This book review covers Policing Gangs in America by Charles Katz and Vincent Webb. Charles Katz has a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, while Vincent Webb has a Ph.D. in Sociology, making both qualified to conduct and discuss research on gangs. Research for Policing Gangs in America was gathered in four cities across the American Southwest; Inglewood, California, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona. This review will summarize and discuss the main points of each chapter, then cover the relationship between the literature and class discussions in Introduction to Policing and finally it will note the strengths and weaknesses of book. The first chapter of Policing Gangs in America is entitled, “Studying the Police Response to Gangs.” The primary purpose of the chapter is to establish how police agencies; Inglewood, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Phoenix in specific, respond to gang problems in their respective areas. This chapter served as an introduction, giving a brief history of gang-related policing, how the public and media see the gang problem, research studies done regarding gangs and the recent declaration to shift away from suppression-oriented strategies as a result of overly aggressive actions toward citizens. Examples of this misconduct are given in the forms of gang units from Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston. The second chapter is titled, “Setting and Methods” and sets out to make clear to the reader the specific methods and research conducted during the study. This study is the primary purpose of the book, and as with all research studies, how one conducts their research is incredibly important, especially if the study plans to be replicated at any point in time. The topics included in this cha... ... middle of paper ... ...g measures out there. The reader is given plenty of background information on gangs allowing someone with little knowledge of the subject or the cities’ history to jump right in. Statistics, interviews, surveys and personal observations of the authors during ride-alongs make up much of the source material. The book’s strengths lie in the amount of research contained within it, as well as an insider look at the gang unit and what it takes to be an officer in that specialization. However, if it is not being used to supplement another research paper or study, the book comes off as a difficult and boring read, making a reader likely to put it down otherwise. Works Cited Katz, C. M., & Webb, V. J. (2006). Policing Gangs in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, S., & Katz, C. (2011). The Police in America: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.
In response to a growing gang problem in specific communities, the OJJDP has refined the Comprehensive Gang Model to better fit the issues related to today’s gangs. The GRP incorporates several new aspects into the pre-existing Comprehensive Gang Model. The revamped program was tested in four communities: East Los Angeles, CA; Milwaukee, W...
This paper will cover issues that young minorities encounter in the movies; Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008), Gran Torino (2008), A Better Life (2011). Movies will be summarize, and compare and contrast youths experienced. Criminological theories shall be utilized to further elaborate issues. Finally steps and theories will be utilized towards solving issues, also possible methods to correct the issues will be addressed in the end.
According to the 2015 National Gang Report (NGR) from the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) almost half of law enforcement juristictions across the United States reported a rise in street gang membership and street gang activitiy. My communitty is no exception.
Gang involvement has been quite higher than past years. The 2008 National Youth Gang Survey estimates that about 32.4 percent of all cities, suburban areas, towns, and rural counties had a gang problem (Egley et al., 2010). This represented a 15 percent increase from the year 2002. The total number of gangs has also increased by 28 percent and total gang members have increased by 6 percent (Egley et al., 2010). This shows how relevant gang related activity is in today’s society. More locations are beginning to experience gang activity for the first time. Gang crime has also been on the rise in the past...
Tobin, Kimberly. Gangs: An Individual and Group Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.
The presence of gang violence has been a long lasting problem in Philadelphia. Since the American Revolution, gangs have been overpopulating the streets of Philadelphia (Johnson, Muhlhausen, 2005). Most gangs in history have been of lower class members of society, and they often are immigrants into the U.S (Teen Gangs, 1996). Gangs provided lower class teens to have an opportunity to bond with other lower class teens. However over time, the original motive of being in a gang has changed. In the past, gangs used to provide an escape for teens to express themselves, let out aggression, and to socialize with their peers. It was also an opportunity for teens to control their territory and fit in (Johnson, Muhlhausen, 2005). In the past, authorities would only focus on symptoms of gang violence and not the root. They would focus on arresting crime members instead of preventing gang violence. Gangs are beginning to expand from inner-city blo...
