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Contributing factors to juvenile delinquency
Family factors that lead to delinquency behaviors
Contributing factors to juvenile delinquency
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The documentary by Lockdown: Gang vs. Family by Gail Mitchell (2007) interviews gang members that are in the Utah State Prison. The state prison has more gang affiliated inmates than non-gang affiliated inmates. The goal of the prison is to stop or reduce gang violence in both the prison and the surrounding cities. In this film, the young lady they are interviewing is living proof of a sociological theory.
Even though the prison has multiple gangs inside, the producers focus on two rivalry gangs for their documentary. A Latino gang called Ogden Trece and a white supremacist group; the two groups go back and forth all the time. The prison has a cell block that is just devoted to gang members and the guards who work in that certain section has
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According to Cohen, this is caused by the inability of juveniles to achieve status among peers by socially acceptable means (Bohm & Haley p.71). And Merton believes this is caused by the contradiction between the cultural goal of achieving wealth and the social structure’s inability to provide legitimate institutional means for achieving the goal (Bohm & Haley p.71). Going back to Cohen’s thoughts, it could very well be applicable to Natalie because she started her criminal activities when she was a juvenile. Cohen also believes that this affects more of the lower class individuals and for Natalie she grew up in a high crime rate neighborhood. A policeman in the film says that the city of Ogden would get at least one call about a shooting every weekend (Mitchell. 2007). Merton’s idea has five ways a person can adapt to it; those five ways are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. Natalie conformed to the way her peers and family was behaving, she was also a “drop out” due to her drug addiction. Merton referred a “drop out” to a retreatist (Bohm & Haley p.71). This documentary Lockdown: Gang vs. Family by Gail Mitchell (2007) was a good way to prove the sociological theories that were mentioned in this paper. After reading more about the theories, I applied them to my life and my peer’s lives and it could be a proven fact for everyone and not just criminals. It is just more applicable
Bridge to Freedom provides the historical documentary behind the events that served as the narrative for Selma. Instead of a drama, the viewers receive an actual documentary that shows the confrontations between the marchers and the government. Like Selma, it highlights the violence, the deaths, and the beatings, but also goes further back in time to show society’s treatment of African Americans.
The first mistake in the correctional system is grouping gangs instead of separating them. Putting members of the same gang together only makes them feel right at home and comfortable in their surroundings. In addition, rival gang members are able to interact, leading to a increased level of hatred towards each other, which is then brought back to the streets. Bangers are taken off the street only to be reunited with fellow bangers in the same situation only behind bars.
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
They studied the criminals lives and show how the link as juveniles and the factors that led them to become a criminals. Statically showing, most people that become criminals fail high school. Showing if a person continues their education the likely hood of becoming a criminal become less and less. These individuals come from broken homes, little education, little money and lack of resources. Growing up in a broken home or family, the child begins to suffer because of either neglect or lack of supervision from a parent figure, either they are not home or work low wage jobs just to make it. Since there is a lack of family support, the child will look for support from another source. The supports they usually find are products of their environment, usually gangs or other bad influences. Even with places that helps less than fortune kids have a role model or after school activates, but most of the time, they do not seek these programs which could help the child on a better path, rather than a life of crime joining a gang or even just commit crime altogether. The main influences on our lives are our families and society that we grow up in, and has a great effect on the individual which can dictate what they do with their lives. When looking at the theory, the effects come from homelessness, abuse neglect, subcultures,
This essay will be looking into the ways that the documentary form and narrative cinema have impacted and influenced each other. The documentary text chosen, Louis Theroux: Behind Bars (2008) depicts the life of prison inmates within America’s infamous San Quentin State Prison. Theroux speaks to serial murderers, gang members, at-risk inmates and guards whilst questioning their sentence alongside their feelings about life within prison. Similarly, the narrative text chosen Carandiru (2003) looks into the life of fictional inmates within the Brazilian Carandiru Penitentiary, a factual prison with its climax based on the 1992 police attack. The film has a strong emphasis on poverty and the realities of underdevelopment, taking influence from
The story, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, is a ethnographic study of a Black King Gang in the Robert Taylor community. Venkatesh accidentally stumbles upon the gang lead by J.T. and decided to study them. Throughout his journey he learns from the violence and illegal activity he witnesses that “in the projects it’s more important that you take care of the problem first. Then you worry about how you took care of it”’ (Venkatesh. 2008:164). He witnesses beatings, selling of illegal drugs, and exploitation of residents; but he also gained a lot of knowledge about the community. He works with J.T. and Ms. Bailey, the community leader, closely through his study. J.T. has taken a sociology class and he allows Venkatesh to shadow the gang
The CNN Documentary “Homicide in Hollenbeck” described several criminal issues that have affected the Hollenbeck community. The documentary focused on the life of a gang member and recruitment of juveniles within the community. Criminological issues discussed in the documentary includes gang and gun violence, drug sales, homicide and vandalism. Interviews were conducted of personal experiences and opinions on neighborhood issues with members of a notorious gang known as White-Fence gang, police officers and family members who lost their loved ones in the hands of gang violence.
