Juvenile gang violence is one of the significant challenges facing the United States of America. In any juvenile gang, the males constitute 90% while the females constitute 10%. Juvenile gang violence affects significant states of the US, such as New York, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, and California. There several reasons as to why adolescents may choose to join juvenile gang, the reasons include: to receive acceptance, loyalty, and to get a sense of belonging, financial aid, peer pressure, companionship, ignorance, and enhancement of one's social status and self-worth. Juvenile gangs always result in some antisocial behaviour such as drug abuse, robbery with violence, abuse of sex, and victimization. A juvenile unit can be counteracted before the adolescents decide to join them. Proactive measures of dealing with juvenile gang violence include strengthening of families, discussing the effects of joining a gang with the adolescents, strengthening society supervision of the youths, appropriate training for the teachers, provision of training about gang violence, and teaching the children on how to solve their problems.
Reasons for Joining a Gang
Adolescents always join juvenile gangs due to peer pressure. In the state of Virginia, many juveniles usually choose to join gang violence so that they can appear like their friends. Those who don't join such gangs always have a feeling that they are missing a lot. Juveniles lure their friends to join the teams so that they can be like them ( Howell, 2010) . juveniles also join the juvenile gang so that they can have companionship. Mostly the decision happens when a juvenile comes from a family that is poorly organized and doesn't make him or her to feel helped. Gangs typically feed young people with an illusion that they will aid themselves with the problems that they are facing. In the teams, a young person is always shown on the kind of benefits he will get. Moreover, young people join juvenile gangs to raise their sense of self-worth. In some states of California, the worthiness of youth gets measured based on the group that a person enters. Some gangs seem superior to others. When a juvenile joins a premiere gang, he will feel worthier than a young person who joins an inferior team.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Young people join juvenile gangs for financial gain. The problem of scarcity of jobs in the US has caused young people to enter the criminal gangs so that they can receive their financial needs. Youths that don't like working love criminal gangs since they offer cheap money that ought not to work hard to get. Young people want to live a which is above their means; hence they join the criminal gangs. Also, juveniles join juvenile gangs to feel accepted by their peers. When a young person is not in the criminal gangs that his friends are, he/she always think outdated, and therefore, the best decision for such a person is to join a criminal team.
Antisocial Behavior of Juvenile Gangs
Drug Abuse
Drug abuse is an antisocial-behaviour commonly with juvenile gangs. A juvenile cannot achieve their activities if they are not under the influence of substances. They, therefore, take hard drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroine to attain their objectives. Such juveniles abuse drugs to the extent that they cannot help society to achieve important things. Drug abuse makes the young people disrespect their parents and fail to attend learning as they perceive it as useless. The juveniles in criminal gangs spend most of their money on drugs.
Sex Abuse
Juvenile gangs encourage the abuse of sex. The habit of abuse of sex emanates from drug abuse. Some of the illicit sexual behaviours that young people engage in includes rape, prostitution, fornication, bestiality, and homosexuality ( Watkins & Moule Jr, 2014) . Abuse of sex causes societies, especially women, to feel insecure about their lives. There are some circumstances where members of criminal gangs have raped their mothers and siblings. The members of criminals teams find it challenging to use their ordinary senses and behave like human beings.
Robbery with Violence
Juvenile gangs involve themselves in a robbery with violence. The reasons as to why criminal gangs exist are to engage themselves in social crimes. Juvenile teams receive their finances by engaging in illegal activities. These gangs always attack homes and any item which seems variable. As they attack the houses, in the process of performing their operations, they usually cause the death of the owners of the homes ( Hayward & Honegger, 2014) . In some situations, juvenile gangs always hijack cars on the Highways and rob them from their owners. Also, these gangs attack restaurants and businesses, thereby causing considerable harms to the company and the owners of the companies.
Proactive Solutions to Gang Violence
Strengthening of Families
Strengthening of families can help in preventing gang violence. Most juveniles join the juvenile gangs due to low family structure where the parents have ignored their parental responsibilities. Strengthening of families whereby the parents are encouraged to take full control of raising their children appropriately helps in reducing the chances of young people from joining the criminal gangs. When a parent instils the right information to a child on the side effects of the criminal gangs, such a child will never involve itself in such organizations since it has the understanding of the impact of joining such a team.
Strengthening a Society Supervision of the Juveniles
Proper strengthening of society helps in the supervision of the juveniles. Strengthening a community entails giving each person the responsibility of educating the children on the issue of gang violence (Kerig et al., 2016). Educating the society on why it should involve itself in bringing up responsible youths that understand their roles in the community helps in reducing the chances of such juveniles joining the criminal gangs. Enlightening a society will aid the young person to realize that they were only meant to involve themselves in the noble activities which can help in building a community.
Teach on Problem Solving Skills
Juveniles join criminal gangs due to the lack of skills in solving their problems. If a young person is fed with the right information on how to solve the problem that himself/herself faces, then such a person will always find no reason to join criminal activities. Some of the issues that meet a young person include a lack of finances and peer pressure. Skills such as decision making and critical thinking skills can help a juvenile to overcome the problem of lack of finances and peer pressure.
Conclusion
Juvenile gangs involve mostly adolescents. In each criminal team, the males always constitute 90% while the females constitute 10%. Some of the reasons as to why young people join criminal gangs involve financial gain, peer pressure, companionship, and to raise one's self-worth. The antisocial behaviour of juvenile teams entails drug abuse, abuse of sex, and robbery with violence. The proactive measures of dealing with gang violence include; feeding the young people with problem-solving skills, strengthening society supervision of the young people, and strengthen the families. Each society should deal appropriately with the problem of gang violence.
References
Hayward, R. A., & Honegger, L. (2014). Gender differences in juvenile gang members: An exploratory study. Journal of evidence-based social work , 11 (4), 373-382.
Howell, J. C. (2010). Gang Prevention: An Overview of Research and Programs. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention .
Kerig, P. K., Chaplo, S. D., Bennett, D. C., & Modrowski, C. A. (2016). “Harm as harm” gang membership, perpetration trauma, and posttraumatic stress symptoms among youth in the juvenile justice system. Criminal Justice and Behavior , 43 (5), 635-652.
Watkins, A. M., & Moule Jr, R. K. (2014). Older, wiser, and a bit more badass? Exploring differences in juvenile and adult gang members' gang-related attitudes and behaviours. Youth violence and juvenile justice , 12 (2), 121-136.
