Family Support Can Reduce Gang Violence

Ms. Best

Eng9293

May 18, 2015

Family Support Can Reduce Gang Violence

Street gang is a serious problem exists in all of the cities, we can see or hear increasing gang violence from daily news, TV, and Internet. Some people complains police brutality, racial discrimination, and law enforcement neglect the safety of poverty communities; most parents are frustrated, and fear that their children might be influenced or join gangs because that, especially who lived in the community around gang members. Street gang is a complex social problem, the root cause relates to any level of the society. Even though gang violence can’t stop now, but most gang-related crime rates have dropped after the government introduced innovation strategies. A functional family is a key factor to prevent youth involvement, and reduce gang violence effectively. Therefore, we need to address the root cause to reduce gang involvement by taking prevention programs, and cooperate with families, communities and other agencies.

Most of gangster are from dysfunctional family since they lack strong connections with parents, other family members and peers. Lewis Yablonsky, the author of Gangsters: Fifty years of Madness, Drugs, and Death on the Streets of America, identifies one of the main factors that leads youth gang membership; “Most gangsters come from dysfunctional families with brutal or absentee fathers”(Yablonsky 17). He explains child who grow up in an abusive and dysfunctional family caused behavioral problems. Child eager to get recognition and protection to hide his issues of abandonment, fear and unhappiness by joining gang. In article “A need for power and respect encourages gang behavior”, Isis Sapp-Grant, a member of one of New York City’s most notorious female gangs, the Deceptinettes. She asserts that “I went home that evening with rings and gold chains and Louis Vuitton bags, and my mother didn’t even notice. I knew she was having her own problems. I think she was depressed. Even though she had been a good mother to me and my sisters till then. She wasn’t really paying attention to what I was getting into. And my sisters took their cue from her and left me alone” (Grant 26). Isis remembers she came home with valuable items from first robbery, and no one cared or pays attention to what she did. Because Isis has no one to share her feeling that cause her feel like she’s alone, and what she did doesn’t matter to anyone. So poor parenting will develop low self-esteem children who will get out of line easily by purpose in order to gain attentions.

Besides that, because most gangs are located in the poverty communities, children grow up from poverty community are higher risks joining gang than other youth. Most of gangs take advantages of lower class community to assort more gang members, to offer alternative families to youth who lack sufficient support from their families. Because financial problem, most of parents need to work long time to support the family but have less time to take care and teach their children. Parent act as a first role model to a child, appropriate parenting, and participation are very important in child’s early age, it will affect child’s view of justice, personality development. In Always Running, Luis J. Rodriguez, was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. He states that “I was nine years old – a good working age, as far as my mother was concerned; she had picked cotton at the age of nine in South Texas”(Rodriguez 68). He remembers he was asked by his mother to work for the family when he was nine years old. Because of poverty, there’s many children are need to make money to support the family. If without correct guidance, children will easily make mistake and influenced by other people, like gangs who take advantages of them to encourage child to make quick money such as robbery, sell drugs, and etc.

Strong families are a major protective factor in preventing gang-joining. For example, in Always Running, Rodriguez writes that “I also learned a parent cannot just turn over a child to a school, a court, or hospital without stepping in at various times to insure his or her best interests are being met” (Rodriguez 9). Rodriguez explains parents need to participate into children’s life, no matter where they went, parent has responsible to take care of them and protect them not being get involve into gang. Furthermore, Jon Shute, author of Family Support as a Gang Reduction Measure, asserts that “fairly support is an unexplored but potentially effective gang reduction tool, but in order to overcome persistent concerns regarding misidentification, stigmatic labelling and policy misdirection, programmes must not only be ‘good science’ but also be non- punitive, acceptable to families and context- sensitive.” He explains that family support builds up child’s self-esteem, connections between parents, and lower the chance that child seeks the respect and power from gangs. In article what should be done in the family to prevent gang membership, Deborah-Smith, Kempner and Bormann point out several reasons for young people involvement in gangs. According to the authors, one of the key factor for gang involvement is family and parenting, the best prevention of gang involvement begins early in life. The article states that family focused on prevention programs, early childhood programs and multi systemic therapy for adolescence. Such as MST (Multisystemic Therapy). “MST, a community-based alternative to incarceration for juvenile offenders, uses a combination of empirically based treatments (such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, parent behavioral training or home-based contingency-drug treatment) to address multiple factors-family, school or peer groups, for example- that are related to delinquent and violent behavior as well as gang involvement” (Smith 81). These programs aim to create a better environment for the child and inform family about better parenting for a proper functioning family. The programs has promising results that they focus on the low income low-income pregnant mothers and families with young children. Additionally, programs that help build networks of social support and foster family-community ties can provide an additional protective factor to prevent youth involvement in gangs and other types of violence.

