Analysis Of The Documentary Crips And Bloods: Made In America

The documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America, can be analyzed through three works: “Modern Theories of Criminality” by C.B. de Quirόs, “Broken Windows” by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling and “Social Structure and Anomie” by Robert K. Merton. In “Modern Theories of Criminality,” we can apply Enrico Ferri’s idea of criminality to the documentary. In Ferri’s theory of factors, crime is the product of many causes such as: individual/ anthropological (e.g., age, sex, social rank, education), physical/ natural (e.g., race, climate, seasons), and social (e.g., emigration, religion, public opinions). This is seen in the documentary because physical/ natural factors, like race, played a role for the African Americans. People like Bird and …show more content…

However, in Crips and Bloods, the Los Angeles Police Department under the direction of Chief Officer William Parker regulated the Los Angeles area in a forceful way. One of the ways he did so was by locking down African-American neighborhoods. Also, in the time of the Watts Riot, many African Americans were being killed for small crimes. There is a difference between the documentary’s order-maintenance and the order-maintenance in “Broken Windows.” Small crimes or disorder were to be treated, but people in the documentary, specifically whom were African Americans were being killed for small crimes. Where does the broken windows speak about this issue? And though the theory thinks that crime is the issue, what if the problem is that there were not enough jobs for the minorities? During the 1950’s when industrialization started to come about, African Americans found themselves displaced in the job market because they did not have the skills, knowledge, or education to perform high-end jobs due to discrimination and lack of opportunities. They also felt they should not have to perform low-end jobs because they felt they were above the immigrant low level jobs. This resulted in total displacement from the labor market. Eventually, by the late 1960s, jobs and factories disappeared from Los Angeles regions. The consequences were …show more content…

This can be applied to American society, where the society may lean too heavily towards either of these social structures. This can then create stress where stressing over goals mean that any form of achieving them becomes acceptable. Merton was more interested on the overemphasis on goals and how that may have generated antisocial behavior. This behavior arises when the expectation that all members of society should exhibit success but run into restrictions on legitimate means to succeed. He says that the cult of success can create illegitimate means because the violator knows the rules of the game, but the validation of success outweighs the weak imperative to play by the rules. He states, “…Crime… [And] the entire catalogue of proscribed behavior, becomes increasingly common when the emphasis on the culturally induced success-goal becomes divorced from a coordinated institutional emphasis” (Merton 675-676). This is shown in the Crips and Bloods documentary because the individuals in both gangs know what they do is wrong, such as dealing drugs, but they still need to be successful by having money and having good appearance by dressing nicely. It is difficult for them to go by the rules when at one point, the whites did not give them