At Eastern Oregon Youth Correctional Facility, staff have found ways to help youth from rival gangs live together in relative peace. The approach doesn’t erase gang identity or promise long-term change. Instead, it creates a space for short-term stability – and the possibility that short-term success will grow into more.
Mediation at Eastern is voluntary, and it’s built on trust and respect. Staff members Bruce Voges and Angelo Worley spend hours talking with youth one-on-one before ever suggesting a sit-down with someone from another gang. “You’ve got to be the people’s champion,” said Angelo. “They’ve got to trust everything about you. What you say – you’ve got to do that. You can’t make any promises and not follow through.” With trust established, a staff member proposing mediation may seem like an opportunity instead of a risk.
One youth who participated in mediation still felt risk, despite his trust of and respect for Bruce and Angelo. Because he stayed actively involved in his gang, there was personal risk entering mediation or even coexisting with someone from a rival gang. That risk was physical – “feeling I have to look over my back and my shoulder” lest he be hurt by a rival gang member – but he also “[didn’t] want to lose that reputation” with members of his own gang outside the facility. That “social pressure” was also something he “[did] for myself” so he could “feel right” by his commitments to his gang.
Yet he also described mediation as “breaking through.” “They created a space to coexist,” he said of Bruce and Angelo, by showing “they really care.” He also attributed the successful mediation to Bruce and Angelo “put[ting] me in the driver’s seat” and letting “[me] make the decision.” Both Bruce and Angelo agreed that, “It’s just gotta be their decision on their own time.”
Reflecting on the mediation experience, a second youth share how he came to make such a decision. In the course “talk[ing] about it and [putting] our differences to the side,” this youth learned that “sometimes we just have to learn to live with people we don’t like.” Bruce Voges observed the two youth “realiz[ing] they probably weren’t that different from each other and had a lot of similar experiences.” “As time went by,” this youth reflected, they “built a relationship,” and the more “we were there for one another,” the more they became “like a family.” He now describes his former rival as, “my brother.”
Notably, these situational successes don’t erase gang ties or entirely prevent future conflict. Even after this experience, the second youth still saw his gang as “my family,” while the first youth acknowledged he’d still “put my gang before anything else.” From Bruce’s perspective, there was no value in “trying to force them, or trying to persuade them: it’s not gonna happen.” “The idea is,” he said, “to plant some seeds of why gang life might not be the best life for them. And then hopefully down the road, through their experiences, they realize it.”