Everyone should treat and be treated equally; Child who grow up round racial discrimination also deeply affects their self-esteem. Some people who are Black or Latino are complains that they were treated unfairly most of the time (when crimes around, they might be the first one to be questioned), and even cause them lots of trouble because their race and skin. In Always Running by Luis Rodriguez, He writes “Our first exposure in America stays with me like foul odor. It seemed a strange world, most of it spiteful to us, spitting and stepping on us, coughing us up, us immigrants, as we were phlegm stuck in the collective throat of this country”( Rodriguez 19). Rodriguez remember his powerless feeling in his childhood when he follow with his family migrated to the US, and it pave the way for his will encounter further racial discrimination from school and community. Those are triggers that may leads Rodriguez joins gang using violence to get respect from other people. For example in article Repetitive Motion Disorder: Black Reality and White Denial in America by Tim Wise, he asserts that “As a general rule, nothing we do will get us shot by law enforcement: not walking around in a big box store with semi-automatic weapons (though standing in one with an air rifle gets you killed if you're black); not assaulting two officers, even in the St. Louis area, a mere five days after Mike Brown was killed; not pointing a loaded weapon at three officers and demanding that they---the police---"drop their fucking guns;" not committing mass murder in a movie theatre before finally being taken alive; not proceeding in the wake of that event to walk around the same town in which it happened carrying a shotgun; and not killing a cop so as to spark a "revolution," and then leading others on a two month chase through the woods before being arrested with only a few scratches.” (Wise 2). Tim uses Mike Brown as example to explain that who was defined as a killer because he is black. Even people not involve in any of the criminal acts but still get arrested or get hurt for police will take advantage of a person’s skin color. Therefore, in article Developing our cultural strengths: Using the ‘Tree of Life’ strength-based, narrative therapy intervention in schools, to enhance self-esteem, cultural understanding and to challenge racism, Mala German writes that “Some people don’t care about culture. The Tree of Life project helped people understand more. Me, I’m more brave to tell them about my culture now” (German 85), He asserts the Tree of Life project is a transformative intervention that can develop youth’s cultural strengths and enhances self-esteem. In order to avoid youth joining gang because racial discrimination, government provides innovation strategies to address the problem, and as parents, we may look to teachers, politicians, or religious leaders to eliminate racism. They certainly can make great contributions toward a just society; we can talk openly with our children about race, ethnicity, religion, and bigotry, to answer their questions about these complicated topics, and we can begin a dialogue that will continue throughout their lives. The quality of our children's future is at stake.

In conclusion of gang violence deterrence, gang violence will never come to an end because there are many problems are waiting for address. But what we can do now is control gang member increase, keeps gangs out of the view of the children, therefore keeping the communities and neighborhoods free of gangs.

Works Cited

Lewis Yablonsky, Excerpted from Gangster: Fifty Year of MADNESS, Drugs, and Death

on the Streets of America, New York University, 1997. Print.

Isis Sapp-Grant, “A need for power and respect encourages gang behavior”, Excerpted

from “Gang girl: The Transformation of Isis Sapp-Grant”, Viewpoint, 1998. Print.

Rodriguez, Luis J. Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Willimantic, CT:

Curbstone, 1993. Print.

Tim Wise. Crimes by White Teenagers Are Not Labeled Gang Behavior David Kennedy.

The Criminal Justice System Can Reduce Gang Violence. Print.

Deborah Gorman-Smith, Andrea Kampfner and Kimberly Bromann , What Should Be

Done in the Family to Prevent Gang Membership? Changing Courses. Print.

Jon, Shute. Children & Society, Family Support as a Gang Reduction Measure, National

Children’s Bureau and Black well Publishing Limited, 2011.

German, Mala. Developing our cultural strengths: Using the ‘Tree of Life’ strength-based, narrative therapy intervention in schools, to enhance self-esteem, cultural understanding and to challenge racism, Educational & Child Psychology December 1, 2013.