Criminology

Although there is still no single agreed-on definition that has been developed to apply exclusively to gangs, a gang can be described as a continuous group of people who have come together under a common identity be it a name, symbol or sign. Members of a specific gang are also united under a common loyalty and engage in criminal or unlawful activities. Most youths or young adults are involved in street gangs. These are groups of individuals who identify themselves under a common leadership, exert control over specific territories in their communities and carry out criminal activities. Such groups meet over time and the criminal activities involved can either be carried out collectively or on individual basis. The term street gang is very often used to refer to youth gangs which are made up of young people between the ages of 12 and 24 years, who also share a similar style of symbols such as hand signs, clothing and graffiti. These gangs also display a considerable degree of permanence and a tendency to be organized as well as a high level of involvement in criminal activity or delinquency. Gangs are also very diverse in nature and can either be small or large more or less criminal in nature more or less territorial as well as short term or long term among other characteristics. But gangs should not be accepted as permanent and a lot should be done to prevent and reduce them considering that their presence misguides the young people in society therefore leading to the moral and social disintegration of communities (Hess 2009, p. 200).

Profile and Risk Factors
To society and law enforcement officials, juvenile gangs are made up of very dangerous offenders most of who have gone through a series of arrests and also spent considerable time in one or more juvenile facilities. Every year, millions of youngsters get involved in unlawful behavior or criminal activities. In the U.S, criminal acts committed by juveniles have been on the increase and the issue has been one of Americas major social problems affecting both the public health and the social sectors. The media is saturated with reports about criminal activities by individual youths or gangs being committed in homes, in the streets, in schools and even in parking lots (Roberts 2004, pp.6-7).

Many youths belong to gangs and this is not an illegal thing to do in the U.S. Nevertheless, the activities that most of these gangs participate in are purely illegal. Gangs have been known to commit such dreadful criminal activities as robberies, shootings and various types of assault. It is gangs that have always had to blame for such unlawful activities as drug trafficking, extortion and other forms of felony as well as terrorizing neighborhoods. Youths and young adults were initially often involved in petty crimes but when these crimes went unchecked, these groups gradually with time, turned into organized and very powerful gangs which became a symbol of some kind of domestic terrorism. For a long time, gangs have existed in almost every community in the U.S and elsewhere. In 2004, the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS) in its data estimated that 41 of youth gang members in the U.S were juveniles and 59 fell in the category of young adults of age 18 years and above. The existence of juvenile gangs has warranted various efforts by the government, states as well as individual communities to help in the prevention and reduction of juvenile gang activities and in so doing help the youths involved to reconstruct their lives (Hess 2009, p.199).

Youths join gangs for a variety of reasons and it is therefore essential to put into consideration various factors when designing treatment strategies for the prevention and reduction of gangs. Youth rehabilitation officers and social workers should consider such factors as individual, family, peer, school or community pressures that may have pushed a young person into identifying and eventually joining a certain gang. Most youths join gangs because of the presence of such groups in the communities they are living in making the activities of these gangs attractive to the youth. Peers influence lures the youth into such groups as they seek to fulfill a need for recognition as well as a sense of belonging. This includes a desire for group rewards such as identity, status, self-esteem and protection. Most youths join gangs in search of acceptance and the protection offered by such groups. Gangs also provide them with a sense of belonging as well as importance that such young people fail to get from their families or communities. Other attractions include material reasons, physical protection, recreation as well as defiance towards parents or society (Krisberg 2005, pp.205-207). Normally, the kind of youths who identify with gangs are those who have failed to achieve a good education and therefore try to seek other ways of making them feel established in society. Unstable families that are riddled with myriad problems and those that have a history of criminal activities are also a determining factor for the involvement of their young ones in gang activities. Most gang members have unfortunate backgrounds often coming from poor, broken, single or abusive families where they grow up without any guidance and with no one taking any responsibility for their upbringing. Those who have been victims of violent victimization and also experience a limited attachment to their communities also tend to join gangs. Drug and substance use also lures the youth into gangs by reducing the young peoples reasoning capacity or inhibitions in such way that they become prone to joining those who engage in criminal activities. Those youths who have a history of conduct problems and pattern behaviors which they were unable to overcome in early adolescence also have a high tendency to be attracted to gangs. These are behaviors such as aggressiveness, chronic stealing and running away from home (Regoli, Hewitt  Delisi 2009, pp.54-115).

Guiding Principles
An effective treatment strategy must be able to address the youngsters belonging to gangs as individual persons who may often be very bitter and angry about the kind of lives they lead. Offering a listening ear to these youngsters creates an intimate relationship between them and the youth rehabilitation officers or social workers who are able to use the availed information to explore the private world of these youths. In such way, the reasons behind their involvement in gang activities are brought into the limelight. A good example of such an initiative was conducted by Jerome Miller who by then was Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. Jerome organized press conferences throughout the state and invited his young clients to expose to the invited media the kind of brutality that they were being subjected to in the corrupt youth rehabilitation systems. As a result of this effort, all the barbaric training schools in the State of Massachusetts were closed and most of the youths were taken back to the community based programs which were not only smaller but of high quality. Smaller correction facilities are better placed to give more attention to their young clients. Redemptive justice should be highly valued for its ability to bring hope to the young people by helping them to restart as well as improve their lives (Krisberg 2005, pp. ix-x).

