Juvenile and Youth Gangs - History, Scope Of Gang Problems, Correlates Of Gang Proliferation, Gangs And Crime, Drugs And Gangs
justice juveniles offenders national
Estimates of the magnitude of youth gang problems in the United States steadily increased over the last decades of the twentieth century. An unprecedented public and government response to gang problems at federal, state, and local levels began in 1989. As the century drew to a close, evidence of a leveling off of the scope of gang problems began to emerge. For two consecutive years, in 1997 and 1998, the national estimates of lawviolating gangs and gang members tabulated by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's National Youth Gang Center suggested small declines in the total number of city and county jurisdictions reporting youth gang problems. Any relief associated with observing slight reversals in the proliferation of gang problems is diminished by the levels attained by these problems between 1980 and 1995.
SCOTT H. DECKER
G. DAVID CURRY
Additional Topics
Gangs are not new, and in fact are found increasingly all over the world. Veteran researchers such as Walter Miller and Malcolm Klein suggest that the United States has experienced numerous cycles of gang activity. In response to rumors of violence against him from Baltimore gangs, President Abraham Lincoln disguised himself in his passage through that city on his way to his first inauguration. Fi…
Efforts to estimate the number of gangs, gang members, and gang crimes as a national problem were not attempted until 1975. In a government study published that year, Walter Miller concluded that six of twelve major cities had gang problems. Miller estimated that there were 760 to 2,700 gangs and 28,500 to 81,500 gang members in those six gang problem cities. Between 1975 and 1995, the Department …
Still, there can be no question that gang problems had spread across the country over a period of two decades. Gangs have now been documented in every state in the nation, and throughout small-, medium-, and large-sized cities. It should be no surprise that researchers are interested in what factors may have led to this enormous proliferation of gangs in the United States. Initially, some observer…
A universal finding of research has been that gang members participate in a greater number of delinquent and criminal acts than youths who are not involved in gangs. While gang members are involved in significantly more delinquency than nonmembers, not all delinquency by gang members is gang-related. Klein observed that gang members engage in "cafeteria style" delinquency. That is, individual memb…
There are two competing views about the role of gangs and gang members in drug sales. The first argues that street gangs are well-organized purveyors of illegal drugs who reinvest the profits from drug sales into the gang. Proponents of this view include researchers Jerome Skolnick, Carl Taylor, and Martin Sanchez Jankowski. Several conditions are required for this understanding of gang drug sales…
From the first national survey of gang problems, Walter Miller proposed a general estimate that 10 percent or less of the gang members in the cities that he studies were females. No recent studies of police data on gang members have approached the 10 percent estimate. Surveys of police officials regarding gangs, indicate that even fewer girls are gang members than surveys show, with some estimates…
It is important to remember that all but the most hard-core gang members lead a considerable portion of their lives outside the gang. As is the case for most adolescents, institutions such as family and school play important roles in their lives. The work of Joan Moore and Diego Vigil in Los Angeles has pointed to the need for order and regulation in the lives of adolescents. Children naturally se…
According to Spergal and Curry, five strategies have typically been used to respond to gangs: (1) suppression, (2) social intervention, (3) social opportunities, (4) community mobilization, and (5) organizational change. Suppression included law enforcement and criminal justice interventions such as arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, and surveillance. Most jurisdictions use suppression as their pr…
??. Life in the Gang: Family, Friends, and Violence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ??. Crime by Youth Gangs and Groups in the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, 1982. ??. Going Down to the Barrio: Homeboys and Homegirls in Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991. …
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User Comments
over 1 year ago
No, no, and no this all has a big huge part to play in broken families. You see EVERY kid NEEDS a MOM AND DAD. This is the reason for most kids lack of respect for elders and authoritative figures. They were not brought up with the love of both mother and father. Ahh, the good ole days when mom stayed home and raised the kids and dad went to work everyday...something has to change!
about 2 years ago
juvenile gangs have become a serious and growing problem in many areas throughout the U.S. what are some solution to this social problem.?
about 1 month ago
Juvenile and Youth Gangs - History, Scope Of Gang Problems, Correlates Of Gang Proliferation, Gangs And Crime, Drugs And Gangs
almost 2 years ago
great info
about 2 years ago
pete franz
when kids see their brothers or any family member getting shot at or die from gang its not okay it messes wwith their heads
over 2 years ago
aaaaaaaaa
over 4 years ago
thats cause the kids dont have role modles