In
my work with adjudicated youth, I have met only one young man who has claimed
to be “loyal to the soil.” All the others talked about how they hate gangs in
their neighborhoods and wish they could make it stop. Maybe these are the
thoughts shared with a safe adult in vulnerable moments only. Maybe among
peers, especially in a secure care setting, the story changes a lot because it
is dangerous to seem vulnerable. That’s ok. What matters is that thinking they’re
all just a bunch of gangbangers is far from true. This is a myth that is easy
to dispel.
To
start from the beginning of this discussion, please read “Clarifying BeliefsAbout Juvenile Delinquency.”
Myth 9 – All juvenile delinquents are affiliated with gangs.
Although gang
membership is a significant risk factor for eventual contact with the juvenile
justice system, very few offenders have contact with gangs. The Florida
Department of Juvenile Justice reports, “Less than 5% of youth arrested have
any gang [association]… Only 4% of youth arrested [between July 1, 2011 and
June 30, 2013] have any gang [association] with 1.4% of youth arrested being
documented gang members” (FL-DJJ, 2014, para. 1).
Conversely, it could be the contact with the justice
system that leads to gang membership. Multiple studies have shown incarcerating
youth actually makes their behavior worse, leading to increased criminal
offending (Gatti, Tremblay, Vitaro, & McDuff, 2005;
Azier & Doyle, 2013). While most incarcerated youth are detained for
minor offenses, containing many of them in one location where they spend all
day, every day together, leads to posturing, goading one another into escalated
behaviors. Negative
peer influences have an impact juvenile crime in general (Shader, 2003), so putting
multiple troubled youth in one residential facility magnifies this effect. Many of the characteristics described by
Howell (2010) apply to this situation.
Youth are at a
higher risk of joining a gang if they engage in delinquent behaviors, are
aggressive or violent, experience multiple care-taker transitions, have many
problems at school, associate with other gang-involved youth, or live in communities
where they feel unsafe and where many youth are in trouble. (Howell, 2010, p. 1)
Therefore, the
effort to scare the young offender straight by incarcerating him or her with
like-minded teens, may be the very thing that makes their behavior worse (Gatti, Tremblay, Vitaro, & McDuff, 2005; Azier
& Doyle, 2013) and sets them on a path toward gang participation.
