Gang members are not technically born in a gang. Gang members go through life learning to be in one. Many criminological theories attempt to tell us who a gang member is and what causes him or her to become one. Many people classify themselves as being part of a certain group; a gang is called a gang because of its criminal activities. Most inner cities have poverty and population growth of all different ethnicities. Juvenile Delinquency has a higher rate in inner city areas. A gang is defined by any group of adolescent or young adults who create crime or offenses. Sociological theories explain crime not in terms of differences between individuals but in terms of differences in the social environment of which people live in. Gang members think …show more content…
When a person strives for success they sometimes find that they can't achieve this success by legitimate means. People's ideas about their own success are far above what they feel they can realistically achieve. This causes a type of strain between goals and means, which causes crime. Anomie is caused because society puts a high emphasis on monetary gain but in some cases restricts people's ability to obtain money. Society emphasizes the importance for economic success; people start to commit crimes because it is not probable that they will gain this economic success by legitimate means. People join gangs so that they can be financially secure and earn some wants or desires because of the criminal actions they commit with the gang. Strain theory addresses why people are involved in more criminal acts than others are. The Anomie Theory focuses on societies and a larger scale of crime, while the strain theory addresses groups (gangs) and …show more content…
The idea that whoever has a higher financial status will live better versus the ones who have a low financial status who will live more harshly are all reasons why a person in poverty would be more likely to create crimes just to have monetary success and feel the love that his/her family does not provide. Bonger and Currie both have ideas and theories that are similar in thought. They also have ideas that are different, Bonger and Currie’s ideas are similar in the fact that they both believe that the economy is a main factor of crime. Bonger believes people who commit crimes only do so because they are selfish and put themselves first. Currie thought that the economy and the government are big factors in their reasoning for crime. Bonger and Currie also have different arguments. Bonger believes that people act egotistically in order to understand and/or commit crime. Whereas, Currie believes that incarceration is the best option for why people commit crimes. People who commit crimes sometimes don’t think about anyone else but themselves. They commit crimes for their own reasons and because they want or need to. Sociological theory describes crime more in depth than any other theories do. The social learning process changes a person belief and who that person is. Sociological theories dominate today because they see past just the individual and their actions. They look at their