Why People Join Gangs

With the amount of violence already in the world, we would think that people are doing everything in their power to cease it; so why is it that people continue to join gangs? Why do gangs live on? We all want to feel connected with something or someone, gangs, in particular have a strong sense of unity. Unity is sometimes all we need to feel “complete”, we all have our opinions on gangs, but there’s no denying that gangs have a long history of recruiting members, news reports, violence, recently female involvement, and rivals with other gangs. Google defines the word “gang” as “an organized group of criminals” (Google), that is the first definition that is listed anyway; but that automatically changes what we think about when we hear the word gang. Dictionary.com, on the other hand, defines gang as “a group or band” (Dictionary.com). How come these two well

“And the real problem is broken homes that result in broken lives” (Deal, 2013). I don’t fear gangs, maybe because I don’t involve myself with “those kinds of people”, I say that in quotations because they are just people, they all have a story, and they all have reasons that they joined, reasons that we are not aware of. I’m also not going to say gangs are good, because they do contribute to crime rates. But Stanley “Tookie” Williams III , an American gangster who is known for being an original founder of the Crips gang in Los Angles once said… “Working together, we can put an end to this cycle that creates deep pain in the hearts of our mothers, our fathers, and our people, who have lost loved ones to this senseless violence.” (Williams) But that’s the problem several people and organizations are not willing to put aside their differences and their opinion than addressing the real issue…where and how people are