GANG CULTURE

Gang Culture in USA

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

In recent years, gangs have become increasingly perceived in many regions of the world as a major problem contributing to crime and violence. The perceived relationship between gangs and violence has led major international organizations like the World Health Organization, the Pan-American Health Organization, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to explore potential solutions to the problem. While gang research has a long and, rich history in the United States, and, has recently begun to flourish in Europe, gangs have not been the focus of sustained empirical research elsewhere, including parts of Central and South America. Scholars have lamented the paucity of research on the contributions of gangs to violence in both North and South America. All issues related to Gang Culture in USA and the revolution of these gangs will be discussed in detail.

Background of Gang Culture in USA

Much of what is known about gangs has come from research in developed nations, particularly the United States. Researchers have invested considerable energy studying how factors such as communities, peers, drugs, families, subculture and the organizational structure of gangs influence gangs and gang-related outcomes. Over the past decade, researchers have begun to examine the extent of the gang problem in Europe and characterize how it compares with other nations. Much of this work has been conducted by the Euro gang working group, which has developed common instruments and methodologies to examine the scope and nature of the gang problem in different nations. Their work has resulted in several volumes of research. The group has made substantial progress in understanding the issue of definition, gang structure and organization, individual gang member characteristics and risk factors, neighborhoods, immigration and ethnicity, and the impact of groups and gangs on individual delinquent behavior, primarily at the national level (Allan, 2004).

It was not until fairly recently that researchers began to collaborate on cross-national gang research. To the researcher's knowledge, there have been only four cross-national quantitative studies examining gangs, all of which were conducted in developed countries and relied on samples of juvenile gang members. Various researchers examined the scope and nature of gang problems among high risk youth from Denver, Colorado and Berman, Germany and school samples participating in the U.S.-based Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) and the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) School Project, respectively. Both reported similar rates of gang joining across countries, and both found that gang members were significantly more likely to be involved in delinquency than non gang members. However, some of the authors reported that German gang members reported less drug sales than American gang members. They indicated that Dutch gang members belonged to gangs that were less organized than American gangs. Most recently, Gatti and his associates compared the prevalence and characteristics of deviant youth groups in Italy to those in France and ...