Gangs and Social Change/Martin Sanchez Jankowski Reading 11 in Chapter 5 Social Structural Theories. The article was by Martin Sanchez Jankowski which focuses on some of the recent researchers have observed gangs. Gangs are an organized group of criminals. He describes it two ways by the most recent research and they stated that gathering of individuals with a specific negative set of personal attributes or a group of individuals who act in a deviant and criminal manner. (Introduction to Criminology, pg.
For many, to fit in or be accepted in their “hood” could mean living a life of crime because that is the only way they know to survive. From the power point in class that was discussed, I conclude that lots of African Americans are in gangs. As stated in the article, the metro area of Houston has the most gang members that are active in the community. Gang members are involved in dog fighting, murders, human trafficking and many other illegal things that corrupt our
Food, shelter, and money causes juveniles to turn to gangs. Areas with high gang activity forces/intimidates, (peer pressure), children to join gangs. Less popular juveniles join gangs to become cool or to claim the social letter. Gangs may present themselves as a means of survival to youth who lack basic essentials such as food, clothing and shelter (http://www.gangfree.org/gangs_why.html). Juveniles who live in low-income neighborhoods or poor neighbors join gangs for food, shelter, and money.
WP2 Synthesis 7/6/2012 Gangs Gangs in the world today have been a major issue to all governments. Gangs will continue to be a problem in our world today because of an informal market, poverty and the youth today. Danny Malec wrote a review on Transforming Latino Gang Violence in the United States. In this article he believes and understands that due to the United States having an informal market, seduces the youth today by replacing family role models with gang members. Grossman agrees with Malec’s views, while taking a media strong stand point on this issue.
PROS AND CONS OF JUVENILE GANGS Pros and Cons of Juvenile Gangs The two separate opinions in relation to juvenile gangs come from the perspective of those who experience the life style and simply those who see the negative effects of the juveniles who are subjected to such a life style. Although the proponents of the gang life style are very few and not well documented the inner social purpose of gang activity is based on as sense of survival that in the environment it is present provides social tools and associations that if not present would cause the gang members to be repeatedly victimized. The opponents of the gang life style would be those of the rest of the population. Even those who have not seen gang activities directly are repeatedly exposed to the worst stereotypical results of such a life style from popular media such as news and movies or through continued publicity of gangster rap or other “art” forms that originate from such cultures and now echo through popular culture straight to the attention and popularity of suburban juveniles that were before rarely subjected to that type of lifestyle, even to include violence, murder, and heavy substance abuse. The life style of a gangster can seen easily as one of a career criminal, and in many cases this is true; the question that has to be posed is simply why, why would a juvenile chose that life style, one that is surely going to end with tragedy, the death of many friends, family, and almost certain imprisonment.
Peer perssure is a global manfaction and is a problem to anyone. The word gang means an informal body of friends where a group of people have eachothers back and always ten to do then bad things. Graffiti is a way of showing someones feeling graffiti is an art work but gangs mostly use it as away of showing who's land your on and to show who is in control around there. Now you saying what does all this have to do with peer perssure? Well it has alot to do, peer perssure is a big role in gangs and gangs go along with graffiti.
As such, the best way to deal with them is through rehabilitation rather than punishment. The Time U.S magazine ran an article in 2001 titled, “Should the Law Treat Kids and Adults Differently?” Reasons why they should not treat kids and adults differently stated by the article were: • The juvenile prison system can help kids turn their lives around; rehabilitation gives kids a second chance. • Children don’t have the intellectual or moral capacity to understand the consequences of their actions. • Children should be able to get deadly weapons in the first place. Adults who provide kids with guns used in violent crimes should be held accountable.
Young teens have a large target on their back because most gangs look for them to be new recruits. They feel the younger generation is a great age to start teaching them what they need to know so that one day they can be the leaders. Teens get pressured and threatened to get them to join (Recruit Their Members). In many cases there’s no way of getting away from it. Gang members also bribe young teens with alcohol and drugs.
In this article, we shall evaluate the effectiveness of the measures that have been taken to control the children and adolescents who have a high risk of future offending. According to researchers, there has been a lot of arrests of young children and adolescents. Law enforcement in the United States for example arrested 2.4 million children aged 18 years and below. This was a 18% of all arrests made, 33% of all property crimes and 17% of the criminal activities that were committed that year (Snyder, 1999). More significant is that cases of cases of youthful offenders are on the rise on among the young female compared to their male counterparts and this situation is raising an alarm (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1999).
Of course there could be more structure which would cause gangs to be less damaging to our culture but the original idea behind it is a good one. We have things like Boys and Girls Club or after school programs to keep children busy and out of trouble, but those seem to be for youth whose parents and families are involved in their lives and play an active role in the decisions they make. Other children don’t have that starting at a very young age so they become independent and think they can do things on their own. That is the idea behind a gang. It is a group of individuals that want to find their place but have no direction to guide them.