Gangs In Garden City

For decades street gangs have been synonymous with inner cities, where drugs and drive-by shootings are a fact of daily life. But in a disturbing new trend two gangs - Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street - with their roots in Central America and Los Angeles, have ventured beyond our urban centers and into America's most exclusive suburbs. For the past five years journalist Sarah Garland has reported on the changing landscape and demographics of Hempstead, Long Island, following the lives of current and former gang members. In Gangs in Garden City she tells their stories. We meet Julio, a Salvadoran civil war veteran escaping the violence back home only to join Mara Salvatrucha in Los Angeles, and flee again for New York; Jessica, who comes from a family of Mara Salvatrucha members yet chooses to join a rival gang; and twelve-year-old Daniel, a recent Salvadoran immigrant who must choose between his best friend and the gang as he fights off bullies and tries to fit in. They have the same dreams and the same problems as suburban teenagers everywhere - except they learn the only way to survive is to join the rising tide of violence that surrounds them. Their disturbing personal narratives expose the cruel reality of segregation, racial income gaps, and poverty, which lie hidden behind suburban white picket fences in a pattern repeated all across America. While the gangs' growth has provoked a nationwide panic and a decade of federal and local law enforcement crackdowns, she asks why their spread is so prevalent, and what it reveals about the fractures in American society. Gangs in Garden City not only explores our false assumptions about these gangs, but also shows how immigration raids, rising incarceration rates, suburban decay, and inadequate funding of our nation's schools have worsened an alarming situation. Fearlessly reported and sensitively told, Gangs in Garden City unveils a hidden, troubling world that exists in the shadows of our own. Garland shows how the gangs next door will continue to spread - and thrive - if we do not act quickly to uproot them.

This new third edition provides an update on what is known about street gangs throughout the world and summarizes some of the major works on street gang phenomena. It focuses on those countries that have a greater presence in the literature. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the topic of street gangs throughout the world. Chapter 2 identifies some of the challenges faced by scholars when studying gangs in different countries. Chapter 3 reviews some of the basic research on street gangs in the United States and Canada. Chapter 4 covers what is known about street gangs in Europe and Russia. Chapter 5 reviews the literature on street gangs in one of the hottest areas of the world for gangs, Central America. In addition, this chapter examines South American and Caribbean gangs. Street gangs in Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Trinidad, and other countries are covered. The presence of street gangs and gang violence in these and other countries has been identified as a major factor in the mass migration of refugees to the United States. Chapter 6 reports on the street gangs of Africa. Research on gangs in South Africa goes back decades and the country has a unique history on how gangs evolved. Other countries, such as Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya are developing a body of literature that highlights the distinctive nature of gangs and gang members in these countries. Chapter 7 addresses street gangs in Asia, including China, India, Hong Kong (post-reunification), Japan, and other countries. This chapter provides rare glimpses of gangs in China, a relatively secretive country. Although different in many ways from gangs in Asia, information is also included here about gangs in Australia and New Zealand. Practitioners in the criminal justice and juvenile justice fields will find this book to be a valuable resource.

"The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society is the premier reference book on gangs for practitioners, policymakers, students, and scholars. This carefully curated volume contains 43 chapters written by the leading experts in the field, who advance a central theme of "looking back, moving forward" by providing state-of-the-art reviews of the literature they created, shaped, and (re)defined. This international, interdisciplinary collective of authors provides readers with a rare tour of the field in its entirety, expertly navigating thorny debates and the at-times contentious history of gang research, while simultaneously synthesizing flourishing areas of study that advance the field into the 21st century. The volume is divided into six cohesive sections that reflect the diverse field of gang studies and capture the large-scale cultural, economic, political, and social changes occurring within the world of gangs in the last century; anticipating immense changes on the horizon. From definitions to history to theory to epistemology to technology to policy and practice, this unprecedented volume captures the most timely and important topics in the field. When readers finish this book, they will be more confident in what we know and do not know about gangs in our society"--

