African-American Gang Affiliation/Crime

African-American Gang Affiliation and Crime:

How Institutions Funnel Blacks Into Lives of Violence

Zara Harding

Choate Rosemary Hall AP US History

May 31, 2017

         Throughout the years, black people in America have often been painted as inherently violent beings that are less educated than others and more likely to become criminals. However, the marginalization and mistreatment of the black community that has existed for centuries in America has largely contributed to its often-violent fate. On the surface, the evidence of gang activity can be an excuse for displacing the blame onto black people themselves, but this displacement ignores the history of black abuse, disenfranchisement, and oppression that has forced members of the community to engage in unhealthy methods of survival. The primary goal of many gangs in their beginning stages was to provide support systems, protection from police and black-on-black violence, and a family for those who needed one. As these groups formed and their values became skewed over time, the actual effects became wildly different from the primary goal. Groups that were originally intended to have positive effects quickly spiraled into what one typically thinks of when hearing the word "gang" today. Gangs have been present in American society for a couple hundred years, first dating back to about the 1800's, when they mostly consisted of small groups of people engaging in low-stakes petty crimes.1 Today, gangs are highly evolved, highly organized, and much larger than they were in the 1800's, sometimes spanning across state borders. Gangs have become popularized and have collectively attracted thousands of members for a variety of reasons. Police brutality directed toward the black community and the unforgiving nature of the judicial system has instilled violent conflict into a disproportionate number of black children. This fact, coupled with mass incarceration, a lack of access to opportunities for a good education and economic growth, and public housing systems, has caused gang involvement and criminal activity to skyrocket immensely among America's youth.
         Mistreatment of the black community by the police has been instilled in American society for centuries and has normalized solving problems with violence. The police system in America is notoriously racist, and this is rooted deeply in its history. Our current police system evolved out of slave patrols, and many local police forces were originally started with the intent to protect white citizens from minority groups.2 A professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, Dr. Victor Kappeler, sums up the values and goals of a historic system that is now America's current police force: "Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities."3 The effort to control minorities has persisted throughout American history and led straight to the crackdown of today's police on the black community and gang violence in particular. Perhaps the most notable example of aggressive police opposition to gangs is the crackdown of the Los Angeles Police Department that occurred in the 1980's, led by Chief Daryl Gates. He is notorious for his militaristic approach to law enforcement, which according to the New York Times "was both admired for its innovation and criticized for the racial unrest it provoked."4 While the intent was to rid Los Angeles of gang influence and violence, Chief Gates' leadership had quite the opposite effect. Between the years of 1972 and 1996, a timespan that covers Gates' entire tenure as LAPD Police Chief, the number of gangs in LA increased by over 1000%.5 The police force's combative approach was both a detrimental example of solving problems with bullets and physical force, and a statement of hostility toward the black community. Gang membership increased as more black youth felt it necessary to protect themselves against the violence of police and other black gang members.
         The police force also had a direct hand in the boom of incarceration that further restricted the black community and made gang protection a necessity for African-American youth. African-Americans make up 12% of the US population, yet they account for 40% of America's prisoners.6 For many young African-American children, the prospect of being arrested by the police and going to prison is a constant fear that becomes a reality for a disproportionate number of them. Black Americans are the most likely group of people to end up in prison. There are over twice as many black prisoners than there are Latino prisoners, and almost six times more blacks in prison than whites.7

