Young Minority Delinquency as Explained through the Lenses of Strain and Social Learning Theory: Insights from “Crips and Bloods: Made in America”, “Grand Torino” and “A Better Life”
Young Minority Delinquency as Explained through the Lenses of Strain and Social Learning Theory: Insights from “Crips and Bloods: Made in America”, “Grand Torino” and “A Better Life”
Introduction
Young minority males from poor families are more likely to turn to delinquency than any other group in the United States of America. In an attempt to explain this tendency by means of well-established criminal law theories, this paper will look at three films which offer an insight the reasons why young people who have their future ahead of them choose to join gangs and to lead a life of crime, which often ends in early death or prison. In Stacy Peralta’s “Crips and Bloods: Made in America” (2008), Chris Weitz’s “a Better Life” (2011) and Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” (2008), young men’s pathway towards delinquency are accurately revealed. It is easy to understand that choice is often missing when young boys start their adult lives and this pushes them towards gangs and delinquency. For these reasons, Social Learning Theory and Strain Theory represent useful frameworks to explain juvenile gang delinquency. The vision of a better future, as well as a role model to whom one can look up, and who can help one to choose the right path is essential in reducing the number of gang members on the long term.
Summary of the Movies
Stacy Peralta’s “Crips and Bloods: Made in America” (2008) is a documentary which looks at the gang violence in African-American neighborhoods in an attempt to raise awareness regarding the social injustice which stands at the basis of the young people’s likeliness to choose a life of crime and violence. The film first shows that racism and social isolation led young African-Americans to feel angry and frustrated, thus leading them to organize in gangs as a way of declaring a group identity, and of protesting against White injustice. Consequently, the competition between different gangs led to violence between African-American youth living in different neighborhoods. The Los Angeles Police adopt a very firm attitude against gang-violence, which quickly transformed into profiling African-Americans, and other types of power abuses, which further enraged the African-American communities, and determined young members of the communities to feel that the Police are their enemy. The documentary explains that the police started to arrest young men for minor offenses, and to treat young African-American in poor neighborhoods brutally. The film then moves the story backwards trying to show how economic problems, and the lack of opportunities for African Americans led many young people to a life of crime, and how social injustice maintained the vicious circle of lack of education, lack of employment crime and prison or death, which tends to repeat itself with each new generation.
Chris Weitz’ 2008 drama presents an immigrant father’s struggle for a better life for himself and his son. The father, Carlos Galindo, is an illegal Mexican immigrant who works as a gardener and lives in poverty. In lack of documents, he has little power to change his destiny to the better. He has little time to spend with his adolescent son, Luis, who feels neglected and the two seem very far apart from each other. Luis despises his father and, together with his friend Facundo, feels attracted towards a local Mexican gang, which promises peer support and easy-made money. As his girlfriend Ruthie is closely related to the gang’s leader, Luis finds himself at a crucial point in his life, when he has to decide whether he will join the gang or not. He gets into a fight, which causes him to be taken to the police station. At the same time, his father is about to make a life-changing decision by purchasing the truck and tools of his former employer. After the truck was stolen, Luis and Carlos try to find the car and take it back. The man and his son thus have a chance to get close to each other, and remember how much they mean for each other. Although his father is caught and sent back to Mexico, Luis rejects his former life, and is ready to start a new one with his aunt, in contrast to Facundo, who joins the gang. In a hopeful ending, the father is shown trying to get back to America, as he had promised to his son.
Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film titled “Gran Torino” presents the story of a Hmong family, and their unusual friendship with a Vietnam War veteran named Walt Kowalsky. In the story, the two younger members of the family, Sue and Thao, slowly approach the grumpy old man, after Thao is persuaded by the gang members to try to steal his Gran Camaro, a care which he values to a great extent. They determine him to find a new motivation in life, in saving young Thao from becoming a member in the Hmong gang to which his older cousin belongs. After saving them from harassment, Kowalsky accepts to give chores to Thao as a reward, and begins to care for the smart and good-hearted boy. He not only keeps him busy, but also teaches him how to approach a girl, and to talk like a man. He helps the boy to secure a job in constructions and even provides him with tools. However, the gang members would not leave Thao alone, despite Kowalsky’s warnings. Eventually, they shoot at the Hmong family house, slightly injuring Thao, and also brutally rape Sue. Kowalsky then decides to sacrifice his own life in order to have the gang members arrested, and allows himself to be shot in front of witnesses for this reason. In his will, he leaves the Gran Torino to Thao.
