Gangs in the U.S.

A look at how the gang problem developed is instructive. There was no gang problem until the mid-nineteenth century, and the problem of delinquency was noted among various urban groups as the nation became more industrialized and presumably as the population became more condensed in the cities. The gang problem today, of course, is much greater and has become an epidemic in our cities, to the point where whole areas are completely controlled by gangs and where much of the public lives in fear. Some researchers place the blame on a variety of social institutions that have no desire to create a gang culture but that are here blamed for it just the same, from the news media for writing about urban unrest and making black

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s, perceiving women as objects and ornaments, and strutting this status in a violent manner. In brief, manhood in contemporary gangs involves the macho-syndrome, which in some distorted way is the gangster's approach to striving for manhood (Yablonsky, 1997, 172). Walter Miller projects a lower-class adolescent theory of gangs and finds that the values of this group produce deviance because they are "naturally" in conflict with middle-class values (Yablonsky, 1997, 173). Cloward and Ohlin see young people as striving for goals but finding a lack of fit between these goals and their means of achieving them (Yablonsky, 1997, 174). Yablonsky (1997) considers the various theories he examines and finds that there are certain central themes to be noted. Gang researchers, he says, generally agree on the following points: 1) Gangs have a fierce involvement with their territory and will fight to protect it. 2) Members of gangs have different levels of participation, in part based on age. 3) Different gangs have different patters of leadership. 4) Many gangs and their members participate in the sale and use of various drugs. 5) In part, gangs are created by their cultural milieu as a response to a society that blocks th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2615
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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