Again, this threat of incarceration and disenfranchisement leads many black teenagers to seek whatever protection they can get, and many choose to join gangs to achieve this. Evidence of the link between incarceration rates and gang involvement is present in New York and Chicago's gang and incarceration statistics. According to an article in The New Yorker, in a twenty-year span from 1980 to 2000, New York experienced significant reductions in both incarceration rates and crime rates, which suggests "whatever happened to make street crime fall, it had nothing to do with putting more men in prison."8 In contrast, Chicago's incarceration rates remained constant throughout this time period and now has the second largest concentration of gang members in the country, second only to Los Angeles.9 California is the gang capital of America and also has the second largest inmate population in the country.10
This shows that, contrary to the beliefs and actions of many law enforcement officials, there is a positive correlation between the number of people in prison in an area and the amount of crime and gang activity in that area.
         Though this correlation seems paradoxical, it is likely due to the prevalence and notoriety of prison gangs that influence the lives of those who have spent time in prison. They are organized groups of inmates that operate from within prisons, protecting each other from members of other prison gangs and conducting business illegally both inside and outside the prison. A great example of the prevalence of prison gangs is the California prison system. There are six main prison gangs in the state: Nuestra Familia, The Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerilla Family, the Northern Structure, and the Nazi Lowriders. They operate across correctional facilities and are not specific to any one prison, and "although prison gangs are formed with an intention to protect its members, they do much more in disguise of offering protection. Most often, prison gangs are involved in activities such as handling of controlled substances, assaults, prostitution, and murder."11 Once in prison, many inmates become involved in these gangs even if they had no affiliation at all with gangs prior to being incarcerated, often because they have no choice if they want to remain safe. The reason this affects crime rates in the area is because affiliation does not end once someone is released from behind bars, as access to these groups "is restrictive, mutually exclusive, and often requires a lifetime commitment."12 In fact, part of the legal definition of prison gangs on the US Law website includes the statement: "Prison gangs are also self-perpetuating criminal entities that exercise much control and influence over the street gangs outside the confines of the penal system."13 This means that inmates, of whom a disproportionate number are African-American, who are involved in prison gangs remain wrapped up in gang violence and affiliation for the rest of their lives, even when they are supposed to start their lives over after being released. While this does not only have an effect on the black community, its effects are deeper and more extensive due to the sheer number of African-American inmates when compared with other racial groups.
         There is also a cyclical relationship between incarceration and education that contributes to gang involvement later in a child's life. The first part of this relationship is the effect that having incarcerated parents has on black students' educational performance. Studies have shown that social conditions outside of school have a direct impact on a child's performance inside the classroom14. For many African-American children, having incarcerated parents are a condition they have to deal with every day. As of 2015, one in nine black children have a parent that is either in prison or has been to prison in their lifetime. This reality has detrimental implications for these children's success rates in school, as having an incarcerated parent can often cause a child's grade point average to decrease and their likelihood of dropping out of school to increase15. It also puts a financial strain on families when one or more sources of income are removed, and this then limits educational resources and opportunity. The second part of the relationship is the school-to-prison pipeline, which refers to educational policies that funnel children directly from schools into the criminal justice system. The system fails to foster a growth mindset that would enhance advancement and it negatively influences young people's view on their own abilities to succeed in school. Some policies include zero-tolerance and one-strike policies for minor rule infringements and having police present in schools to handle certain rule violations.16 Students are suspended or expelled for these minor violations and denied a proper education. This affects black students much more than it affects other students, as a black student in America is three and a half times more likely to be suspended than his/her white counterpart and 40% of expelled students are black.17 This relationship between education and incarceration relates to gang involvement for a number of reasons. One is the startling amount of black children being set up for incarceration and how that plays into the aforementioned connection between prison life and gang affiliation. The second reason is the direct link between level of education and eventual income. Numerous studies show that the higher a person's education is, the higher their eventual salary becomes18. A New York Times article states, "American workers with a college degree are paid 74 percent more than those with only a high school degree,"19 and due to these current educational policies, a large percentage of black Americans hold only either a high school diploma or no diploma at all. This creates economic instability and exposes many African-American families to poverty or a struggle to survive, which then causes many teenagers look to gangs to escape their poor financial conditions.
         Along with the failure of education, lack of access to high-paying jobs also restricts the black community financially and causes people to turn to gangs as a method of survival. Gangs are often heavily involved in the sale and trade of narcotics and weapons, and can sometimes yield big rewards for those who get involved with this "hustle." For many teenagers and adults, this eventually becomes the only way to get by and they are locked into a life of committing illegal acts, all in an effort to put food on their dinner tables. These circumstances apply to so many individuals and families because job discrimination creates such limited access to good, high-paying jobs. While education plays a key role in this, statistics also show that no matter the level of education, the Black or African-American median income is consistently lower than the overall median income for Americans.20 This statistic is evidence of a disturbing fact: a black American can have the same level of education and just as much academic success as a white American, but they will likely have a smaller income and be less financially successful because of their race. A study conducted by renowned economics professors Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan proves the unfortunate reality of job discrimination for African-Americans. They assigned typically black and typically white names to identical rum and submitted them to employers. The rum with white-sounding names were called back for interviews 50% more than rum with black-sounding names.21 This exposes a system that favors white employees and leaves many black workers and families in a financial rut. This disadvantage causes many people to resort to other, often unhealthy, means of survival. It sparks interest in criminal activity among struggling black teenagers when the financial benefit looks promising.
         Subsidized public housing and redlining also play a pivotal role in the concentration of crime and how that affects the black community. In the 1930's, there was a boom in homeownership and new federal policies regarding neighborhood ranking reflected the blatant racism ingrained in American society. "Redlining" was a process used by federal loan corporations to determine which neighborhoods were worthy enough to have mortgages approved.22 Neighborhoods were ranked by ethnic makeup and marked by color and letter. First-grade A communities were highlighted in green and fourth-grade D communities, which were predominantly low-income black communities, were marked in red, declared ineligible for loans and "cut off from essential capital."23 This policy restricted black Americans to the poorest neighborhoods and made it extremely difficult both for individuals to escape these boundaries and for entire communities to advance economically. Though redlining is no longer a utilized policy, housing bias has persisted over the decades and, in partnership with financial disadvantage, kept many black Americans restricted to public housing. Public housing is subsidized by government funds and provided to people with low incomes, and this applies to black families more often than anyone else due to overall lower incomes. Large public housing developments contribute to crime rates by "concentrat[ing] crime to dangerously high levels."24 The already existing prevalence of crime in the black community coupled with a high, close concentration of people enables easy spread of violent conflict and leaves almost no black adult or child unexposed to crime and violence.
         In so many ways, American institutions place shackles on black and African-American people that keep them weighed down and largely restricts them from prosperity. African-Americans are so often perceived as poor criminals, and while the black community is collectively poorer and more engaged in criminal activity than other racial groups, this perception almost entirely ignores how institutions, largely white-controlled, have choked the black community into lives of criminal activity and gang affiliation. Police brutality instills hostility into a majority of black children in America and feeds into the number of black people being put in prison each year. Being in prison often comes with exposure to gangs, and there is a direct link between prison and school policies that tend to affect a larger percentage of black students than other groups. Restriction of young black students from a good education affects job opportunities overall income later in life, which further strains financial freedom and eventual housing opportunities. These things are interwoven quite directly, and they all individually and collectively contribute to the rampancy of crime and gang affiliation by stifling and disadvantaging America's black community.

