Criminological and Gang MembershipApril SmolkowiczGeorgia Gwinnett CollegeCriminological and Gang MembershipSocial scientists have researched and documented empirical findings of the many one-of-a-kind influential factors of formative years gang and non-gang involvement across the United States. While it is now not feasible to predict whether or not a younger man or woman will be a section of a gang, possession of certain danger elements can extend the probability.Social Leaning Theory Article One The motive of this paper is to analyze adolescence gang and non-gang attitudes and behaviors with the social learning idea factors and its possibility of predicting youths self-reporting of gang membership, explicitly with the ethnicity of “Hispanics’ and Anglos, of eight-grade college students in two southwestern cities”. The lookup article is empirical that meets the requirements of the capstone mission with the gaining of understanding on the difficulty of adolescence gang and non-gang membership attitudes and behaviors. The hypothetical context is primarily based absolutely on comparing key variables of the social learning theory, advantageous reinforcers, terrible punishers, and indications of differential definitions.The lookup method of cross-sectional quantitative records is used, that is then recoded systematically and equipped to be entered into a pc database. This evaluation will serve as an additional evaluation with the previous longitudinal information that is used
Abstract: This paper will discuss the correlation of youth gangs and how the cognitive and social learning theory comes in to play, and why female and male juveniles end up in the system. It will touch bases on how youth surroundings have a lot to do with the decisions they choose to make and the life style they end up living. Gangs usually recruit youth off the street, if a child sees that being a part of a gang is an everyday thing and is normal then they will be influenced more to do that. The cognitive theory ultimately states that a child learns from observing and from there environment. This essay will touch on the different statistics and the reasoning for youth gangs and gangs in general, it will also show statics of youth who are apart of gangs and are incarcerated. It will also show how it correlates with the cognitive theory and social learning theory.
Gang and non-gang comparisons, primarily of at-risk minority youth drawn from institutionalized and non- institutionalized settings, consistently reveal an association between admitted gang membership and self-reported crime or delinquency. Although female youth are shown to be relatively underrepresented in gangs and gang activity, they self-report gang membership at a rate up to 4½ times higher (20% to 46%) than typically indicated in surveys of law enforcement (Esbensen & Huizinga, 1993).
Gangs have been a point of concern for states and societies around the world for centuries. Youth gangs are not exempt from that same categorization and have operated for the same amount of time worldwide. Over the last century however, a proliferation of youth gangs has been witnessed, especially among Hispanic youths immigrating into the United States. Researchers and scholars have offered multiple theories as to why youths, and Hispanics youths in particular integrate themselves into gang organizations. Three schools of thought arise when conducting gang integration research. Rational Economics Theory1 proposes that youths, and all individuals, join gangs for financial and material benefit. Cultural Deviance Theory considers youth gang
Gang activity and gang violence have been a major issue in the urban community for over half a century, dominated by mostly minority youth. This essay will review the question: Does growing up as a minority with a dysfunctional family setting aide or contribute to joining a gang, therefore continuing the cycle of gang violence and activity? In order to dive deeper into this subject, several references from the internet and Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez will be stated and discussed. After the discussion of the web articles and passages from the book a solution will be suggested to help the misguided youth of America to make better life decisions than just throwing their lives away as expendable tools of urban guerilla warfare.
In James Howell’s “Gangs in America’s Communities” book he mentions that a gang should be looked at more of as a social network rather than an “organization” (Howell, 2012, p.60). This can be especially true for the youth who get involved in gangs. For the youth it is normal for them to want to belong somewhere so their peers have major influences in what they do and even how they think. The emergence or involvement of a gang among youth is identifying with each other and eventually giving themselves a name. Howell then describes the next step as grasping the gang culture by wearing distinctive clothing, colors, having rituals, gatherings, and the exclusion of other youth. Most youth join gangs between the ages of 11 and 15, the peak of gang involvement usually occurs between the age of 14 to 16. Some of the risk factors that get them involved in a
Gangs and Organized Crime in the United States is on the rise. With the increase in turf wars, position and the financial gains, gang wars and Organized Crime are linked together in many ways. Within this paper, I will show how they are all tied together in. The M-13’s are the largest reported gang controlling large areas of our states. However, the largest area to which the MS-13’s control is within our own capital, Washington D.C. Their leaders rule all the gangs from inside El Salvador. I will discuss other gangs, and their ties into Organized Crime.
There is no definite term for the word “gang”. State and other local government organizations tend to create their own definition. The depiction of “street gang” is consistently intertwined with “youth gang”. However, the term “street gang” can mean two particular meanings that raise it’s face value. 1st, it proposes a common quality of gangs: They usually contain a street presence. Street socialization is a huge attribute of young gangs. 2nd, this expression also refers to “street crimes,” that is, violent and grave crimes (e.g., assaults, drive-by shootings, robberies, homicides) that happen on the streets and that frequently cause concern to citizens and policymakers. “More than 1 million young people in the U.S. (about two percent of youth) belong to a gang”("Study Finds 1 Million Juvenile Gang Members in U.S."). The ongoing activities of these infractions cause distress among the inhabitants within the community. Recently teenagers have been getting more and more involved. Questioning the future of the country. The majority portion of high-schoolers who attach to a gang do so at a young age, usually consisting between 11 and 15 years old. Well knit families are a huge protective factor in helping kids resist the urge of joining gangs. Youth join gangs for a vast amount reasons, including money, feeling of support and belonging, peer status, grasp a sense of protection, or portray an outlaw
Esbensen and Peterson draws on their research on how youth gangs were formed and operated and the stereotypes the youth gangs faced in the United States. Esbensen and Peterson outlined that sex and race/ethnicity were related to youth gangs and paid particular attention to the results provided by the National Youth Gang Survey. According to the National Youth Gang Survey, 90% of the gang members are Hispanic or African American. Based on a study on 11 cities in the United States, it was found that gang youths looked extremely similar to the youth residents in that specific community. Esbensen and Peterson outlined the community risk factors of youth gangs which includes individuals, family, peer, school and sex and race/ethnicity risk.
