Gangs and youthful crews and youth violence

Gangs and youthful crews and youth violence

Gangs and youthful crews often take center stage when it gets to discussing youth violence. According to the best client-centered practices with social service, making a distinction between crews and gangs is often considered less important to develop a trusting relationship. However, these terms are essential when coming up with law enforcement. Additionally, the social services providers ought to be aware of the diverse landscapes, especially in light of the increasing involvement of various stakeholders in partnerships to reduce violence. However, the voices of the youth seem to be left out in this endeavor. This fact may be blamed on the various perceptions of the youth identified as gang members or those deemed to be at risk of joining gang membership.

The most typical misconception about gangs and crews is that they are often made up of individuals who are in their late adolescents. These individuals are commonly believed to be drug-addicts, sexually hyperactive, confrontational, and unpredictable. The general perception is that they are demonic just for being members of a gang. This is a perception that is meant to elicit fear. However, it is prudent to note that these misperceptions are often derived from non-academic sources. Therefore, the claims are often unsupported by any empirical data. Because of these misconceptions, the idea of gangs can engender widespread fear in a community.

Gangs often thrive on notoriety and intimidation. It is evident that they not only find violence to be glamorous but also a necessity to establish themselves as a group to be feared. Additionally, their activities are often designed to entice more youth to consider some actions such as drug use, drinking, bullying people, creating disorder, and vandalizing property to be fun. The most apparent aspect of gangs is that they consider getting high, partying, and robbing specific targets to be part of the amusement and merriment. Essentially, pro-gang activities and attitudes are often aligned with breaking the law.

The role of ethnicity in regard to gang membership is quite complicated. Many gangs are often multi-racial. However, in most cases, films and books often present gangs to be made of African American and Spanish individuals. This relationship between gang membership and the race is often correlated with poverty and migration, limited educational and employment opportunities, little or no monitoring from parents, as well as social isolation. In this light, gang membership is often associated with individuals from low socioeconomic status. White involvement in gangs is often associated with the street socialization process. This means that these productions often assert that whites would only join gangs if they hand around people who are likely to be gang members.

Los Angeles is often considered the gang capital of the United States. Gangs are not a new concept in the city. In fact, the LAPD states that there have been more than 16,000 gang-related crimes over the last three years. There are more than 450 gangs in Los Angeles, with some of them having been in existence for over 50 years. Gang membership in the city also continues to increase, although their periodic crimes seem to decrease. However, the primary reason for the increase in gangs in the lucrative drug trade. Most of the gang-related crimes are often about rival gangs competing for a greater market share of this trade.

In Los Angeles, gangs often organize themselves along ethnic and neighborhood lines. In Los Angeles, criminal gangs include Hispanic, white, black, or Asian gangs. They identify each other with signs or symbols in which members share. In most cases, their criminal activities often follow a pattern. The gangs establish unique symbols and graffiti to demonstrate allegiance, challenge rivals, and even strengthen the participation of members. They also have primary activities in which the members collectively or individually engage. The most common crime by gangs is drive-in shootings, where gangs target an individual and ambush them with gun-fire.

Membership in the gangs and loyalty to them often fluctuate since people join the gangs for different reasons. Some join for status, and friendship, while others join to boost their self-esteem and for the promise of adventure and fun. Gangs give the members some sense of family and belonging, especially in the event of absentee parents. This fact implies that any approach to eradicate the menace of gangs would require cooperation from various stakeholders including police agencies, the media, schools, and law enforcement in general.

In conclusion, there are various myths created about gangs by the media and several other publications. The media often paints gangs as a group of people that are aligned with breaking the law and asserting fear in the community around them. While most of these assertions are often true, other misconceptions about gangs are in relation to their ethnicity and race. Most of the time, the gangs presented are from black and Spanish races and people from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. In Los Angeles, gangs are often organized depending on their neighborhood and ethnicity. However, some are multi-ethnic. In regards to the diversities that exist in gang organizations, it would be prudent to have an approach that engages several stakeholders to address the issue of gangs in a community.