Peers and Delinquency

Posted: August 27th, 2021

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Chapter 9: Peers and Delinquency

As a white unmarried male aged 21, my life in New York City has always been influenced by my peers. For all the years I have lived in New York City, my peers’ dress and act have influenced my actions towards delinquency. I usually admire how my friends behave and dress, which have compelled me to engage in juvenile crimes in a bid to feel like my friends.

As a peer living in NYC, I have been longing to have romantic love with a girlfriend I feel emotionally attached to. Indeed, engaging in such adolescent friendships has helped me form attachment with others. Since I come from a family lacking a solid relationship bond, I have experienced a weak romantic love affair, which has been attributed to delinquency cases as a way of satisfying my emotions and ego.

I regard gangs as a group of youths whose intention is to carry out delinquent behaviors. Whereas group delinquency is characterized by short-lived alliances with objective of committing violent acts, gang delinquency involves long-lived institutional framework withleadership structures (Siegel and Welsh 292). Therefore, members of various gangs have self-recognition tags like signs, colors, clothes, and graffiti.

I used to perceive the advent of gangs as American culture, but I have learned that the first youth gang occurred in London around the 1600s. The first recognition of the American youth gang occurred in the 1780s, where these young people are identified by colorful names like Roach Guards and Dead Rabbits in Philadelphia streets (Siegel and Welsh 294). Therefore, a gang membership experience would dominate a youngster’s opinions, standards, beliefs, and conduct.

The youth gang activities have significantly reduced recently compared to the past years in my city, New York. For example, there are now 760,000 and 24,000 members and gangs in more than 2,900 US jurisdictions. Therefore, all these youth gangs are primarily concentrated in large urban areas due to a dense population having diverse racial or ethnic profiling. 

The social gang is involved with fewer delinquent activities and minor drug abuse cases like alcohol and marijuana. Members of gangs are more interested in social activities. Party gang focuses on the abuse and sale of drugs butdoes not participate in critical delinquent actions. Also, severe delinquent gang participates incriminal behaviorsas they avoid the usage and sale of drugs. Besides, organized gangs are profoundlyentangled in criminal activities. Therefore, gang violence is at the center of establishing control over territories for selling drugs.

Globalization has made gangs a flourishing underground economic dealing, which can be exploited internationally via interconnected enterprises. Hence, globalization promotes the export of black market items, especially illegal trading of guns and pirated films.

As much as forms of gangs change, the hybrid gang’s culture follows a particularset of rules. Globalized gangs do not have racial assemblies, symbols, or graffiti since they are less concerned over territories.Previously, females were accustomed to delinquent activities either as proxies of male gangs or a section of sexually mixed gangs. Auxiliaries are female versions of male gangs. Hence, in today’s world, the number of woman gang members is quicklygrowingwith more than 25%.

The theories of gangs are compared in terms of their territoriality. I feel that most gang members cohabit in close vicinity to advance the spirit of belongingness. Majorly, they cover small areas of the city. Whereas some gangs are formed due to self-preservation, others result from the need for domination over inferior groups. Thus, the theories of admiration and apprenticeship are the contrasting fundamentals that underscore different groups of gangs.

Legal control of youth gangs involves penalizing suspected members. Some states in the US have undertaken legal injunctions through lawsuits. Law enforcement efforts via social programs and gang details have helped the discouraged formation of youth gangs—community control efforts through role models to emancipate the youths from delinquent activities.

Works Cited

Siegel, Larry J., and Brandon C. Welsh. “Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Practice, and Law.” Juvenile Delinquency and Children’s Rights in the United States and Abroad, 1-680.