Funding cut for tattoo removal program

The CARENCEN Tattoo Removal program was founded in 1998 to address the needs of the Mission’s at-risk youth seeking to move past the negative associations that their tattoos chained them to.
“We don’t turn our backs on people that are willing to change,” said Lizbett Calleros, the program’s coordinator.

Calleros estimates that about 25 percent of the tattoo removal program’s participants are at the lower end of their target-age bracket——only 12 or 13 years old. “When they come in that young its been mandated and they’re already in the system,” Henriquez said, adding that young people who get gang tattoos are often motivated by loneliness or fear and unintentionally put themselves in serious danger both from gang violence and public suspicion.

“The negative stereotypes of tattoos have endless repercussions,” said Calleros. “Racial profiling becomes a cycle. There are a lot of situations in which not having a visible tattoo could be your saving grace. You might not have gotten arrested or you might not have gotten jumped or shot.”

But now, because of financial pressure caused by state-wide budget cuts, the Tattoo Removal program is unable to accept any new participants. Nor does it have the resources to even consider older applicants, despite the fact that there is a high demand for tattoo removal and rehabilitation services for young adults.

CARECEN’s staff spends a great deal of its time dealing with reporting and documentation for government records, further taxing the time that they can spend with participants and on these programs. They are trying to develop a digital system that would allow participants to manage their appointments and track their progress, but money and resources are limited and even after three years of working towards this goal it has yet to be completed.

“And this is only the first slice,” said Metzi Henriquez, mental health specialist at CARECEN’s Second Chance. “We are anticipating even more cuts come December…We’re having to slice our staff, reduced to almost half, while the work load stays the same.”
She said that the program’s staff is struggling to try and provide the same quality and availability of services with almost half the resources that they previously had. The program’s staff is made up of only a handful of professionals balancing multiple roles. For example, the program’s medical assistant is also the sole receptionist. “This is our choice – trying to do work without cutting the services,” Henriquez said.

Hundreds of concerned Mission residents and community members gathered at Horace Mann Middle School on April 24 to voice their concerns about how these budget cuts are affecting families and public services for the community.

Data from the California Department of Corrections show that from 1989 to 2003, 6,629 youth entered their custody for an offense committed prior to their 18th birthday. Fify-one percent of these youth were Latino.

A joint study released in 2009 by the Campaign for Youth Justice and the National Council of La Raza revealed startling disparities about how these Latino youth are treated in the criminal justice system.

Latino youth are over 40 percent more likely than their white counterparts to be waived to the adult justice system and/or detained in an adult prison even if they had no previous referrals to the juvenile court or had committed only a minor, nonviolent offense.

The vast majority of the program’s participants have spent time behind bars, but the CARECEN staff never feels unsafe or threatened.

“I feel the safest,” Calleros said.“They are so young and impressionable. I’ve seen youth with incredible potential. Anything with water will flourish, positive associations. Our job is to make them believe in themselves.”

The program itself, just like the process of leaving a gang, is not easy.

There is a multiple-step application process and the program requires a minimum of 50 hours of supervised community service. The one to two year tattoo removal process is incredibly painful and removing the tattoo and disassociating from a gang can make a young person vulnerable to violence.

“It’s a process,” Henriquez said. “That’s expected. We expect that and it’s not like failing.”

The program has had much success. Every single one of the participants have completed their high school education. A sizeable achievement when compared to the data found by the Pew Hispanic Center – that only one in ten Hispanic students in America that does not complete traditional high school will ever acquire their GED.

The CARECEN Tattoo Removal Program has helped around 65 individuals a week, 375 days a year, for over a decade.There are 5 areas of care: tattoo removal, mental health, education,community support and case management that helps participants gain access to resources such as job training.

“Families see that that they have allies in the community and people that believe in their kids,” said Calleros. “We’re trying to create a social fabric to make a better world for our kids.”

“We deal with kids from the community and our staff is 100 perent from the community, there is a lot of mentoring,” said Henriquez. “Because there’s no separation between personal and professional it’s much more effective.” This makes “street outreach” possible and it is often incorporated into the staff’s work.

Henriquez also spoke of mentors and youth being actively involved in productive and creative extracurricular activities like Danza Azteca. For youth that may have previously associated their identities with racism, stereotyping, and gangs, “using culture to heal” can be a transformative experience, Henriquez said.

“Education is an empowering way of supporting someone’s growth,” Calleros said. “Anyone that’s trying to live a positive and healthy lifestyle benefits the whole community. Youth employment and education benefits the entire nation.”