Reviewing The Problems In Gang Culture Criminology Essay

Reviewing The Problems In Gang Culture Criminology Essay It is the intention of the following literature review to focus upon the gang and focus in detail on youth gang culture and look in detail the media coverage in relation to knife crime, the public perception of the gang. To discuss why young people become involved in gangs and to discover during this literature review if poverty, race and ethnicity have a radical impact on who joins a change plus who is a victim of a gang. In order to discuss the subjects noted above this review will also look in detail into previous research relating to gangs with a particular emphasis on youth crime. It is also critical to highlight that it is important to discuss key social theories which could be utilised to explain some of the above. In recent years the media, government, police have used the term gang to generally refer to crimes which have been committed by groups of young people. Often crimes such as knife crime have been used by the mass media to portray gangs in a particular way. Often crimes such as knife crime have been used by the mass media to portray gangs in a particular way and also to draw public attention to this social issue. According to the Home Office There has been increasing public concern in recent years about gun and knife crime. While disturbing, the number of such crimes is relatively low and in a general population sample survey such as the BCS the number of victims is too small. Alexandar (2008) More than 70 youngsters died at the hands of gangs in Britain in 2008. In London, 26 were stabbed to death. There are more than 170 gangs, with members as young as ten have been identified by police in London. Many teenagers now routinely carry a knife out of fear, in order to defend themselves if attacked. The penalty for straying into the wrong area is to be robbed, beaten or stabbed. It is difficult to define specifically what a gang is due to the nature of these particular social groups. Gangs in the UK are currently seen as a collection of more than two people for example and often these gangs have a specific purpose. In recent years a collection of youths walking around the streets have become labelled as gangs in the media. Steven Sachs (1978) makes the following definition, a youth gang is commonly thought as a self-formed association of peers having the following characteristics: a gang name and recognizable symbols, identifiable leadership, a geographic territory, a regular meeting pattern, and collective actions to carry out illegal activities, it is a structured, cohesive group of individuals, usually between the ages of eleven and twenty-five, gang members can be male or female, but they are most often male. (Sachs, 1997) According to Cohen (1955) Youth gangs participate in all kinds of activities such as extortion and intimidation, robbery, vandalism, assault, drug trafficking, stabbings, shootings, and sometimes even murder. The following sections of this literature review will focus in detail at specific research which has been carried out previously relating to youth gangs and knife culture. Study 1 The first study was created in 2008 by Scottish centre for crime and justice research , they were awarded a research grant of  £155,000 by the Scottish  government to undertake ethnographic research exploring the nature of youth gang involvement, and the nature of knife carrying by young people in Scotland, and the roles that such activities may play in young peoples everyday lives. The research took place in five locations across Scotland and involved a multi-method approach, combining sets of interviews with young people, police, community and youth workers and other local area experts. Two draft reports were submitted to the Scottish Government in spring 2010: the first providing a qualitative account of young peoples involvement in youth gangs and the second drawing on an analysis of quantitative data from several sweeps of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions of Crime (ESYTC). A core finding of this report is that gang members (inclusive of those who carry /use knives an d other weapons) are drawn from areas of multiple deprivations. The evidence presented in this report suggests that youth gang members are likely to be highly visible as problematic individuals, in terms of their tendency to hang about the streets and their frequent alcohol consumption. Study 2 Youth Gangs in an English City: Social Exclusion, Drugs and Violence The research Youth Gangs: The factors behind the headlines have been made by Judith Aldridge of the University of Manchester. The research provides an ethnographic account of contemporary youth gangs in an English city.   The study involved 26 months of participant observation in Research City; 107 interviews with gang members and their associates, and with key informants; and nine group interviews with non-gang youth, community representatives and parents.   Findings showed a long history of territorial street gangs in Research City. From the 1980s, attention focused on drug-selling gangs engaging in lethal gun violence in marginalised black areas. This framed the way the issue of gangs was officially constructed across Research City; other white areas of the city where gangs presented a lower profile and level of gun violence received less attention. A combination of factors changed the nature of these gangs, in particular from their drug-selling focus. The findings from this r esearch shows that Gangs today in Research City are ethnically mixed, loose, dynamic, interlinked territorial networks with far less organisation than expected and ephemeral, shifting and unstable leadership. Findings are presented in relation to: gang formation and the life course, violence, earnings, drug use, the role of women and girls, ethnicity, community, and statutory responses.   Findings from the research have important implications for policy development, theoretical understanding of youth gangs in the UK, and methodological know-how. The researches shows that one of many reasons why young people get in to gangs is peer pressure and wanting to look bad and also young people are searching for some kind of family unit.Youth crime is simultaneously a social problem and an intrinsic part of consumer culture: while images of gangs and gangsters are used to sell global commodities, young people not in work and education are labelled as antisocial and susceptible to crime. There was a general consensus that the issue of violent weapon crime by groups of young people is not a new phenomenon, and is in part fuelled by media. Group crime involving weapons transcends ethnicity and occurs across all races, with neighbourhood poverty and deprivatation at the root.

