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Home / Rotorua Daily Post

The 111 Files: Gang members need a window of hope

By Bruce Horne
Rotorua Daily Post·
30 Jul, 2014 04:06 AM3 mins to read

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Inspector Bruce Horne.

Inspector Bruce Horne.

Last week I issued a challenge, suggesting that living in community involves having some responsibilities to one another; and that one of those responsibilities is thinking about how we might encourage more men to leave the bullying, violent and destructive lifestyle that is inherent to gang membership.

I finished by suggesting a couple of things that might be keys to solving this problem: helping people to imagine a better future and inspiring hope.

A couple of years ago I was talking to a woman who had been in a long-term relationship with a man who belonged to a gang. She told me that she had recently heard her partner telling her 16-year-old son not to join the gang; and not to live the life that he had lived.

Apparently he spoke quite passionately about all the grief and heartache and regrets that he had as a result of his gangster lifestyle. Her son responded by asking a very confronting question, "But if it's so bad, why are you still there?"

There are a number of difficulties that confront gang members who want to leave. Perhaps one of the most challenging is imagining a life outside of a culture they have come to see as their identity.

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Which explains, in part, the words of the conflicted father who told his son to take a different road to the one he remains committed to. CS Lewis put it this way: "like a child who wants to continue making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine a vacation by the sea".

Recently I had the pleasure of talking to Jacob Kajavala. He is the managing director of a timber company in Kawerau and has spent the last four or five years working on the culture of his company. It's a great story - one that is full of hope and optimism. It also highlights the amazing things that can be achieved when someone dares to hope for a vision of a better future, and then goes about finding ways to make that hope a reality.

For Jacob and his team, the journey began with conversations. Conversations about the culture they wanted their workplace to be characterised by.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, they came up with the things that pretty much everyone wants; a sense of community and belonging, integrity and respect.

Some people were even brave enough to say "love". A culture of love in a logging company. Who would have thought? It's got me thinking though.

Inspector Bruce Horne is the Rotorua police Area Commander.

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