Female Gang Delinquency

Females in gangs follow what is known as the gang’s code of dressing, which would include having same tattoos, same hair color and same dressing style. The system of gangs have always incorporated a sense of brotherhood and family towards its members, and females who enter these gangs want to take refuge away from their homes and schools, and that is why females today who are joining gangs and are ready to go at any level to connect to the gangs;many of them are willing to take tests like group sex with gang members or doing burglary just to prove their mettle. The roles of females in the coming times in street gangs are more like to change for the worse, and females will be involved in more and more gruesome crimes, because of the new ideologies of male gang members that females who are caught are generally given a relaxed sentence compared to their male

(Hunt, Joe-Laidler, and Evans, 2002 p.376) Female gang members comprise approximately 20-46% by the Compare to official law enforcement data. Adolescent girls with affiliation to gangs have higher rates of offenders than adolescent girls with no gang affiliation (Bjerregaard and Smith, 1993; Deschenes and Esbensen, 1999; Miller, 2001; see also Flesicher and Krienert, 2004; Thornberry, Krohn, Lizette, and Chard-Wierchem, 1993). Gang members are exposed to significant numbers of family and environmental risk factors (Howell, 2004).

Gangs have been a growing issue across the United States for many decades now. Youth gang violence may have started around the ‘50s, but did not become a serious issue until the ‘80s and from there went through a downward spiral in some cities like downtown Los Angeles, which was where the notorious Bloods and Crips gangs both started. First, let’s simply define a gang as a group of people, mostly men ranging for ages 14-30, who claim territory and use it to make money for themselves and their neighborhood through illegal activities such as trafficking drugs and weapons. There are many reasons and components that are factored in when conducting research to hypothesize “why do people join gangs?” That is why it is necessary to compare and contrast all the social, biological, psychological, developmental, and substance abuse aspects and relate it to joining a gang. It is also important to touch base on the differences between males and females that join gangs, such as power differentials, social learning differences and social stratification differences.

For much of history, gang members who are female have generally been left out of the equation. When both the layman and the researcher looked at gang life, gang members, and how they function, rarely have women and their role in gang culture been considered. However, women have long played important roles in gang life, culture, and membership, and the importance of such cannot be ignored. When women in gangs are studied, patterns emerge, the paths that often lead to gang life are able to be greater understood, and this understanding may lead to better practices in gang prevention and intervention.

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.

Many years of research have gone into studying why youth turns to gang involvement. A sector of this population has only recently been a focus of any study at all and that is the female. From the authors De La Rue, Espelage research they estimate that female gang membership is anywhere from 10 to 35% of the total gang population (De La Rue, Espelage 2014 pg. 1). There are many pieces that drive females to join the gang lifestyle. There are three major causes that drive females to gang involvement; family influences, relationship drives, and prior victimization.

Starting in the 1980s, reports of female involvement in gangs, drug sales, and violence began to surface as a serious problem in America. To support claims of increased female delinquency, reporters and scholars often cite crime statistics or anecdotes from field studies. The reasons they give to explain this female crime wave generally fall into one of two categories: drugs as a means for economic success the idea that the increased availability of crack cocaine provides economic means to poverty-ridden women suffering from the effects of urbanization and deindustrializationand social movements the idea that female “liberation” has hit the streets.

Many people recognize that gangs have been around for what seems like forever. What they don't realize is that the numbers are increasing to amazing proportions, there were 28,000 youth gangs with 780,200 members in the United States (in 2000) and 20% to 46% of those members are female (Evans). And what is even more shocking is, in Chicago alone there are 16,000 to 20,000 female gang members (Eghigian). These girls start out as ?groupies?, become members, and sometimes even leaders of all-girl gangs because of troubles in the home, a need for money, for the social scene, or just because it is all they know.

Female juveniles are known to be the most vulnerable. If they are growing up in poverty or suffering from abuse, their delinquent behavior are often leads to self-destruction. Female juveniles will most likely grow up to join street gangs, drop out of school, or become teenage mothers. Girls are the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice system with minority females disproportionately represented among delinquent girls; two-thirds are girls of color. The majority have been subjected to some form of emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse (Lowen, 2014). The statistical evidence behind the delinquent behavior of female juvenile is disturbing. Juvenile girls are likely to be criminalizes for their behavior than juvenile boys would in the criminal justice system.

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.

Joining gangs is a way to make friends and belong to a group where you are accepted by most (if not all) its members. A young female without friends is a prisoner in her own world, there is no consistent interaction with people and often feel like they are living a miserable life. The fun and wildness of gang membership are also an attraction for females, being able to have fun, go out to parties, trying out different drugs, doing careless things, and the adrenaline of doing bad things and not getting caught is very fun for most female gangsters (Carrasco, 1999). Gang membership offer females an opportunity to experience new things and be accepted by people who will not be just consider your friends but instead your brothers and sisters.

Through in-depth interviews with 20 female gang members in Columbus, Ohio, Miller (1998) found that women often have difficulty being accepted as gang members. Many attempt to show “masculine” leadership qualities, such as being tough, able to fight, and being willing to engage in criminal acts for the gangs. Beliefs that women are weaker than men, however, mean that women have a harder time proving their commitment to the gang. Nevertheless, women might also gain acceptance through connections to influential, high-status men – a route to acceptance that is less available to men (Miller 1998). Women’s participation in crime within the gang is also different from men’s. Though girls are involved in less serious forms of delinquency, gang boys are still more likely to be involved in the most serious forms of crime, such as drive-by shootings and gun assaults. This is due both to the deliberate exclusion of girls from these types of crimes and the fact that young women themselves often use gender as means of avoiding crimes they find dangerous or morally dubious (Miller and Brunson 2000). The lesser involvement of girls in more serious forms of crime, however, can lead to the devaluation and mistreatment of female gang members because they are perceived as less valuable to the gang. Female gang members are also more likely to be sexually mistreated than male gang members (Miller 1998). Given these

Improvised juveniles are less likely to join a gang than than those from middle-class America, this group of teens are found in suburban neighborhoods. Juveniles that are actively involved in gangs are under the age of 18, and joining gangs at an early age as young as 11-12 years old. The racial and ethnic gang memberships show that black and Hispanic gang members are more eminent in the inner city, in comparison to whites, Hispanics members is over 45%, and black members are nearly at 40%, while whites are at the noticeable rate of 9.7%. Statistics do suggest that whites have an increased membership in rural area indicating more than 56% participation. Law enforcement agencies overwhelmingly report a bigger percent of male gang members versus female gang members—a typical finding from law enforcement data. Despite a rising fear of females joining gangs, the percentage of females joining gangs remain around 8% during the study period, with 90% of juvenile male gang

In order for us to understand the nature and extent of girl’s gang, we must first consider where our notions and rising interest of girl gangs comes from. This is because, before the 1960’s, majority of mainstream gang research associated youth gangs with the male experiences, failing to throw some light on female gang experiences. This was as a result of

There were three common factors across St. Louis and Columbus that influenced girls to join gangs: gang involved family members, problems in the family, and neighborhood exposure. Many girls grew up in neighborhoods with high levels of gang activity. With gang members right outside their doorsteps, it was near impossible for some girls to avoid being swept into the gang life. Inevitably, the gang girls would have to