Road to Mecca

The Road to Mecca examines the bio-psycho-social systems and issues that are part of the aging process. There are many issues introduced that are useful in understanding the social workers role in evaluating and developing a plan of care for young adults through late adulthood development. Since the passing of her husband, Helen has devoted her time to creating and transforming her home into her own â€Å"Mecca† of beauty and freedom. The dozens of sculptures of wise men, mermaids and other figures inside and outside of her home has secluded Helen from her neighbors who are very rigid white Calvinists.Her neighbors are trying to get rid of Helen by encouraging her to move into a local old folk’s home because of her eccentric work of art surrounding her home and because they fear for Helen’s safety living alone, now that she is in late adulthood and recently almost burnt her house down. Elsa is a young career minded woman who has befriended Helen and the only pers on that respects and accepts Helen’s work and interest. Throughout this play there are many psychoanalytic themes such as love, abandonment, dependency and loss to name a few.Both Helen and Elsa appeared to have grown up with a sense of abandonment and lack of trust from their families and others. Before the death of Helen’s husband, she lived as a conventional member of society. After becoming a widow, she began expressing herself in an artistic way and displaying her creativity throughout her house. Now that she is in late adulthood and becoming gradually unable to manage on her own as she use to, her sense of creativity seems at an end and she finds herself faced with a sense of darkness and hopelessness that at times overwhelms her.Helen discusses that when she was a child her mother would take away her candle at night; to be in pure darkness as a child was frightening for her and when her mother took away the candle, she took away Helen’s only source of com fort. That fear of darkness transformed into a feeling of abandonment for Helen which has caused her to search for intimacy and trust in her life that she fears she will not find before she dies. Helen’s darkness that she once saw on the outside when the candles were blown out is now darkness she feels on the inside; candles can no longer help this kind of darkness.This darkness symbolizes Helen’s depression. She is frightened that old age is over taking her and affecting her ability to continue creating her Mecca, take care of herself and find the true intimacy in her life that she needs. When Helen meets Elsa and their friendship blossoms, she becomes Helen’s only source of light. The day Helen met Elsa is the day she felt like her true self. Elsa didn’t judge Helen because of her statues and mermaids, she accepted her and after this, Helen felt she could trust Elsa. Elsa revived Helen’s life by accepting her true self.Elsa has extreme trust issu es which are exposed throughout this play. All trust is lost and feelings of abandonment resurface after Elsa’s married boyfriend leaves her and chooses his wife and child. Shame and guilt arise when Elsa has an abortion and when her plan to live happily ever after with a married man goes sour. The relationship with the married man opened her up to life and love, she felt like a woman for the first time. Her heart was wide open to someone that ended up betraying her. Now she feels as though she can’t trust at all and will think twice before she trusts again.Elsa feels you can love someone without trusting them, she is stuck in a mind set of all you need is love. This situation brings up feelings from the past for Elsa. It’s apparent that Elsa never learned trust as a child and trusting another is what she fears most. â€Å"Trust is more dangerous because that’s when you drop your defenses, lay yourself wide open, and if you’ve made a mistake, youà ¢â‚¬â„¢re in big, big trouble. And it hurts like hell. † Helen and Elsa’s fear of abandonment, trust and feelings of possible rejection also emerge when they both hide secrets from each other.Helen lies to Elsa about her suicidal attempt when the house almost burnt down and Elsa hesitates to tell Helen about the abortion and the married boyfriend. The two women have found love in each other and trust; they have had too much rejection in the past and fear their friendship will end badly if their secrets are revealed. Both women are very desperate to see if their friendship will survive their struggles. When Helen explains to Elsa about Marius and the rest of the community encouraging her to move into an old people’s home, Elsa becomes furious with Helen for not standing up for herself.Elsa becomes so angry about this issue, she needs Helen to stand up for herself and fight because Helen is the only one that lives her life the way she wants. If Helen goes into the old people’s home, Elsa will feel a sense of abandonment. Helen serves as a source of inspiration for her and her reaction to Helen’s inability to cope is tied to her need for Helen to remain a strong role model. There are many instances where both women provide a mirroring experience for each other in their lives. Elsa understands Helen’s life of expressing herself through her statues and she allows Helen to see how special she is.Elsa represents the good enough mother for Helen. She provides a holding environment for her. Especially after Elsa receives Helen’s letter of despair and comes to her side for support. Helen is able to challenge Elsa, to be herself and nobody has ever done that. This is what a mother would provide for her child. Both have a fear that if one is in darkness how will the other survive. Helen and Elsa need each other to take away their darkness inside. Miss Helen and Elsa develop a twinship with one another.Both allow themselves t o be vulnerable with each other, Miss Helen even states she allows the little girl inside of her come out to play when she is around Elsa. They both provide a sense of belonging and acceptance for each other. A mother holds the key to her child’s development. Helen and Elsa are on a journey of self discovery and both are at two different developmental stages in their lives. They are both stuck in two areas of the life cycle, trust and abandonment. The mirroring experience Miss Helen and Elsa have, allows a social worker to assess that both women are searching for the mother they never had.These two women were each other’s therapist. A therapist in many cases acts as the â€Å"mother† or â€Å"caretaker† for their clients. Therapists provide a safe holding place for their clients to be able to fall apart in. Therapists also mirror back strengths and uniqueness of a client that typically a good enough mother would provide. With support for each other Miss H elen and Elsa were able to move on with life. At the end of the play, Elsa helps Helen gain confidence when she stands up to Marius about not moving into the retirement home.Helen was able to explain to Marius that her home is the only place where she feels real. After Helen is able to stand her ground against Marius and the rest of the town, Helen and Elsa’s bond deepens. Elsa is able to admit that her choice of abortion has caused some depression. Helen is able to understand the pain that Elsa feels just like Elsa is able to understand Helen’s unconventional art work. The understanding that Helen has for Elsa’s troubles helps Elsa recognize the special role that Helen plays in her life.In the first act of the play when Elsa was very mean and disrespectful to Helen, she was displacing her anger and grief about her married ex-boyfriend and aborted child onto Helen. Elsa is even able to trust again by the end of the play, which is evident in the closing line, â⠂¬Å"Open your arms and catch me, I’m going to jump. † At the end of Act two, Helen is also able to move on with her life by allowing her candles to be blown out which symbolizes she is accepting her development in late adulthood and the completion of her Mecca.The childhood background of a person plays a major part in their adulthood life. When one has a healthy family typically the experience of abandonment and trust issues do not occur. Elsa felt trapped in her early adulthood; she had a job as a teacher in a â€Å"colored† school and ultimately had to conceal her true self to keep her job. Her heart was broken by the man she loved and opened her heart to and she experienced guilt and shame for terminating her pregnancy. Helen was also feeling trapped in her life.Creating her Mecca allowed her to create her own freedom and show her true self instead of complying with Cape Town’s religious ways of living. Both women were able to find a way out of their tr apped lives by finding trust and true intimacy with each other. This play shows the development of a great friendship and how having true intimacy in your life means showing all your faults and rawness without rejection. Helen and Elsa’s characters show that you can continue to grow until the end of life.

