My Bloody Life, By Randall Shelden, Sharon Tracy, And William Brown Essay

This is called innovation “when individuals accept the goals of society, but are unable or unwilling to attain them through legitimate means… Innovation is most closely associated with criminal behavior” (Siegel, 2015: 151). As mentioned in The Made in America: Crips and Bloods documentary many people felt alienated, and joined gangs for protection, love, unity, identity, status and acceptance. Gangs are a community within themselves and there is an established hierarchy in which some members hold higher status over others. Being a gang member gives individuals a place to feel like they are important, whereas they might not feel that way in their regular community. In addition, gangs provide “employment” for those who cannot obtain jobs legally.

Gangs originated naturally during the adolescent years of a child. They started from small play groups that eventually found themselves in conflict with other small groups of youth. Due to the conflict between the two small groups of youth it became a part of a child’s mind set to come together as a gang and protect their rights and satisfy the needs that their environment and families couldn’t provide. There are about 24,500 gangs in the U.S and out of those gangs 40% of them are juveniles (Hess, Orthmann, Wright, 2013). There are numerous reason why a child would join a gang, and the

Gang violence has been around for a long time all the way back to the 1800 and have greatly increased all around the globe ever since. Gangs are a group of people that fight and kill other gangs over turf,money,pride, and drugs. People usually join gangs from around the age of 8 to the age 20. Most gang members join because they have been abused by their parents or because they don 't have a family. Gangs treat each other like a family, that is the most common reason why people join, they want to be accepted, they want to feel like if they belong something.

Life in the Inner-City In the novel “Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City” written by Elijah Anderson, Elijah discusses how socioeconomic problems affect the choices that youths in the inner-city make. Elijah asserts in order not to be harmed, individuals need to understand the code in these areas. An important key point to remember from this novel is that violence happens because of the social disorganization and socioeconomic issues that surround these cities. Issues like poverty impact how people live their lives.

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.

Why do adolescences join gangs in the ages of 13 and 15 years old? In the chapter Street Gangs, the author goes over six different risk factors for joining gangs. These examples are individuals who have experienced stress, injury, or parental divorce. Leading into other motives like impulsive behaviors or being influenced by negative peers. These adolescences end up experiencing the support and protection from gangs when they never received it from their parents or social organizations. This point reminds me of a course I took with Professor Zozula reading a theory from Websdale explaining the definition of a Jugger nut. Websdale says they are young males growing up with no authority or supervision who are easily influenced by negative relationship

“Violent crimes committed by juveniles are not diminishing, as other crimes, as reported by the Justice Department statistics, are (Siegel and Welsh, 2011).” We see that juveniles have more access, and more use of the weapons of violence, including gang affiliation. So why do young people join gangs? First of all, the gang

Juveniles often join gangs to be accepted into a society of their peers. These juveniles are looking for acceptance and a sense of belonging. They join these gangs for special status amongst their friends, protection from other gangs, financial help, peer pressure, excitement and for some juveniles, they are born into a gang society and it is a family tradition. Gangs can also act like a family. They will praise, chastise and show them a form of love and respect that they are looking for but cannot get at home.

- Gangs may offer kids a powerful group identity and a kind of recognition they cannot get at home or elsewhere.

Some criminal gang members give beat downs and stab people to get initiated into the gangs. For instance if a male and wanted to be a Crip or a Blood you would have to get beat in. If females want to join they have to be sexed in. Teenagers these days join gangs because the lifestyle of money,fast cars,sex.Another reason teenagers join gangs because their tired of being told what to do their tired of being bullied by older bullies at school or in the neighborhood.For instance Stanley Tookie Williams the Original Leader of the Crips gang when he was 12 years old he began carrying a switchblade to protect himself from older bullies on the neighborhood.

There are many different factors that push the “at risk” to join gangs. Some common factors are the desire for power, money, protection, and respect. For many of the individuals these things only seem to be obtainable by joining a gang. Many of the people that join gangs are lacking social support and get an instant feeling of belonging and identity.

Street gangs have played a major role in the minds of today’s youth. For some youth, joining a gang is considered to be a rite of passage. Most youth join gangs to have a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, to be accepted, to feel protected, and to feel like they belong (Violent Prevent Institute, 2016). In most cases, they look up to the older men or women in gangs for guidance not realizing that in most cases, the older people who are in the gang joined for the same reasons (Violent Prevent Institute, 2016). In most city neighborhoods, joining a gang is the urban equivalent of joining the Cub Scouts or a Brownie troop in the suburbs. For a lot of the older gang members, it is a matter of simple economics. They often cannot find legal work and certainly nothing that pays nearly as well as selling drugs and committing crimes (Violent Prevent Institute, 2016). Youth want to have the same flashy lifestyle that provides them with expensive clothing, drugs, sex, and respect (Violent Prevent Institute, 2016). Gang violence is something that affects us all in many ways. A lot of people are terrified of gang violence. With every wrong decision, there could be major consequences following it.

Being that the closest that I have ever come to gangs or gangs violence is in television of movies, this topic intrigued me. What makes a person want to become part of something that is so violent and dangerous? Why would someone risk everything to put their lives on the line for people that are not even their blood relatives? As I read the material that I found in the library about gangs, I found out a lot about how this children's' though process works. They believe that the gang members are their family; to them it is not seen as the sinister organization of careless violence as it is to us "normal" Americans. To them the gang is their family.

According to the article, Why Young People Join Gangs and What You Can Do, today's gangs are portrayed by their variety in region, group, and their engagement in criminal or delinquent activities. In today's society, people are more conscious of the gangs forming all around the world. Many different ethnic and socioeconomic groups make up gangs and most gang members lean to be adolescents or young adults. Recent information shows that children are being engaged into gangs at a much younger age, to young that they are still in elementary school. But some gangs are formed by young middle school teenagers and grow from there to become a criminal and delinquent gang. Gang activity has been limited to cities but gangs are no longer just in large cities, but in smaller towns and rural areas. Reasons may vary in to which why they join gangs, many children tend to not receive much attention from their family members, causing them to join gangs because they are attended there and seek attention as they want. Others tend to join because they, gain power, money, or even safety.

There are many reasons why parents affect the kid’s choice to join a gang or not. Some kids join gangs so they can provide for themselves because sometimes parents don’t do it. “Joining a gang can be an attractive option for children whose parents do not show them love or affection” (global post). When parents lack of care for their children the children will have to depend on themselves. Parents that don't care for their children will affect their children. Children will have to provide for themselves in life. They will need to provide themselves with food, money, and clothes. And when that happens it's not easy but with a gang they provide them that for them trying to trick them to joining gangs, and when that happens the kid doesn't seem to have no other choice so they join. And instead of going to school now they will start acting like a gang