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My paper was peer reviewed by Alex Eades.
                   1          Julia Dunn, "Los Angeles Crips and Bloods:          Past and Present," EDGE: Ethics of Development in a Global          Environment, accessed May 14, 2017,          https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/gangcolor/lacrips.htm.
         
                   2          Victor E. Kappeler, "A Brief History of          Slavery and the Origins of American Policing," last modified          January 7, 2014, accessed May 26, 2017,          http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing.
         
         3          Ibid.
         
                   4          Keith Schneider, "Daryl F. Gates, L.A.P.D.          Chief in Rodney King Era, Dies at 83," The New York Times, last          modified April 16, 2010, accessed May 25, 2017,          http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/us/17gates.html.
         
                   5          Alex A. Alonso, "Black Street Gangs in Los          Angeles: A History," Streetgangs.com, accessed May 27, 2017,          http://www.streetgangs.com/crips/blackstreetgangs#sthash.8jA3eGUc.C435MvyT.dpbs.
         
         
                   6          Shara Tonn, "Stanford Research Suggests          Support for Incarceration Mirrors Whites' Perception of Black Prison          Populations," Stanford News, last modified August 6, 2014,          accessed May 26, 2017,          http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/august/prison-black-laws-080614.html.
         
                   7          United States Incarceration Rates by Race and          Ethnicity, 2010, image, Prison Policy          Initiative, accessed May 26, 2017,          https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html.
         
                   8          Adam Gopnik, "The Caging of America,"          The New Yorker, last modified January 30, 2012, accessed May 25,          2017,          http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/the-caging-of-america#ixzz1khkeCALB.
         
                   9          Whet Moser, "Why Are There so Many Gang          Members in Chicago?," Chicago Magazine, last modified January          27, 2012, accessed May 24, 2017,          http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/January-2012/Why-Are-There-So-Many-Gang-Members-in-Chicago/.
         
                   10          Graeme Wood, "How Gangs Took over Prisons,"          The Atlantic, last modified October 2014, accessed May 26, 2017,          https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/how-gangs-took-over-prisons/379330/.
         
         
                   11          "Prison Gang Law and Legal Definition,"          US Legal, accessed May 28, 2017,          https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/prison-gang/.
         
                   12          "Prison Gang," Wikipedia, last          modified May 30, 2017, accessed May 29, 2017,          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_gang.
         
                   13          "Prison Gang," US Legal.
         
         
                   14          Melinda D. Anderson, "How Mass          Incarceration Pushes Black Children Further Behind in School,"          The Atlantic, last modified January 16, 2017, accessed May 28, 2017,          https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/01/how-mass-incarceration-pushes-black-children-further-behind-in-school/513161/.
         
         15Ibid.
         
                   16          "School-to-prison Pipeline," American          Civil Liberties Union, accessed May 29, 2017,          https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline.
         
                   17          Carla Amurao, "Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the          School-to-Prison Pipeline?," Tavis Smiley Reports, accessed May          28, 2017,          http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/.
         
                   18          Relationship between Education and Income,          image, Tufts Open Courseware, 2005, accessed May 29, 2017,          http://ocw.tufts.edu/Content/18/coursehome/289071/289085.
         
                   19          Eduardo Porter, "A Simple Equation: More          Education = More Income," The New York Times, last modified          September 10, 2014, accessed May 29, 2017,          https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/business/economy/a-simple-equation-more-education-more-income.html?_r=0.
         
                   20          "African American Income," Black          Demographics, accessed May 29, 2017,          http://blackdemographics.com/households/african-american-income.
         
                   21          Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan,          "Discrimination in the Job Market in the United States,"          Poverty Action Lab, accessed May 30, 2017,          https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-job-market-united-states.
         
                   22          "1934-1968: FHA Mortgage Insurance          Requirements Utilize Redlining," The Fair Housing Center,          accessed May 28, 2017,          http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1934-1968-FHA-Redlining.html.
         
                   23          Emily Badger, "Redlining: Still a Thing,"          The Washington Post, last modified May 28, 2015, accessed May 31,          2017,          https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/28/evidence-that-banks-still-deny-black-borrowers-just-as-they-did-50-years-ago/?utm_term=.9e8cfcf0178f.
         
                   24          Michael C. Lens, "Subsidized Housing and          Crime: Theory, Mechanisms, and Evidence," last modified January          2013, accessed May 30, 2017,          http://luskin.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/Lens%204%20JPL.pdf.