While reading “Fighting Gangs” in Urban Issues: Selections from CQ Researcher Eighth Edition it occurred to me that no tactic employed by the courts or law enforcement has effectively reduced gangs and gang related crimes long term. Any good tactic reduced gang related violence for a short term, but, as the chapter points out, although gang violence has decreased, gang related crimes are still on the rise, evolved and adapted for the 21st century. Perhaps the real way to eliminate gang crime would be to look at the cause of gang membership, and prevent gangs from growing.

Information from the chapter has indicated that the bulk of gang members are older adolescents and young adults. Additionally, it would seem that the motivating factors to join a gang all basically stem from a lack of good social and economic standing and no where else to turn to. When different ethnicities created gangs, it was in response to an environment they found to be against them. Organizing into a gang gives a group the ability to draw territory boundaries, and enforce their will in their neighborhood. Rather than be the victims of society, these people are rising up in their own way.

Like law enforcement issues, it would seem the best way to prevent the expansion of crime is to provide neighborhoods with a properly functioning education system, and affordable living. How to do that is out of my depth, but it is clear that as more youth feel rejected and oppressed by their environment, more youth will take matters into their own hands. And not in a way that benefits the society they hate.