'Broad Daylight': A Short Note On Gangs

As a REACH member, I had the privilege of witnessing a support group for substance abusers and alcoholics. One man, in particular, spoke of his addiction to cocaine. I listened to his speech that described his introduction to the substance, the hardships he faced, and his slow but successful recovery. I, though, had one question in mind: to what measures will users and even sellers go for drugs? Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader For a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets answers my question.

Even seemingly barbaric gangs search for order in society and provide security and comfort for the impoverished. People are naturally inclined to help others and act socially, especially

The gang is a way to obtain the goals they could not obtain by legal means such as work due to the outsourcing of jobs. Gangs show violence and a criminal subculture that attracts youth. The communities surrounding youth are unstable. Families are often single parent creating a strain between parents or the child and a parent. Schools are underfunded due to the lack of funding from the government due to segregation and crime.

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25 year old man, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade. While being transported in a police van. Gray fell into a coma and was taken to a hospital. Gray died on April 19, 2015, his death was because of a spinal cord injury. On April 21, 2015, pending an investigation of the incident.

“The Gangs of New York Assignment” “The Gangs of New York” interpreted many aspects of the Gilded Age including politics, immigration, and racism. When the immigrants, which were mostly Irish, came to New York they were treated very poorly. When arriving to America the immigrants were shouted at to go back home and had items thrown at that them when departing the boats that they arrived on. When the Irish came to America a countless amount of them had an illness, this then led to New York being called a “City of fever.” If you had an illness as an immigrant you were put back onto a ship and you were sailed back to where you had came from.

For many youths, gang life is all they know. Many gang members have other family members who are involved in gangs already. In Lauger’s (2012) ethnography of the DFW boyz, he found

The Watts and Rodney King riots, the Rampart Scandal, overt racism, brutality and general neglect of the inner city are sins that author Joe Domanick places on the front door of past chiefs, particularly the celebrated icons William Parker and Daryl Gates. Both former chiefs are lambasted without mercy. He goes over the top with his treatment of them as individuals, but provides ample evidence to show how their management styles led to future dishonor and disgrace for the agency. Few are spared scathing criticism. Dominick's antipathy towards American law enforcement and law enforcers sticks out like a sore thumb.

Also, living in a poverty area he was forced into the gang lifestyle for protection from the other gangs. The discrimination followed him throughout his life, like if they had big signs on their backs. He tells many stories about his gang life from the beginning to what ended it. This book is more than just gangs and the ugly truth about this unknown war people are currently fighting. They are fighting against other gangs, drugs, violence in the streets but, more importantly fighting to survive for a better life.

Utilizing research findings and realistic experiences, Shakur, Howell, and Griffiths disprove myths about gangs, justify the reasons for young people being recruited because of their desire to be understood by others similar to them, and girls integrating themselves into the groups from their relationships with members. Howell and Griffiths managed to explain the principles behind gangs and their members' lifestyles, while Shakur provided real gangster experiences as supporting evidence for the research findings. Theories to gangs may be existent, but without proper research leading to the findings, or experiences from subjects who lived the lifestyle, beliefs about the organizations merely become empty

The fourth time period the author looked was gangs in times of mass incarceration. During the incarceration times street gangs have been more assimilated into prison gangs. Many of the youth do not want the older men controlling them so they rebel. As the street gang's youths went to prison they had to join with the prison gangs or risked of being attacked. The street gangs and prison gangs unify which means that the collective association is close and have more resources. .

Gang violence is running rampnd across the nation. Just last week over two hundred cases of gang violence were recorded. As a nation, we can’t stand for this any longer. This is getting out of hand and it puts the public in danger. Now I have created a novel solution to this problem.

The formation of the 18th street gang was created under a unique situation. This gang originated during the 1960s from Los Angeles, California. It was founded by a young group of men from the same neighborhood. It initially was established by the young group of men as a result from being rejected by a local gang (Howell and Moore, 14). Unlike most gangs in the local area, this particular group did not discriminate or reject any members based on their racial backgrounds.

But there can also be a forced alliance as many can be compelled to join or work for a gang under threat so they don’t have a choice and have to follow orders for the sake of their own lives. Much of whether gangs are seen as a social problem comes from perspective. Society is more prone to seeing gangs in a negative point of view because the social reality is not reaching the ideals and standards of people’s conception of a perfect world. Many external factors such as the media and personal opinions encourage a bad outlook on gangs. The media inflicts fear and depicts gangs to be a threat, which the community looks at in a negative view.

The term gang can be attached to a legion of groups which would include outlaws from back in the nineteenth century in the west of America, a congregation of unruly prison inmates, members of the triads, the mafioso, and other organised criminal entities such as sons of anarchy a know motorcycle gang, and groups of socially displaced inner city youths. Despite its diverse definition, the term gang most of the times denotes the involvement to illegal or disreputable activities. The term gang were mostly facilitated by social scientists they use this term to describe a group of juveniles, this research can be dated back to 1927 with the involvement of Frederic Thrasher's literature titled The Gang: A study of 1313 gangs in Chicago.

Throughout the 17th-century gangs have been causing havoc in people's life and destroying the society. The National Institute of Justice (2011) has defined a gang as "A group of collective members which create an atmosphere of intimidation among citizens. " Many of these gangs are well organized, using different forms of violence to control neighbourhoods and to conduct their illegal activities. The National Gang Threat Assessment (2011) reports that “Gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions.” Street Gangs have caused incidences of violence that is confined in the inner city of many countries.