Youth and Gang Violence
Gangs have always been the author of violence throughout the world, specifically in the United States. It’s mainly composed of teenagers starting at the age of 12 to 13,who feel the need to do anything in their power to be accepted by people who they identify as cool or people they simply look up to. They are mainly located in urban areas, where law and order doesn’t take place. The broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime and public disorder creates an urban environment and encourages further crimes.
The goal of joining gangs is to gain power over certain territory, respect, protection, money or simply because of the influences they’ll have in the community. Many face difficulties at home at an early age. In urban areas, it’s common for parents to work long hours in order to provide for their family which doesn’t allow them to have 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 like robbery, burglaries and assaults.
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 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.
The youth can easily get influenced on doing gang- related activities through the least expected. We have television shows, movies, 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 a perfect example of gang relations. its 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 beneficial when it comes to keeping communities safe from high gang related crimes. Their lifestyle is almost as if it was a cultural thing. Something they praise and are meant to do in order to feel value and sense in their life.
According to the Gang Prevention: An Overview of Research and Programs | Youth.gov
There really 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 gang related program funded by the federal office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention ( OJJDP). It uses community supervision in order to deter the youth from joining gangs, which has demonstrated effectiveness in various cities throughout the U.S that have been mostly affected by gang activities. Community Mobilization, Involvement of local citizens—including former gang youth, community groups, and agencies, the coordination of programs and staff functions within and across agencies are tactics used within the program in order to show effectiveness.
The community supervision strategies that are used 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.
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
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Get your Categories right, Pink.
This one belongs in Definition Rewrite and pink.
Take it out of Uncategorized.
I would like to receive feedback on the structure, what can I work on, what is a better way for me to structure, and some overall criticism like punctuations and grammar.
That’s too much for a single round of Feedback, Pink, but I’ll do what I can.
My first impression is that this isn’t a Definition/Categorical argument. It’s just a brief outline of what could be the entire research paper. I do believe there is benefit to portioning the work, so, when I come back for Feedback, the first thing I’ll do is help you decide a strategy for collecting Categorical observations into your first 1000 words.
I love you, Pink, but my answer to your questions is that this is not a Definition/Categorical essay and that your structure is a mess.
You have some attitudes to express.
You have some facts to share.
You have gathered some sources.
But you haven’t begun to organize an argument any reader can follow.
Your Introduction complains that gang violence is an ongoing threat to the health and safety of communities that police cannot control and that only “community supervision” can help reduce.
Your Conclusion suggests that “community supervision” will reduce the likelihood that youth will join gangs.
In between, I see no evidence that community supervision has had any measurable effect; furthermore, I see no explanation of what you mean by “community supervision.” If you’re recommending it as a solution to a real problem, you should be able to describe it by its characteristics. THAT would be worthy of a 1000-word Definition/Categorical argument.
As it stands, your paragraphs say the following:
1. Youth gang violence could be solved by community supervision
2. Youth gang violence springs from unsupervised youth having insufficient roles and role models.
3. The parents of WAY too many urban kids are in jail.
4. A lot of those prisoners will be imprisoned repeatedly.
5. Gang members are young.
6. Violence prevention programs don’t work.
7. One program shows promise. Its methods sound like bullshit.
8. The culture undermines any effort to keep kids from adopting a violent gang lifestyle.
9. Community supervision will reduce gang membership.
So, I ask you, if you read the 9 paragraphs, would you be at all convinced (even if the evidence were rock solid) that community supervision—whatever that is—would be effective at reducing gang membership or violence?
For some students, the sequence of Definition/Causal/Rebuttal short arguments will feel out of order. Yours may be such a case. You seem to want to make Causal arguments here BEFORE you help us understand what “Community Supervision” means. But for the sake of clarity here, you should find a way to spend 1000 words on describing how communities beset by violence and fear can form alliances that effectively prevent youth from gravitating toward gangs, probably by providing healthy alternatives that offer hope.
That may sound Causal too, but it would help us understand the absolutely essential concept of community supervision, upon which your entire argument rests.
Thanks professor, I will definitely be making the improvements stated.
I took some of the advices you gave me and tried my best to apply it to the essay. I would like feedback mainly on how I can appropriately conclude the essay.
This is still primarily a Causal Argument, Pink. Almost every paragraph offers REASONS TO EXPLAIN WHY kids join gangs. In fact, when you post your Causal Argument, if you haven’t already, I suggest you import all the material from “the goal of joining gangs” all the way to “in order to feel value and sense in their life.” (Do you hear the CAUSAL language in that last bit of text? Why do they join gangs?: to feel value and sense.)
In the meantime, to make meaningful improvements to your Definition/Categorical argument, you need more material about the program(s) you think COULD BE beneficial. You started by calling your remedy “Community Involvement.”
You didn’t provide a References section, so I couldn’t see where your evidence was coming from, so I followed a link to the article from the National Gang Center titled, “Comprehensive Gang Prevention . . . .”
THEY did provide a References section, which is where you should look for more evidence about programs that have been tried. Here’s that References list.
References
Best Practices to Address Community Gang Problems. (2008). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. http://www.ojjdp.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=253257.
Cahill, M., & Hayeslip, D. (2010). Findings from the Evaluation of OJJDP’s Gang Reduction Program. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Spergel, I. A. (1995). The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach. Oxford University Press: New York.
Spergel, I. A. (2007). Reducing Youth Gang Violence: The Little Village Gang Project in Chicago. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Appendix A, p. 51.
Spergel, I. A.; Wa, K. M.; and Sosa, R. V. (2006). “The Comprehensive, Community-Wide, Gang Program Model: Success and Failure.” In J. F. Short and L. A. Hughes (eds.), Studying Youth Gangs. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, pp. 203–224.
Hayeslip, D., and Cahill, M. (2009). Community Collaboratives Addressing Youth Gangs: Final Evaluation Findings From the Gang Reduction Program. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Wyrick, P. (2006). “Gang Prevention: How to Make the ’Front End’ of Your Anti-Gang Effort Work.” United States Attorneys’ Bulletin, 54(3):52–60.
Use Google Scholar or the Rowan Library database to track down the online versions of these sources. Five of them even use the “Community” or “Village” language you seek. Use those sources to DEFINE what Community Involvement looks like in a Definition/Categorical argument. We’ll talk about what your Conclusion should sound like when you’ve written the body paragraphs.
Good luck, Pink. I’m pulling for you. These sources should get you on the right track.