Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Homeboy Industries is not for those that need help, only for those who want it. In this sense, we are a gang-rehabilitation center.”

Boyle is discussing the underlying mission of his non-profit organization Homeboy Industries: to help local homies and homegirls who have decided to change their lives for the better. Boyle stresses that only those who sincerely want help will succeed. 

“What if we were to invest in gang members, rather than just seek to incarcerate our way out of this problem?”

Boyle poses this rhetorical question in order to suggest that it makes far more sense to help gang members than to imprison as many of them as possible, as imprisonment only perpetuates a cycle of crime and incarceration in the barrios. 

“Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century female English mystic, saw the life struggle as coming to discover that we are ‘clothed in God’s goodness.’” 

Boyle uses Julian’s quote to make sense of Luis’s journey and death. Luis had previously been a drug dealer, but he found it within himself to make a change and found a job baking bread instead. Boyle maintains that Luis found his inner “goodness” before he passed.