Gang Behavior Definition

Throughout schools in the United States, educators are teaching their students good values, how to behave, how to think for themselves, and how to become productive members of society. For students that are growing up in lower-income neighborhoods or for those that lack strong family relationships, making good decisions on the type of person they want to be can be difficult.
Most young adults/teens have one thing in common. They like to have fun, hang out with their peers, fit in socially with their peers, and engage in exciting activities which, at times, break the rules for how they are supposed to behave in public. However, is this behavior considered gang behavior? When does hanging out with your friends and bending the rules turn into
There are many different definitions for the word “gang”. For the purpose of this paper, the definition used by youth service agency workers, police officers, community outreach workers, judges, criminal justice planners, probation officers, prosecutors, public defenders, educators, city council members, state legislators, ex-convicts, and past and present members of gangs will be used. In 1975, Walter Miller asked a national survey of these professionals for their definition of the word “gang”. They came up with a list of 1,400 different characteristics to describe a gang. However, 85% of them agreed on 6 items defining a youth gang (Ball, 1995; Curry, 1995). A gang is “a self-formed association of peers, bound together by mutual interests, with identifiable leadership, well-developed lines of authority, and other organizational features, who act in concert to achieve a specific purpose or purposes which generally include the conduct of illegal activity and control over a particular territory, facility, or type of enterprise” (Miller, 1975). This definition continues to be used
Recent research on gang involvement explores reasons that youth join gangs and highlights three common themes: neighborhood disadvantage, having gang-involved family or friends, and problems within the family such as neglect, lack of supervision, and drug or alcohol addiction. Also, residential instability, heterogeneity, and poverty affect interpersonal relationships within the community that open opportunities for crime. According to Bell (2007), the breakdown of parent-child and neighborhood relations provides greater opportunity for males and females to associate with delinquent peers and to become immersed in gangs (Bell,