Future gang members tend to become involved in delinquency--including violence--and alcohol or marijuana use at an early age. During childhood and early adolescence, friendships with aggressive peers, conduct problems, and involvement in delinquency are stepping stones to gang membership. Future gang members are likely to have other gang members in their school classrooms, they perform poorly in elementary school, and they have a low degree of commitment to school. They often are identified as learning disabled. They show higher levels of stability in the family, peer group, and school settings, and they spend lots of unsupervised time with friends. Many youth gang members have none of these characteristics. These are good kids, from good families, and they are good students; however, these youths do not remain in gangs long. Adolescents ' allegiances to friends, gangs, and other peer groups tend to be brief.
Gang groups such as the Blood, the Crips, Aryan Brotherhood, the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia were amongst the intended sample but the leaders of the Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood told members to decline from participating in the study (Fox et al., 2012). After the remaining individuals who were part of gangs and individuals not a part of a gang were interviewed the results indicate that crime victimization occurred more in gang-affiliated inmates rather than non-gang affiliated inmates (Fox et al., 2012). The results also indicate that gang members were younger, were more likely to have a juvenile arrest history, more likely to have witnessed violence within the home and had a lesser percentage of education and employment history (Fox et al., 2012). Gang members had an increase in the chances they experienced victimization while they were under the influence (Fox et al., 2012). Lastly, gang members were more likely than non-gang members to experience victimization in terms of drive-by shootings, simple assaults and aggravated assaults (Fox et al.,
Within the past two decades, a growing concern has been focused on what can be considered a social epidemic among the youth of our nation. This social distress stems directly from the rising number of youth gangs throughout the country. Gang mentality and social deviance of this form has been noticed and documented in this country for decades. “ 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. Today, gangs are made up largely of ethnic groups, especially African American and Latino Americans, and handguns and other military hardware are the typical vehicles for the acts of
The paper will address the reasons why youth join gangs. Social disorganization theory is relevant as to the topic of why youth join gangs because it looks at the learning techniques and of youth joining gangs. In this paper, I argue that youth join gangs because of low socio-economic status, parental influences and neighborhood influences. Social disorganization theory is able to explain low socio-economic status and neighbourhood influences as reasons for youth gang involvement, but it is unable to account for why parental influences lead youth to join gangs.
In order to determine if the respondent was an actual gang member as opposed to respondents that were members of informal gangs, the respondents was asked to reveal the name of the gang they were a member of. If the respondent did not answer with the name of the gang, that respondent was not considered an actual gang member and therefore not counted (Katz et. al.). The sample consisted of 939 juvenile arrestees, 81% male and 19% female. Within the sample, 25.7% were 14 years of age or younger, 20.3% were 15 years old and 54% were 16 years old or older (Katz et. al.). Gang affiliation / participation were rather high at 52% of all respondents.
Dating back to the 1800s, the United States has had a long history of gangs and gang violence. There are a total of 1,150,000 gang members in the United States and 40% of them are under the age of 18 years old. There has been much research done on gang members, but the theory that stands out most is Social Identity Theory. When considering that almost half of gang members are under the age of 18, it is not shocking that Social Identity Theory applies to the lives of these gang members.
Thomas Winfree Jr, Ni He and Terrance J Taylor in a works entitled Youth Gangs and Definitional Issues: When is a Gang a Gang and Why Does it Matter? In their study they used 6,000 middle school students. The looked to examine the youth gang phenomenon by using five restrictive membership. Their research design was set up using students who were in the eighth grade in eleven cities. The method they used were self-administered questionnaires as part of the National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) (Esbensen, He, Taylor, & Winfree, 2001). With the final sample consisting of 5,935 eight graders that were in public school. The data collected in this study was cross sectional. The students in the study represented minority race or ethnicity. In the current study they asked the students the two following questions “Have you ever been a gang member?” and “Are you now in a gang?” (Esbensen, He, Taylor, & Winfree, 2001). They set out to separate youth groups from youth gangs. Making criminal activity the key element to distinguish between the two. This study fits into the differential opportunity theory because they set out to see what types of involvement the students had in gangs. They wanted them to identify there gangs criminal level by indicating the gangs level of participation. Stating examples from getting in fights with other gangs all the way to damaging property. It fits in the theory because they are examining criminal gangs which is one level out of the three gangs. On the third level they wanted to state if there gang had any type of organization. (Esbensen, He, Taylor, & Winfree, 2001) Used the following question to indicate that by asking the respondents if the following describe their gang: “there are initiation rites, the gang has established a leaders, and the gang has symbol colors”. The last thing they posed was the involvement of the gang by indicating