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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
When Kody Scott was 6 years old, the gang wars started in Los Angeles. It started out as a battle between the Crips and the Bloods, but by the late 70's and continuing today, the biggest killer of Crips is other Crips. The Crip Nation was divided into different divisions, which Monster compares to the U.S. Army. "For instance, one who is in the army may belong to the F...
Merton recognised that individuals receive messages from society, which set acceptable behaviours to follow. He noted that a majority of citizens abide the acceptable behaviours, though there are numerous pressures that associate with the American Dream and the importance of the economy, which leads individuals to participate in deviant behaviours. Merton associated criminality and deviance with the American Dream goals, and how people attempt to achieve them, particularly the wealth component (Murphy & Robertson, 2008). Merton argued in 1938 that within unbalanced societies, the discrepancy between success goals and the endorsement of the means to achieve the goals, combined with limited opportunities manufactured the state of anomie. Further, Merton suggested that the anomic conditions in society were likely to tempt strain upon individuals, forming criminal behaviour adaptations. Particularly, the strain theory emphasised that those with high monetary aspirations are likely to innovate, resorting to unlawful activities, with the desire to channel success (Antonaccio, Gostjev & Smith, 2014). The strain theory connects to social causes, linking criminality with selfishness and egoism as the desire to
The documentary, “Crips and Bloods: Made in America” talks about many social concerns. In the documentary, both discrimination and economics are the main factors for the problems in Southern California. The gangs started because of discrimination. By denying people because of their skin color to join social activities such as the boy/girl scouts is what led to the formation of groups that later turned into gangs. Apart from that, hatred and threats escalated the situations that then turned the gangs into what they are today. According to the documentary, because of the gang rivalry there exists an invisible line that separates the territories of both the Crips and the Bloods. Not only is that the only factor, but also
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.
One direct quote from the film, Crips and Bloods: Made in America that Differential Association Theory can be used to explain is “I joined a gang not only for the protection but for the love for the unity, to be a part of
In this paper I intend to show how Kody's early child hood and teenage years, both proceeding and during his life as a Crip, fit quite well with several theories that were discussed in class over the quarter.
The author begins his ethnography by giving us insight of the crime rate in the 1990s. He described this subject as the “age of drive-by shootings, drug deals gone bad, crack cocaine, and gangsta rap” ( ) that dominated the talk of the time. This type of ideology led our society to believe that we should put massive
Levin, b (2002). From slavery to hate crime: the emergence of race and status based
Gang Life in Two Cities: An insider’s Journey, is written by Robert J. Duran, an associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University. Before attending college and starting his research Duran was a member of a latino gang in Ogden, Utah. Using his skills learned in academia and reputation as a former gang member, he was able to get an inside look of gangs and their reasons for existing. He spent five years in Denver, Colarado and Ogden, Utah and conducted over 145 interviews with gang members and also members of law enforcement. In Gang Life in Two Cities Duran concludes that colonization and racial oppression of latinos are the main reasons for gangs. That the criminization of latino groups and failed gang neutralization efforts have only deepened the ideals the gangs hold and continue to persist.
One of the positivist theory demonstrated in Crips and Bloods: Made in America is Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory. Both gangs initially started as a new generation watched the turmoil that their parents endured. They saw the police targeting and the response of their parents. That is how the Crips was formed. Sutherland’s Theory states, “If an individual associates with people who hold deviant (or criminal) ideas more than with people who embrace conventional ideas, the individual is like to become deviant” (24). The founders of the Crips associated with rest of the African-American population as they grew up watching their families be brutalized by the police and result in riots or other criminal behaviors. Society had such a
Boom! Boom! Boom! Imagine waking with your house riddled by gunshots knowing that you could be killed any second of the day for no reason whatsoever. This is what communities containing gangs do on a daily basis. In communities just like ours, an astonishing forty-eight percent of all violence in jurisdictions across the country is contributed by the gangs. The Crips and Bloods are two of the most well-known and largest gangs in the country. These gangs have been known to break laws on a regular basis and disrupt the lives of many of the members of towns and cities around them. The Crips and Bloods have a vast history together and control a larger amount of drugs and guns than any other gangs. This simple fact alone makes them some of the most
In the early part of the twentieth century, organized crime began to pop up in the United States with a similar structure to current days. Prohibition caused men to begin the manufacturing and distribution of alcohol under the government’s radar. There was one name that stood out from all the others, Al Capone a.k.a. “Scarface.” Capone set the stage for organized crime in America and thrust it into the spotlight. It wouldn’t be for a couple decades though that the larger groups would begin to have a significant presence in the US. As America opened its borders ...
The groups that I am comparing and contrasting are that of the Crips gang and that of the Five families of the Mafia of New York. The Crips is one of the largest gangs in the United States (Crips, 2014). They were founded in Los Angeles during the late 1960s, the Crips gang developed and rose in strength due to the breakdown in the community leadership of the African American community following the LA riots (Crips, 2014). The gang began to profit from the sale of narcotics, crack cocaine, and more sets were developed and moved to other cities (Crips, 2014). As of right now there is estimated at eight hundred plus gangs with a total of around thirty five thousand members. They are the second most notorious gangs in the United States currently. The different sets are both structured and highly organized drug organizations or unstructured groups of juveniles who engage in local crime (Know Your, 2013). The five families of New York came together in 1931 after the bloody Castellammarese War highlighted the need for a new way to share the many soils of underground activity without killing each other in the process (Mafioso, 2014). The families were powerful and formed a syndicate referred to as the “Commission” that would remain at the heart of the organized crime in America for the next seventy
Robert Merton’s theory of anomie explains organized crime in the sense that when there is a lack of moral obligation in society, individuals tend to turn to whatever means necessary to reach their goals. Organized crime provides the perfect outlet for individuals to work together for the purpose of collective success between the primary members involved. These situations are especially prevalent when certain groups feel that the current society has created a case where they are unlikely to succeed through traditional, ethical means. For example, as the text states, immigrants coming to the united states in the nineteenth century realized that success would be difficult for them to achieve; therefore, organized crime became increasingly prevalent
Hallswort, S. And Young, T. (2004) Getting Real About Gang. Criminal Justice Matters [online]. 55. (1), pp 12-13 [Accessed 10 December 2013]