Youth Gangs
Gangs have been a threat in a lot of our communities in the United States dating back to the early 1800s. There has however, been a few discrepancies when it comes to defining these groups. Sometimes city or town officials who do not want to be classified as having a gang problem will go to certain measures to cover up this problem. This may be for many reasons, but the main reason that sticks out in my mind is the fact that these cities or towns do not want tourists or people in the community to be fearful of this "gang problem". The police departments and/or city officials then oversimplify the problem so they will not be considered to have a gang problem. Another problem that we face with defining gangs is that sometimes police departments will be offered money to clean up their gang problem. In turn, these police departments will either exaggerate this problem or in some cases create a gang problem to receive more funding. Other exaggeration occurs when police departments classify certain people as gang members when this is not necessarily the case. Police departments may see, for example, six teenage boys that are always in trouble and happen to hang around together as a gang. What will happen is that the police will
There are a few slight distinctions when it comes to different racial and cultural groups, such as African Americans, Chicano's and Vietnamese groups. The packet discussed that initially the African American and the Chicano groups were first involved there is more centralized leadership. Organized crime groups are the most sophisticated of them all. Members of Organized Crime Groups are also much older and are highly organized crime focused business groups. Skinhead Groups are different altogether. These groups are motivated by hate and they have a racist ideology. Most of their time is spent indoors generating materials about their cause. report theses teenagers as gang members and their names will stay in the system for a long time. This is a major problem because the system is not being purged as much as it should be. Gangs are formed for many reasons. In Hagedorn's article "How Gangs Get Started", he names few of them. Hagedorn's article was about a study he conducted in Milwaukee of how gangs were started. This study revealed some interesting information. The main cause of gang activity in Milwaukee was because of the high influence level of the Chicago gangs. Some of the gang's that started had Chicago Roots. Basically what this means is that kids from Chicago moved to Milwaukee with their families for whatever reason or kids who had relatives in Chicago and knew some of the signs and the attire that they wear decided to start up a gang where they lived. Break dance groups also formed into gangs. At first, these groups were just competing against each other. Then after one group lost, fights would break out. Other groups that broke out were corner gangs. Corner Gangs started by a group of kids hanging around on the corner causing trouble. They in tu
Some common words found in the essay are:
Saints Roughnecks, , Corner Gangs, Roots Basically, American Chicano, Organized Crime, Gangs Started, Americans Vietnamese, Youth Gangs, Drug Crews, youth gangs, police departments, organized crime, drug crews, gangs started, poverty stricken, trouble police roughnecks, wrong town, police roughnecks, african americans, gang police, gang police departments,
Approximate Word count = 1211
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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