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Gangs, what is the solution?

Light The Fuse

Light The Fuse

Moon
Joined
Dec 15, 2010
I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately. The Aryan Brotherhood, MS-13, Bloods, Crips. Let's say you became the directer of a firm regarding how to deal with gangs. Putting aside morals, cost of funding, everything. How would you deal with this situation?

 
I say turn it into a sporting event with the option to watch it on national TV, Pay-Per-View and internet podcast. Besides, people love blood, violence and absolute carnage and the major TV outlets - including the internet - love money and ratings as well as hits.

It's a win-win for everyone, I believe.
 
Granted, it's not the most popular choice anyone would come up with, but let's face it. Gangs hate each other because of who they side with, what color their skin is, what religion they preach or whatever reason. So what better way for them to dismantle the other than with giving them all a venue where they can all beat each other to death while the rest of humanity watches on getting their money's worth? Plus, it's also an important life lesson to teach the kids about gangs: To never - EVER - affiliate with any of them unless if you want to end up like them.

If you also look at it this way, it also applies to prison gangs, too. If you think about it, it would also fix the overcrowding problems that plagues many maximum security prisons today. Plus, you can also invest that money back into the economy to help balance the massive mountain that's called the National Debt.
 
Most gangs hate each other because they get in the way of one another making all the money an area can put out through illegal means.
 
0% Tolerance for gangs in all communities.
Cops are authorized to shoot to kill if a member is proudly displaying his gang affiliation.
At least this would keep it more secretive and not public.
 
@Pandaboi

I had a similar idea, but the sheer amount of causalities and the type of discrimination needed would bring about too much confusion, not to mention dead members would be martyrs, not good examples. Besides, unless major progress is made or a vocal genius arises, most civilians will not interfere with gang activities. Knowing their families, their friends, everyone could be dead.

@BlisteredBlood

The idea is good, but in reality they do fight for money. Cash prizes would possibly benefit the idea, however in general the sheer survival rate compared to cash earned would dis-way most gangs from participation. It'd work on a prison level, but city level would be rather ineffective.

@Nihilistic_Impact

Regulation would slow business, with the idea of a safer and more secure method of procuring what is needed for addicts and sexual deviants. However the government would need to out-match the prices of the dealers themselves, and it would probably be very long for it to take effect, if not impossible. Not to mention gang retaliation, considering their business is being 'moved' upon.
 
I would say that no matter what, you could never truly stop gangs as we know them. People in the same walks of life stay together for protection. They get kids when they are young, and most grow with the idea that what they are going to do is all they will have.
 
You'd have to get rid of the mystique of gang culture. A lot of people forget that in that culture there's this idea that you can somehow make it big. Like in high school football--maybe if you're good enough, you'll make it into the NBA. Dreams of gold and ice, Scarface fantasies, that sorta thing. That kind of tinkering tends to be based in media and culture, so I do not know how possible that level of manipulation is period. If for the sake of the hypothetical questions laws and money did not matter, I'd probably put a fact finding center on every block, take middle schoolers through the economics of gang activity. The third chapter of the book Freakonomics takes an in depth look at the economics of crack cocaine dealing and the rather poor working conditions of the crack cocaine dealer.

I think there would have to be positive incentives to avoid gang participation. For instance, if you really wanna sell drugs, then join a state sponsored dispensary. All your cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, marijuana, LSD, DMT, mushrooms, PCP, sass, ecstasy, molly; whatever you want it the government's got it. Hell, they'd have it purer and better than most of the stuff you can find if you know the right people to look for, not George Gangster with skunk weed and real dirty acid. There would even be literature in the form of friendly pamphlets about organizations available in case you feel you might have a problem, where you can get your clean needles, the whole nine yards. Smiley faces everywhere. As Nihil mentioned, I believe that regulation and legalization of drugs would be beneficial.

@ Light The Fuse: give the gang members jobs in the dispensaries with strict inventory controls and security. Not only are you bringing them into society by giving them jobs but you are also giving them work history and capitalizing on their expertise in the field towards sales. They will bring customers with them to purview this potentially more expensive product that comes at a much higher quality with an assurance that there will be no hot doses. It seems like the best option for me.

