Posted by Scott on September 9th, 2007 — Posted in Gang Violence
I remember something that surprised me when reading about gangs: Contrary to popular belief, most gangs do not recruit young children, but rather young children seek out gangs.
I remember the two main reasons cited for why these children want to join gangs. For one, children do it to emulate family and friends. Secondly, children do it for safety. They believe their gang will protect them from the violence that plagues their neighborhoods.
I also bet that children join gangs to fulfill a natural human desire for social acceptance. Humans naturally have a desire to join groups of other humans.
To reduce unhealthy gang activity, we have to get rid of the incentives for children to join gangs.
First, we have to make sure children have a way to escape violent neighborhoods and otherwise avoid violence. Secondly, we need to create other ways for children to fulfill their social needs and join groups. This includes boys and girls clubs, sporting teams, and other healthy groups and clubs for children who may otherwise turn to gangs. These clubs can give children somewhere to go to escape the violence, but they cannot do it all.
We have to find a way to get rid of the violence that surrounds these gang-prone children. Increasing police presence can help–assuming the police focus on violence and not on victimless crimes. Also, legalizing drugs will eliminate a major funding source for organized crime and career criminals, and it will free up much of the state’s resources to focus on violent criminals and other victimizers.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on July 18th, 2007 — Posted in Gang Violence
Today, when I looked through the stories about self-defense, violence prevention, etc., I saw so much about gangs and gang violence.
In my opinion, many of these reports and articles incorrectly view gangs as a cause of social problems. In contrast, I see gangs and gang violence as a symptom.
Don’t get me wrong; I in no way excuse the violent actions of gangsters. I believe gangster, thugs, and anyone who offensively hurts innocent belongs in jail. I say, let’s put as many of them as we can in jail, so that they can no longer hurt people.
Nonetheless, we need to realize the causes of gang violence, and we need to fight the underlying problems. Namely, poverty and poor education cause gangs and gang violence.
For one, children who live in ghettos and go to crappy schools grow up around violence, and they copy what they observe. The crappy inner-city schools lack the resources to teach the kids any better.
Even more importantly, poverty and poor education mean the children lack opportunity. That lack of opportunity causes the children to turn to gangs, drug dealing, and other desperate & short-sighted vices. As people often say, there’s nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose. Poor children from gang-ridden neighborhoods do not have much to lose.
The best way to reduce gang violence and steer children away from gangs consists of eliminating the aforementioned causes. If society gives all children quality education and opportunities, then the children will invest in that rather than turning to gangs.
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