Chapter Seven

Schools, Peers, and Gangs

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1.      To understand the various problems associated with today’s school environment including obstacles to achieve a positive school experience.

2.      To realize the nature and scope of delinquency in school and to appreciate the various types of approaches to addressing this problem.

3.      To appreciate the influence of peers on delinquency.

4.      To provide an overview of youth gangs including the definitional difficulties as well as the extent of their criminal activity.

5.      To appreciate various criminal justice efforts to address delinquent activity associated with youth gangs.

CHAPTER OUTLINE:

The School Environment

·        Research has revealed that youth who do not perform well in school, or do not like school, are more likely to be involve din delinquent behavior.

·        More than one of the theories that are reviewed in Chapter 4 points to the school as a factor in explaining delinquency (e.g. Merton, Ohlin, and Cloward, Cohen, Lemert, the Schwendigers.)

The School Experience

·        The concept that schools do not uniformly provide a positive atmosphere for adolescent development has considerable empirical support; many of the youths who are seriously delinquent find their school experiences to be very negative.

·        One study conducted in Boston schools revealed that student relationships with key staff members were more formal, task-oriented, superficial, and unequal than in other kinds of community programs.

·        It is realistic to assume that many delinquents attend schools where meaningful involvement is not the norm.

Obstacles to a Positive School Experience

·        Various indicators of the school experience have been identified as major obstacles to providing a positive school environment for youth including truancy, dropout rates, bullying, and the general condition of American schools today.

·        Although there are no national data on the extent of truancy, various cities indicate that unexcused absences among youth is a significant problem.

·        The U.S. Department of Education noted that high rates of unexcused absences are associated with high daytime burglary rates and vandalism.

·        In their Manual to Combat Truancy, the U.S. Department of Education, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice, emphasized the importance of reducing truancy rates as one approach to preventing delinquency.

·        Youths who do not complete high school face numerous consequences that can potentially influence their adult lives including an increased change of unemployment and receipt of public assistance.

·        Our nation’s prisons and death row inmates are disproportionately high school dropouts.

·        Bullying is a form of aggression ranging from such behaviors as name-calling or teasing, humiliation, social ostracism, to taking money or property and other direct forms of physical aggression such as kicking and hitting.

·        Bosworth and Espelage’s study revealed that as the bullying behavior increased self-reported indicators of misconduct and anger increased while prosocial skills decreased.

·        Additional factors linked to bullying include parental physical discipline, the amount of time spent without adult supervision, negative peer influences, and neighborhood safety concerns.

·        The National Education Goals Panel reported that between 1990 and 1998 five states increased the number of 18 to 24 year olds who had high school degrees, five states decreased the percentage of high school graduates, and the remaining states reported no change.

·        Based on the National Education Goals study, the areas that appeared to show no improvement, and in some instances were worse that the previous time period, where alcohol and drug-use, school safety, and discipline.

Delinquency in Schools

·        A major obstacle for creating a safe school environment for youth is criminal activity that actually occurs in the school.

Nature and Score of Delinquency in Schools

·        The National Crime Victimization Survey revealed that between 1992 and 1996, teachers were the victims of approximately 123,800 violent in-school crimes during each of those years; this averages to about 20 crimes for every 1000 teachers.

·        About 4 out of every 1000 teachers were the victims of serious violent crimes including robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault.

·        A crucial problem concerning crime in our schools is the students’ increased fear of victimization and the consequences of this fear.

·        While student victimization rates have remained relatively stable during previous years, students report and increased fear of victimization.

·        From 1989 to 1995, students reported an increased fear of being attacked in school and while traveling to and from school.

·        Fear among students differs by race/ethnicity; Hispanic students reported more fear of victimization when compared to other racial/ethnic groups.

·        Victims of school crime tended to be males ages 12-14; there are dramatic differences in the type of victimization that girls and boys experience.

·        The most serious school violent crime occurs in a small number of public schools primarily located in cities with large enrollments.

·        Youths are most likely to commit crime and to be victimized after school hours.

Addressing the Problem of School Violence

·        Hunter and Elias noted that there are two broad approaches to addressing the problem of school violence: reactive and preventive.

·        Hunter and Elias identified four general types of violence prevention programs: school-based, organizational, family, and early intervention.

·        The Annual Report of School Safety presented several examples of programs that address school safety (Exhibit 7-3).

The Influence of Peers

·        Delinquency among a youth’s peers continues to be a significant predictor of that individual’s delinquent activity.

·        Lotz and Lee argued that there are four competing interpretations of the peer and delinquency nexus: 1) differential association, 2) group pressures, 3) selection, and 4) projection or attribution.

·        Lotz and Lee suggested a fifth perspective that focuses on unstructured socializing.

Definition of Gangs

·        The term “gang” can take on many meanings and there has been a great deal of debate as to the definition of “gang”.

·        In the 1996 National Youth Gang Survey, law enforcement agencies were asked to identify what groups they defined as a gang; over 80 percent included in their definition “juvenile gangs” and “street gangs.”

·        Ball and Curry emphasized that the label “gang” can have different meanings due to different purposes.

Who is in a Gang?

·        Based on the 1996 National Youth Gang Survey, 37 percent of gang members are between the ages of 18 to 24; nationally Hispanics and African Americans make up the largest number of gang members, however, racial/ethnic composition varied depending on the area.

·        Most research indicates that males make up the greatest proportion of gang members.

Joining the Gang

·        Spergel suggested that youths may join gangs for personal safety, fun, money, and substitute family.

·        Several factors increase the risk of joining a gang including several family characteristics such as low family involvement, love parental control of monitoring, poor affective relationships between parent and child, and parental conflict.

·        For boys, additional factors are growing up in a disorganized neighborhood and poor school success.

·        For girls, there are fewer predictors but growing up in a disorganized and violent neighborhood and low expectations for school success are predictive.

Youth Gangs and Criminal Activity

·        According to the 1997 Youth Gang Survey, law enforcement agencies were asked to distinguish between member-based and motive-based gang crime; in 1997 there were a total of 3,341 estimated member-based homicides and 1,880 estimated motive-based homicides.

·        Maxson, Gordon, and Klein’s study on gangs revealed that there were differences, quantitative as well as qualitative, between gang and nongang homicides.

·        Another major issue regarding youth gangs is their involvement in drugs.

·        There is evidence that the gang “facilities” delinquency, so youth increase their illegal activity once they join.

Juvenile Justice System’s Response to Youth Gangs

·        Throughout the years, five basic strategies have been developed to address the problem of youth gangs: neighborhood mobilization, social intervention, social and economic opportunities, gang suppression and incarceration, and organizational development.

·        Currey and Thomas recommend that community organization efforts need to focus on 1) increasing linkages between agencies within communities, 2) using research to study the nature of local interagency relations, 3) increasing the quality of information being supplied to crucial actors in local networks, and 4) beginning to think in terms of a national-level network.

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION:

1.      If students are truant from school, should parents be held responsible to the extent that they could be charged with a misdemeanor offense for their children’s truancy?

2.      What are the pros and cons of the different strategies to deal with the problem of delinquency and its relation to schools.

3.      Assume that your job is to prioritize spending areas for a state budget for education and criminal justice.  Consider the limited amount of money available, the needs of the community, and the needs of youth.  What percentage of your budget would you spend for education and criminal justice?

4.      What is the most effective approach to addressing youth gangs-a rehabilitative or punitive approach?  Include in your answer such factors as the needs of the juvenile and the needs of the community.