The video “The Satan’s Disciples Gang of Chicago” illustrates how the Social Control Theory can help explain the engagement in gang affiliation in deviant activity and behavior. The gang offers possibility of finding identity in general the young not found in their family or school environment. The gang offers the possibility of finding protection, companionship and security. In communities where there are already gangs, joining one is done almost a necessity. The gang offers a sense of family that sometimes does not exists in the home.…
The most common definition of a youth gang involves self-formed group of young teens imbedded within a structured organization. The group is distinctly recognizable by those in their community, tend to have a name, and have a negative association with crime (Klein 1971). The group adheres to a strict agenda and often partakes in criminal behavior to reach a set of goals outlined within the guidelines (Thrasher 1927). Additionally, as determined, youth gang activity is contingent on an individual’s socio-economic status, race, and neighborhood (Klein 1971). However, given that such factors are never standard across all communities, it becomes difficult to place every individual into a standardized definition of gang members.…
A serious problem that is going on in the United States is criminal street gangs. The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) defined gangs as “an association of three or more individuals, who members identify themselves by adopting a group identity with a purpose to engage in criminal activity by using force and/or intimidation and such crime are used to enhance or preserve the association’s power, reputation or economic resources” (National Gang Center, National Youth Gang Survey Analysis). The term “gang” is not a new concept as historians have traced this term back to the mid-1700s. However, gang violence has changed and evolved since the first recorded gang activity. Gang…
As a sociologist studying why youths join gangs, the approach that would be taken is the inductive approach. A sociologist should aim to answer questions as; do youths join gangs to gain a social status within their community? Or do they join gangs as a mean of protection? A lot of factors play a significant role in what makes youths turn to gangs. To make sure all possible factors are looked upon, it would be key to, observe youths within gangs and then base your hypothesis off of your observations.…
It is not only social factors or political factors that lead gang violence. Personal factors play an important part in gangs choosing violence and it is the most frequent cause of violence by gang members. Especially when it comes to seek revenge for perceived slights or previous disputes gangs use their utmost power and resources (Buchanan, 2014). A member can be attacked for belonging to a rival gang, living in the same neighborhood of a different gang, or to settle an old score between gang members or their families. Sometimes revenge leads to a series of crimes.…
As a commander of the gang unit, If I was responsible for intervening in a cycle of escalating violence among five prevalent youth gangs in my jurisdiction. What can I do to stop the escalation of inter-gang violence? First, I would set up a meeting with all the top members one on one so that I can get a feel for what type of feelings they are having among others in the community and how it is affecting them. According to pg. 153 "traditional organized crime was nationality based; today's organized crime is overwhelmingly racially based, but with occasional nationalistic overlay"(Hoover, 2014).…
The most recent estimate of more than 30,000 gangs represents a 15 percent increase from 2006 and is the highest annual estimate since 1996. Gang violence in America has been a major problem in this country which affects several communities and several major cities all throughout America. If gang violence awareness can be more available to areas where it is most popular and holding seminars and informational classes about what the gang life can cause, then there will be a decrease in gang related activity. In America, there has been a rapid increase in gang violence and gang related activity which affects the countries major cities. While larger cities and suburban counties expectedly report higher numbers of gangs, there is also considerable variation within each area type.…
Twenty year-old Manitoba native David Michael Vincett was gunned down at around three in the morning on September 25th, 2011 during a gang related shooting. According to the Winnipeg police, Vincett didn’t have any gang affiliation to their knowledge, but the shooter who will remain nameless due to the Youth Criminal Justice Act was supposedly tied to the Indian Posse. The Indian Posse is one of the largest street gangs in Canada, reportedly claiming over 12,000 members. It was stated in the report that the suspect and David Vincett spoke about respective gang affiliations before the shooting happened. This raised the question whether the victim was actually associated with a gang or not.…
The shift to a criminal justice system based on partnerships between law enforcement and the community from the previous idea of strict punishment and a lock-them-up attitude has only occurred in recent years. This means there has been ample time for few programs to be implemented to prevent gang member offending and to rehabilitate gang members. Due to the small number of programs that have been implemented in recent years, only a small amount of research has been done to see if these programs are effective. Furthermore, only a portion of this research conducted has been conclusive. One reason for the largely inconclusive research is the programs themselves are not uniform.…
There are many problems happening in the African American Community. There are many issues like gang violence, police brutality, poverty and many more. All those things we can stop but we continue to still let our actions cause them. Those are just a small amount of the issues African Americans are facing these days.…
Gangs in the United States started to pop up in vast numbers during the civil rights movement in the 50’s and 60’s. In those days’ gangs were meant as more of a support system for the African American community than the disturbing drug dealing violence evoking entities that they are now. The question now becomes what led to such a change in philosophy in the African American gang community, the answer is simple it is institutional racism. Take Chicago, for example ever since the civil rights act of 1965 homicides are up to an all time high, this is caused by the high concentration of African Americans in what people call the ghetto’s and section eight housing developments, in those environments options for good clean work are slim due to the low amount of funding for schools and the according to the novelist Hakeem Muhammad “Chicago is divided between affluent whites on the north-side and impoverished blacks on the South-side “. This shows us that there is still segregation in the United States, although it is not blatant like during the Jim Crow era, this segregation has led to greater poverty and thus causing youth to run to gangs in order to make money, gain respect and stop the cycle of poverty.…
The city has the highest crime rate in America due to the city’s numerous gangs. They wreak havoc by initiating new members into their clan and by retaliating to other gangs. Initiation usually includes committing a crime anywhere from stealing to homicide. To some, being in a gang is a way to get protection from other nearby gangs. To others, gangs are seen as family.…
Trying to address the question of why youth join gangs requires the examination of multiple factors, and preferably, multiple theories. Social disorganization theory explains that the place where an individual grows up matters – disordered neighborhoods lead youth to join gangs. Due to its overemphasis on disorganization within neighbourhoods, however, social disorganization theory is not able to assess every factor that causes youth to join gangs. In this paper, I argue that youth join gangs because of neighborhood influence, poverty, and peer influence. Social disorganization theory is able to explain neighborhoods that lack resources and poverty as reasons for youth gang involvement, but it is unable to account for why gang-affiliated peers cause youth to join gangs.…
The traditional interpretation in today 's society correlates with many negative connotations. The word gang is associated with crime, violence, gangsters, drugs and murders. In many cases, a gang is another perspective of someone 's family. Considering, a group of people closely bond with love, passion, and care; it could be concluded that in certain situations gangs are the only outlet for an individual when they lack a family or a sense of…
Gang crime today is no longer just an inner city problem. Gangs are often associated with inner cities where it had its early origins. However, they have now spread like the plague seeping its way into some areas of the U.S where gangs and the crimes associated with them were once unheard of. With now gangs being a nationwide problem it is important for law enforcement nationwide understand how gangs operate, their gang members, and the roots behind this phenomenon. By better understanding gangs it will help us get at the roots of the problem and better combat them.…