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POLICE AND MINORITY JUVENILES.

Discusses racial bias of police in treating of juveniles. Problems of harsher treatment of minority juveniles, more serious delinquency commited by minorities than whites, negative attitude of minority juveniles toward police, increasing gang activity. Measures taken by juvenile justice system to deal with gangs. Makeup of gang membership. Ethnic and social class factors.

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POLICE AND MINORITY JUVENILES
INTRODUCTION:
It is generally believed that police are more likely to treat minority juveniles more harshly than whites. This suggests police may be influenced by race in their decisionmaking. There is also evidence to suggest minority juveniles commit more serious delinquency more frequently than white juveniles and have more negative attitudes toward the police.
DISCUSSION:
A 1995 survey by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reported a total of 23,388 gangs and 664,906 gang members in the United States. Forty nine percent of the law enforcement agencies reporting gang activity reported that the gang problem was "getting worse," while only ten percent

(2 1). 37-58. Gang members are products of thecommunity. Although there is no stated policy with respect to gang affiliation,gang members will typically be dealt with more severely by the system. B., Gordon, R. "Immigration And Ethnic AndRacial Inequality In The United States;" Annual Review of Sociology, Vol21, Pages 419-447.----------------------- 8 "A gang sometimes is defined as a group, large or small, that has aname, common symbols, a territory, a meeting place or pattern and anorganization towards criminality. Lahey, B. Attitudes of theexcluded group toward the larger society and the perceived denial ofopportunity can color the attitude toward gang membership (Chandler, Tsai,2 1, 194). 1, Pgs. This can be seen goingback to the Irish gangs of New York City in the mid-nineteenth century at atime of high Irish immigration, and certainly includes Italian and Jewishgangs from periods of high immigration of those groups. Gangsorganize themselves in various ways - sometimes under the guise of socialor religious groups, ostensibly geared toward cultural improvement, yetoften applying illegitimate or illegal tactics-such as violence, extortionand fear- to enhance gang power, prestige and profits" (Riley, 1997, 132). It has been demonstrated that police anti-gang units are morelikely to stop youths in "gang attire" - which can also be defined as"youth fashion" - and document them with photographs and survey cards,which can result in youths without a formal gang affiliation acquiring arecord of possible membership in a gang; if a young person lives in a gang-infested neighborhood, then it is more likely something like this wouldoccur than if that youth lived in a neighborhood with low levels of gangactivity. Gang membership may also be used at detention, in that it may beharder for a gang member to achieve a higher detention level with moreprivileges. There is also evidence tosuggest minority juveniles commit more serious delinquency more frequentlythan white juveniles and have more negative attitudes toward the police.DISCUSSION: A 1995 survey by the Office of Juvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention (OJJDP) reported a total of 23,388 gangs and 664,9 6 gangmembers in the United States. "Juvenile Gangs;" Corrections Today; October, Vol.59, No. In California, a recently-passed initiative allows prosecutors todetermine whether to charge offenders over the age of 14 as adults inparticular crimes; this is presently being attacked by defense attorneys,most prominently in the recent San Diego school shooting, as anunconstitutional restriction on judicial authority - previously such adetermination or whether to deal with a juvenile in the juvenile or adultjustice system was made by a judge - but the new law has been invoked alsoin such cases as the gang murders at Glendale High School. C. 3, Pgs. "Female Gang Members: A Profile of Aggressionand Victimization;" Social Work; MayVol. Riley, W. 41, No. "Gangbangs and Drive-bys: Grounded Culture andJuvenile Gang Violence;" Social Forces; March, Vol. (1995). & Lizotte, A. While African American and Latino juvenilesmay constitute numbers disproportionate to the community if the communityis defined racially, this may not be the case if the community compared isbased on social class. "Boys Who Join Gangs: A Prospective Study ofPredictors of First Gang Entry;" Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology;August, Vol. Traditionally, gangs have been associated with excluded ethnicgroups, and membership has been seen as a way of gaining economic andpolitical power that was available in no other way. Monti, D. If gang membership is considered acrosssocial classes, the percentage of white lower-class youths (whether ofimmigrant or native background) involved in gangs approximates the ratesseen in African-American and Latino Groups (Waters, Eschbach, 1995, 435). For instance, if three or more gang members are involved, a chargemay be filed as engaging in organized crime, in an effort to increase theseverity. 2 Pg. Waters, M. Identificationof gang "membership" is most frequently determined on the city or county-wide level by the police department. 86, No. Prevailing attitudes about the problem of juvenile crime and thenecessary steps to combat the problem are evidenced in the push to includeprovisions which encourage prevention and attempt to increase thepunishments for juvenile offenders.This increase in gangs has affected the juvenile system, both in itschanging attitudes towards juvenile offenders and in its strengthenedattempts to control the juvenile gang problem. 1179-1188. Gangs used to be primarily associated with the lower classes. 38 No. It goes to the very heart of thematter, which is whether a person would do well on probation or whetherthey should go to prison" (Lahey, et al, 271-74). (1995). (1997). According to a National Youth Gang Center (NYGC) 1995 Survey, all 5 states reported the existence of youth gangs, with most large citiesreporting a gang presence. 4, Pgs. J.