Chicago Gang Issues

Gangs originated naturally during the adolescent years of a child. They started from small play groups that eventually found themselves in conflict with other small groups of youth. Due to the conflict between the two small groups of youth it became a part of a child’s mind set to come together as a gang and protect their rights and satisfy the needs that their environment and families couldn’t provide. There are about 24,500 gangs in the U.S and out of those gangs 40% of them are juveniles (Hess, Orthmann, Wright, 2013). There are numerous reason why a child would join a gang, and the

This is a ‘touchy’ subject to most, as most people who live in an urban setting know someone either initiated into a gang or affiliated with a gang in one way or another. This is not a subject that is only skin deep. This is something that was created out of years of struggle and oppression, until the pressure years of social injustice found an outlet in the form of rebellion and organizations designed to fight the power that once suppressed them. At least that is how it began. Now the Gang mentality isn’t about protecting the community, it’s about power, local respect, fortune, and most of all fear. These are the same organizations that recruit children and adolescents to become drug dealers and

Gangs are not a new problem to the United States. Gangs have often been romanticized in literature and the media with a classic example being “West Side Story”. Americans have long been fascinated with the Mafia, and infamous gangsters such as Al Capone and John Gotti have even been elevated in status as cultural icons. Americans have seen an uprising in “Gangster Rap” since the early 1990’s. Many people tend to think of gangs in America as being made up primarily of young inner-city black males with a small percentage of white males. Americans tend to forget that gangs also include girls, adults, and children. One area that most Americans have not started to look into yet is the influence of the growing number of Hispanic Gangs.

“Gangs have morphed from social organizations into full-fledged criminal enterprises” (Thomas, 2009, para 5). Gangs are highly sophisticated and more dangerous then ever. The number one reason to join a gang is money; and 95 percent of gangs profit comes from drug dealing

‘’Teen shot dead in gang wars’’, ‘’ two bystanders killed in gang shootout ‘’, these are familiar headlines at the front page of the local newspapers, aren’t they? Every day thousands of people are affected by gangs across the world. Women are left widowed, children are orphaned and parents are left childless. Let me put what most people are thinking ‘’ gangs are a threat to all of us no matter what sex, age or background we are from. They ruin the safety of a society as a whole, is a never-ending cycle which needs to be stopped and finally being a gang member most probably wrecks an individual’s life.

Before continuing, it is crucial to understand how gangs originated. In the article “Where All the Madness Began: A Look at Gang History”, Hoover stated that both African American and Hispanic Gangs began forming in the 1920’s, but it wasn’t until the 1980’s when gangs became organized and violent to the extent for which they are recognized today (2). In the midst of the desperate conditions blacks and Latinos found themselves in, young men from these racial or ethnic groups created units within their neighborhoods as a sign of brotherhood. They wanted to show, white people specifically, that they were powerful and that they were not broken or limited by of the environments that powerful white people had created. Furthermore, in the 20’s, gangs

Gangs in the United States have increased rapidly, and are becoming more violent and deadly than ever. There are deaths of innocent, young, and gang affiliated people dying each year. This everyday occurrence brings moral and heart felt emotions to these death tragedies. These gangs are corrupting our streets and neighborhoods of America, which is something that is needed to be stopped. All members get introduced and jumped in for a reason, a reason of family, trust, acceptance, and respect which threatens many people today. Every year gang violence is proposed in which it should be prevented in today’s public because they have the urge to be involved with conflicts based on rivalries over reputation and turf, compensates on creating a lot of violence where innocent people are being killed, participate in drug trafficking, and encourages the youth to get involved and join a group of affiliated crime.

Although gangs target and recruit youth at a young age, sometimes youth have no other choice at times, but to fall into deviant behavior and gangs. Most of these gangs are within urban areas, and even some grow up in the same

Gangs are very dangerous to everyone in society. “Gangs are groups of people (mostly young males) who band together for protection and a sense of belonging. The U.S. Department of Justice officially defines a youth gang as a group of young people involved in criminal activity” (Gangs 1). There are about one million gang members in more than 20,00 criminally active gangs in the United States. Also, that group of about one million people, are accountable for up to eighty percent of our nation’s crimes. Since 2005, gangs have nationally added about 200,000 members (Targeting Gangs 1). This is why more action from the community needs to be taken to help with the growing gang-related crimes here in America.

