Steve Levitt is incredibly funny and really delivered a great presentation. His discussion on why being in a gang and selling drugs for a gang is the worse job in America really made sense in correlation with the article. Mr. Levitt described that in the early eighties prior to the implementation of crack cocaine there was no way to make large sums of money belonging to a street gang. (TED Talks, 2010). Of all male gang members, only a third had a high school diploma and about the same number were working. The rate of high school graduation for female gang members was about the same as male gang members. Almost all of the young women were mothers (88%) by their early 20s, with about 58% on welfare (Krohn, Thornberry, 2007).
Gang membership remained a significant predictor of ever having been incarcerated and the percentage of income from illegal sources. Since gang members are typically more involved in delinquent activities than non-gang members, it is reasonable to expect that being a member of a gang during adolescence will be associated with disrupted transitions from adolescence to adulthood and, ultimately,will adversely impact life chances (Krohn, Thornberry, 2007).
The life-course perspective recognizes that as people move along trajectories, they make (or fail to make) transitions such as completing their education, getting married, or finding a job. The success in making those transitions, for example, in completing one’s education, is likely to have a significant impact on life chances. Disruption in or failure to complete major transitions will adversely affect subsequent development (Krohn, Thornberry, 2007). When the article discussed life transitions and behavior initiated during adolescence can have important consequences for successful entry into adult roles and responsibilities it was self evident that the delinquent activities hindered gang members from creating the paths necessary in order to obtain any type of substantial employment later on in life.
According to the research presented in the article, half of the male (50.4%) and two-thirds of the female gang members (66.0%) report being members of the gang for one year or less. In contrast, only 21.6% of the boys and 5.0% of the girls report being a gang member for 3 or 4 years (Krohn, Thornberry, 2007). Mr. Levine made the statement that members join gangs believing that if they stay and do everything the gang wants them to do they will move up to the top of the ranks. According to Mr. Levine prior to street gangs becoming involved in the drug trade people would join gangs and leaves after a certain amount of time. So now with the injection of the drug trade the same gang leaders who helmed the ushering in of crack cocaine are now still the same gang leaders over the organization 20 to 30 years later.
So with all these grime statistics the question is asked what is attracting these children to gang life. Studies of gang proliferation report that between 1980 and 1990 there was a dramatic increase in the number of large cities (100,000 population or more) that reported gang problems, increasing from 15% prior to 1980 to 70% by 1990. I would concur that this correlates with the crack epidemic. At the height of the media’s “glamorization” of gang life as Mr. Levitt puts it, a rise in gang affiliation occurred.
What’s incredibly interesting to me was the fact that the life of the drug lord was only that, glamorized. In reality the gold chains were plated and the cars were leased, all in order to stage or set up the young 13-15 year old being sold a dream of gang life. The money wasn’t that big. The death statistics can never add up to the dollars made and the incarcerated lives of young men are now the empty shells of what they once thought so promising.
TED Talks."Steven Levitt analyzes crack economics." Feb 2004. Online Video Clip. Accessed on July 27 2010.
Krohn, M. D., & Thornberry, T. P. (2007). Longitudinal perspectives on adolescent street gangs. In The long view of crime: A synthesis of longitudinal research. (pp. 128-60). New York: Springer.
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