Social Problems By Anna Leon-Guerrero: Summary

The Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 is an international gang that was initiated in Los Angeles, California in the 1980s that were Hispanics. Most of the members in the gang is culturally composed of Central Americans. The gang is mostly in the neighborhood where their lives people that are poor or living in poverty. The gang has now stretched towards other areas besides Central America. Some of the areas where MS-13 is affiliated is El Salvador, Mexico, Canada, and the United States.

The strain theory implies that crime may occur because of the stress or frustration placed on people when

Apart from the physical impact of street living, people who are homeless are also the targets of stigmatization based on their homelessness and joblessness, and as such they experience segregation from the greater community. They are also more likely to experience emotional and psychological abuse and to have ongoing medical needs go

Homelessness is one the most ignored problems in the United States with citizen and politician. Homeless people are walked by and ignored. Nobody ever thinks that they will be homeless. Due to the economy, people live paycheck to paycheck making house payments very difficult. Most people will want to believe most homeless people are drug addicts or alcoholics, but most people will be surprise to know that it is no all true.

There are many reasons why mentally ill people go homeless. Mental illness can disturb anyone’s everyday life as it can prevent you from carrying out normal activities and thinking rationally. Mental illness is one of the largest reasons people go homeless. In Florida there are tens of thousands of homeless people on any given night.

Homelessness is usually a result of several of complicated issues. First, domestic and family violence is considered to be the most common reason why people become homeless. Domestic and family violence is that one person uses abuse and/or violence to control his/her spouse or other family members through fear (Domestic Violence Prevention Centre, 2016). Therefore, victims prefer to stay outside all day in order to avoid being at home which is considered as nightmare. Second, financial difficulty is another major cause for homelessness.

Unemployed and Working Hard, written by Simon Wykoff, describes the life of a homeless man. However, this essay seems to be very personal to Wykoff, for the homeless man was her father, and even her. Throughout her essay, Wykoff describes the life her father lived. She talks about the everyday struggles he had that most people take for granted. Her essay implies something else.

General strain theory is another approach to determining why students resort to carrying weapons at school. The introduction of negative stimuli into an individual’s life is one of the main three strains described in general strain theory. Negative stimuli that are perceived as unjust often result in crime according to general strain theory. Negative stimuli often cause negative emotions, strains, such as anger or frustration, which can result in delinquent behavior. While not all strains lead to delinquent behavior, strains that develop due to the perception that something is unjust frequently lead to crime.

Although certain groups are definitely at a disadvantage because of their appearance in today's society, that does not mean people in the more privileged group are immune to homelessness

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in United States suffers from a form of severe mental illness (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). Mental illness is the third largest cause of homelessness for single adults. (National Coalition for the Homeless). People with mental illness who become homeless lack both proper medications for the illness and suffer from extreme psychological problems. It is often a challenge hosting and caring for individuals with mental illness because they suffer from mental issues such as delusions and bizarre conduct.

Because it does not sit well me that’s why I plan to create a program that matches homeless people with vacant homes around their area by working with people, banks, organizations who own vacant homes that are willing to let a homeless person live in it for a few weeks or months. Now you may be thinking are vacant home owners really going to agree with that? The answer is yes, in fact, some states already passed laws to give government-owned vacant home to the homeless. How

Strain theory is a very well-known theory to criminology world. Robert Merton who introduced strain theory first, believed that as a society we encourage others to committed crime and engage in deviant behaviors due to the nature of our lifestyle within our society. As we know, strain theory argues that there are pretty much two different types of people, people who are willing to reach to their American dream by working hard and not breaking any laws and others who will achieve American dream by engaging in deviant behavior in order to get to their goals. However, once other criminologists started to study strain theory and processing the details, they were able to find many inadequacies and limitations.

a. Use Strain Theory to define and explain the following: i. The theft of a loaf of bread by a hungry person Using strain theory, the theft of a loaf of bread by a hungry person can be explained as a situation where an individual employs different means of success of getting fed, one that is against the agreeable ways in the society of getting money and feeding themselves. ii. Alcoholics Using strain theory, an alcohol has ultimately rejected the society’s goals of conforming to the societal values such as happiness and a stable job, such an individual essentially rejects the goals because they have been ultimately been unable to live up to the society’s standards. iii.

Looking at society as a whole with individual units that work together to make society function efficiently is the structural functionalism concept. Each unit has a part and is describe as institutions such as family, religion, education, politics, economy and inequality. Because structural functionalism looks at social structure and patterns of behavior it is able to create values for society. As well as, distinguish between visible and suppressed problems within the social structures that may need to be addressed. For instance, homelessness is indication of dysfunction in structural functionalism system.

In 1985 Robert Agnew a sociologist come to an interest of studying the theory and finds a potential for the theory in explaining several causes of crime in society, but due to its limitation he developed and reformulated the theory to widen its dimension or scope. After revising the theory he come up into General strain theory of crime and builds its foundation in 1992. General strain theory argues that frustrations and anger leads someone to deviance and may result into committing a crime (Agnew, 1992). GST defines strains as negative life events and conditions which are commonly disliked by the people who experience it or negative experiences of a person in a given group (Agnew, 1992; 2001; 2006). Strain is often classified in two distinct types, the Objective Strain and the Subjective Strain.