Los Angeles Pierce College

break up a fight when a man open fired upon him. Pete Cordero, 35, was shot in an apartment and was eventually found dead behind the wheel of his car. All these, and many others, are believed to be gang related, all occurring just last month in Los Angeles alone. Over 2,000 people die each year from gang related homicides and over 4 times that are affiliated with gangs. Something clearly needs to be done. The harm from gangs in America affects all people who find themselves surrounded by the…

Street gangs in America are a major nuisance to the economy and safety of citizens of the country. Gangs can illegally sell firearms and pharmaceuticals at a lower cost or higher cost for profit to anybody throughout the country wanting to buy them, immensely hurting the firearm and pharmaceutical industries and any other industries connected to them. Some gangs also commit heinous crimes ranging from burglary to murder and even human trafficking. The U.S. government has many programs and…

A. Formal Organization. (Pg. 175) Secondary groups designed to achieve explicit objectives. These gangs are very intricate but also seem very disoriented. While a majority of the gangsters are low level runners, there’s more control as you go up the ranks. Someone could be a drug runner, then get promoted to maybe making the drugs instead. This formal type of organization is which enables this gang to function. Its not as much of a formal organization but it is essentially organized crime. While…

Book Review Jumped: What Gangs Taught Me about Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemptionn by Jorja Leap is an autobiographical book about the experiences of a UCLA professor and her struggle to understand the lifestyle of gangs, and her goal to deter gang violence. Jorja Leap is an outsider looking at these communities from an intellectual point of view of a professor, but she also has her personal biases and emotions as she reacts to the violence occurring all around the communities that she…

The article “Shuttling Between Nations, Latino Gangs Confound the Law”, written by Ginger Thompson, was very informational to me. The counterculture in the article is gang members. Gang members are the counterculture because they are not the most powerful, influential, or widespread on the earth. Gang members are not respected and often times treated terrible. Gang members are not listened to and are supposed to obey the laws of the dominant culture. In some cases gang members might be the…

American History X When I started watching the movie I wasn’t sure I would like the topic and what I assumed the movie would be all about. The main character Derek I doubt could have been played by any other actor, He drew me into his character and the whole movie. Having worked in the prison system and then fifteen years in the county jail I could name at least 200 men and even women who I witnessed struggled with the gang mentality of the Arian Brotherhood. Even after their release quite…

The film I choose to base my film analysis paper on was End of Watch it was released September 21st of 2012. This film is primarily about two close partners in law enforcement who have been through a lot together. They get assigned to patrol one of the most dangerous areas in LA. The film goes on to show their day to day events while on duty. As the movies continues the two officers begin to grow closer in relationship and always have each other’s backs. Jakes and Mike get dispatched to a call…

Boyz N the Hood is a movie which was released in 1991 and is about teens growing up in the inner city of Los Angeles. Reva, the mother of Tre Styles, sends Tre to live with his father because of some trouble he got into at school. Reva wanted Tre’s father, Furious Styles, to teach him about life and being a man in hopes to protect her son from the streets. While growing up living with his father Tre reunites with his friends “Doughboy”, Ricky, and Chris. Doughboy is in a gang called the…

Gangs in North Carolina Prisons, and How Gangs Communicate with the Outside World Gangs are undoubtedly one of the largest problems that the Department of Corrections faces daily. According to David Starbek prison gang is defined as: “an inmate organization that operates within a prison system, that has a corporate entity, exists into perpetuity, and whose membership is restrictive, mutually exclusive, and often requires a lifetime commitment”(Starbek). A person who was in a gang before…

INTRODUCTION Gang membership is often associated with negative consequences from use of illicit substances (Battin-Pearson et al. 1999; Eitle, Gunkel, and Gundy 2004; Hennigan et al. 2014), antisocial behaviour (Esbensen and Melde 2011; Hennigan et al. 2014), stressful life events (Eitle et al 2004; Hennigan et al 2014), and violent criminal activity (Battin-Pearson et al. 1999; Deschenes and Esbenson 1998; Eitle et al. 2004; Esbensen and Melde 2011; Hennigan et al. 2014). This literature will…