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Surprising Gang Myth

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From my perspective, the most surprising gang myth was that gangs, drugs, and violence were linked. I was under the impression that gangs made their income from the sale and distribution of drugs to fund their activities. It was unique in that Coughlin and Venkatesh (2003) actually stated that drugs were secondary to that of identity, protection, and recreation (28). Though from just these two chapters, I can see there is a pattern to why youth join gangs and the gang’s desire for identity as a primary goal. All of the offered criteria of identity, protection, and recreation signal to me that of any troubled teen/youth trying to establish their way through not only a changing environment of high school, but also a changing body of hormones. I was curious in the details regarding to the fact that few gangs control distribution, in that if not them then who actually …show more content…

The chapter directs this blame towards cartels and syndicates. My perspective was that gangs were the predominant users and thus would want to ensure that they were also the sellers. It goes on to state that even the once believed violence is often from other conflicts not directly associated with drugs (29). Tita and his colleagues document that most homicides with the involvement of drugs is in regards to quantity/quality issues (30). Again, I would have considered that due to drug withdrawals gang members would become quickly agitated and resort to violence more often in relation to the transactions involved to support

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