Gangs and Injunctions

The first chapter of Policing Gangs in America is entitled, “Studying the Police Response to Gangs.” The primary purpose of the chapter is to establish how police agencies; Inglewood, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Phoenix in specific,

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.

Most law-enforcement personnel agree on a couple of key points: gangs will always be around, but the negative impacts caused by gangs can be prevented or mitigated to some extent. However, media reporting has a natural tendency to cover areas experiencing escalations in gang violence, sometimes directly or inadvertently creating the illusion that the upsurge is

With the leading number of gangs in the country, Los Angeles is thought of as the gang capital of the world. Employing gang suppression strategies that take distinct forms, from anti-gang injunctions to high rate of incarcerations, the City of Angels has failed to live up to its angelic name. Known instead for its demonic gang activity and police suppression efforts, Los Angeles has taken over media headlines as one of the most dangerous places to subsist. Representing a worrisome issue for residents, visitors, city government officials, as well as urban planners, gang violence has rapidly become a threat to public safety. Although current-day gang culture has eased off on the violence, it continues to be one of the greatest planning challenges

Individuals who are affiliated with gangs commit crimes such as homicide consistently. Gangs target areas where people are not unified and would be less likely to contact authorities if violence broke out. Drive by shootings occur so often that Detective Dale Wallis says “they [gangs] do not care who’s going to get shot” (qtd. in Minty 1). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did a report to determine the top five United States cities to have high levels of gang homicide. Those five cities were Los Angeles, California; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Long Beach, California; Oakland, California, and Newark, New Jersey. The study

Criminal activities and gangs have been a continuous problem in California. Focusing on what helps society and the community become a safer environment has lead to civil gang injunctions. Keeping society safe is a responsibility for the local police departments. A civil gang injunction is a court order that prohibits a specific criminal street gang from engaging in various activities such as: fighting, trespassing, intimidation, association with the gang members and graffiti. CGI’s are a public nuisance, which is considered anything that is injurious or deleterious to one’s enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. Civil Gang Injunctions affects the entire community. CGI’s can best be described as behavior of criminal street gangs. City attorneys

This week’s reading was a chapter from the book Police, Power, and the Product of Racial Boundaries by Ana Muniz analyzed the function and outcomes of gang injunctions, specifically the Glendale Corridor Gang Injunction. From what I understood, gang injunctions were used as a modern peculiar institution that reestablished the definition of race and normalized forms of racial inequality to fit their societal needs. Society’s wishes to gentrify lead to the displacement of certain people of color and justified the use of violence against individuals through police action. This is similar to slavery and the separation between white and black to justify the use of violence and dehumanization by reducing African Americans to objects of labor when

The main intent of the gang injunction was applied into this neighborhood to maintain race and class boundaries by which the police and city prosecutors executed. Gang injunctions are issued by the court in order to restraining order against a gang. “If alleged gang members are listed on an injunction, they are not allowed to engage in behavior that is otherwise legal,including-but not limited to-congregating in groups of two or more, standing in public for more than five minutes, wearing certain clothes, and making certain gestures. They can be arrested if they engage in any of these activities”(Muniz. Pg 34). With that being said, although gang injunctions have the intent to control gangs and bring less crime to neighborhoods they actually criminalize communities of color by stigmatizing public space in target neighborhoods. In addition, “ scholars assert gang injunctions are used to control black and Latino communities through mechanisms of criminalization”(Muniz. Pg.37). Thus, gang injunctions control our lives by telling is what we can and what we can were or were we can hanging out at. Usually people of color or the lower class are the ones who are not notified where these gang injunctions are taken place and for how long. It is the white and upper class who take part in these injunctions. “Business owners favored gang injunctions because they legalized the removal of “undesirables” from middle-class entertainment and consumer centers”(Muniz.Pg79). Considering this, the wealthy class of society just want to get more wealthy by removing the unwanted people from their communities and building shops,markets and stores to generate more money into their

The United States of America faces a highly complex problem that is threatening to destroy the fabric of its unique urban society. This problem has been developing for many years and has become entwined into the core of American society to such a point where it has virtually become accepted as the norm to the millions of people whose quality of life has been greatly reduced by it. The problem in its most simple form is crime, however, this is evident as a problem that demands improvement in nearly every country throughout the world, so this essay will look closely at the crime problem that has become synonymous with modern day urban America - gang crime. To fully understand the detrimental

Street gangs in this country can probably be traced back to the first wave of Europeans who migrated to the colonies for a better life for themselves and their families. Many of the first gangs were formed as a means of self protection, with the thinking that there is simply strength in numbers. The missions of gangs in today’s society have grown and emerged to include many violent criminal avenues, including drug trafficking, prostitution, money laundering, and extortion but the original thinking that there is strength in numbers remains true. Criminology experts believe that the number of teens involved in gangs or gang activity may be as high as 1 in every 5 people in most urban areas. Those number jump to 1 in every 3 people in

Throughout the United States, empirical articles have been researched and documented the gang problems that reside within a large number of our cities and urban communities, and so not long ago it has become possible to study the relationship between violent victimization and gang membership.

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). About one million gang members are in more than 20,000 criminally active gangs in the United States. Also, that group of about one million people is accountable for up to eighty percent of our nation’s crimes. Since 2005, gangs have nationally added about 200,000 members to the already high total (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’ participation in gangs is an ongoing issue continuing to face the Unites States of America’s criminal justice system in modern society. The first active gangs to appear within Western society were inscribed by a respected chronicler of crime in Britain 1873. Gangs first emerged into American society around 1783 as the American Revolution drew to a close. More serious street gangs, however, did not surface until the early part of the nineteenth century. Although gangs appear to specialize recruits at the ages of seventeen and eighteen years old, in some instances, gangs begin to mold future recruits at a younger age. The problem facilitate a rippling effect that can be felt throughout local communities, cities, and American society as a whole, affecting parts of society such as juvenile detention and correctional facilities (breeding grounds for recruitment), the economy, and parts of the local community. Activities perpetrated by juveniles in gangs stretches from drug trafficking and gun trafficking, which often results in physical violence (including murder, homicide, and drive by shootings), to less serious, more deviant offenses that are nonetheless viewed as problematic for the community. With the drastic influence and effect that gangs are having on juveniles, one may scrounge into hopelessness, fearful that there is no solution, when in fact the answer lies within all citizens throughout society

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.

Youth gang issues has been around for almost several decades and data showed the proportion of youths joining a gang increased significantly. In order to prevent from newer generations of youths from joining a gang and essentially ruining their future, communities formed together to create a blockage to direct them to a successful future and be a law abiding citizen. The federal government even formed an office called the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that operates under United States department of Justice to attempt “by supporting states, local communities, and tribal jurisdictions in their efforts to develop and implement effective programs for juveniles”. (Howell, J. C., Wilson, J. J., Reno, J., Marcus, D., &