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Gang Violence

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Submitted By eballantine
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01/13/2011
Juvenile Gangs My bias opinion on youth gangs is the same as I view planting a seed. If you plant a seed in bad soil most likely you’ll grow a defected or bad plant. I say that to say this “if a child is raised in an unstructured household most of the time that child will take his home training outside the home. Then we also have our young kids joining gangs that come from good homes, but can’t escape their negative environments once they walk outside their front door. Also some of the youths get involved in gangs looking for something to call a family; these are mostly our kids coming from foster homes, adoption agencies and so forth.

Personally I feel the majority of the kids involved in gangs are lost and out trying to find themselves. Then we have younger kids who are labeled gang members, but are far from it. These kids usually grow up together and have strong bonds with one another; they occasionally dress alike, hang together, and claim to belong to a certain neighborhood only by personal childhood reasons. But the local authorities see things different, they feel as if you wear certain colors, hang in certain areas with 3 or more kids claiming to belong to anything other than a sports team are considered gang related. To the rise of drug use amongst teens is also a major contribution to the growing number of youth kids joining gangs. Being that drugs from marijuana, to heroin has become so easy to get a hold of the kids are experimenting more freely now. A lot of kids get addicted to different drugs and begin to act out, committing crimes, joining gangs, and running away from home chasing their addiction. And once out on the streets these gangs become their new family & friends.

Peer pressure has been the decision maker of many of our teens when it comes to joining gangs. Many of today’s youth join gangs just trying to fit in with their

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