An effective gang treatment strategy should be able to address other factors as well. One most important guiding principle is the involvement of many segments of the community in which the treatment is being carried out. Those involved could be the youth, parents, educators or school administrators, faith groups, law enforcement officials, social service providers as well as various community representatives and others who may have an essential role to play in the reconstructive programs. Parents and other adults are a must in any treatment strategy because they know the target individuals or groups better than the worker (Hess 2009, p.394). An effective treatment strategy should also be subjected to serious research and evaluation in order to determine the effectiveness of the particular strategy in addressing the problem at hand as well as producing the desired results. Youth correction officers and social workers should get into the field with confidence that whatever they are investing their effort in is capable of bearing good results. It also essential to identify a target population, evaluate their numbers, motivations as well as risk factors  in order to be able to design appropriate programs. Working with a target population also makes it easier to assess the effectiveness of any treatment program as well as to easily identify their problems and possible solutions to the problems (Klein and Maxson 2010, pp.92-167).  While laying down various redemptive strategies for youth gangs, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment strategy against its weaknesses. While some strategies may be relevant, others can make the gangs to become more cohesive and violent. It is good to avoid any form of approach that may use any form of force to put across suggested opinions. Pressure only makes gangs to grow stronger (Krisberg 2005, p.166). Different youths have different reasons that attract them to different types of gangs. It is therefore very essential when developing any treatment strategy to put into consideration these different factors. By addressing the gang members as individuals, by their families, peer groups, their schools or communities, workers involved in any particular redemptive program will easily get a limelight of personal lives of their subjects and will certainly get wiser in their approach to the treatment strategy. A good knowledge of the risk factors involved in the formation of a gang helps to develop an equally good approach towards a successful and fruitful rehabilitation journey for the young gang members (Hess 2009, pp.208-209). Treatment strategies should involve a combination of intervention, enforcement as well as prevention. It is also very essential to create and sustain an active network of trained leaders who are willing not only to work with the youths but also to learn from them as a way of advancing their local anti-gang approaches. Programs and policies should be drawn upon easily identifiable and documented practices (Hess 2009, p.226).

Treatment Strategy
Juvenile criminal gangs can be helped into the path of recovery by training and assigning workers to various gangs through a detached worker program. Through such a program, individual workers are sent from the office into specific neighborhood set ups where therapeutic models can be applied to the redemptive process. Workers can inconspicuously enter gang territories and make contact with them through their usual meeting places such as street corners, pool rooms or candy stores. Such proposals as offering jobs to the gangs as well as recreational activities can be an effective forum for persuading them out of their gangster lives. The fact that gang members are not accustomed to encountering sympathetic adults can be quite attractive to them. Since it is difficult to catch the attention of all gang members, the worker can work towards securing the attention of a few gang members and especially those in leadership positions. Gangs are run under very authoritative and unquestionable leadership and catching the attention of such leaders can bring tremendous changes to a whole gang.  These leaders are used to being heard and obeyed without questioning and the same can apply when they bring new reformative ideas into the group (Hess 2009, p.212). It is also quite easy to catch the attention of gang members who have been initiated through victimization by other gang members because these may be very willing to find their own way out. Investigations can also be carried out to find out the economic needs of gangs and programs initiated through which gang members can be financially assisted to start income generating activities. Gangs have their own established and controlled social set-ups and it would be quite easy to involve all members in controlled social action (Krisberg 2005, pp.49-53, 100).

Prevention Programs
Gangs are characterized by a very strong leadership and one which is also more identifiable than the types of leadership found in other delinquent groups. The older gang members are usually the leaders and normally rise to such positions through some sort of initiation. They are more violent, commit crimes and also demand a high level of obedience from those surrounding them. Initiating such leaders into the treatment program can be a very promising strategy not only towards the rehabilitation of a whole gang but also towards prevention of gang formation. Those youths who aspire to be gang members usually begin by imitating such leaders such as their style of dressing, walking and other characteristics. Since gangs have initiation rituals, reformed leaders can help to change such rituals from criminal activities into worthwhile and productive activities. Youths finding their way into such gangs will be joining reformed groups instead of finding their way into criminal gangs. Preventing gangs will undoubtedly have a tremendous effect in the control of gang-related violence. Youth workers can work in conjunction with law enforcement authorities to enforce new behavior codes whereby bans are placed on such gang identifiers as dressing codes, gang colors as well as gang signals. Such a program will prevent recruitment of new members by removing those identifiers that help new recruits to identify members of existing gangs. For such an approach to realize considerable amount of achievement, it is essential that those enforcing such bans encourage cooperation and friendliness from gang members and also reward such cooperation (Hess 2009, 212-214, 226).

Corrections and Detention
Correction can also be applied to the gang treatment strategy. When youth workers infiltrate into gang groups they are able to easily identify those gang members who are willing to change and those who are not. Often, those who are unwilling to change are the ones who are also involved in criminal activities. Youth workers can conspicuously help authorities to identify those gang members who pose a serious threat to the rehabilitation process and to the community at large. These threat groups can be separated from the rest of the gang by removing them to rehabilitation facilities or other places that will isolate them from the rest of the group and give the gang room for reconstruction (Gaines  Miller 2008, p.452).

Juvenile Courts
Most juvenile courts have caseloads of youths who are charged with minor property crimes, incorrigibility, violation of probation, running away and curfew violations. On the other hand, most redemptive programs have a tendency to concentrate on dangerous gang members while ignoring the vast majority of minor offenders. Such youths can be recruited into productive redemptive programs that will earn them some income and prevent them from going back to criminal activities (Krisberg 2005, p.164).

Conclusion
Gang treatment is a very noble course but one that can also be very expensive and risky. It requires a lot of commitment from the workers and a high level of discipline that demands one to be very careful with gang information. This is because any detection of betrayal from the gangs can lead to a lack of trust and subsequent failure of the whole program. Service providers who are able to understand gang culture develop a good experience at working with at-risk youths and their families and in such way become valuable in gang prevention and reduction programs. The results are not only beneficial to the gang members but to their communities at large.