This timely collection provides a historical overview of violence in American popular culture from the Puritan era to the present and across a range of media. Few topics are discussed more broadly today than violence in American popular culture. Unfortunately, such discussion is often unsupported by fact and lacking in historical context. This two-volume work aims to remedy that through a series of concise, detailed essays that explore why violence has always been a fundamental part of American popular culture, the ways in which it has appeared, and how the nature and expression of interest in it have changed over time. Each volume of the collection is organized chronologically. The first focuses on violent events and phenomena in American history that have been treated across a range of popular cultural media. Topics include Native American genocide, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and gender violence. The second volume explores the treatment of violence in popular culture as it relates to specific genres—for example, Puritan "execution sermons," dime novels, television, film, and video games. An afterword looks at the forces that influence how violence is presented, discusses what violence in pop culture tells us about American culture as a whole, and speculates about the future.

Winner, Best Book on Ethnic and Racial Politics in a Local or Urban Setting , Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics of the American Political Science Association, 2002 This cross-cultural study of Los Angeles gangs identifies the social and economic factors that lead to gang membership and underscores their commonality across four ethnic groups--Chicano, African American, Vietnamese, and Salvadorian. With nearly 1,000 gangs and 200,000 gang members, Los Angeles holds the dubious distinction of being the youth gang capital of the United States. The process of street socialization that leads to gang membership now cuts across all ethnic groups, as evidenced by the growing numbers of gangs among recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America. This cross-cultural study of Los Angeles gangs identifies the social and economic factors that lead to gang membership and underscores their commonality across four ethnic groups—Chicano, African American, Vietnamese, and Salvadorian. James Diego Vigil begins at the community level, examining how destabilizing forces and marginalizing changes have disrupted the normal structures of parenting, schooling, and policing, thereby compelling many youths to grow up on the streets. He then turns to gang members' life stories to show how societal forces play out in individual lives. His findings provide a wealth of comparative data for scholars, policymakers, and law enforcement personnel seeking to respond to the complex problems associated with gangs.

The first comprehensive overview to examine how sex and race/ethnicity impact the interrelationships among youth violence, violent victimization, and gang membership.

Why young people participate in violent gang behavior The effects of gang violence are witnessed every day on the streets, in the news, and on the movie screen. In all these forums, gangs of young adults are associated with drugs and violence. Yet what is it that prompts young people to participate in violent behavior? And what can be done to extract adolescents from the gangster world of crime, death, and incarceration once they have become involved? In Gangsters: 50 Years of Madness, Drugs, and Death on the Streets of America, Lewis Yablonsky provides answers to the most baffling and crucial questions regarding gangs. Using information gathered from over forty years of experience working with gang members and based on hundreds of personal interviews, many conducted in prisons and in gang neighborhoods, Yablonsky explores the pathology of the gangsters' apparent addiction to incarceration and death. Gangsters is divided into four parts, including a brief history of gangs, the characteristics of gangs, successful approaches for treating gangsters in prison and the community, and concluding with a review and analysis of notable behavioral and social scientific theories of gangs. While condemning their violent behavior in no uncertain terms, Yablonsky offers hope through his belief that, given a chance in an effective treatment program, youths trapped in violent behavior can change their lives in positive ways and, in turn, facilitate positive change in their communities and society at large.

This two-volume set integrates informative encyclopedia entries and essential primary documents to provide an illuminating overview of trends in gang membership and activity in America in the 21st century. Gangland: An Encyclopedia of Gang Life from Cradle to Grave includes extended discussion of specific gangs; types of gangs based on ethnicity and environment (rural, suburban, and urban); recruitment and retention methods; leadership structure and other internal dynamics of various gangs; impacts of gang membership on extended family; the historical evolution of gangs in American society; depictions of gang life in popular culture; violent and nonviolent gang activities; and programs, policies, agencies, and organizations that have been crafted to combat gang activities. In addition, the encyclopedia includes a suite of primary sources that offer a look into the personal experiences of gang members, examine efforts by law enforcement and public officials to address gang activity, and address wider societal factors that make eradicating gangs such a difficult task.