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The Pros And Cons Of Gangs

1975 Words8 Pages
Gang membership and gang involvement have been a growing concern in the world today. Many places such like Canada and the United States have reported higher amounts of gang involvement in the last five years, reporting numbers of around 900 gang in the United States alone as of 2010( Totten and Totten 2012). However researcher often the question why is that the case? Thought out this paper will address what gangs members and memberships itself offers teenage boys, in lower-income families? Forcing on protection, relationships with friends and family, money, gender, and finally the means of entering and exiting the gang. It goes with saying did the boys chose the gang life or did the gang life chose them.

Defining a gang
Gangs and the gang membership is not a new phenomenon, they have been around for centuries, starting off as pirates, smuggler, and bootleggers( Wiener 1999). Gangs and the different types of gangs is a hard concept to define. Research has found that in North America gangs date back to the Industrial Revolution, where we see divisions based on race and ethnicity( Wiener 1999). Many different scholars come up with the understanding of gangs. Lahey and colleagues(1999) define gangs as “ a ground of three or more that spends a lot of time in public spaces, has existed for a minimum of three months, has engaged in delinquent activities in the past 12 months, and has at least more structural feature”( Lahey, Gordon, Loeber, Stouthammer-Loeber, and
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