Youth gang membership is a growing problem in the United States. According to a recent study, there are over one million juvenile gang members in the U.S. ages 5 – 17. The study found that an average of 2% of American youth are gang members, reaching a peak of 5% at age 14. (Sam Houston State University, 2015) The blame on adolescent gang membership is often placed on poverty rather than a lack of community. However, by looking closer at what gangs have to offer perceivably neglected children, it becomes clear that the sense of community gangs give is the real culprit for their success.
A sense of community refers to the degree to which community members feel a sense of belonging or membership in their community and is characterized by interdependence and attachment to other community members. (Schneider et al. 2012) Important characteristics of community that these gangs offer are membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. Gang affiliation addresses all of these needs as well as allowing individuals in large sprawling populations to become members of a smaller community, something studies suggest that a human’s small-group hunter gatherer brain can handle.
Although there are many pros for an adolescent joining a gang in an urban setting, most of the cons are common knowledge. However, little known effects of long-term membership in a gang for an adolescent are that it can lead to lower rates of educational and occupational attainment, and even poor physical and mental health in adulthood. (Sam Houston State University, 2015) A wide-spread governmental intervention is required in order to prevent recruitment from climbing.
Most programs in place are focused on educating youth on the dangers of gang membership rather than giving them an alternative. In order to address the void of the sense of community that these adolescents are seeking, groups need to have a focus on providing a safe and healthy alternative such as sports clubs/common interest groups. Unfortunately, conventional institutions in urban settings are widely underfunded, schools simply cannot afford to provide many afterschool activities and extracurricular groups. However, the need for these programs needs to be a higher priority.
References
Sam Houston State University. (2015, February 12). Juvenile gang members in US top 1 million, new study finds. Retrieved November 4, 2018, from https://phys.org/news/2015-02-juvenile-gang-members-million.html
Schneider, F.W., Gruman, J.A., Coutts, L.M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
I found your blog post very interesting and informative. Gangs are definitely an ongoing epidemic in the United States and I could see how you would relate Gangs with being a community because essentially it is a community within itself. They definitely get the feeling of belonging to something and that feeling and sense of belonging causes individuals in gangs to make terrible and unforgivable decisions. A recent news story that sticks in my head is the Bronx teenager Junior that was stabbed to death outside the bodega because these older young men mistaken his identity for someone else. This was all gang related and when you sit back and think about these older young men who did this… what did they accomplish? They murdered an innocent and the wrong individual at that and now they will be sitting in jail rotting away for the rest of their lives. Again, this shows how much a gang can have a sense of community in it and what the gang members are willing to do for their community.