@ BlisteredBlood: let me be frank--I find the majority of blood sports distasteful. Mostly because it's wasteful. If these people have an inclination towards murder then let's put them in a place where we can use that. The military. You want to kill people? Fine. Military training and rigors, or intelligence wetwork, and then you get to go out and kill for Uncle Sam. I've read that a lot of soldiers have a hard time killing as they are not sociopaths. These gangbangers who already have experience with guns and a willingness to end another's life would be a great way to add efficient, competent force in military engagements. Again, we are providing valuable life skills and bringing them into the fold by taking note of their interests and skills and turning that to our advantage. It's important to have a win-win situation!

After all, why waste valuable man power? That definitely does not meet the bottom line.

A side note about prison gangs: a lot of it is, surprise surprise, politics. A lot of it is racial politics. Say you have a prison with four main groups; Bloods, Muslim Brotherhood, M13, Aryan Brotherhood. We'll have a few smaller groups as well; NWA, bikers, anarchists, lifers, ect., ect. Even then we move onto the microgangs which are in all reality groups of friends who band together for protection. So there are a lot of different reasons for prison gangs; cultural, economic, security. You want to break up prison gangs? Again, incentives are important. But what incentives are important? What is important to a prisoner?

1) Respect.

2) Freedom.

What do we want to instill in a prisoner to reduce the rate of recidivism?

1) The want to integrate into society in a positive role.

Here's what we do--we'll radically alter the social and architectural structure of prisons. Let's have four tiers of prisoners. The very first tier will be made to wear something humiliating. I think Hello Kitty armbands would be sufficient. The second tier, higher up, would be made to wear Mickey Mouse hats. The third tier wears bright pink jumpsuits. The fourth tier is given a range of options of what to wear as long as it meets certain guidelines of neatness. You go up in tiers by taking part in vocational training and by not participating in violent activity. Even encourage them to form up monitored clubs and form initiatives such as farming, automotive mechanics, engineering, mathematics, literature, pop culture, politics, fashion, fitness, band, choral; things that will let them do something constructive and give them ways to relate to others in a positive manner.

If, at the same time, we can ingrain skills that will make them more economically viable all the better. It will, of course, be important to provide work opportunities after prison to help get them into something resembling the mainstream. For the majority of people, should they have a stable profession or career path they will gladly never steal again. The risk-reward ratio is no longer in their favor to steal if they have something they can do for steady work.
 
Kids join gangs because they have no families to speak of. This is a direct result of a significant proportion, if not a majority, of children in poor environments being born out of wedlock. Men in these conditions have become dissociated from marrying their pregnant girlfriends because they care much more about their own "freedom" than the well-being of their children. The "liberal establishment" is loathe to speak out on this issue because it could be seen in some quarters as attempting to impose mainstream morals on minority groups. That, as I see it, is the problem, and the worst part is it may not be admissive of a solution given the moral climate of the time....
 
Let's not discount the absentee parents, whether single or pairs, that are that way because you can't make a living with just one job. Assuming you can find the work, employers very frequently don't want to give many employees full-time shifts, because then they'd have to pay for benefits, and that's more expense than big employers want to pay for the general rank and file. So you have to get two jobs that pay minimally, and only give you 29 hours, at most, a week, and you have to factor in transit time, and what time to you have left to raise your kids? You're doing the best you can just to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, and you can't always manage that last part. And that's a problem even in families with two parents working, as many analyses of the economic dynamic of families show. And that's the fault of big business and the always-rising expense of benefits, which relates to money and the conservative lobby, not "liberal establishment."

You try and politicize, it can work both ways, with equal justification.

You can't legislate or require marriages. That's as bad as denying marriages. But it's true kids need attention and raising. That's an irrefutable fact. You can say two parents would solve the problem, or you could say one parent could pull it off if they had the time to do so. Either way is actually correct, but how are you going to pull it off?

In all honesty, there's actually more than just one reason why kids join gangs. There's more than one reason why kids have no families to speak of. There's never just one single influence on a complex dynamic, and to claim that there is more points out the speaker's ignorance than actually sheds any light on the problem.
 
XXtraPrince said:
Kids join gangs because they have no families to speak of. This is a direct result of a significant proportion, if not a majority, of children in poor environments being born out of wedlock. Men in these conditions have become dissociated from marrying their pregnant girlfriends because they care much more about their own "freedom" than the well-being of their children. The "liberal establishment" is loathe to speak out on this issue because it could be seen in some quarters as attempting to impose mainstream morals on minority groups. That, as I see it, is the problem, and the worst part is it may not be admissive of a solution given the moral climate of the time....
Click to expand...

