Youth Violence

Hey Lesleigh,

Before I go into gangs and the City of God movie, I wanted to talk a little about my service learning. Last night there was a little boy who would not do any of the work and was ignoring us pretty much the whole time. I guess he got to his breaking point and got mad at us trying to get him to do the work. He started to hit himself in the head with his hands and when I took his hands so he could not do it anymore, he started to bang his head on the table. This was not the first time I have seen a kid hit him or herself but this kid was very persistent. It scares me that they try to inflict pain on themselves. It might not turn to anything but if he has not problem hitting himself, I keep thinking; will it turn into more? Or will he start hitting others? We have talked in class about juveniles committing violence on each other, but not much about doing to his or her own body.

In class we were talking about choices and (as some stated) that there is always a choice. I agree with this statement that there is always a choice but neither one might be good. My Professor in my Holocaust class called this choice less choices; meaning any choice given will turn out bad. She used the example of Rumcowski having to give over twenty thousand children under the age ten. He said it was either that or the Nazis come and take more so he CHOSE to cooperate. Either choice that he could have made had a terrible outcome. This is what I thought about when talking about the City of God movie. They all had a choice throughout the movie; whether it be to join or not or to get out of the gangs. If you were already in a gang, there is a good a chance that you could get killed. If one tried to get out of the gang, then they would either be beaten to death of a good chance of getting shot. This is a choice less choice; which ever they pick will most likely end up in death. Lil Ze and Rocket grew up in the same type of neighborhood. Rocket got lucky and developed an interest in photography. In talking about gangs, I enjoyed reading Spergel’s Gang Member Demographics and Gang Subcultures. When most people think of gangs, they think teenagers, and usually black or Hispanic. I thought it was interesting that they analyzed the demographics and subcultures. Spergel stated “The analysis of age, gender, and especially race/ethnic, gang characteristics suggests that there are distinctive gang subcultures, and therefore distinctive intervention approaches are required”. In my honest opinion, I do not think anyone can see a teenager a say he/she is not in a gang. Now-a-days no one can ever tell. In today’s world, there are people that think they can stereotype others by the way that they dress or the way that they look.

One thing that was mentioned in class about City of God was that there were not parents anywhere to be seen. I am a big family person so sometimes I forget how important family influence is. I guess a big reason for that is because I have always had it and my parents have always been there for me and provided me with what I need plus a ton more. The way parents raise and interact with their children make a huge difference for when they get into their teen years and peer pressure starts to kick in. According to the Youth Gangs: A developmental perspective, Patterson stated that “… parents of antisocial children are noncontingent in many of their interactions with their children.” The parents probably ignore the behavior problems of their own children and are very inconsistent with their punishments. I have one student at my job who is very wild and gets into a lot of trouble. When the teacher has a conference with the mother, the mother tries to blame it on everyone else except for her son. He does not get punished a whole lot because she does not think he does anything wrong. After reading about gangs and talking about it in class, this is starting to concern me. I just hope he can steer away from any trouble.