Script+and+Reflection

** Q: What is your topic and how does it relate to the units we have learned about in Sociology? ** My topic is about how gangs effects youth across the United States. My topic mainly relates to the crime and deviance unit we learned about in Sociology this year. It also deals with how youth can peer pressure each other into doing the wrong thing. Also, gangs effect the societies around them in a very negative way. The paradigms that could fit under this topic are structural functional and social conflict. It would fit into structural functional because a lot of the youths that join gangs just fit into the structural norms that are expected of them and they just join gangs. It would also fit into social conflict because gangs are awful for the societies that surround them and the societies that add to the gangs by adding members or by supplying weapons. ** Q: What effect do youth gang members have on the amount of crime done by youth in the United States? ** A: Gangs have a huge impact on the amount of violence caused by the youth of the United States. The main effect that gangs have on youth in the United States is with the amount of crime that the youth of the United States commit. Of all the youth in the United States seven percent of the youth are responsible for seventy percent of all the crime committed by youth in the United States, and of that seven percent nearly seventy-five percent of those youth are gang members. Also, the homicide rates for youth ages fifteen to eighteen have sky rocketed over the past twenty years. The rates for arrests due to homicide in the age range of seventeen to eighteen have risen from 34.4 arrests per every 100,000 youths to know 76, that is a 121% increase in arrests. For youth between the ages of fifteen to sixteen the rates are about the same for those of youth between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. Gangs are a huge factor in the amount of homicide rates because of the amount of homicide arrests for youth between the ages of fifteen and seventeen close to seventy percent belonged to a gang. ** Q: What effect do youth gangs have on the youth that are in the gang? ** A: Besides the effects that gangs have on the amount of crime that youth in the United States cause they have an even larger effect on the youth that are in the gang. Gangs can seem very appealing to the youth that are in them. The main things that appeal to youths that have joined gangs or are planning or wanting to join gangs is that they offer quick and large amounts of cash, protection, a sense of family/brotherhood and they can allow youth to be in a leadership position. These few things might make it appear that gangs are probably the best way to go for youth, but there are many more disadvantages than advantages to joining a gang at a young age. Youth are joining gangs at a very high rate. In the late 1980s the amount of youth that were in a gang were only about 20,000, and that was over the entire United States. Today it is projected that over 400,000 youth are in gangs, that is over a 500% increase over the past twenty years. Of that number over 230,000 youth are lived in the city before they joined the gang. This is not a good sign because the real things that gangs offer youth is a probability of jail time or ending up in a coffin before their time should have come. The majority of gang members have been in jail at least once in their life and the members that join at a younger age are more likely to end up in jail then those that join in their adult years. ** Q: What effect do gangs have on the youth that are not in the gang? ** A: Gangs are not beneficial to the youth that are in the gangs, but they are almost as bad for the youth that are not in the gang, but live in the area where the gangs operate. Gangs are very dangerous to the people that are in the gangs and to the people that live where the gangs operate. The youth that live in the area where the gangs operate have to live in constant fear that one day they may be caught up in a crime that a gang is committing or that they might end up in a coffin because they happened to be walking home and they got in the middle of two gangs in the middle of a conflict. Due to this a lot of youth, especially in the cities, spend some days just hiding at home so as to avoid being in the middle of a crime committed by gang members and because of this a lot of inner-city youth miss many days of school. Due to this fact they miss large chunks of learning and it has been found that this causes test scores to lower. City schools cannot take this because their test scores are already low enough thanks to either lack of funding or the fact that a lot of their children are already missing school because they are in a gang. The youth that live where the gangs operate also have to live in fear that one day it might just become too much for them to handle and they too will join a gang that they have seen a large number of their friends and classmates join. ** Q: What areas of the United States do youth gangs effect the most? ** A: The main area that is effected by youth gangs in the United States are the cities. This is due to the fact that sixty percent of United States gangs are found in the cities, but there are gangs in the suburbs and the rural areas of the United States. There are gangs that consist of just youth, but most youth are looking to join a gang that already has set leaders and older members to help protect and guide them. So, they choose gangs that fit into the three main categories of gangs in the United States, street, prison, and outlaw motorcycle gangs. Of these three gangs the street gangs that are usually found in the city are the most appealing. These are the most appealing because to join a prison gang one must be in prison and most new youth gang members are not. Also, to be able to join an outlaw motorcycle gang one must be able to ride a motorcycle and own one, but most youth aren't able to fulfill one or both of the requirements. So, this leaves the street gangs for youth to join. Street gangs are most popular among new youth gang members because they have probably heard of a lot of the street gangs which consist of some infamous street gang like the Bloods and Crips. The amount of youth in street gangs are especially high in the major cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. ** Q: What can law enforcement agencies due to try and combat the rise of youth gang members in the United States? ** The main reason that youth join gangs is because it appeals to them because it appears to them as if it leads to a better life. If law enforcement agencies found a way to make gangs seem less appealing to the youth that join them then they would be able to basically stop the amount of youth that join gangs in the United States. However, there are smaller steps that law enforcement agencies can take to lower the amount of youth that join gangs. One thing that law enforcement agencies can do is to make schools not be allowed to have any youth wear gang paraphernalia in schools. This might not help members already in gangs, but it can keep youth that do not know about gangs from seeing them in schools. Law enforcement have also tried to stop the amount of deaths due to gangs by confiscating a large number of weapons legal and illegal that gangs have, it would be very beneficial to the societies in the United States if they keep this up. Also, if law enforcement agencies try and tackle the amount of youth that join gangs in the city they would be targeting the majority of youths that join gangs and it might help in leading to less youth that join gangs. ** Q: Where should one begin if they are looking for more information on youth gang members in the United States? **  A: If you are really looking for more information on youth gang members I suggest that you go to either the FBI or the Gang Intelligence Center's websites or if you visit my wikispace page you can find the two sites that I used from both of these organizations. Since there are no true experts about youth gang members the FBI and the Gang Intelligence Center are the top two organizations in regards to youth gang members in the United States. I also suggest that you read //Gangs: Opposing Viewpoints// by David Bender, Bruno Leone, and Charles P Cozic.