Youth gangs have been an issue in the United States for decades. Since the early 1980, the growth in youth gangs had increased tremendously. Each time new immigrants migrate to the United States, a new youth gang emerges. Conversely, new youth gangs are emerging as the American children are becoming teenagers. Both immigrants and American teenagers are joining gangs for similar purposes. Whatever the purposes are, these issues need to be resolve. The government has to create more prevention programs to prevent the growth of youth gangs. As the increase of immigrants and teenagers escalate, the numbers of youth gang prevention programs need to expand to keep up with the new youth gangs.
Youth gangs are emerging quickly in our country. What should we do to prevent these individuals from joining gangs?
- Youth are emerging so quickly that it is impossible to reach out to every teenager and prevent them from joining gang. What the government should do is expand on the creation of youth gang prevention programs for children at a younger age. In addition, the government should provide prevention programs for parents. Due to the fact that parents are children’s first instructors, they can begin educating their children and steer them away from joining gangs at younger age.
- One of the best prevention programs in the United States is the Montreal Preventive Treatment Program (Wilson 1, 2000). This program is design to target potential gang members from joining gangs at an early age. The program targets individuals ages seven to nine who have a history of disruptive problems and behaviors in their earlier years. During this program, the parents need to finish an average of seventeen training courses involving monitoring their children’s behavior, using punishment effectively, and managing family crises (Wilson 1, 2000). These skills are use to better and prevent the children from joining gangs. On the other hand, the children need to finish an average of nineteen training courses. These courses are given to teach self control and improving social skills (Wilson 1, 2000). Once both the parents and the children completed the courses, the chance of the children joining gang is very low.
- Gang members are overflowing in our school systems across our nation. In schools today, we are seeing an increase of gang related fights between students. These problems are usually caused by gang members who are also students. They bring their preexisting gang conflicts to schools and create more conflicts at schools (Wilson 1, 2000). Schools can prevent students from getting involved in gang by providing in school safety, control procedures, enrich procedures that will make school more enjoyable, meaningful, and effective, and have programs that involve the community (Wilson 1, 2000). For example, creating more activities for students and getting the community to join the students in these activities might prevent the conflicts between the gangs. Another method that the school system could do to prevent youth from joining gang is to provide school vouchers. The voucher system works when the government issues school vouchers to the students. Then once the students choose the school that they want to attend, they need to bring the vouchers to the school so the administrator could notify the government of their attendents. With this system, students can choose a school that does not have gang issues. This can prevent students from joining gang.
- One of the largest youth gang prevention program in the United States is Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T) program. This program is developed to engage students in grade school to the correct path. This program is consists of three sections. The first section is the conflict resolution skills portion. The second section is the cultural sensitivity portion. The last section is the negative aspect of gang life portion. Due to the length of the program, it usually takes about nine weeks to finish the program (Wilson 2, 2000). At the end of the program, the individuals should have the knowledge to use many resists skills to stop the pressure needed to join gang (Wilson 2, 2000). This program is proven to be effective to many youth. After the completion of the G.R.E.A.T. program, the students are reported less problems in lowering the rate of gang involvement, higher school commitment, and greater positive outcomes (Wilson 2, 2000). By having more programs like G.R.E.A.T., the United States will have a lower youth gang involvement.
- Another large program that is effective at preventing youth from joining gang is the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). BGCA is a club that uses different tactics to engage youth to the right path in life. The program purpose is to prevent youth from feeling the needs to join gang. BGCA uses technique such as recreational activities to educate and teach life skills to the youth. The purposes of these skills and educations are to teach the youth how to enhance their communication skills, problem solving techniques, and decision making abilities (Wilson 2, 2000). Once the youth learns these skills, they have a great chance of making the correct decision such as not joining gang. Statistic shows that individuals who completed BGCA will avoid gangs and strongly improve in school.
These are a few of the many programs that are provided by the government. Although these programs tend to work, the government needs to provide more programs. The youth population is still growing rapidly and the access to gang is getting easier. The government needs to create more prevention programs to effectively prevent youth from joining gang.
Bibliography
1. Wilson, J. (September, 2000). Preventing Adolescent Gang Involvement. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/182210.pdf
2. Wilson, J. (August, 2000). Youth Gang Programs and Strategies. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/171154.pdf
Prevention is the most important route to go with all of the youth gangs we are seeing these days. We need to reach these children before they join gangs, inform and educate them on how horribe gangs really are. You have provided a lot of good solutions to the gang problem and like you said there are many more. Also we as a population can come up with gang prevention programs to take to the city to help the problem ourselves. Intervention is also another way to get rid of this problem, because once it has already taken off we need to find solutions to intervene with it. Good post.
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