The City of Los Angeles is the “gang capital” of the nation. There are more than 450 active gangs in the City of Los Angeles. Many of these gangs have been in existence for over 50 years. These gangs have a combined membership of over 45,000 individuals. Gang violence has for a long time been a major issue. Now it may not be as bad as it was back in the 90’s when it really first surfaced but gang violence is still a critical issue. A place where gang violence has really been an issue is none other than the state of California.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss widespread presence of gang and non-gang membership while accessing attitudes between a diversified sample of youth girls and youth boys across the United States. This empirical article meets the requirements for the capstone project while it is based upon a criminological theory, the chosen social learning theory in examining the subject related to gender and gangs. This study was conducted in the spring of 1995, that builds upon an existing research from the prior year’s 1993-94, administered by the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program. The research method used to conduct this research is that of the quantitative method, the data gathered is of multi-site, multistate cross-sectional survey, then the process of sorting the data, afterwards the data is then entered into a database for further analysis.
For these reasons, it is easy why gangs impact prisons and why they require special attention. With the abundance of gangs, prisons have been forced to implement a number of programs. The first program used to combat gangs is the “gang intelligence program” (Management, n. d, p. 6). This is considered the most commonly used program. Which, intel’s “shakedowns, correspondence checks, and informants, provide important information concerning gangs in a correctional system” (Management, n. d, p. 6). Following this, the information “must be evaluated, systematized, and made readily retrievable” (Management, n. d, p. 6). Otherwise the gang intelligence programs will not be as effective in addressing gang problems. Overtime, prisons realized that they had to increase their effects if they were going to stay on top of these sophisticated gangs.
The main source of drug dealers is gangs and how the police come up with strategies that can stop these gangs from trafficking these narcotics. Among the most urgent and oppressive aspects of the current drug problem is the violence of gangs engaged in street-level drug distribution. Gangs are held responsible for the increase in homicide rates in the cities where they have their production is happening. They use violence not only to discipline their own employees and to intimidate and rob their competitors but also to intimidate individual citizens and groups of citizens who resist their intrusion. Exactly how the police can best deal with this aspect of the drug problem remains uncertain. One approach is to view drug gangs as similar to the youth gangs of the past and to use the same strategies that proved effective in the past. That older strategy was designed primarily to reduce inter gang violen...
Critical Analysis: According to FBI.gov, gangs poison streets with drugs, violence, and all manner of crime. The FBI statistics show that there are 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs within the United States today. Today gangs consists of 1.4 million members. The copyright of, An Introduction to Juvenile Justice, was in 2013. In a little over two years, gangs have increased by 5,000 and consists of over 269,000 new members. In my critical opinion, that shows our efforts need to be reevaluated and adjusted accordingly.
As a police officer patrolling the area, I have observed several gang features in the community.If this problem isn’t taken care of, it can affect the community.As I approach the impending problems of dealing with these gangs, I would,accordingly, apply the the three distinctive styles of policing (Schmalleger ,172)to deter the gang crimes and activities in our community.
Gangs emerged throughout the 19th century in the transitional neighbourhoods of large cities in the U.S such as Chicago, as well as those in the industrial Midwest and the Northeast (Huff 1996; Sante 1991). Thrasher (1927) carried out a landmark study of 1,313 Chicago gangs, making him one of the pioneering academics on gang research, and following him were other academics such as Cohen (1955), Yablonsky (1959, 1990, 1997), Klein (1971, 1995), Decker and Van Winkle (1996) and Phelan and Hunt (1998). Gangs have typically been researched through empirical studies and investigative literature reports, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s important research into gangs occurred in the United States and elsewhere (Hughes and Short 2009). However, ‘recent scholarly attention has become stagnant, lacking fresh insight and the intellectual spirit out of which it was born’ (Hughes and Short 2009: 694).
Hallswort, S. And Young, T. (2004) Getting Real About Gang. Criminal Justice Matters [online]. 55. (1), pp 12-13 [Accessed 10 December 2013]
This paper will examine and evaluate a qualitative study conducted by Beare and Hogg named “Listening In...to Gang Culture.” It will discuss the purpose of the study and evaluate the methodological designs. The study looks into the problem of street gangs and sought to understand how gang members behave. The authors used police transcripts of wiretaps as their primary source of data and analyzed it for further review. Findings show that social programs will have to be targeted towards younger gang members to dissuade them from the gang lifestyle.