Prison Gang Victimization

The most heinous crimes committed in the prisons are done by the hands of prison gangs. Gangs compete with other gangs to be the most dangerous of them all. There are many reasons why an inmate would join a prison gang. Some do it for the power although others do it for protection from rival gangs or people who don’t like them. CBC News reported that in the last 5 years the numbers of inmates who are affiliated with gangs has risen by 32%. Some people believe that prisons are the breeding grounds for gang initiation and joining. Adult gang members in prison range from ages 18 to 65 years old. Many prison gang members are brainwashed. They are used to being fed, clothed, and sheltered in prison that they are unable to walk a straight line once released. With little to no skills of surviving by themselves in the real world, gang members return to prison because that is what they are used to. It is common to find ex-con gang members panhandling on the streets or resorting to crimes such as robbery, burglary or theft. Gang members do what they know instead of trying to become better. My topic is about prison gang and violence. Why they join gangs, How they took over prison, How they affect other inmates, How to prevent it in the correctional facilities.

Chapter Four is entitled, “[The] Scope and Nature of the Current Gang Problem.” It focuses on recent trends in number of gangs, gang members and gang-related crimes in each city. In Inglewood, almost all the neighborhoods were claimed by at least one gang, with gang-unit officers agreeing that the city was facing a major gang problem. In Albuquerque, gangs were involved in drug trafficking and property offenses, with 7 out of 8 gang-unit officers believing the city had a major gang problem. In Las Vegas, migration from other cities was thought to be the primary cause of an increase in gang members. 50% of crime in Las Vegas is attributed to gangs, with most officers believing they had a moderate to major gang problem. In Phoenix, the gang problem is described as wave-like, with 70% of gang-unit officers thinking the city had a major gang problem. These statistics were backed up through interviews with officers and city records.

In the third article, “Gang membership as a turning point in the life course” by Melde and Esbensen conducted a Quasi-Experimental Study and Survey Design that has the strengths of generalizability, also known as external validity. The weakness includes causal validity, also known as internal validity and it was spuriousness. This sample is restricted to the youth who report gang membership during the study. The corresponding increases the odds of violence that are

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).

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

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.

The article presented on this paper reveals the problem of gangs and gang related violence in our nation’s institutions. Corrections Canada has seen a 44 per cent jump in gang members in federal prisons in the last five years, to 2,040 in 2012 from 1,421 in 2007, according to the documents obtained under access to information. The correctional service constructed a strategic framework for dealing with gangs in 2006, and implemented its gang management strategy in 2008, aiming to convince inmates to drop their affiliation and limit security risks. Gang numbers have continued to rise, according to one correctional service management document. It raises a number of

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

Gang violence is nationwide and is one of the most prominent problems in the prison system today. Gangs are known to attempt to control the prisons/jails, instill fear within the prison system and throughout the society, and bring negative attention to the system. “Gang affiliated inmates comprise about 18 percent of the 18000 inmate population.”(Seabrook) A growing numbers of inmates and a large amount of them serving longer sentences for violent crimes suggest a notable increase in gangs and violence in the prison system in the upcoming future.

In addition to the issue of defining a gang, the reasoning and motivation behind the use of violence by these groups of individuals appears. It is quite difficult to identify whether a crime is gang related or not, such as in the case of the shooting of Randall Barrs. One definition of gang related crimes are that they must be committed within the group context and clearly promote the goals or interests of the gang (Mares 2010; Rosenfeld et al. 1999; Howell 1999). This creates the debate in regards to whether individually motivated crimes are still gang related. The importance of this pertains to how gang related crimes would be documented within the justice system. However there is no dilemma in seeing the positive relationship amongst gang memberships and violent crime. Klein (2006) finds that youth who self report their gang involvement are four to six times more likely to engage in serious violence than youth who are not gang-involved. Howell (1998) states that official police statistics from the United States show that gang members are twenty times more likely than other at-risk youth to engage in a drive-by-shooting, ten times more likely to engage in a homicide, eight times more likely to commit robbery and three times more likely to engage in an aggravated assault. In addition gang members are also more likely to carry weapons such as firearms and use them (Wortley 2008). Studies have shown that gang violence is more likely to occur in public places, involving

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

The purpose of this paper is to review and verify a recent study by Scott H. Decker of the University of Missouri – St. Louis, entitled Collective and Normative Features in Gang Violence (Decker & VanWinkle, 1996). The study will attempt to address why our local increase in gang violence has reached monumental heights causing an increase in gang members appearing your court.

The United States is infested with street gangs, from rural towns to inner-cities, that perpetuate violence and criminal activity. There are four gangs that have gained nation status--Crips, Bloods, People Nation, and Folk Nation. American’s strain on African Americans and Latinos creates oppression and has led to the creation of these gangs. Minorities are predominantly in the lower class, stratified by inequality in the workplace, schools, and social groups. Vince Staples, a former Crip, details how society created his childhood and forced him into a gang. These gangs are heavily involved with drug and weapons trafficking, their main source of income, and use violence to intimidate and protect their turf and sales.

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 objective of this paper was to express that risky/deviant lifestyle, risky behaviour (offending behaviour) and the gang membership itself were the factors that lead to gang member victimization. Marcus Felson and Lawrence E. Cohen’s routine activity theory was used as the theoretical framework for this paper. The main point to Felon and Cohen’s theory is that opportunity of crime transpires in daily routine activities and the degree of risk of these activities will determine the likelihood of crimes and victimization. Committing crimes leads gang members to lead a risky lifestyle. Living a risky lifestyle such as carrying a gun and employment are major factors that result in gang member victimization. Gang members can be victimized by rival