lts who are closest to the child. Approximately 50 percent of child abuse cases occur in households receiving public assistance, while the remaining 50 percent occur in higher income households.
Psychiatrically, abusers of children are typically unstable, immature, characterized by poor impulse control, and, in many instances, psychotic (Kaplan and Sadock, 1990). Young persons who join street gangs often do so to escape such abuse. In the process, they may be required to endure an abuse of another type during the gang initiation process (Gwynne, 1990). Once initiated, however, they are accepted into the gang family, and may expect gang protection.
Young persons who join street gangs are also frequently alienated from society's political establishment. It has been said that "the integration of individuals into their society results from forces which place them within the system and govern their participation and patterned associations with others" (Rossow, 1967, 9). Social values, group memberships, and social roles are "conceived as the axes providing the ties that structure social interaction, place the person in society, and order relations with others. In effect, actors are integrated into society thr
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