The three films are similar in that they all present issues associated with gang violence, and the roles of gangs in destroying the futures of young boys. In all three films, gang violence seems to represent the greatest danger for a young man who grows up in a poor neighborhood. For African –American, Hmong and Mexican boys, poverty, lack of perspectives, discrimination and lack of parental authority seem to represent important factors in all the films. In “Crips and Bloods”, former gang members confess that they grew up without fathers, and with mothers who worked so hard that they had very little time for them. They were often forced to give up their dreams since very young, and they had no opportunities as they grew up. They were attracted to gang membership for protection and for the opportunity to make money. In “A Better Life”, Luis also lives in poverty, and he feels disappointed with his own future, as he sees it not different than his father’s. His father Carlos also had no time for him, as he grew up which he confesses as he is getting ready to be deported. Finally, in “Gran Torino”, Thao also seems to suffer from the lack of a role model from whom to learn how to behave like a man. As one former gang member confesses in “Crips and Bloods”, most African American boys in the hood learn to be men from the older boys in the neighborhood, as their fathers are rarely present. This is also the case with Thao, whose father did not represented a proper role model for him, and with Luis, who rejected his father as a role model, because of his low status, and lack of ambition.
Despite these similarities, there are also many differences among these films. Thus, while in “Crips and Bloods”, the boys presented in the documentary are already lost to gang violence and crime, in both “A Better Life” and “Gran Torino”, the young protagonists are at a crossroad and they have not yet joined the gangs. The first film discusses the destinies of the young man who join gangs, and why they choose to do so, while the second films show young boys taking a better path. In these films, the focus is not on the gang members themselves, but on the “good” boys that choose a different way. The gang members are presented as antagonists, while in “Crips and Bloods”, they are the victims. In “A Better Life” and “Gran Torino”, the gang members seem to be inherently evil, because they do not show any better side, and their violence is not justified. The only concession to this is the confession of a gang member that he was also a weak and undecided boy, in “Gran Torino”, which suggests that at one point, these evil gang members, were innocent and undecided, just like Thao, while in “A Better Life”, the filmmaker provides Facundo as Luis’s counterpart, who starts as pure as him, but ends up joining the gang, while Luis takes a batter decision.
There is a difference between the issues presented in “A Better Life” as compared to “Gran Torino” as well. Thus, in “Gran Torino”, Sue and Hmong seem to have better prospects for the future than Luis, in “A Better Life”. Although they experience racism as well, their family lives in the country legally and they also live in a better neighborhood other minorities. They are expected to do well in school and their living conditions seem to be better than the ones of the families presented in other films. Furthermore, in “A Better Life”, Luis is motivated to become someone by his father’s expectations and dreams for him, although he is not integrated in the society. His father’s leadership, lessons and confessions as they are searching for the truck, as well as his brave determination to get the truck back inspire Luis. In “Gran Torino”, Thao’s parent does not manage to inspire Thao, but on the contrary. Thao needs Kowalsky, an “insider” and a respected member of the community, to become his mentor in the world of men.
Theoretical Implications
Both the Strain Theory and the Social Learning theory represent adequate framework in explaining gang violence, and minority youth’s likeliness to turn to delinquency. Thus, Strain Theory argues that “strain or stress is a major source of criminal motivation” (Agnew 1999, p.126). Thus, this theory explains the fact that some neighborhoods are more likely than others to have higher crime rates than others by means of the strain that the community exercises over its members. Such stressors include lack of money, of respect, of perspectives for the future, among others. According to Agnew (1999), “individuals not only want to achieve specific goals like monetary success and status/respect; they also have a more general desire to be treated in a just or fair manner” (Agnew, 1999, p. 133). However, the way in which a particular strain is experienced at the level of the community may be different depending on the way in which it deals with the strain. The strain may lead to crime in communities where it is promoted, emphasized and amplified, than in communities where it is limited.
