In many ways, we need to brace ourselves because it probably will to some extent.

Gregory Boyle Priest Fights Gangs With Boundless Compassion For 20 years, the Rev.

Boyle recently had to lay off most of his staff because of financial problems.

He recounts the decades hes helped ex-gang members turn their lives around in a new memoir, Tattoos on the Heart.

Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who started Homeboy, has mentored and counseled the more than 12,000 gang members who pass through Homeboy each year to learn job skills, get their gang tattoos removed and attend therapy sessions on everything from alcohol abuse to anger management.

In the past three years, Boyle explains, Homeboy moved to a new headquarters to provide more room for the five businesses it runs for ex-gang members.

In that time, Homeboy quadrupled the number of people it serves.

On May 14, Boyle had to lay off most of the employees working at Homeboy.

We sort of publicly announced and we got from November to here.

But what we really needed was that 5 million cushion when we moved to our new headquarters three years ago to really factor that in.

The place was packed and the recession only added to the need and the fact that were the only game in town.

There is no other place that people go to, so it was hard and we sort of needed an angel and we didnt get it.

I dont save people.

God saves people.

I can point them in the right direction.

I think if you walked through it, youd be happier than you are.

That was intense -- reaching the highest moment in 92 when the county saw 1,000 gang-related homicides.

And just again, anecdotally, I buried eight kids in a three-week period once.

Things have calmed down considerably since the horror of that decade of death.

Helicopters every night; shootings morning, noon and night; and mothers putting their babies in the bathtubs at night in the housing projects, anticipating what everybody knew would happen, which is shooting all night long.

So its hard to. even recall that because its feeling like a long time ago, really.

So obviously, you know, gang-related homicides have been cut in half and in half again since 1992.

And since 92 -- which you recall was the unrest of 92 -- things were.

But so was A Place Called Home, and after-school programs in communities and schools and all sorts of things were born to address every aspect of this, from mentoring to loving, caring adults who paid attention.

So I dont think its a surprise that frankly, those numbers have gone south.

And even with the recession, people make a connection between the economy going badly and a rise in crime and that hasnt happened.

Vista Homeboys Gang Members In Prison