Gangs (THAT KID)

Gangs are a social phenomenon that we must tackle, because the activity that the members engage is typically illegal and dangerous for other members of society. Such activities range from drug dealing to murder. The murder typically takes place against other rival gang members. If asked about gangs to anyone on the street their reply would be, it’s a bad thing. They don’t give anything to society or they cost tax payers money from the damage they contribute on the street. These damages could be distributing drugs on the street which leads to addiction and medicals costs for those people. Also, they damage property by shootings, and robberies.

            Are gangs a social problem? It depends on how you look at it. The statistics according to justice.gov gang activity has been rising from 2004 to 2008. The year 2007 and 2008 seems to level out looking at the graph. Another statistic taken from justice.gov is the statistic of membership. It is calculated that there is 1 million gang members in the United States and 21,500 gangs. That is quite a bit and rather intimidating. There is a couple of small problems with gang membership. The claim to be a gang member varies between different gangs. Gangs don’t keep a record (from what I know) of every single gang members. Also, people who associate themselves with gang members might be consider gangs members, even though they don’t consider themselves one.

            Why do people join gangs? This question is in essence what most people want to know, because if you can figure out why they join, then you can end it. Some research suggest that they join, because protection against other gangs, fitting in, money, friends, and family.

            Gangs are a social issue, but since crimes are going down and they are composed of the 90 percent of crimes in America, are they dying?

http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs32/32146/gangs.htm#Figure2

http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/

http://people.howstuffworks.com/street-gang.htm

This entry was posted on 9. December 2011 at 02:38 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.