Introduction
Although there is little doubt that youth gangs have been, and continue to be, present in the United States, the question of how gangs have changed and evolved over the years requires a closer examination. In researching gangs, there are definitional problems about what constitutes a gang and gang activities. (Hixon, A. 1999).
There are a number of questions of interest in examining youth gang activity in the United States. Are gangs a threat to contemporary society? What impact do gangs have on the country? How has the country responded politically and socially to gang activity? What is being done to address gang-related problems? How do gangs organize themselves socially? What are the trends toward addressing youth gang problems likely to be in the future?
Youth gang involvement is not a new phenomenon in the United States. Gangs have been known to exist in our country since the 18th-century. Philadelphia was trying to devise a way to deal with roaming youth disrupting the city in 1791. According to the National School Safety Center, officials in New York City acknowledged having gang problems as early as 1825. The gang problem is not likely to go away soon or to be eliminated easily. http://www.focusas.com/Gangs.html
The etymology of the word "gang" provides a starting point from which to examine contemporary social views about juvenile gangs. These social views are constructed from an amalgam of fact, myth, and stereotype, and like all such views, they tend to elicit and to perpetuate the process that they seek to describe. It is one of the noteworthy insights of social.
Sciences that the isolation and labelling of forms of behavior tend to solidify and sometimes to increase such behavior. Labelling provides a definitional framework in its recognition of a phenomenon, adding a further dimension to its......
