THE CASE of Alex DoSouto, the former gang member who turned around his life before recently being convicted of a 2008 armed robbery, illustrates the complexities of balancing the need for punishment with the push toward rehabilitation. In a culture of youth violence, breaking away from gangs and earning a high school diploma — as DoSouto did — is no small step. Society cannot excuse armed robbery, but it can give encouragement to those offenders who have already shown the ability to transform themselves.
At DoSouto’s sentencing today at Norfolk Superior Court, the judge should opt for a lighter sentence that may delay — but should not derail — his plans to attend college. DoSouto should be allowed to pay his debt to society and move on.
But DoSouto’s case is illustrative in another way — of the gross unfairness of the Boston police decision a month ago to pass around a flier with the photographs of 10 young men known to be linked to local gangs. DoSouto was among the men pictured, though teachers and others insist he had left the gang world about a year ago and was already tutoring his fellow students at Boston English High, where he also earned strong grades and starred on the basketball team.
The police claimed the flier would “shame’’ the young men and their neighborhoods into providing information that could help bring justice to the victims of a spate of recent unsolved murders of young people. Instead, it served to reconnect those who had left the gang world with their earlier lives. Suddenly, DoSouto had to fear retaliation from rival gangs.
In the past, DoSouto was no stranger to gang life. A teenager who got caught up early in the Cape Verdean gang culture of his rough Dorchester neighborhood, he drove the getaway car in a series of armed robberies in Quincy. His accomplices used a BB gun. But after spending most of his junior year in jail because he couldn’t afford bail, and then getting shot in the leg in the spring of 2009, he broke away. As a basketball star on his high school team, he became a symbol for other youths seeking a life outside the gang world.
The goal of his sentencing should be to recognize his crime but should in no way impede his emergence from the gang world. And, hopefully, his case will persuade the Boston police not to repeat the mistake of assuming that all young men caught up in the gang world will forever be criminals.
