For many youths, gang life is all they know. Many gang members have other family members who are involved in gangs already. In Lauger’s (2012) ethnography of the DFW boyz, he found
A. Parents socialize their children knowingly, sometimes unknowingly through their negligence into the gang. B. The schools serve as a recruiting ground for the gang C. Through peer to peer interactions or bullying. The gang recruits new members through peers. D. The adults in the neighborhood educate the children about the gang E.
Utilizing research findings and realistic experiences, Shakur, Howell, and Griffiths disprove myths about gangs, justify the reasons for young people being recruited because of their desire to be understood by others similar to them, and girls integrating themselves into the groups from their relationships with members. Howell and Griffiths managed to explain the principles behind gangs and their members' lifestyles, while Shakur provided real gangster experiences as supporting evidence for the research findings. Theories to gangs may be existent, but without proper research leading to the findings, or experiences from subjects who lived the lifestyle, beliefs about the organizations merely become empty
The journal article speaks on history of being a gang member and what the families are like and how things go for them, just a lifestyle of a gang member. The
It is very rare for someone who had taken a firsthand experience in gang life to come up in the open and narrate these experiences to the public as well as the dangers which they go through. This is irrespective of the fact that the realism of gang life can be seen in news, movies or in the actual streets, reading about it and visualizing the scenes in one’s mind is like taking a firsthand experience in these
This study is the primary purpose of the book, and it consist of what towns were deliberated, how the gang unit controlled their gangs in each of their cities, and how this material was brought to their attention. This certain data was collected through field examination, conversations with members, and reading through documents. Chapter three goes on to talk about the “Historical Analysis of Gangs and Gang Control.” This part is essential to understanding each town’s past gang complications and how the police force responded to them around 1960 to 2000. The chapter is put into different subdivisions by city.
The first chapter of Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For a Day gives a small glimpse of the everyday lives of African American street gang members. He describes in detail of their deplorable living conditions, as well as their immediate distrust of him. In some ways, his descriptions positively reinforce the conventional beliefs of gangs. Most people connotate gangs with crime - particularly "senseless" violence, drug dealing, and robbery. A lot of people are quick to judge, and rarely ask questions as to why gangs are so willing to participate in illegal, and often inhumane activities.
In the United States, every year there are around 2,000 gang-related homicides and in the realistic fiction novel, The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton, it explores the issues of gang violence, and teenagers in gangs. Around 40% of all members in gangs are teenagers, who are getting involved in some dangerous things very early in life. In the novel The Outsiders, the “Greasers” which is a gang of all teenagers, fight other gangs and commit serious crimes such as murder. We as a society need to pinpoint why teenagers join gangs and stop them beforehand. We also need to help people get out of gangs if they are already in one.
Finally, the underclass theory by Jeffrey Fagan and others has been widely used to explain the origins of gangs. In the urban area filled with poverty and deprivation, it is argued that gangs are a normal response to an abnormal setting such as exclusions from the labor markets (Bartollas & Miller,
Gang Violence Gang violence can be seen in a variety of settings with extreme violence typically as a rite of passage into a gang or retaliation (James & Gilliland, 2017). For example, in order for a potential gang member to enter a gang, they may have to partake in an initiation ceremony where they murder an individual. The effects of gang violence include community disorganization, homicide, and drug use. Gangs are typically formed in areas with weak social institutes and mechanisms for social control (Papachristos & Kirk, 2006).
This paper draws on existing sociological research in identifying a number of theories used in explaining the formation of gangs. The theories discussed are social structure theories, social conflict theory, and social process theories all of which highlight elements of strain in different forms as they relates to gang formation. According to Merton, (as cited in Schneider & Tilly, 2004) structural theories significantly emphasize the role of social and economic structures as the causes of delinquent behavior and tend to treat criminal behavior as the result of the undesirable and dysfunctional structures (P. 3.).
There are a number of reasons that range from simple to complex on why teenagers join gangs, and one solution is finding an answer to their
The best four articles that provide facts, statistics, agreements, and opinions are: “Why Do Kids Join Criminal Street Gangs?” by JoAnn Moore, “FBI report: Gang membership spikes” by Terry Frieden, “Youth Gang Violence is America’s Problem”
Most gangs are made up of young males that are of a similar background and have a desire of acquiring
Now the question that was left behind is why did gangs turn violent and the most accurate/common answer is the impact of poverty and lack of resources, you might still be asking what that has to do with violence well since members were in lack of money they began to sell drugs doing drive-by shootings, and breaking into homes. The second most common reason is they are in lack of resources. In most cases gang members come from families that either were gang affiliated themselves when they were younger and want their kids to follow in the same footsteps or families where parents are non-responsive and also have drugs around them some of the time, and when they join a gang they get a sense of belonging to something important/ belonging to family because although they sell drugs or do what they do they show love.