I'm confused as to why there has to be a father in the situation. Single mothers can do a pretty good job of raising their children. So can single fathers, too, for that matter. I know people who were abandoned as children by one or both of their parents and are doing just fine. I bet you'll find a large number of people with sub par parents who are pretty successful or happily getting by. Doesn't just happen with people who have a white, Christian, middle class background either. There are plenty of atheists, Muslims, blacks, Asians, whatever who have crap parents and do alright.

Also, let's keep it civil? That's what this forum is about. Civil debate. Constructive argument. The exchange of ideas.
 
But if they are controlled by the state, are they gangs?
Also, the power and influence of these state-sanctioned "gangs" tends to be severely limited.
 
annah said:
But if they are controlled by the state, are they gangs?
Also, the power and influence of these state-sanctioned "gangs" tends to be severely limited.
Click to expand...

Your question intrigued me. So I turned to a dictionary for the answer, well, more like ten. Yay internet making simple questions easily answered! I found one overwhelming theme in the gamut of dictionary definitions--as a side note scholars have shown gang originally meant "to go" as in a group, hence gangplank--which is that a gang is a group of people, usually youths, who share a common identity and are intent on criminal or antisocial behavior.

This made me think. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that Fascism inherently supports gangs. By assimilating them into their local group of jackbooted thugs. Let's look at the Gestapo--they were said to integrate local gang members, people looking for a common identity who were interested in antisocial behavior (Kristallnacht, anyone?). If we say that by the previously found definition there are three criteria for a gang--1) group of people, 2) common identity, 3) antisocial behavior--then we can see fascism by its nature supporting this.

Fascism is about exclusivity, as well as some other admittedly very good things: efficiency, industry, ect., ect. But Fascism is essentially a radically authoritarian principle based off of corporatist organization and structure. Run the country like a business! Efficiency! Punctuality! Work ethic! Ra-ra-ra! If someone doesn't toe the line, you fire them, how do you fire them from society? I'll let you review the history of the, say, Ustaše or the Iron Guard or the Rexists before I let you come to a conclusion about that one. This is to say nothing of the Italian, German or Japanese fascists the children of the Western World learn oh-so-much about in school. Fascism also has a trend towards diminishing the importance of individuality and focusing on the group identity--could this be in part a hearkening back to trying to get people to identify with the nation in the way they would the company they work for?--to the exclusion of all else.

When you look at that radically authoritarian principle it is always, always bundled with nationalism. The Rex? Fuck the Flanders! Ustaše? Fuck the Serbs and Jews! Francoist Spain? Fuck the Galicians, fuck the Basque, fuck the Catalans! It goes with increasingly exclusive levels of who and is not a member of the state based off of their culture, interests, backgrounds, political philosophy. The whole nine yards.

So what does that put you in the mind of?
 
Gangs of youth give people in power some convenient footsoldiers and dupes. Young minds tend to not examine a lot of what they're told, if they have reason to think the speaker knows what they're talking about, or if they agree with part of their message then they buy the whole thing.

Therefore, disaffected, antisocial youth make for excellent recruits. Tell 'em what they want to hear, give them some cheap trinkets that they wouldn't otherwise afford, they'll kill and die for you, and you don't have to leave your office.

It's one reason that having a poor underclass is a good idea when you're a plutocrat.
 
BlisteredBlood said:
I say turn it into a sporting event with the option to watch it on national TV, Pay-Per-View and internet podcast. Besides, people love blood, violence and absolute carnage and the major TV outlets - including the internet - love money and ratings as well as hits.

It's a win-win for everyone, I believe.
Click to expand...

Great idea. Until the gangs and mobs begin buying influential amount of shares in that.
 
Sadly, I don't think there is much of a solution. Rules were meant to be broken, after all, and criminals will always find some way to evasively elude the authorities.

But a way we can clamp down on it, I think is simple. Get some better leaders in place that can fix stuff up. The politicians now-a-days are actually making deals with criminals to get to the top. We need inspiring leaders like Eisenhower or something, who is well, straightforwardly, pure and true, and holds the citizens before him or herself. Then, the awareness for crime will rise, and crime will fall.
 
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