of homicides committed by the gang ("Almighty Vice Lord Nation", ). Latin Kings is the largest and most organized Hispanic street gang.
The gang consist of 20, 000 to 40,000 mostly Hispanic members and are located in Chicago, New York City, and other cities throughout the United States. The gang was initially form by Puerto Rican males but now consist of mostly Mexicans. The gang activities consist of racketeering, battery arms, and drug trafficking, extortion, identity document forgery, robbery and murder. The organization structure consist of different tribes and chapter across the country. This gang when compared to other street gangs are said to be no comparison to the organization of the Latin Kings ("Latin Kings. ", ). The Latin Kings and Almighty Vice Lord Nation gangs differ from contemporary youth gangs in that the youth gangs are not as organized. The youth gangs are juveniles who has for the most parts been ousted from their family, and have joined together with other youths to make a family on their own. They do illegal things like steal cars, monies, and sell drugs to support themselves. The structure of youth gangs could be that the one who started the game or the oldest is in charge and most of the members have to do an initiation to become a …show more content…
member. There are some gangs located in the Triad area. I am not familiar with the gangs but some crimes that are committed are said to be gang related. There was a case that I sat in on in court about three Latinos teens who called themselves MS-13, and they were going to do a drive-by on a rivalry gang. The teens hitched a ride from a citizen, shot him, and took his car so they could do a drive by. The teens was locked up for the incident and the drive-by did not happen because of one teenager mistakenly shot themselves and needed medical appointment. The causation that can lead to gang existence is a dysfunctional family life or poverty.
Gang membership could be attracted because it gives the youth a sense of prestige or status among friends. According to Rochester study, Thornberry (1998) states the most important community risk factor is the level of social integration (attachment) is low. Those youth who grow in social disorganized neighborhoods who do poorly in school and associate himself with delinquent peers are more prone to become gang members. In conclusion, there are members added to crime groups everyday and without a solution it will be never-ending. A solution to help control local gangs is to set up something like a neighborhood watch. Most neighborhood watch are looking out for each other to keep their neighborhoods safe. This would consider the same idea except go a step farther to report youths that are hanging around, find out who they are and who their parents are. This will be a solution to controlling local gang
activities.
References
Almighty Vice Lord Nation. (). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almighty_Vice_Lord_Nation
Latin Kings. . (). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Kings_(gang)#Organizational_structure
Lyman, M. D., & Potter, G. W. (2007). Organized Crime (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Thornberry, T.P. 1998. Membership in youth gangs and involvement in serious and violent offending. In Serious and Violent Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions, edited by R. Loeber and D.P. Farrington. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 147-166.