182.5: the California Penal Code Sending Your Favourite Rappers to Prison

Gang culture has been an integral part of the rap genre for decades and decades: the majority of rap music is centred lyrically, or influenced, by gang activity, whether it be Crips in Los Angeles or even small sets in London.

Yes, rap music has built and founded communities, linked cultures across the globe, turned pain and struggle into better futures. What about all of this? The stuff never commented on through the media: the good things.

Focusing on these positive aspects of the genre, what would you say if I told you that the whole style could be in danger? Or maybe you wouldn’t speak—you’d just scream.

It took me a while to figure out how to write this. Potentially because there’s so much to digest, but I believe that this is something any fan of hip-hop, grime, or hyphy needs to know.

182.5. Four digits which threaten decades of lyrical art. Keep this number in your head.

We start a while back, in 1967 California. Between 1967 and 1995, juvenile-committed crimes for robbery within the state were rising uncontrollably, by a staggering 260%. Even worse, murder crimes by juveniles were increasing by 300%. The California Governor Pete Wilson proposed 11 bills to contain and reduce juvenile-committed crimes within his state. I imagine he must’ve been sweating buckets, overwhelmed by a new tidal wave of crime. But that wouldn’t excuse what he did next, what’s affected many people and will continue to for years.

At first, these 11 bills failed, but give it a few years, and they’d become something monstrous: Proposition 21: Gang Violence and Juvenile Prevention Act.

The year’s 2000 and the Proposition’s just been approved, passed with a two-thirds majority vote. Most of the state’s voted in favour of it, bar the Bay Area, San Francisco, which, if you didn’t know, has one of the most racially diverse populations in the United States (we’ll come back to this later).

The State Attorney General says the Proposition ‘increases punishment for gang-related felonies, home-invasion robbery, carjacking, witness intimidation and drive-by shootings; and creates crime of gang-recruitment activities’.

Proposition 21 fundamentally enables the prosecutor to determine a sentencing without the judge’s ruling or consent, meaning that if a prosecutor has any bias, racial or not, towards the defendant, they can decide if they go to jail or not. Additionally, it allows juveniles from the age of 14 to be tried and sentenced as adults with life imprisonment.

Sure, we can agree it has had its positives; juvenile-committed crime did decrease in the years after, but at what cost?

In adult prisons, juveniles are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, usually within the first 48 hours of incarceration.

That’s one of the many problems with this Proposition. It seems to me as though not only is the state denying juveniles the chance to learn and grow from their young mistakes, but also putting them in further danger from statutory rape and assault, ultimately reducing their chances to ever reintegrate and function in society as responsible citizens.

Drakeo the Ruler, pictured right

How does this link to rap music? I’ll tell you now.

Let’s go back to those four digits I mentioned. 182.5. A Penal Code under Proposition 21 which states that ‘any person who actively participates in any criminal street gang, with knowledge that its members engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity, and who willfully promotes, furthers, assists, or benefits from any felonious criminal conduct by members of that gang is guilty of conspiracy to commit that felony and may be punished…’

Just looking at that paragraph I see a big pile of steaming hot waffle. But you get the idea: if you’re in a ‘gang’, and one of its members has committed a crime, and you know about it and ‘benefit’ from it, you get the same charge as them.

Penal Code 186.22 defines a gang as a group of 3 or more people which: has a common name or symbol; has the commission of one of a long list of California criminal offenses; has engaged in a ‘pattern of criminal activity’, either alone or together.

It’s the 25th of July 2019 and Drakeo the Ruler, breakout LA rapper, has been acquitted of a murder charge and is set to be released in early August—life is pretty good.

Fast forward two months and we’re back where we started: the District Attorney plans to trial him for gang conspiracy charges and shooting from a motor vehicle.

Drakeo is a part of the rap group Stinc Team, made up of more than three members, and the group has had charges of vandalism and burglary in the past.

And so, in the eyes of cruel California law, the Stinc Team is a gang. But where in that paragraph do you see any mention of murder?

Drakeo happened to be at the same party as the shot victim, whose killer already admitted to having pulled the trigger.

Tell me then why Drakeo could be facing life imprisonment?

We’re in the court house. The prosecutor plays Drakeo’s music, and the jury hears ‘choppa’, so he must be guilty. And that’s it: Drakeo the Ruler, Ralfy the Plug, Ketchy the Great, some of LA’s best talent, behind bars.

Tiny Doo, a San Diego rapper, was incarcerated in 2014 also under 182.5 for more than seven months. Later, his case was dismissed, and the San Diego Superior Court was sued for false imprisonment. Tiny Doo won, and received $737,500 in a settlement.

What shocks me to the core about this law is that it could be applied to virtually any rap or hip-hop group whose member(s) have committed small crimes in the past.

How many people will they take from us before the rap genre decimates entirely?

How many people will they look at and accuse falsely with these 4 lethal digits, stealing years from their time with their family and music itself?

As I said, rap music has and always will have links to gang culture, but that doesn’t mean every rapper is a criminal, or every rap collective is a gang.

From my point of view, this is yet another form of shameless racism towards the African American community, another breach of California’s corrupt justice system’s promise to serve each of their citizens fairly and righteously.

As a London native, I can't speak for Californians and their decision to put Proposition 21 in place. However, as someone who greatly appreciates California rap, I can't help but feel as though those who voted in favour of it have made a huge mistake.

After all, the Bay knew first, and there’s a reason they voted against the law.

And maybe one day, the rest of California will catch up and eventually abolish this perversion of justice once and for all.