High Risk Youth : A Public Health Approach By Doctor Dawn Delfin Mcdaniels

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.

In time, violent crimes were slowly being decreased in the United States, but it seems to be making some sort of a comeback when it comes to youth violence and violence affiliated with gangs. This topic has appeared to be a dominant target for educators,

Although non-gang members may also participate in risky activities like binge drinking, marijuana use, and drug selling, gang affiliation greatly increases exposure and likelihood to partake in these activities. Studies show that “early alcohol use and early marijuana use are both identified risk factors for joining a gang among adolescents” (Swahn et. al 354). Youth gang members are also exposed to hard drugs because of gang involvement in the illegal drug market. Many youth gang members in these

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.

Youth gang violence has turned into an unmistakable issue in the public eye reaching across national boundaries as well as socio-economic, cultural, racial, and class distinctions. Not only is the problem widely dispersed geographically, but its incidence is also extensive, making it a common, acknowledged, and a mainstream behavior for many teens. Gang activity is extremely common in lower income neighborhoods and ethnic ghettos where underprivileged children are regularly recruited. Youth gang violence has always been an issue in the United States since the 1950’s but many crime analysts tended to overlook the problem of youth gang violence in major cities due to historical events such as the Korean War, U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation was illegal in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the Civil Rights Movement. The first nationwide study undertaken of the nature and extent of gang violence was reported by Walter B. Miller. Miller whose study concentrated primarily on the increase of gang violence and four major motives such as respect, guarding local communities, control, and gain the of monetary goods.

According to John Lewis, An Examination of Psychological, Social, and Economic Motivations for Gang Membership among Hispanic American Youth, purpose of this study was to examine the influences of Latino’s participants who joined gangs in a large West Coast, American city. Lewis participants are former gang members whose ages vary eighteen through thirty, and he gathers his data by using qualitative research, and individual interviews. Zeiders, Roosa, and Tein (2011) writes, “Parental influences serve a vital role in either deterring deviant behavior or enhancing its likelihood (p. 32).” According to Harris and Ryan (2004), they concluded that “parental influences on youth are the strongest when both parents are living in the same home as

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.

In order to define the nature and scope of juvenile antisocial behavior we must determine that “gangs are variable, diverse and difficult to define in precise terms” (White, 2007) and that “adolescent antisocial behavior is an issue of major concern to parents, teachers, police and governments and is a significant cost to the

Criminological and Gang MembershipApril SmolkowiczGeorgia Gwinnett CollegeCriminological 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

A person's childhood will ultimately determine the course of the rest of their lives. Statistically, children who are born into poor locations are more likely to commit robberies and to engage in gang-related criminality. The people who are most at-risk are African American youth, particularly males from single-parent households (Wheelock & Ugeen 2006, page 2). Within low-income areas, there are many associated hardships including lack of educational opportunities, health care, potential employment, and an influx of

Access to uncensored information, people have exacerbated the immature and misguided decisions. Substance youth and addiction are also factors that lead to youth violence.” The CDC says that there are 3 main factors to youth violence there are individual risk factors, family risk factors, and peer and social risk factors. An example of an individual risk factor would be exposure to violence within the family. If a child is exposed to violence at birth they will think that violence is ok and right. A family risk factor is low parental involvement. If a parent does not show up to events and doesn’t care about what they do or where they are at, then the kid will think that the parent won’t stop them from doing bad things. This includes lack of supervision, if a parent is never at the household watching the child then they are left alone to do whatever they want. And lastly a peer and social risk factor would include involvement in gangs. This is the blandest example but the most considered. Most gangs are connected or involved in illegal activities such as carjacking, robbery, and killing. If you were to join a gang you would have to be involved in this

Studies show that a common thread amongst criminals is neglected and abusive childhoods. Being maltreated in the early years of development approximately doubles the probability of engaging in many types of crimes. The effects are worst for children from low socio-economic status backgrounds; lower-class youth commit four times more violent crimes than middle-class youth. Beyond the obvious economical issues of the community, many also find themselves victims of the “war on drugs” which traditionally targets the low-income population. Children born into this community are drowning in drugs, alcohol, instability and lack of role models. Even beyond their broken homes, low-income communities often have poor performing schools crushing any chances

The term youth gangs refers to a group of three or more members, who are between the age of 12 and 24; they share an identity through the use of names or symbols; they see themselves as gang and are recognized by others as a gang; there is some amount of permanence and degree of organization; and the group is involved in an elevated amount of criminal activity (National Gang Center Staff, n.d.). Risk factors for gang involvement are based on factors such as individual, family, school, community. School risk factors include poor school performance, poor connectedness to schools, low degree of commitment to and involvement in school, and weak attachment to teachers (Howell, 2010). Community risk factors includes such things as greater level of criminal activity, neighborhood youth are involved in illegal behaviors, widespread access to and the use of firearms and drugs, and low level of neighborhood attachment (Howell, 2010). Additional factors that lead to gang involvement include learning disabilities and emotional disorders, school failure and truancy, no positive involvement outside of school, friends and peers are delinquent, low income, and early involvement in petty crimes and behavioral disorders in grade school (Hernandez, 2015). Reasons given for joining a gang as reported by youths includes for protection, for fun, for respect, for money, family members are part of the gang (and because a friend was in the gang (Howell, 2010).

“Delinquent and criminal behavior occurs among young people, as they negotiate the transition from childhood to adulthood in an increasingly complex and confusing world” (World Youth Report, 2003). There are several factors to juvenile delinquency and also ways to possibly prevent it. From early childhood to adolescence, children need to be surrounded with positive role models and environment. A couple of factors to juvenile delinquency that McWhirter, McWhirter, McWhirter, & McWhirter (2013) state are “economic factors, lack of adult bonding, poor parental monitoring, and environmental and cultural factors” (p. 225). Being involved in criminal activities is not something that just happens overnight. McWhirter et al. (2013) shows that because of the factors stated above, children in every stage, from early childhood to adolescence show similar characteristics because of the past experiences they’ve encountered. Middle childhood stage shows that children become rebellious and aggressive at home that lead to them acting in a similar way at school and their co mmunity. Children in late childhood and pre- adolescence stage start receiving negative response from their community, peers and may result in academic failure. All these factors lead to these children becoming involved in gang and criminal activities. The movie character that I chose to cover for this paper is named Jimmy. However, since there is not a lot of information on him in the movie, I have also made his father,

There are approximately 27,900 gangs, with 774,000 members, impacting towns, cities, and communities across the United States. According to a recent bulletin released by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 23 percent of students aged 12 through 18 years reported presence of street gangs in their schools. Almost half (46%) of students in public schools reported street gang presence. In addition, 21 percent of students in suburban schools and 15 percent in rural schools reported presence of street gangs. According to a survey conducted by the National Parents' Resource Institute for Drug