.

I agree with Tiana that it's a law enforcement problem, that it's not the need for new laws.

And in fact, I would argue that lumping firearms, violence and gun control measures into legislation like the Violence Against Women Act unnecessarily politicizes an issue that would otherwise and should otherwise have bipartisan support.

So you can make the argument that women are particularly affected by firearms violence.

But if you look at the statistics, 86% of firearms deaths are males.

87% of firearms injuries are males.

So men certainly are also disproportionately in their own way, affected by firearms violence.

I see these two issues as both critically important.

Let's address intimate partner violence.

Let's address firearms violence.

But we don't need to do them together in one piece of legislation that should be about protecting women, women's shelters, protecting female only spaces, and making it possible for women who are fleeing intimate partner violence to have a safe space to go to.

Lori, your thoughts on whether the problem lies with enforcement of pre existing gun laws or lack of resources to enforce those laws or what is the problem?

Yeah, I think it's a mixture.

Right.

But exactly.

You know, to respond to Tiana, you know, that the problem that she's talking about is exactly the reason we need to have protection orders that address, you know, dating partner violence.

You know, when we're waiting two and three years for a conviction, people still have access to those guns.

That's not okay.

Remember, domestic violence is a pattern of behaviors, right?

They've shown a pattern of violence and a willingness to use guns in those cases.

And so we need to be restricting gun access to people who who have even been charged and not yet convicted.

But then let's also remember that only about 10% of cases ever reach the criminal justice system.

Right.

So the vast majority of domestic violence cases are not heard in the criminal justice system.

We have to be working on those personal protection orders.

They have to close that boyfriend loop and, you know, make sure that anybody that's committing these acts needs to be held responsible, number one.

Number two, needs to have access to dangerous guns restricted.

All right.

Thank you.

From violence against women to girls and gangs.

Gangs and gang violence exist across the country in big cities and small towns.

Up to 90% of all gang members are young.

But not just boys.

Girls are joining in in larger percentages.

Young women and girls are also joining for different reasons, often nuanced.

I grew up in a gang neighborhood.

Claudia Gonzalez knows gang life.

She was a gang member for 12 years.

My family members, my brothers were gang related.

And so it just again occurred organically.

My father, he was one of the people who were like victims of the war on drugs.

Right.

So he spent most of my childhood incarcerated.

No one was there to help me in my healing.

And so instead, I was really criminalized.

Claudia's earliest encounters with the law or a result of her skipping school.

I tell people that the first time I actually went to juvenile hall was not because I actually committed a crime, but because I was truant.

It was over truancy.

And so that set me up to the school to prison pipeline.

During 16 arrests, Claudia was charged with offenses ranging from Grand Theft Auto to possession of drug paraphernalia and assault on fraud charges.

She spent significant time in prison.

The National Gang Center estimates females account for roughly 10% of gang members.

Nearly 40% of gangs report having female members.

Females tend to be seen as willing participants who are either violently or sexually promiscuous.

However, the truth is more complex and nuanced.

They want a family.

They want, you know, the sense of like sisterhood or kinship.

And the gang gives them that.

Criminology professor Molly Smith teaches at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

She says women and girls choose gangs for a variety of reasons.

They may be following the paths set by family members.

They may want protection, identity, friendship, social activities and or money.

They don't really have many opportunities outside of being in the gang.

Female gang members are generally associates, but these days more are playing major roles, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes as leaders.

You had an increase in membership of young girls, right?

Because young men were being sent to prison in large numbers.

And so then you had young women coming in to occupy those spaces.

They're becoming significantly more violent.

You know, in the past few decades.

So we really need to start focusing on, you know, what their experience is.

They came in, trying to overly compensate.

Right.

And prove that they were worthy of gang membership, that they're, quote, down, right down for their their neighborhood for the gang.

Angelo Brown, a criminology professor at Arkansas State University, says females use different entry points.

You get jumped in.

You know, you have to kind of fight, defend yourself against a whole group of gang members.

Also, a common way they get in is called “sexed i ” they have sex with a member or a group of gang members.

Being “sexed in ” is the most common method for women to get involved in gangs.

The purpose of it is to prove their loyalty and sort of demonstrate their willingness to abide by the expectations of the gang.

Smith adds sexed in gang members tend to face additional stigma.

Devaluation and ongoing mistreatment.

They may even become sex objects for gang members or sex workers.

And there's a third way That's easier.

If you had a high ranking gang member as your father or you were dating them, they're going to treat you differently.

Female gang members do paperwork, bookkeeping and mechanical jobs, too.

They are used by male members for roles in which they're less likely to get caught.

Police, our society, They don't see usually women as violent.

No, Sometimes they get overlooked.

And the data shows when they get sentenced they get sentenced a lot lower than their male counterparts.

So gangs kind of use that to transport certain illegal items across states and things like that.

The males are in prison and women come visit them sometimes, try to bring narcotics into the jail, prisons, get information.

Sell information.

One notable female gang member is the artist Cardi B. Cardi B, She's like a rapper from New York.

And she has a very similar story to gang members.

that join.

she came from she was raised probably by her grandmother in poverty in a very gang infested neighborhood in the Bronx.

And dating a gang member.

These gangs are so much well known by the youth and the media.

Potentially, knowing Cardi B was a gang member could influence maybe female members that follow that type of music to be more interested in it.