What Is a Scientific Variable (The Scientific Method)

A variable is any factor that can be changed or controlled. In math, a variable is a quantity that can assume any value from a set of values. A scientific variable is a little more complicated, plus there are different types of scientific variables. Scientific variables are associated with the scientific method. Variables are things which are controlled and measured as part of a scientific experiment. There are three main types of variables: Controlled Variables As the name implies, controlled variables are factors which are controlled or held constant throughout an investigation. The are kept unchanging so that they wont influence the outcome of the experiment by changing. However, they do have an impact on the experiment. For example, if you are measuring whether plants grow better when watered with milk or water, one of the controlled variables might be the amount of light that is given to the plants. Even through the value may be held constant throughout the experiment, it is important to note the condition of this variable. You would expect the growth of the plant might be different in sunlight as compared with darkness, right? Tracking controlled variables makes it easier to replicate an experiment. Sometimes the effect of a variable comes as a surprise, leading to a new experiment. Independent Variable The independent variable is the one factor that you purposely change in an experiment. For example, in an experiment looking at whether plant growth is affected by watering with water or milk the independent variable is the substance used to water the plants. Many experiments are based on an if-then scenario, where the researcher measures what happens if a variable is changed. The if part of the experiment is the independent variable. Dependent Variable The dependent variable is the variable that you are measuring in order to determine whether or not it is affected by a change in the independent variable. In the plant experiment, the growth of the plant is the dependent variable. In an if-then experiment, the response to a change refers to the dependent variable. Its value depends on the status of the independent variable. Plotting a Graph of Variables When you plot a graph of your data, the x-axis is the independent variable and the y-axis is the dependent variable. In our example, the height of the plant would be recorded on the y-axis while the substance used to water the plants would be recorded on the x-axis. In this case, a bar graph would be an appropriate way to present the data. More About Scientific Variables What Is an Independent Variable?What Is a Dependent Variable?What Is an Experimental Group?What Is a Control Group?What Is an Experiment?

Biomass Energy Renewable Resources - 754 Words

Renewable Energy Biomass is the energy we get from plants and animals that have died. It is organic material made from microorganisms containing stored energy from a process called photosynthesis. When photosynthesis occurs, plants take in sunlight with carbon dioxide and water, and then release glucose, which the plant uses for food and oxygen, which is the air that we breathe. Then sooner of later the plant will either die or get eaten. When it is eaten, the energy from the plant is passed from the plant to the animal or people eating them. When they die, the energy is either released into the air or it is used as fuel for burning or cooking. There are five types of biomass, wood, crops, garbage, landfill gases, and alcohol fuels. All of these are renewable because more trees and crops can be grown and there will always be trash and waste. We release energy from these all the time and most people dont even realize it, but when you burn these, energy is released. 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