Weerman, Lovegrove, and Thornberry (2015), in their article, analyzed the way gang membership among teenagers is linked to changes regarding their friends, conventional social relations, and issues regarding behaviors. The authors argued that belonging to a particular gang is mainly related to delinquent behaviors. For instance, across the US and Europe, gang membership facilitates troublesome behaviors, the degree of offense increase compared to before and after. Following their studies, the authors elaborated that being in a gang group makes adolescents shift from other trajectories such as street gangs. Leaving gang membership is mainly associated with three main variables: changes in the social groups, changes to conservative organizations, and variations in the participation of troublesome behaviors. To ascertain is the argument is true or no, the authors collected data from two longitudinal studies. The first one was carried out in the US at the Rochester Youth Development Study and the second one took place in the Netherlands at the NSCR School Study. The authors found that gang membership does not last for a long period, an average of one year. Joining the gang groups is due to increase levels of drug abuse, delinquency, weak social bonds, and peer pressure. Exiting a gang is linked with the conflicting patterns of changes. The article was backed up with the latest studies that correspond to the topic. Arguments are comprehensive, covering all the viewpoints, i.e., factors that make an adolescent leave or join the group.
The article is very educative and elaborative. I have learned that teenagers mainly enter into a gang group due to unique variables. Mostly it is related to negative peers and substance abuse. The main issue is how to deter adolescents from joining a gang because it affects their future life. For instance, they will fail in parenthood, the harmful transition to marriage, and many more. The other issue is finding the number of adolescents in gang groups and how long the group membership is. The authors logically addressed the issue from the studies as there was no consensus disagreement in both the current and previous studies. Each study had unique but related arguments on gang membership. The main areas that should be further researched include identifying procedures by which gangs demonstrated potential impacts on teens' behaviors to decrease the effect. The information provided in the study is reliable because it incorporated both primary and secondary sources of information. The article is also not biased as it tackled wide areas of study both in the United States and the Netherlands. Generalization is possible because of the wide degree of sampling. The article, for sure, was based on many studies to offer vivid information to the study.
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I can use the article to explore my research interest. It is up to date, well-researched, has elaborative information about gangs among adolescents and ways of solving society's problem. The source is helpful because it tackled an important issue in society. Gang membership has become a common issue in the past years. There is a need to look at what were triggers and how to solve the problem. I will utilize the source as part of my secondary information to a systematic review of how to reduce gang membership by altering the youths' behaviors and creating awareness. The article is recent and still useful to provide information on the current issues affecting society. I could not use a source that is 10 years old because it will be hard to link with present problems and provide a strong argument on the topic.
Reference
Weerman, F. M., Lovegrove, P. J., & Thornberry, T. (2015). Gang membership transitions and its consequences: Exploring changes related to joining and leaving gangs in two countries. European Journal of Criminology , 12 (1), 70-91. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1477370814539070