(1995). At theother end is the understanding that punishing a juvenile for meremembership in a gang, orincreasing punishment for such membership, absent other aggravatingcircumstances, is not a totally legitimate aim. Other definitions include "a group of people who get together on aregular basis to carry out violent, illegal, or anti-social activities,including intimidation, assault, vandalism, burglary and murder, and list1)formal organization structure; 2)identifiable leadership; 3)identifiedwith a territory; 4)recurrent interaction; and 5) engaging in serious orviolent behavior as clues that one is dealing with a gang (Lahey, et al,263). As to whether the situation is improving or deteriorating, this isnot objectively determinable, given that there are large numbers of"replacements" in terms of newly-arrived immigrants and young African-Americans raised in "at risk" situations. In an effort to make us feel safer, and in an effort to win votes,actors in the juvenile justice system make bold statements about theirability to combat the problem and get the offenders off the streets. & Eschbach, K. "Social Factors InfluencingImmigration Attitudes: An Analysis of Data From the General SocialSurvey;"_The Social Science Journal; April Vol. Lucky Luciano, the founder of the modern American Mafia, and MeyerLansky, who led the Jewish gangs in New York, both got their start in thesame juvenile gang in Five Points. 6; Pgs 132-139. Determining who is and who is not a gang member, and the level of anindividual's involvement in gang activity, has a great deal to do with howthat individual will be treated in the justice system. Chandler, C. R.& Yung-mei T. "Gun Ownership and GangMembership; Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology;Fall, Vol. Gangs have been defined in a variety of ways (Lahey,et al, 262). A belief in police harassment will lead to minority youthsfeeling they are being "singled out" for this attention (Monti, 1995, 1182-84).POLICE RACIAL BIAS: It is commonly claimed that th4e police are racially biased towardminority juveniles, and single them out in numbers disproportionate totheir part of the community. Gang membership is sometimes used to try to build criminal conspiracycases. (1996). 3, Pgs. Regardless of socio-economic level, today's youngpeople spend more time without parental supervision than they did inprevious generations due to the fact that parents today work longer hoursthan before and have longer commutes to and from work than before. On the national level there has been a push toeffectively handle the problem with the introduction of legislation such asthe "Anti-Gang and Youth Violence Control Act of 1996." More recently, thePresident and the Congress have struggled with the passage of a JuvenileJustice bill, which effects both deterrence and punishment for the juvenileoffender (Riley, 1997, 133). In African-American and Latino communities,gang membership is seen to decrease as the individual family rises insocial class and status, in exactly the same way that could be observed inthe earlier ethnic immigrant groups such as the Irish, Italians and Jews.This would tend to support the thesis that gang activity is a function ofclass and not race, with the situation having an appearance of race due todisproportionate numbers of African-Americans and Latinos being in thelower socio-economic classes. 73, No. Today,a gang is as likely to be found in an upper-class white suburb as in aminority ghetto. 251-258. This mind set is summed upin the words of San Diego Prosecutor Deborah Einhorn: "Being in a gang isnot like being a member of the Boy Scouts. This suggests police may beinfluenced by race in their decision-making. And gangmembership is a good gauge of character. P. Manychildren, of all socio-economic levels and ethnic backgrounds, are beingraised by their mothers in single-parent households, where there is nostrong role model for a young boy just at the time he is most in need ofone as he begins making the decisions that will mold his life (Monti, 1995,118 ). The question tobe asked is, do they become gang members because they are members of anethnic group, or because they are part of a social class - is the situationthe result of class or race? Research indicatesthat there is no easy definition for a juvenile gang and that there are fewconclusive indications that a juvenile is involved in a gang. A., Loeber, R., Stouthamer-Loeber, M.,Farrington, D. Around the country, there is an increased awareness of theworsening of the juvenile crime problem, especially in the area of juvenilegangs (Lahey, et al, 1999, 261). They range in age, and members may be male or female. 261-312. References Bjerregaard, B. E. While there appear to bevery few official policies concerning juvenile gang membership, whether theactors in the juvenile system are willing to admit it or not, gangmembership is surely a factor which is given great weight. At the same time, the ethnic groupsthese gang members came from were subject to discrimination by the largersociety and their representatives, the police, regardless of criminalactivity by the individual (Waters, Eschbach, 1995, 432).CONCLUSIONS: African-Americans are the immigrant group which has been mostexcluded from society, while Latinos are at present the largest new-immigrant group, and both are ethnically distinguishable. There has been a decrease ingang crime in recent years which some observers have attributed toincreased sentences for use of a gun in a crime, and to increased use ofsuch tools as the "three strikes" laws (Bjerregaard, Lizotte, 1995, 57). This information is then utilized bythe other levels of the Juvenile Justice system (Lahey, et al, 287). POLICE AND MINORITY JUVENILESINTRODUCTION: It is generally believed that police are more likely to treatminority juveniles more harshly than whites. Forty nine percent of the law enforcementagencies reporting gang activity reported that the gang problem was"getting worse," while only ten percent reported that the problem wasimproving. Often, membership in a neighborhood gang can take the place of both astrong male role model and a feeling of belonging to a "family." This isadditionally true for girls, who will have a mother absent at work, and whomay be subject to child abuse in one form or another (Molidor, 1996, 253-55). Molidor, C. Gangs havebeen around since before the Montagues and Capulets and some definitions ofgangs are so inclusive that the Girl Scouts and the bridge club could beclassified as gangs. Gangs commit crimes. Thisis primarily due to the fact that many of these kids are the ones withprior records or are the ones involved in the more hard core crimes(Bjerregaard, Lizotte, 1995, 47). 27, No. (1999). 177-2 1.

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