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Gangs in the U.S.

Numerous authors have noted the growing gang problem in the United States, and various researchers have undertaken to determine why young people join gangs as a way of developing a response and of finding means of prevention. The gang problem is largely an urban concern and has been related economic issues, racial strife, broken homes, the drug problem in the cities, and similar social forces, but there is also a psychological dimension to be considered in terms of why individuals respond to gangs and what they get out of joining a gang. In some degree, the reasons relate to rationales for criminal behavior in general, but at the same time there are added dimensions related to socio-economic position, peer pressure, family situation, and similar issues.

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 youth seem criminal to the economy for changing and creating pockets of poverty in the cities. Shelden, Tracy, & Brown (1997) find that most of the gang trappings originated with Hispanic gangs and then were taken over and modified by the new black gangs that developed in the late 1960s (Shelden, Tracy, & Brown, 1997, 58-60).

The authors analyze a number of theories of why gangs develop, among them Social Disorganization Theory, Strain and Cultural-Deviance ...

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Gangs in the U.S.. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:25, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707215.html