Gangs have become one of the nation’s fastest growing problems within recent history. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs with about 2.4 million members are criminally active in the U.S. today. They use violence to control neighborhoods and boost their illegal moneymaking activities, which include but are not limited to: robbery, drug and gun trafficking, fraud, extortion, and prostitute rings. With as much research that has been conducted on gangs the research fails to study females and their participation in gangs. Female gangs have long been overlooked in the gang literature. Although there are similarities between young women and men in gangs, some have claimed that the process of gang membership is different for young women. This paper will discuss the history of women in gangs, why they join gangs, their reasons for leaving a gang, and how they manage to get out.
Women have participated in gangs since the earliest accounts from New York in the early
1800s, their participation is not a new phenomenon. We didn’t hear much about female gangs because females were seen to be inferior towards males. Women were considered to be auxiliaries, affiliates, or instruments that primarily were sex objects. Evidence has shown that young women represent a growing percentage of gang members. According to Campbell (1991), some women were thought to participate in gangs as tomboys who refused to take the
Gangs have been a growing issue across the United States for many decades now. Youth gang violence may have started around the ‘50s, but did not become a serious issue until the ‘80s and from there went through a downward spiral in some cities like downtown Los Angeles, which was where the notorious Bloods and Crips gangs both started. First, let’s simply define a gang as a group of people, mostly men ranging for ages 14-30, who claim territory and use it to make money for themselves and their neighborhood through illegal activities such as trafficking drugs and weapons. There are many reasons and components that are factored in when conducting research to hypothesize “why do people join gangs?” That is why it is necessary to compare and contrast all the social, biological, psychological, developmental, and substance abuse aspects and relate it to joining a gang. It is also important to touch base on the differences between males and females that join gangs, such as power differentials, social learning differences and social stratification differences.
Anderson posits that this is a major reason why they join gangs; they want to earn their “manhood” or at least learn what it means to be a man. This leads to them getting a twisted idea of what it is to be a true man (Anderson 14-16). Another issue that Anderson discusses is the growing intensity of girls becoming more violent in reaction to different types of threats to respect such as rumors and gossip. While Anderson does say girls are less prone to killing others based on these issues, there is still a rise in fighting amongst those in the areas these gangs run rampant (Anderson 16-18). Finally, Anderson ends his article with a final component in which gang members try to earn a reputation for being “bad” as they call it. This comes down to the willingness to perform risky behaviors, and how little they fear death as a result of their activities (Anderson 18-19). Anderson terms this kind of culture to be an oppositional culture (Anderson 20).
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.
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 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).
Even so, early on in my reading on this ethnography, I identified the role gender plays not only for the ethnographer doing the research, but also for the gang members. As the gang members matured into adulthood the similarities in these gender roles that match most societies became apparent,
Although it has been well known that males tend to make up the majority of gang members, an increasing number of female gangs have been showing up; Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Manitoba are just a few of the provinces where female gangs are popping up (Statistics Canada, 2008). Often the study of the female youth gang rate is neglected within research and the correlation between the gangs and social economic facts are forgot about (As cited in Jacob, 2006). Gangs and Girls: Understanding Juvenile Prostitution by Michel Dorais and Patrice Corriveau discusses how “gangs often use girls as accomplices
Starting in the 1980s, reports of female involvement in gangs, drug sales, and violence began to surface as a serious problem in America. To support claims of increased female delinquency, reporters and scholars often cite crime statistics or anecdotes from field studies. The reasons they give to explain this female crime wave generally fall into one of two categories: drugs as a means for economic success the idea that the increased availability of crack cocaine provides economic means to poverty-ridden women suffering from the effects of urbanization and deindustrializationand social movements the idea that female “liberation” has hit the streets.
“Gangs have morphed from social organizations into full-fledged criminal enterprises” (Thomas, 2009, para 5). Gangs are highly sophisticated and more dangerous then ever. The number one reason to join a gang is money; and 95 percent of gangs profit comes from drug dealing
Many people recognize that gangs have been around for what seems like forever. What they don't realize is that the numbers are increasing to amazing proportions, there were 28,000 youth gangs with 780,200 members in the United States (in 2000) and 20% to 46% of those members are female (Evans). And what is even more shocking is, in Chicago alone there are 16,000 to 20,000 female gang members (Eghigian). These girls start out as ?groupies?, become members, and sometimes even leaders of all-girl gangs because of troubles in the home, a need for money, for the social scene, or just because it is all they know.
The 1960’s or 1970’s is when gangs were originated. Gangs became a formation of protection against racial crimes being committed by whites. There were quite a few popular gangs such as the Slausons,
Many of the research that has been done on gang membership have been concentrated on the male population. The minimal work that has been done on female gang membership is reference to the young women has secondary roles or as sex objects in the gangs. However, women roles in gangs are changing in a steadily pace in which female gang member are committing more serious criminal crime and delinquency. The delinquency has been linked towards both serious and minor forms criminal activity. The delinquent behavior for gang members has been established by many factors in particularly in the neighborhoods one lives in. The neighborhood that female gang members live in has a differently impact and development toward them rather than compared with male
Gangs are becoming prevalent in today’s society and within our schools. More and more young people are turning to gangs in an attempt to escape their everyday lives and the future, which they perceive as dismal and bleak. They are initially attracted to the prestige and cash flow, which is glamorized by the street gang. Many gangs are actively involved in criminal misconduct, such as drug and gun trafficking, burglaries and homicides. However, street gangs are not just a criminal justice issue, but a social problem, which is triggered by poverty, peer pressure, boredom, despair and lacking a sense of belonging.
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
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.