Street Gangs

Today, gangs are everywhere; they are in most neighborhoods and affect many generations. In the gang textbook, an individual and group perspective, chapter one contains information on how there were many immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean and South America during many times. This chapter also mentions that there are many chronic gang cities. This would be a city that has a very large problem with gangs and gang crimes. For Example, Los Angeles would be considered a gang city since most crimes are gang related, motivated, and most deaths are gang homicides. The gangs in LA are more likely to commit more crimes and engage in gang violence. Because gangs started becoming an issue and the media had to pay a lot more attention to the current issues, gang units were created. Also in this book, there is information on studies that show most of gang populations are males. This was a survey done many years ago but till this day most gang members are males. Now a days, there are a lot more females joining gangs but they are still a very low percentage of the gang population. One reason there aren’t as many girls as guys in gangs is because the girls don’t tend to stay in gangs as long as males. It is also known that females join gangs a lot later than males and don’t stay part of the gang as long. Around Santa Ana, there were many girls joining gangs a few years ago but most only stood in the gangs less than a year. As for guys, most join at a very young age and stay in for many years. In class, there was a discussion about being gang related or motivated. Most girls are gang related since they are associates to the guys in the gangs. The students also discussed how there are many reasons people are starting to join gangs. Some of the reasons are for power, respect, protection, and money. On the national gang center website there are many gang related articles. There was a particular article on surveying both male and female gang members. This article has information on...