Standing before more than 100 seventh-graders at Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School on Hartford Avenue in Providence, federal prosecutor Richard W. Rose held up a candle in a tall glass container.

“Anybody recognize this?” he asked. “It’s a bodega candle, right? Ninety-nine cents across the street — $1.59 if you want one with a picture of a saint on it.”

Rose paused a beat.

“If your ass gets shot on Hartford Avenue, that’s all you are going to get,” he said, taking his first swipe at the hype of gang life. “They are going to make a mini-shrine next to a telephone pole and will remember you for about two weeks.”

Rose is an assistant U.S. attorney best known for putting former Providence Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr. behind bars for corruption. But over the last three years he has been doing something that, in some respects, might prove more important: He has talked to nearly 10,000 students, urging them to avoid guns and gangs as part of the Street Smarts program.

Rose introduced the program to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. And now the U.S. Department of Justice is making Street Smarts part of the “best-practices” package given to all 93 U.S. Attorneys in the country, according to Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente.

On Tuesday morning, Corrente lugged a laptop and speakers into Perry Middle School. “I’m Richard’s road crew,” he joked. “I’ve been to a lot of these.”

Corrente said Street Smarts began after he talked to Rose about coming up with a better school outreach program. The goal is to reach young people before they land in the Training School or the Adult Correctional Institutions, he said.

Rose, 49, of Providence, is responsible for gun and gang prosecutions and is the antigang and Project Safe Neighborhoods coordinator. He has given the Street Smarts presentation to students in Central Falls, Pawtucket, Cranston and Woonsocket, but he mostly focuses on Providence.

Rose knows the neighborhoods. He once lived in a tenement three blocks away from Perry Middle School, on Whittier Avenue. He lived in the Manton Avenue projects. He met his father for the first time when he was 7 years old. And he spent five years at St. Aloysius orphanage in Smithfield.

“Nobody else in the office could do this as well. He’s got street cred that nobody else has,” Corrente said. “He’s an engaging speaker. He’s an experienced prosecutor. And he can say, ‘I came from the same place you guys did and look at me now.’ ”

As the students filed into the school auditorium, slipping into rows of wooden fold-down chairs worn smooth over the years, Rose stood at the front, wearing Department of Justice cuff links and a black suit with a sharply creased white handkerchief in the breast pocket.

Soon the room filled with the sounds of a New Orleans funeral dirge — trumpet blasts of sorrow and rage providing the backdrop for a roll call of the dead.

On a screen, a PowerPoint presentation delivered a powerful point, scrolling through the names of people — all less than 30 years old — who have been shot, stabbed or beaten to death in Providence since 1994.

A drumbeat marked time as the list marched from year to year. When the list for 2000 appeared on the screen, the 12-year-old girl sitting next to me recognized a name. She said it was her uncle, who was shot and killed at age 28. The 2000 list also included Jennifer Rivera, the 15-year-old girl who was gunned down the night before she was to testify against Charles “Manny” Pona in a murder trial.

The tally for 2002 included Ricky Sok, a 16-year-old member of the Oriental Rascals gang who was shot to death by a 15-year-old boy. Also on it was Jermaine Ellis, who was just 12 when he was shot and killed at the Chad Brown housing complex.

On the list for 2005 was Jamont Richardson, a 14-year-old boy who was shot to death in a dispute over a $15 hair-braiding debt. The last name on the roll call belonged to Jeffrey Lopez, a 19-year-old gunned down in June over a confrontation that began when he walked through a group of Laos Pride gang members on a sidewalk.

In all, the roll call listed 150 murders.

And the killing is by no means confined to Rhode Island, Rose said, displaying murder totals for Baltimore, Chicago, New York and other cities. “Nearly 4,000 dead in 11 American cities alone in 2006,” he said. That nearly matches the number of U.S. soldiers who’ve died in Iraq, he said.

But unlike in Iraq, Rose said, “We are doing it to each other. And we are doing it to each other for stupid reasons.”

“We are doing it to each other for red or blue,” he said, referring to the gang colors for Bloods and Crips. “Or for the name of a country you’ve never even been to,” he said, referring to gangs such as Laos Pride.

Some students roll their eyes at the idea of an antigang speech, Rose said. “But you roll your eyes, and then I walk out the door and I see ‘MS-13’ on the side of the school,” he said, referring to a spray-painted gang tag.

