Humans are social creatures who thrive upon other’s approval, crave love and community, and are driven by their emotions. Gangs are created to feed those urges; people find a community who accepts them, take control of their own future and find an identity for themselves.
In the 1960s, the first gang emerged in LA. The gang comprised of young, African-American men, who felt they only had themselves to depend on. Excluded from the Boy Scouts, stopped regularly by the police, and feared by much of the LA population, they felt alienated from the rest of the world. However, the gang was supportive and like-minded, giving them a home in the racist, angry world.
Though the first gang was created for a sense of family, later gangs formed out of obligation and a need for protection. People rarely left their ten block radius, lest they be found in another gang’s territory. Murder, drive-bys and revenge were a regular event in the LA neighborhoods, affecting every
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These children were left unsupervised because their parents were in jail, or working overtime to provide for their family. These lonely children believed they had to forge their own path, felt unloved by their parents, or didn’t see an alternative and therefore joined a gang . Without anyone telling them to go to school, protecting them from gang action and reminding them that they have other opportunities, teens joined the gang in order to prove that they were strong and because they wanted follow the path people they respected followed.
In conclusion, gangs are based in natural human behaviour, a person’s need for acceptance, wanting power to control their lives, and wanting to follow in the steps of role models. No matter how many people a gang murders, or whether they are the toughest looking people on the block, they, just like everyone in the world, are controlled by emotions and