Youth in Gangs

“There are an estimated 23,388 youth gangs with 664,906 members in all 50 States. These numbers are probably conservative estimates because many jurisdictions deny, often for political and image reasons, that there is a problem, especially in the early stages of youth gang development in a community.” (Huff p.1) This is an outrageous number of youths involved in such a dangerous way of life and it is not something that can be ignored. No matter how much the people of power within a city ignore the problem it won’t just go away. Not all of these young individuals do this simply because they have nothing else in life, however, the majority do. When looking at the numbers above just think if many of these youths had people there to support them and making them feel accepted without going down the path of a criminal life style. The question is, what factors lead to youth turning to the gang life?

            Many people feel as though our youth choose to become wrapped up in this life style, most of the time that is not he case. I have had some experience working around troubled youth that have taken the road to gang life, but the only way to understand it is to listen to what they have to say. In many instances these kids join a gang because they were raised into the lifestyle, it has been a part of their family since before they were born, and gang lifestyle is all they know. Another contributing factor is that the individual’s parents might not be home often; do to work schedule and only one form of income. These kids then turn to the neighborhood gangs for that acceptance.  “There seems to be a large number of single parent families or “latch keys” kids. By some estimates 27%, or 18 million, of America’s children are raised in single parent homes. It appears that 1990’s parents have little or no time to spend with their children.” (Valdez p.493)

            There are youth gangs in most of the cities throughout the United States, but the majority are in places stated in the following quote out of an article called, Youth  Gangs: Continuity and Change, by Irving A. Spergel. “Contemporary youth gangs are located primarily in lower-class, slum, ghetto, or barrio communities; it is not clear, however, that class, culture, race, or ethnicity per se primarily account for gang problems. More likely, they interact with community characteristics like poverty, social instability, and failures of inter-agency organization and social isolation.” (Spergel p.211)  With consideration from the literature discussed, the contributing factors seem to lead youths to the involvement and acceptance of gang affiliation.

    

Huff, C. R. "Comparing the Criminal Behavior of Youth Gangs and At-Risk Youths." Nation Institute of Justice: Research in Brief (1998):p. 1

Spergel, Irving A. "Youth Gangs: Continuity and Change." Crime and Justice 12 (1990): p. 211

Valdez, Al. Gangs: a Guide to Understanding Street Gangs. 3rd Edition ed. San Clemente, CA: Law Tech Pub., 2000: p. 493

Street Gangs

There are a variety of ways that “Street Gangs” can be defined. So to get a little idea of what a street gang is let's focus on one of those definitions. According to the California penal Code 186.22, a street gang is defined as "any ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons, whether formal or informal, having as one its primary activities the commission of one or more of the criminal acts enumerated in paragraphs (1) to (8), inclusive, of subdivision (E), which has a common name or common identifying sign or symbol, whose members individually or collectively engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity." (Klein p. 17)

Where I grew up there was no real concept of gangs. You herd of them on movies and television, but never really saw the impact or understood why people would want to join a gang. When I started to learn more and more about gangs it becomes very clear as to why people join these gangs. “A police sergeant in Miami commented during an interview that gangs fulfill members’ needs for identity, recognition, protection, love, and understanding (perhaps missing at home), status, money, and opportunity.” (Conly p. 18)

When you think of street gangs, what is the first thing that comes to mind? To me it is a variety of different ethnicities that come from the same demographic that turn to each other for acceptance. When street gangs first were documented it wasn’t always like this. According to a piece written by James Diego Vigil, “prior to the 1970’s gang violence was still popularly associated with white ethnic enclaves in the cities of the Midwest and East, and gang incidents were typically brawls involving fists, sticks, and knives.” (Vigil p. 225) This excerpt from Vigil is a far different picture these days, “Gangs exist in all ethnic categories. Although African American and Hispanic members are predominate there are also gangs with white and Asian members.” (Conly p. 16) Not only is there more of an ethnic variety, but the violence and weapons have become more sophisticated as well.

Conly, Catherine H. "Chapter 2." Street Gangs Current Knowledge and Strategies. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 1993. 16-18.

Klein, Malcolm W. "Section #2." Chasing after Street Gangs: a Forty-year Journey. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. 17-18.

Vigil, James D. "Urban Violence and Street Gangs." Annual Review Of Anthropology Vol. 32 (2003): 225.