In the 1950’s, Cohen (1955) acquired Merton’s theory of crime further by concentrating on gang delinquency within the working class demographic. Cohen used the dominant knowledge of the anomie theory but narrowed its emphasis on this precise subculture and particularized it in order to clarify the features of gang delinquency. Comparable to Merton and Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin (1960) tried to clarify why certain individuals or groups are more likely to involve in criminal activities. They contended that people are strained when they fail to attain financial achievement through legitimate means. Cloward and Ohlin remained in...
Ralph, P.H.(1997). From Self Preservation to Organized Crime: The Evolution of Inmate Gangs. In J.W. Marquart, & J.R. Sorensen (Eds.). Correctional Contexts: Contemporary and Classical Readings (pp. 182-186). Los Angeles: Roxbury
In the Deprivation Theory, inmate subcultures develop in response to the deprivations of prison life. Then there is the Importation Theory where inmate subcultures are brought into prisons from the outside world. These theories are very true and visible in the movie because the prison is split up by race, which is very common for male inmates in prisons. There are basically gangs formed based on race. John Smith, who shares a cell with Wade Porter, says, “It’s not about gangs, it’s about race.” That statement is true to how prisons are in real life. In the movie, there is the Aryan Brotherhood, who basically runs the show. Most of the white men are in this gang, except for some who are in smaller gangs below them. Wade Porter finds himself joining the Aryan Brotherhood due to the need for protection. Next are the Hispanics who are split into two gangs, the northerners and the southerners who have a huge rivalry. Then there is the blacks who are joined by the Asians and the pacific islanders. This movie is a great representation of how prisons are split up by race. The gangs in the movie are also show how there is social control in prison because the gangs are split up into
Therefore, the community has informal social control, or the connection between social organization and crime. Some of the helpful factors to a community can be informal surveillance, movement-governing rules, and direct intervention. They also contain unity, structure, and integration. All of these qualities are proven to improve crime rate. Socially disorganized communities lack those qualities. According to our lecture, “characteristics such as poverty, residential mobility, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity contribute to social disorganization.” A major example would be when a community has weak social ties. This can be caused from a lack of resources needed to help others, such as single-parent families or poor families. These weak social ties cause social disorganization, which then leads higher levels of crime. According to Seigel, Social disorganization theory concentrates on the circumstances in the inner city that affect crimes. These circumstances include the deterioration of the neighborhoods, the lack of social control, gangs and other groups who violate the law, and the opposing social values within these neighborhoods (Siegel,
This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
Prison gangs are a fairly recently new phenomenon that has arisen within the corrections system in the U.S. With the “First known American prison gang was the Gypsy Jokers formed in the 1950s in Washington state prisons” (Orlando-Morningstar, 1997; Stastny & Tyrnauer, 1983; Fleisher & Decker, 2001, 2) and in California, The Mexican Mafia, formed in 1956 was the first Californian prison gang (Camp and Camp, 1985; Pyrooz et al., 2011; Skarkbek, 2012). The Mexican Mafia developed to protect Hispanic inmates from predatory white inmates and to reduce conflict among rival Hispanic street gangs (Mendoza, 2005; Skarkbek,2012). Now other prison gangs have spread like a disease throughout the nation for similar reasons but just with the inmates own corresponding race and/or ethnicity.
Gang crime in Long Beach is extremely prevalent and stems mainly out of racism. People of different racial groups stereotyped, feared and hated each other and violence was their way of dealing with the situation. This violence did not only negatively impact the community when someone was killed, however, it also perpetuated the feelings of fear and hatred. Another way in which the movie highlighted the negative consequences of racism was through classroom 203. Children who came from disadvantaged communities were placed in this classroom as a result of the gaps in their education, however, these students were discriminated upon as they were percieved to be educationally incapable and funds were often witheld from this classroom. This lowered standard of education would negatively affect these students in their later lives by reducing their job opportunities or access to tertiary education, thereby trapping them in a cycle of
The correctional outcome of the gang members remained somehow less developed and understudied compared to the general outcome of the affiliation in the gang, and the related statistics. “Researchers affirmed that even if it's known that there are nearly 800 000 gang members, affiliated with more than 24,5000 gangs, nationwide in 2000.” (Eagley and Arjunan, 2002) [..] only 6 percent of adult prison inmates were gang members.”