Dozens of Chicago children have been killed this year. Police blame a lot of those deaths on street gangs. The violence has block clubs and politicians pledging to help authorities crack down on gangs. And it has communities trying to keep kids from joining in the first place. Not many programs engage gang members themselves — to help them turn their lives around before they land in prison or hurt somebody. One that does is a Boys and Girls Club in Pilsen, a largely Mexican neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. But not everyone in the neighborhood thinks opening the door to gang kids is the way to go. As part of our summer series examining youth violence, Chicago Public Radio’s Chip Mitchell brings us this report.

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ambi: Children’s voices and billiard balls

Adoring fans surround a pool table at the Union League Boys and Girls Club on 19th and Leavitt. They watch 19-year-old José Pérez’s every move until he finally sinks the 8-ball.

ambi: “Ohhhh!”

You might not know it right away from his baggy pants or the do-rag on his head, but Pérez is a club counselor.

PÉREZ: By looking at the kids, it changes my life a lot. I want to stay right here and work with them more.

“Right here” means off the streets. Until just a couple years ago, Pérez flirted with the Satan Disciples, a street gang that’s claimed this part of Pilsen for decades.

PÉREZ: You’ll see, like, ‘Damn, that guy, he’s making money on the streets,’ or ‘He’s getting all the girls,’ or ‘He’s got a nice car. I want to be like that.’ You know?

Pérez insists he never actually joined the gang, but says the police labeled him a member when they caught him posting graffiti. They also arrested him on assault and drug charges. And his high school kicked him out.

Pérez started hanging out at the Boys and Girls Club, where he’d gone as a young boy. The staff there welcomed him back in. And, once he’d moved away from the gang and found another school, the club gave him a big break.

PÉREZ: They offered me to be a counselor in the summer, and I took it.

Now he’s a mentor to hundreds of kids.

And they need it. The Chicago Crime Commission counts nine gangs with a foothold in Pilsen.

SODINI: They work in small territorial areas.

Ronald Sodini commands the local police district.

SODINI: So it’s hard for a child or a youngster to go from one part of Pilsen to another without crossing lines.

Sodini’s officers work with community groups to crack down on gangs. One professional in the neighborhood focuses on reaching out to gang members.

In most Pilsen youth programs, though, the name of the game isn’t outreach. It’s prevention.

ambi: Lunchroom

A community center called Gads Hill serves meals as part of its summer camp. Teenagers and younger kids find educational opportunities here. The programming used to include a youth drop-in center.

CASTELLAN: It had degenerated to a gang clubhouse.

When Barbara Castellan started as Gads Hill director in 1993, she set out to combat beer drinking, graffiti and vandalism.

CASTELLAN: But when they came in here to beat somebody up in my gymnasium, I said, ‘I can’t deal with this, because if I let this happen, it’ll happen all the time.’

Castellan eliminated the drop-in program in 1995. Since then, Gads Hill has practiced what she calls “triage.” It welcomes low achievers but turns away gang members. And Gads Hill isn’t alone.

ambi: Outdoor basketball

Just a couple blocks from the Boys and Girls Club, youth basketball teams square off between road barriers. A Pilsen nonprofit agency called the Resurrection Project brings this outdoor league to a different gang hotspot every Friday evening. But organizer Alvaro Obregón says gang members aren’t allowed to play.

OBREGON: I personally cannot, will not, risk a hundred kids. If it’s out in the open, I don’t have them in the gym. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in trying to work with gang members. I just think that that’s a different strategy.

Trying to work with gang members is not only a different approach to reducing violence. It’s rare. Northwestern University’s Wesley Skogan studies efforts against crime in Chicago.

SKOGAN: You have schools being more aggressively interested in using zero tolerance and uniform requirements and suspensions and expulsions in order to get gang kids out of the schools. Local nonprofit youth clubs and recreation centers, in order to protect what they think of as the good youth of the community, in order to maintain their legitimacy and standing — they also tend to expel, exclude, try not to serve gang youth. So what happens is the sort of opportunities and alternatives that mainstream society opens for youths turn out to be closed for kids who are in gangs, for kids who are rumored to be in gangs, for kids who are at high risk of being in a gang. And they get further isolated.

Skogan says that isolation tends to drive kids further into the gang world.

ambi: More children’s voices and billiard balls

Known gang members are welcome at the Union League Boys and Girls Club in Pilsen. But that doesn’t mean program coordinator Carlos Gallardo allows their colors, jewelry or titled caps.

GALLARDO: We always ask them, as soon as they walk in, to put on one of our T-shirts that we have or to go home and change. And if they come dressed as civilians, what I do is, I try to listen to what they say.

The club doesn’t try to segregate the handful of gang members from the hundreds of other kids in the building on any afternoon.

GALLARDO: We let them go into the general population. We keep an eye on them and… I’m not saying that they’re angels all the time. We do have them get in their little gatherings and they do have their little gang meetings. And, when that happens, I ask them to leave.

Gallardo knows what to watch for. The 47-year-old came of age in a Pilsen gang himself.

GALLARDO: Sometimes it seems like a losing battle but, because of what this place did for me when I was their age, I’m not going to give it up.

O’CONNELL: While it may be noble in concept, it poses a lot of difficulties for me, as an administrator and a staff member, bringing my kids over there.

Jack O’Connell is an assistant principal of Orozco Academy, a Pilsen middle school.

O’CONNELL: And it’s not necessarily, it’s not always what’s going on in the building. It’s what’s going on around the building.

The area’s gang activity has convinced some Pilsen parents to steer their kids away from the club. One mother points to her 13-year-old.

MOTHER: I’m afraid that if something’s going to happen — let’s put as an example, if there’s a shooting — he might be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gang experts say neither police crackdowns nor recreation efforts can significantly reduce youth violence on their own. The University of Chicago’s Irving Spergel is the author of a new book about gang intervention in Little Village, just west of Pilsen. He says the only proven model targets a neighborhood’s troublemakers from all sides. That means coordinating everyone from probation officers to teachers, from social workers to employers.

SPERGEL: The approach here is to cut the violence and stop the shooting. But you also, at the same time, you must be concerned with, How do you help this kid grow up and become a decent citizen?

ambi: “Alright, no running, no diving, no pushing! Go in.” (splashes and cheers)

At the Union League Boys and Girls Club, José Pérez monitors swim time as part of his summer counselor duties. He doesn’t miss his life on the streets.

PÉREZ: I actually feel better about myself. And I know I’m doing the right thing. So I’d rather stick with that.

He says he’s thankful the Union League didn’t write him off.

I’m Chip Mitchell, Chicago Public Radio.