“I see a 6-year-old getting shot 50 feet away,” Rose said, regarding the shooting of Manuel Aponte last month in the Hartford Park public housing project across the street from the school. (The boy was shot in the abdomen but survived.)

And Rose noted that when he came into the school, ACI inmates were across the street, wearing orange wool caps as they raked up leaves at the Hartford Park housing complex. “I’m glad they come back and help out a little bit,” he said. “But what’s up with that? That’s my role model, huh? Yeah, I’m going to get me one of them orange hats and come back and pick up the leaves.”

Rose asked why people sell drugs, carry guns and join gangs. The students talked about making money, getting respect, feeling powerful and finding protection. He said love, respect and protection are all good things, but they’re supposed to come from families, not gangs. “The biggest problem, in my personal opinion, is a lack of parental control and involvement,” he said.

If you’re in a gang, you’re not going to get respect; you’re going to get killed, Rose said. The biggest myth is that you are going to make a lot of money selling drugs, he said. “I’ve been a prosecutor 12 years, and I have never seen a drug dealer come into federal court with a team of lawyers. They come in with lawyers they get with a cash advance on their mother’s credit card.”

Are drug dealers living large? “It’s not exactly like what you see on MTV’s Cribs,” Rose said, as the screen filled with images of clogged sinks, ripped-up floors and stained rugs littered with beer bottles and pizza crusts.

“Don’t believe the hype,” Rose said. “If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life living on Hartford Avenue, you have got to get an education.” Without an education, “it won’t matter who’s the president,” he said. “Success is about hard work and education.”

Rose said he had just read in the newspaper that two-thirds of students in the state’s urban school districts are not reading at grade level. “That’s 2 out of 3, yo!” he said. “Do not let that be you.”

At one point, Rose displayed a photo of gang graffiti in Providence’s West End. He asked a student what it meant, and the boy quickly decoded the message, noting, for example, that 3-11 stood for Crip Killer because C is the third letter in the alphabet and K is the 11th letter.

Rose then asked the boy four questions related to “book smarts,” saying he’d give him $5 for each correct answer. For example, he asked: Who is the governor of Rhode Island? And what is President-Elect Barack Obama’s middle name? The boy could not answer any of the questions.

Later, Rose said that in deciphering the graffiti, the boy was engaging in “replacement algebra” and is clearly intelligent. “If you could redirect his energy, he could be anything he wants to be,” he said. “He could be president. He could be governor.”

At another point, the screen displayed Rose’s high school equivalency diploma, which bears the name “Rose Richards.”

“I actually have a GED in the wrong name,” he said as students snickered. “I put it up here to let you know that if a knucklehead like me can make it, you can definitely make it out of here.”

Rose — who dropped out of high school and joined the Marines before going on to Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and Northeastern University law school — said, “I’ll tell you, I make good money. My life is good.”

If the students want role models, Rose suggested they look at Adeola Oredola, a graduate of Perry Middle School and Brown University who is now executive director of Youth in Action. Or Jorge Elorza, who grew up in Olneyville, graduated from Harvard Law School and is now a Roger Williams University law professor.

Or Misty Delgado, who attended Hope High School with her baby in daycare, worked at the U.S. Attorney’s office and is now attending Roger Williams University School of Law on a full scholarship. Or Emily Phrasikaysone, who as a child had to sleep in a Toyota in Roger Williams Park. She just graduated from E{+3} Academy and is now attending Providence College on a full scholarship.

“Listen to me when I tell you this, because I mean it from the bottom of my heart,” Rose said. “You can get out of here if you want to.”

You can’t precisely quantify the impact of a program like Street Smarts. You can’t say that — as a direct result — five lives were saved, 10 people decided against joining a gang and 15 others pursued promising careers. But as he left Perry Middle School, Rose said, “I know in my heart we reach some of these kids.”

And as I drove away from Perry, I thought of the young defendants I’ve seen facing gun and drug charges down at the federal courthouse in Kennedy Plaza. Prosecutors provide a drumbeat of evidence. Defendants hear the words “We have a verdict.” Then, amid blasts of sorrow and rage, the young men and women are sent to federal prisons far away. Sentences sometimes are longer than their lives have been to that point. There’s no glitter. No glory. No hype.

When federal prosecutors try to reach kids before the kids reach those courtrooms, that’s not just street smart. That’s wise.

efitzpat@projo.com