Juveniles involved in gang violence is not a current revelation, it has been an issue in the past as well. Since the 1950s through the 1980s gangs have been a part of the community and as the years pass they continually get more dangerous than what they were before (Miller, 1992). When this was going the media went ballistic on how gangs began to “flower in the 1950s, died in the 1960s, revival in early 1970s, and dormancy in later 1970s,” but later in a survey it was revealed

A problem facing the common citizen regarding this problem is their perception of gangs, how they view gangs and how they think gangs operate. To the average person when they think of a gang, they think of some teenagers smoking on a street corner brandishing knives. And while that’s partially true, it’s very far from the whole truth. When it comes to organized crime, there is no one type of gang, there different types of gangs varying in their size, influence, and how dangerous they are. At the bottom of the food chain is the street gangs consisting of a few dozen members at most and, like the name implies, they

The community problem of gangs and related violence is prevalent all over the United States. Young people join gangs for a variety of reasons. Some may feel isolated from their general school or social communities and search out the connections and community affiliation offered by gangs. Others are seduced by the importance attached to generally laudable qualities like loyalty and honor. In a gang setup, however, these are generally proven by violent or criminal activities. Some young people could also be somewhat seduced by the romantic notion of belonging to a group of people who all stand for the same thing and would give their lives for the cause and each other. To curb the danger related to gangs and gang violence and to protect young people from being coerced into gangs, parents, educators, and government officials need to be aware of the various reasons why a young person would join a gang, the most insidious, violent, and dangerous of which is arguably coercion. Open and honest communication between parents and their children could be seen as the first important platform from which to fight the continuous threat of gang membership and violence.

An increasing crime statistic in the United States is a lot of violence by young gangs. In this case, young gangs tend to kill other young people in a large percentage of incidents these juvenile killers belong to young gangs. Young gangs band together for various reasons and get into trouble with the law are certainly not new in America. Young gangs have been around since the early 1800’s it was formed young kids of low-income immigrants who felt that society held no place for them . The earliest gangs, which flourished in new England, New York, and Philadelphia. Today’s youth gangs are composed by young Latinos of African Americans, but their problems are the same poorly educated, poorly trained without resources, they band together for

“Reports show that gangs are present in every state in the US, where in 1970 they existed in less than half of all states” (Lohmann). Teen gangs are started around the ages of 14 and 15. When teenagers get into a gang, he or she usually gets into the gang to make themselves look resilient or try to blend in, in account of problems at home or simply if one does not feel loved. Teen gangs are becoming a problem in the United States and the effects of these gangs are unnecessary youth deaths, alcohol and drug abuse, in addition to young teenage boys becoming another statistic in today’s society.

The presence of gangs has always been of concern to society, largely owing to their criminal behavior. The solution to the problem, however, lays not so much in police and legal action, but in addressing, the social causes of gang development. In other words, society has to change social conditions such as poverty, family abuse and neglect, the educational system, the Criminal Justice system, employment opportunities and the nature of social programs in order to prevent the development of criminally oriented gangs. Indeed, society would probably benefit a great deal if it could stop punishing such behavior and, instead, focus on the creation of a social environment that could prevent the development of criminally oriented gangs. The primary cause of gang development, it has been well established, is poverty. This is because poverty causes economic and social pressures that lead to youth developing a poor image of self and society. In addition, homes that suffer from poverty are often prone to family neglect and abuse, which aggravates the problem. Unfortunately, poverty and dysfunctional families tend to congregate in the same neighborhoods, which lead to already embittered youngsters feeding off each other 's anger and bitterness. This anger and bitterness is collectively so strong that it resists any and all efforts of the educational system, community and social programs to promote socially productive and upright behaviors. In fact, educational and other social efforts