Looking for a surrogate family. Young people join gangs to receive the attention, affirmation, and protection they may feel they are lacking at home. Breakdown of traditional family units. Many youngsters do not have a positive adult role model. Many see domestic violence and alcohol and other drug use in the home.
Lack of parental involvement and the absence of rules and family rituals allow older gang members to be viewed as authority figures by young teens and children. Identity or recognition problems. Because of low self-worth and self-esteem, some youth join gangs seeking the status they lack due to unemployment or academic failure at school.
If young people do not see themselves as intelligent, leaders, or star athletes, they join other groups where they feel they can excel. Gang family history.
Many street gang members carry on a family tradition established by siblings, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, or cousins who they see as role models.
Lack of alternatives. Few job opportunities, no positive recreational choices, or lack of effective responses to peer pressure can create a climate favouring gang membership. Few recreational opportunities. Many teens and youngsters do not have any interests outside of school. Joining a gang provides friends with whom they can share their free time. Need for money. The monetary allure of gang membership is difficult to counteract.
Gang members share profits from drug trafficking and other illegal activities. To a teen, money translates into social status. Many people are without jobs or a source of income. Becoming a gang member can provide a teen with an opportunity to make large amounts money quickly, because many gangs are involved in the illegal sale of drugs and firearms. Lack of educational opportunities.
Many kids feel that time spent in school is wasted. Joining a gang becomes an alternative to studying or attending school. Use of intimidation and violence.
To coerce others to join their gang, members may recruit through scare tactics. People are then forced into membership to protect themselves or their families from the local gang or the local gang's rivals. It remains available to provide access to historical materials. Other products of interest Contact us. National Drug Intelligence Center a component of the U. Department of Justice.
Street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs OMGs , and prison gangs are the primary distributors of illegal drugs on the streets of the United States. Gangs also smuggle drugs into the United States and produce and transport drugs within the country.
Street gang members convert powdered cocaine into crack cocaine and produce most of the PCP available in the United States. Gangs, primarily OMGs, also produce marijuana and methamphetamine.
In addition, gangs increasingly are involved in smuggling large quantities of cocaine and marijuana and lesser quantities of heroin, methamphetamine, and MDMA also known as ecstasy into the United States from foreign sources of supply.
Located throughout the country, street gangs vary in size, composition, and structure. Large, nationally affiliated street gangs pose the greatest threat because they smuggle, produce, transport, and distribute large quantities of illicit drugs throughout the country and are extremely violent.
Local street gangs in rural, suburban, and urban areas pose a low but growing threat. Local street gangs transport and distribute drugs within very specific areas.
These gangs often imitate the larger, more powerful national gangs in order to gain respect from rivals. Some gangs collect millions of dollars per month selling illegal drugs, trafficking weapons, operating prostitution rings, and selling stolen property.
Gangs launder proceeds by investing in real estate, recording studios, motorcycle shops, and construction companies.
They also operate various cash-based businesses, such as barbershops, music stores, restaurants, catering services, tattoo parlors, and strip clubs, in order to commingle drug proceeds with funds generated through legitimate commerce.
There are at least 21, gangs and more than , active gang members in the United States. Gangs conduct criminal activity in all 50 states and U. Although most gang activity is concentrated in major urban areas, gangs also are proliferating in rural and suburban areas of the country as gang members flee increasing law enforcement pressure in urban areas or seek more lucrative drug markets.
This proliferation in nonurban areas increasingly is accompanied by violence and is threatening society in general. According to a Department of Justice survey, 20 percent of students aged 12 through 18 reported that street gangs had been present at their school during the previous 6 months.
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