Gang Life

With so many things happening in the world, from the war to the failing economy our youth is getting a full dose of reality and how you can get lost in this world. We have people who are so worried about things that aren’t in reach of them that they forget bout things within grasp. Your family is the people who teach you about life and the obstacles that come with that. Depending on your living situations, gang activity possibly is an option for you and seems like a good idea if you don’t have the proper upbringing. People join gangs because of numerous reasons some to be cool, to feel apart of something or to simply just to fit in with everyone else. We have these gang prevention programs in schools but they don’t always give you that true lesson on gangs, they simply go over the negatives and tell you stay away. But when you see these gang members with flashy things and living the supposedly “Cool Life” your not going to listen to what somebody told you at school. Throughout this paper I will show why gang prevention programs don’t work in schools if the topic isn’t expressed in a realistic manner and connecting to the kids on a personal level as well.

I believe that it doesn’t matter about what you learn at school if your surroundings at home don’t obtain a stable platform for a better life. Yes the gang prevention programs work for kids living in suburbs because they aren’t surrounded around that environment but what about the kids who live in the urban area and inner city. The prevention programs I’ve seen seem to try and subject to all kids and not vary situations or lifestyles. So when that message is told to a kid who lives in the inner city and lets say has family members who are gang affiliated, they are going to take that message as a joke. Also race plays a huge part in this situation because yes there are all different types of races but mostly affected are Blacks and Mexicans, which in high numbers reside in the inner cities of America. For example, in this article called “Understanding And Responding To Youth Gangs” Lonnie Jacksons States “According to a national law enforcement study conducted in 1996 by G.D. Curry for the National Youth Gang Center, the ethnicity of gang members is estimated at 48 percent African-American; 43 percent Hispanic; 5 percent Caucasian; and 4 percent Asian”. This study shows that if these so called Gang Prevention Programs are in full affect, they don’t do much for Blacks and Hispanics. Possibly if the gang prevention programs were focused on a certain race and weren’t so basic, they possibly could work. I feel this way because I remember when these prevention programs came to my school, they didn’t make it realistic or feel like they knew where I was coming from. The people who spoke were going off of what they knew about gangs and the lifestyle of it as well but maybe it was because we were so young, so they gave us a watered down perspective. For instance,