Youth and Gang Violence

Youth gang violence has been a problem for society throughout many years and there seems to be no changes being made by police officers or the city officials. Implementing greater community supervision is necessary in order to prevent the youth from joining gangs and for the community to not feel as threatened by gang violence.

 Youth gang violence began with wanting power over certain territory, respect, protection, money or because of influencing. It’s mainly composed of teenagers starting at 12 to 13 years old who feel the need to do anything in their power to be accepted by people they identify as cool or people they simply look up to. It always starts with the difficulties they face at home. In urban areas, many parents have to work long hours in order to provide for their family which does not leave a lot of time to focus on their children or keep up with how they’re doing. This leads to children wanting acceptance or becoming easily influenced by the things that they see happening out in the streets. 

. Many of the minority races  in the United States have most likely been to jail or are currently serving time in prison for low level offenses like selling drugs. If we really think about it, they don’t have the same opportunities that we have at getting well paid jobs and having the privilege to enroll in college. The article  Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022 | Prison Policy Initiative by authors Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner shows a very important graph in which it shows the amount of people incarcerated in local jails ( 547,000) , federal prisons and jails ( 208,000), and state prisons ( 1,042,000). 

 Authors Sawyer and Peter stated that “ Some have just been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small number (about 103,000 on any given day) have been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanor sentences under a year. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested again within the same year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.” This shows how the main issue of people going to jail are minorities and will continue to eventually end up in jail, causing a ritual for the following generations to come. 

This eventually ends up affecting the younger generations because they tend to grow up without a parental guide to what’s right and what’s wrong. The National Youth Gang Survey Analysis: Demographics shows the percentage, by race and ages of men and females in gangs across the U.S. It also showed that the amount of juvenile gang members that are the age of 18 and under is significantly higher than the amount of gang members from the age of 18 and over.  

According to the Gang Prevention: An Overview of Research and Programs | Youth.gov there aren’t any programs to prevent gang violence. In my opinion, I believe it’s because no one willingly will go to programs that specifically talk about avoiding gang members or joining gangs, this will most likely put a target on their backs. Some of the strategies and tactics proposed were : strengthening families, reducing youth conflicts, improving community supervision, training from people they can potentially look up to like teachers in order to manage disruptive students the correct way, reducing suspensions and expulsions which in my opinion, don’t really work in order to deter the youth from having future disruptive behavior since it doesn’t help to influence positively, and recreation services like after school programs. 

The Comprehensive Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Model  is a possible gang related program funded by the federal office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention ( OJJDP)  which has demonstrated effectiveness in various cities. Community Mobilization: Involvement of local citizens—including former gang youth, community groups, and agencies—and the coordination of programs and staff functions within and across agencies. The five strategies stated are :

• Developing a variety of specific education and employment targeting gangs involving youths. 
• Involving youth serving agencies in order for them to reach out to family members and render support by providing services in order to better their situation. 
•  Close monitoring of the gang involved youths by agencies and by the schools. 
• Setting policies and procedures in order to address gang problems. 

Some of the strategies proposed by different organizations might not be as effective because of the influence the gangs have upon them. Nowadays , people get influenced on doing gang related activities through the least expected, we have television shows, movies, reality shows, music, even friends who might paint an idea of what being in a gang looks or feels like, it’s inevitable. A perfect example is the video games which more than 90 percent of kids in America play and 75 percent of them have played GTA within the past 2 years. GTA is one of the most violent video games where gang related activities are shown and allow the players to steal, fight, and murder other gang members in order to claim territory. According to Game mocks real tragedy, gang experts say GTA is being used by real gang members in order to justify their lifestyle, which is not very helpful when it comes to trying to convince them of why they should not be in gangs in the first place. 

Implementing greater community supervision on the minority youth will help reduce their probability of joining gangs and it will also help communities feel like a safer place. It will also help break the cycle of generations of minorities going to jail over minor offenses, and help future generations and future families live a better life. 

References : 

Mass incarceration: the whole pie 2022

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

National Youth Gang Survey Analysis:Demographics

https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/demographics

Gang Prevention: an overview of research and programs. 

https://youth.gov/feature-article/gang-prevention-overview-research-and-programs

Comprehensive Gang Prevention

https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/spt/Programs/53

Game mocks real tragedy https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6409148