Under a tougher state law, Salt Lake County accuses 3 of recruiting minors to a gang
Salt Lake County prosecutors urged lawmakers to toughen penalties for recruiting minors into gangs. Now they say they're putting the new law to work. .
Seeking stronger tools to prosecute gang members for recruiting minors, the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office made its case to state lawmakers for tougher penalties last year.
The Utah Legislature listened, raising the severity of the offense from a misdemeanor to a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Now Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill says his office is putting that new law to use for the first time.
Gill announced Wednesday that he’s filed formal charges of soliciting, recruiting or intimidating a minor to join a gang against three men. The cases follow a long-running investigation conducted by the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office focused on a Utah gang’s efforts to bring in younger members, Gill said.
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As the county grows, Gill said they’re seeing gangs operate in more sophisticated ways.
“They are now trying to recruit younger kids because they know the system holds juveniles accountable to a lesser degree than adults or even older teenage minors,” Gill said in a prepared statement.
The three men his office charged this week included a “shot caller” and someone who is second-in-command for a Barrio Evil gang, Gill said. Investigators obtained a warrant to look at their social media activity and conversations, finding that one of the suspects urged a young recruit to steal cars and take money and guns from vehicles, but the boy replied that he was almost 17 years old and could be tried as an adult, Gill said.
The suspect said in response that the charges would be “a slap on the wrist” for a minor who hasn’t already been locked up multiple times, charging documents say. The three men — two of them age 19, and one 20 — were charged Tuesday in Salt Lake County’s 3rd District Court and have not yet appeared in court to face the allegations.
The 2025 state law makes clear that even if a recruit doesn’t join a gang in the end, it’s still a crime to try to get them to do so. It also stipulates that it’s a misdemeanor for one minor to recruit another.
Defense attorneys opposed the change, raising concerns that it would do more harm than good. They contend the change allows the criminal justice system to put people behind bars for longer, and as a result, further engrain their involvement in any gangs that have a presence in the state’s jails or prison system.
“We should focus more on general gang prevention efforts in the community instead of punishing people more harshly for gang activity,” Richard Mauro, executive director of Salt Lake Legal Defender Association, told Utah News Dispatch.
He and other critics point to research indicating that tougher penalties do not necessarily deter people from committing crimes. But Gill’s office believes the change will go a long way.
“More and more of the homicides and attempted murders are unfortunately happening for younger and younger people,” Brett Robinson, an attorney in Gill’s office, told lawmakers on a law enforcement committee last year. “And this bill will help us give us the tools to try to counteract that.”