Youth Gangs: The Role of the Family in the Formation and Prevention of Youth Gangs
The issue of youth gangs is one of the most serious concerns facing administrators in the UK today. Numerous factors have been identified as increasing the risk of one getting lured into gang activity. The most prominent of these factors include poverty and deprivation, poor performance in school, drug and substance abuse, and crime-prone surroundings. While not underestimating the role of these factors, this study seeks to establish the role of the family as an influencing factor of youth delinquency and gang involvement. It is intent on showing that disorganization within the family unit is the main reason as to why young people engage in gang activities, and the best way to address the problem is by giving families and parents a central role in policy and interventions.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Methodology
Literature Review
Defining a Gang.
The push and pull factors that drive gang membership.. 13
The role of the family in gang involvement
The urban underclass.. 17
Family structure and gang involvement.. 18
Familial criminality and gang involvement. 19
Theoretical framework. 21
Findings and discussion.
Conclusion.
References. 28
Chapter One: Introduction
Youth gangs are back on the government's agenda, with Prime Minister David Cameron recently promising to put up an "all out fight" against gangs wreaking havoc in the country's inner cities. A 2008 study by the Home Office established that nearly 6% of adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 in England and Wales belong to some form of gang. In London alone, police have reported approximately 171 "dangerous" gangs, and have found almost half of all teenage deaths in the city to be gang-related (Castella & McClatchey, 2011). The situation is no different in Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool, where 60% of shootings are linked to gang involvement (Castella & McClatchey, 2011). However, whilst not disputing these statistics, criminology experts are raising questions over the criterion used by police to categorize a group as a gang - given that most of the young offenders arrested on gang-related charges do not even identify themselves as gang members in their court appearances (Castella & McClatchey, 2011). In his book, One Blood, for instance, John Heale (2009: 1968) expresses that we do not even have a standard definition for the term "gang" in the UK, and it is likely, therefore, that we may perceive every "suspicious" group as a gang even when they are just kids hanging around together because they do not have anything useful to do. Owing to this lack of information on the nature and operations of gangs, and the effect of misrepresentation on the part of the media, we have developed this common perception that urban groups nurture attitudes and values that encourage delinquency. What is even more worrying though is that we do not stop to consider the effect of external push and pull factors that contribute to gang membership and gang involvement (Cox, 2011:1). Well, if this is the mentality that PM David Cameron and his team intend to use in their war against gang activities, then we should not expect the youth gang problem to go away any time soon.
If we are to effectively tackle the issue of youth gangs, we will need to adopt a holistic approach that responds not only to the surface issues, but also the underlying issues that drive young people to join gangs. As Gavin Poole, the executive director at the Center for Social Justice, says, we cannot eradicate youth gangs by eliminating those who are already caught up in them; the best we can do is prevent more youths from joining the same (Castella & McClatchey, 2011). Doing so will, however, require us to first heighten our understanding of the social, individual, and psychological factors that drive the youth to join gangs. If we can effectively address these, then we will be able to minimize the youth gang effect, which has threatened the nation's security for centuries.
This dissertation examines the causal factors in the youth gang problem, with particular emphasis on the role of the family in criminality and gang membership. The researcher hypothesizes that disorganization within the family unit is the main reason why young people engage in gang activities. This is, however, not to underestimate the role of other social, psychological, and individual factors because the researcher fully understands that one's involvement in criminality is driven by their socio-economic context as a whole, and not a single factor. All the same, compared to other factors, familial influences have been...
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