Female Gang Members

In the years prior to the creation for the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program, America’s inner cities was experiencing a substantial increase of gang membership along the youth living in impoverished communities. During the early 1990s, many viewed gang activity as a particular community’s problem, but as youth and gang violence was increasing drastically across the United States’ inner cities, the public’s perception about this social issue changed. Due to the rapid rise of gang violence and youth membership, delinquent behavior by youths began to receive a substantial amount of academic and media attention.

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.

Gang involvement and its associated violent crime have become a rapidly growing problem for the United States. Generally, gangs consist of young people of the same ethnic, racial, and economic background. Usually of a low socio-economic status, these gangs engage in illegal money making activities and intimidate their neighborhoods and rival gangs with violent crimes and victimization. Gang members exemplify a high value for group loyalty and sacrifice.

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).

Even so, early on in my reading on this ethnography, I identified the role gender plays not only for the ethnographer doing the research, but also for the gang members. As the gang members matured into adulthood the similarities in these gender roles that match most societies became apparent,

Although it has been well known that males tend to make up the majority of gang members, an increasing number of female gangs have been showing up; Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Manitoba are just a few of the provinces where female gangs are popping up (Statistics Canada, 2008). Often the study of the female youth gang rate is neglected within research and the correlation between the gangs and social economic facts are forgot about (As cited in Jacob, 2006). Gangs and Girls: Understanding Juvenile Prostitution by Michel Dorais and Patrice Corriveau discusses how “gangs often use girls as accomplices

A study done in 1996 on prisoners of the Arizona Department of Corrections, followed inmates for the first 3 years of their incarceration. This study found that “inmates with no gang affiliation were significantly less likely that those wit either street gang affiliation or prison gang affiliation to have been guilty of a violent misconduct” (Griffin, 2006). Also noted in the Griffon study, inmates who have a gang affiliation are less likely to participate in needed rehab and vocational programs that may help them upon release. A big problem with prison gangs is that very little is known about them, this is because they are very secretive, unlike their counterparts on the streets (Fong, 1991). The reason for this secrecy is so gang members can avoid being persecuted by the prison administration.

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.

It gives out so much information of what it’s like to be part of a female gang. It also shows the long-term consequences of being part of a female gang. It shows the same information that Vigil provided, which was that according to their economic status and their neighborhood conditions, is one of the many reasons why they join. That can be included as street socialization, because many of young females join or start a gang, because of their surroundings and also what they’ve been through in their homes. Moore and Hagedorn mention, “Several studies found that the female gang may be a refuge from physical and sexual abuse at home.” Many women from low-income families have been through physical abuse, which sadly leads them to choosing the wrong path in life. This article also supports my hypothesis that street socialization is one of the leading roles of females joining gangs. Some of their neighborhoods can be considered dangerous and those young women get exposed to that kind of lifestyle, which leads them to the path of wanting to be part of a

All authors have exceptionally provided sociological answers to the research question, but they tended to overemphasize one idea over another. Although Esbensen, Winfree, He, Taylor and Covey share comparable views of what they believe constitutes a gang, one piece of literature was more prone to speaking about the relationship between race and class. For instance, based on a survey, gang members are more likely to be of an ethnic minority and live with only one parent in substandard living conditions (Esbensen, Winfree, He and Taylor, 2001). It is not correct to state that certain races and economic classes are predisposed to criminal behaviour, but this insight does raise the question of why exactly particular races and classes are always link to gang membership. Kathleen A. Fox and Jodi Lane will mention that they believe there

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention put out a bulletin in March of 2001, written by Joan Moore and John Hagedorn. It is centered on female gang research. Moore & Hagedorn tell us in this bulletin that in the 1980’s and 1990’s the male and FEMALE gangs “proliferated.” This is believe to be because of the closing of factories and other manual labor-type jobs that their parents held down for years were now closing rapidly. Many people lost their jobs and the youth

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.

Many of the research that has been done on gang membership have been concentrated on the male population. The minimal work that has been done on female gang membership is reference to the young women has secondary roles or as sex objects in the gangs. However, women roles in gangs are changing in a steadily pace in which female gang member are committing more serious criminal crime and delinquency. The delinquency has been linked towards both serious and minor forms criminal activity. The delinquent behavior for gang members has been established by many factors in particularly in the neighborhoods one lives in. The neighborhood that female gang members live in has a differently impact and development toward them rather than compared with male

Abstract: This review studies in depth research done on street gangs. Social issues have social scientists turning away from including this in their research around this time. Sociological views have been changed dramatically in the past 40 years due to gender and racial studies. Also, women have started to join gangs since America has been changed with woman equality laws passing.

The conception that gang activities only concern the actual members of the gang is a false belief. The activities of a gang actually concern everyone associated with the gang and