Cardi B is quite open about her past and uses her platform to deter other young people.

She didn't want to influence the next generation.

She wanted to have a kind of a positive impact on them in some senses because she knows that gang life is not It doesn't bring anything good.

The number one reason women leave gangs is they become pregnant.

Others find a steady job or just decide they don't want to go back to prison.

I come from a family of generational incarceration.

It looked really grim, right?

And at one point, I thought I would end up in prison for the rest of my life.

Just thinking like, this is all that there is for me, right?

I can't be nothing else but a gang member.

Claudia was 24 the last time she was released from jail and promised herself an education.

Claudia kept that promise.

But she did not break ties with the gang at first.

While in school, she'd researched legal issues for some members.

You know, went to adult school, went to college.

I surprisingly, I excelled in college and I was able to get into Berkeley, U.C.

Berkeley.

And it was like a really pivotal crossroads in my life where I was living a double life.

Right?

Claudia managed to achieve a gang approved break away.

Now she works for an organization That helps and supports former prisoners as they reenter society.

It's a new, rewarding, gang free life.

But she has even bigger aspirations.

We have to lead by example and model for others.

And if I have been able to learn such valuable skills and empower myself and better my life, like why not strive, right?

to become a legislator, to become a lawmaker, you know, and be a model for other young women.

Eleanor, what draws girls to gangs?

Well, we now find that more than 10% of gangs have women in them.

I think it's technology.

Cell phones and apps and the Internet have made all of this go digital so that you have particularly in rural areas where almost 40% of gangs are have female members.

But in urban areas like my own, less than a quarter of gangs are women.

But it's surprising that any women would belong to gangs.

It is, except it's not exactly new.

When you think about about Bonnie and Clyde, for example.

Again, the vast minority and in growing percentages, certainly not 50, 50 or anywhere near that yet.

But as we just heard, a lot of young women are being used for the less violent parts of gang membership, transporting drugs, transporting money, keeping the books, etc., etc.

So what are your thoughts, Hadley, about the allure and what we can do to cut back on the allure of gangs for girls?

This is downstream of social alienation, atomization, isolation.

Our social fabric has been trying for many years now, and COVID, the COVID pandemic became a huge catalyst for this as children, youth, adolescence, spent a lot of time out of school, school closures, the closures of many youth activities, other groups that children and youth could participate in and find meaning, find meaningful relationships and connections.

Also, as our family structure has deteriorated, people don't find the family that they need and the traditional mother, father, sibling, extended family relationships.

They go out in search of those relationships and they can often find a home in a gang like organization.

These youth, including the young women, slip through the cracks and are looking for connection.

They're looking for meaning in their life, and they can find it In some of these organizations, even if they're, of course, committing criminal activity.

Quick question to you Hadley, is this an area of spending?

It is, of course, social spending, which conservatives, generally speaking, are opposed to.

Is this an area where conservatives think this is a problem that the marketplace so to speak, or people should be taking care of themselves, just lock up the criminals when you can catch them, but don't put money into young women and girls from poor communities who need it so they won't get into gang membership?

the provision of social services like health care and food is separate from the provision of a real relationship.

Relationships can only be cultivated in the cultural social sector outside of government.

In fact, I would argue that the bigger the government, the more we see a displacement of the traditional civic oriented relationships that we've seen a huge decrease in the number of people who are members of civic organizations, the Optimist Club, the Rotary Club, etc.

We can organize and associate in these non-governmental community based organizations.

and that's really where we find meaning.

That's where we find those roles in relationships that give us life and make us happy.

No wonder the mental health of so many young people has deteriorated as the only relationships they have are either with government provided services or with an unfortunate case of gang members with their gang.

Bonnie, If we if we're going to play the partisan game about this, what you have to remember is that it was those of us on the right side of the aisle that were begging progressive cities to keep the public schools open.

I don't I can't think of many serious Republicans who have wanted to defund the public school system.

Right.

We've always considered schooling essential.

It is the most direct way that we have as taxpayers made the concession.

That doesn't matter if you have ten kids, doesn't matter if you've zero kids, you're paying into that public school system because it is so important to educate the growing electorate, because it is so important for them to have a social network outside of hopefully their home and their church and their community and whatnot.

And a lot of these cities decided that their public school systems were not essential and closed them down for well over a year.

So right now, what's the number one thing we can do to make sure that kids have somewhere to go?

That is a good community where parents can be involved in the selection and the engagement in their kids education?

School choice.

Let's fight for more school choice that way.

the kids who are the most at risk, right?

Those who are the least privileged have the least money, maybe have least odds of having two parents in the household to engage them and protect them, have access to better schools.

Yeah, I can agree with some of what's being said.

I think technology certainly plays a piece in this.

Right.

But I also think that when we look at girls that are joining gangs, sometimes that's a safety issue.

It's safe.

It's more safe to be part of a gang than it is to be separate and potentially a target.

And so I think that, you know, we have to look at that safety issue as well.

You know, and sometimes you got to do what you've got to do in order to be safe and not a target for rape, sexual assault, physical beatings, all of those other things that go along with, you know, gangs these days.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lori, for joining us and bringing your perspective.

Thanks to everybody else.

That's it for this edition.

Please keep the conversation on going with us on social media and visit our PBS website.