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Street Gangs

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Gangs A gang is a group of recurrently associating individuals or close friends with identifiable leadership and internal organization, identifying with or claiming control over territory in a community, and engaging either individually or collectively in violent or other forms of illegal behavior. When a new member joins the gang he or she must go through an initiation, the most common initiation is “jumping in” or getting beaten by all the gang members and/or committing acts of theft or violence. In 2011 the National Gang Intelligence Center of the Federal Bureau of Investigation asserted that "There are approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and outlaw gang members comprising more than 33,500 gangs in the United States." In …show more content…

This person will commit any crime or act of violence to further the goals and objectives of the gang. This person is usually in his/her late teens or early 20’s and on up into their 30’s. The “gang leaders” are the high command in the gang’s structure. This gang member is probably the oldest in the posse and likely has the smallest criminal record and they often have the power to direct the gang’s activity, whether they are involved or not. There are many different factors that push the “at risk” to join gangs. Some common factors are the desire for power, money, protection, and respect. For many of the individuals these things only seem to be obtainable by joining a gang. Many of the people that join gangs are lacking social support and get an instant feeling of belonging and identity. Gangs are involved in all levels of street crime, from extortion, to robbery, to kidnapping, to drug trafficking. Cocaine is the primary drug of distribution by gangs in America, which have used the cities Chicago, Cape Town, and Rio de Janeiro to transport drugs internationally. When a gang has taken over a particular area or “turf” the gang will charge businesses or people payment for “protection”, usually from the gang itself. Gang violence refers to mostly those illegal and non-political acts of violence perpetrated by gangs against innocent people, property, or other gangs. Gangs could use violence to protect their “turf”

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