GANGS

    What is a gang?  Why do people join them?  What are some of the advantages and disadvantages?  The word gang can stand for many things, but to combine all definitions together the word would mean groups of people who form allegiance for common purpose, usually to commit violence or other unlawful criminal activity.

    People tend to join gangs for many reasons, each case having its individual purpose.  Some reasons include a search for love, structure, discipline, sense of belonging, and commitment.  Gang members feel the need for recognition, power, companionship, training, excitement, and activity.  Sometimes the gang members feel a sense of self-worth, place of acceptance, a need for physical safety and protection, or it could be something of a family tradition.

    Some advantages of being in a gang is the protection you get.  There are more disadvantages than advantages.  Once you're in a gang, your only way out most times is by death.  Drugs play a key role in gangs whether gangs members use them or sell them.  Mostly, the selling of drugs is a financial source.  Gang members tend to have a very lengthy criminal record which prevents them from getting a job, so again, they turn to the distribution of drugs.  Gang members that break certain codes can cause harm to themselves and also to members of their family.

LITERATURE REVIEW

    People tend to join gangs for many reasons, each case having its individual purpose. Some reasons include a search for love, structure, discipline, sense of belonging, and commitment. Gang members feel the need for recognition, power, companionship, training, excitement, and activity. Sometimes the gang members feel a sense of self-worth, place of acceptance, a need for physical safety and protection, or it could be something of a family tradition.

    Not all street gangs exist to sell drugs or commit criminal acts. Instead, young people normally seek gang involvement for some combination of the following five reasons:

1) Structure: Youths want to organize their lives but lack the maturity to do so on their own. The gang provides rules to live by and a code of conduct.
2) Nurturing: Gang members frequently talk of how they love one another. This remains true even among the most hardened street gangs. These young people are trying to fill a void in their lives by substituting the gang for the traditional family.
3) Sense of belonging: Because humans require social interaction, some young people find that the gang fulfills the need to be accepted as an important part of a group.
4) Economic opportunity: Gang members motivated by this consideration alone probably would become involved in criminal activity anyway. Finding it hard to draw away from the lifestyle, but due to a lack of loyalty for the group, they often will provide authorities with information in exchange for some personal benefit.
5) Excitement: This often represents a motivation for suburban and affluent youths. Gangs composed of these types of individuals usually have very fluid membership, with associates joining and leaving to be replaced by others with a passing interest.

    Few young people that enter into the gang subculture do so for evil or criminal reasons. They are looking for something that they feel is lacking in their lives. For this reason, gangs can form in any city, town, neighborhood, or region. No hard-and-fast rule says that all gang members do one thing or another. To understand the gang operating in any given area, law enforcement agencies must determine what motivates the gang's members and how the gang leadership maintains authority over, and loyalty from, its members. (David M. Allender)

RESEARCH METHODS

Crime in Los Angeles has been declining since 1995 in almost all major categories, including robberies, assaults, theft, and homicides. According to the FBI crime throughout the entire United States has been in a sharp decline during the past several years. Other than Los Angeles, cities such as Miami, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Detroit have all seen declines in crime.

Published reports have stated that crime rates in Los Angeles have reached 29 year lows, but there is no clear cut explanation to the recent declines. Cities and states have theorized on their own declines without considering the big picture and national trends.

The following are some reasons that have been used to explain the recent declines in crime, but these reasons do not explain national down trends of violence, and in some cases they may not be accurately explaining crime drops in their cities. It appears that several organizations and law makers want to take credit for these recent declines.

Below is a table of all gang-related homicides that occurred in Los Angeles for each year from 1979 to 1998. These figures are tabulted by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and include all gang-related homicides of all racial groups for the entire county of Los Angeles.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

    The word gang can stand for many things, but this is a way to control gangs and/or even end their presence in America: Prevention. Gangs can be stopped from forming or spreading. This begins with parents, schools, law enforcement agencies, religious institutions, community organizations, businesses, and youth. No person, group or agency can solve a gang problem alone.  We must act against gangs together. Each of us must help keep our communities safe.

    Parents - know the signs of gang involvement, talk about gangs with your children, and listen to their concerns.

    Families & Friends - develop a family prevention plan and learn how to help friends or other children stay safe from or get out of a gang.

    Communities - learn to identify when gangs are moving into a neighborhood and mobilize local residents and agencies to fight against the spread of gangs in your community

REFERENCES

Other comments: You'll note some minor editing I did with some of your sentences.  I was trying to keep your Intro short and full of short, choppy sentences.  I don't mean to take anything away from what you've written - it's well done and right on the mark -- but I feel I should point out a couple of things: (1) you've got to have more than one word in your title; and (2) you've got to write a criminology paper in this class.  Gangs are a perfectly acceptable dependent variable, the outcome, or type of crime you will explain.  But you've also got to have an independent variable, the cause, some concept or idea from the field of criminology. Otherwise, you have a criminal justice paper on the pros and cons of gangs.  You job in this class is to write about the theoretical criminological causes of something.

You lit review's a little short, but enough to keep going, I guess.

On 04/26, I added your Research Methods section.
On 05/08, I added your Summary and Conclusions. You have no references.