African Americans and other minorities are more likely than White youth to experience strains which lead to criminal behavior, and so do other minorities who live in tight communities, where more members are likely to be affected by the same strains. One of the most important such strains, as shown above, is racism. As one former gang member explained in “Crips and Blood”, “every time I knock on the door and I am rejected, you take something out of me”. This shows that young African Americans are deeply injured by racism, not only because of racist behavior of particular individuals, but also, because of institutional racism, which is much more harmful. As compared to other minorities, African-Americans are even more impacted by racism, because they feel that more injustice is done to them, since they are historically part of the American nation. Racism is also present in “Gran Torino” and “A Better Life”, but it does not seem to affect them as much, as all the families in these movies want, is to make it financially, and live the “American Dream”. However, they are equally affected by the fact that they are deprived of the possibilities to achieve financial success in a legal manner. In a study on the topic, Piquero & Sealock (2010) explained that African Americans turn to delinquency more often because they are more likely to experience such strains are poverty, broken families, lack of a good education, injustice, racism and improper parenting. Moreover, they are more likely to feel that this strain is upsetting, or unjust, and to experience more negative emotions as a consequence. Finally, they are more likely to cope with the strains by means of crime because their situation provides them with fewer resources to cope with these situations. After conducting a study in this respect, Piquero & Sealock (2010) found “criminal offending in terms of both interpersonal aggression and property offending in the baseline model but only for minority youths. Strain never attained significance in predicting either criminal outcome for the White youth” (p.180). For both Luis, and Thao, such stressors as a dismembered family, improper parenting, poverty, and injustice, did have great impact, and it led them to attempted crime. This meant for Luis, getting into a fight, and for Thao, trying to steal a car.
Social Learning theory is also an important theory for explaining minority youth delinquency. According to Winfree, Mays & Virgil-Backstrom (1994), peers delinquency is likely to predict individual delinquency, irrespective of the peers being organized in a gang or not, and regardless of the youth’s sex or community status. In their study, they found that youth who many friends as gang members, and who their peers would approve their decision to enter a gang, were more likely to do so, and to commit crimes as a result Winfree, Mays & Virgil-Backstrom (1994). While “Crips and Bloods” focused more on strains and less on peer influence in joining gangs, they did approach this topic at a limited manner, by mentioning the pressure to become a gang member, and the danger of being killed in lack of protection from a gang. However, social learning theory may be easier applied to the other two films, as both Luis and Thao feel intense pressure from their peers to join gangs. While Thao is forced into it under threat, Luis is pressured by his girlfriend and best friend to show that he is tough as they are. As Ruthie’s boyfriend, he is expected to become a member of her uncle’s gang. However, there is also positive social learning, as both boys find better models in adults around them, from whom they learn how more healthy masculine models, than the ones provided by gang members.
A long time strategy for reducing or eliminating gang violence is “drying up sources of recruitment”, as Winfree, Mays & Virgil-Backstrom (1994) showed. In both “Gran Torino” and “A Better Life”, the boys are being saved from gang violence by mentors who helped them to find a new direction in life, and empowered them to make better choices. Establishing youth day centers and clubs based on teenagers’ interests, but also, based on their future needs to secure a living, may prove to be efficient because here, they could find positive peer support, and a role model, or a mentor who could help them to break from the vicious circle of gang violence. Furthermore, continuing to arrest young people in an attempt to reduce violence is not only inefficient, but it continues to aliment the same strains that lead to violence in the first place, such as perceived injustice. Rather, the authorities must try to find a way of mediating conflicts as a way of preventing crimes before they occur. They must aid families financially, so as to ensure that young men do not resort to crime as a way of dealing with poverty, and they provide job opportunities for these people. Finally, education is an essential step in ending gang violence, and the concerned parties must reach young people before they are drawn towards crime. They must gather together young children from rival parts of the neighborhood, and promote friendship and cooperation between them since a young age, by means of school trips, different projects that reunite different parts of the neighborhood.
Conclusion
In “Crips and Bloods”, “A Better Life” and “Gran Torino”, the issue of gang violence is explored from different perspectives. While in all three films, the young men portrayed are members of poor minority families, who have few perspectives for the future and who experience social injustice and broken family unities, among others, in “Crips and Bloods”, the stress is on the gang members themselves, as victims of a broken system, whereas in “A Better Life” and “Gran Torino”, the stress is on boys who manage to avoid the trap of gang delinquency due to the inspiration and teachings of inspiring masculine role-models. In all three films, Strain Theory and Social Learning Theories are able to provide a framework for analyzing the films, social learning was most useful in the las two films, due to the emphasis which is put on personal experience. As a result of the analysis, it became obvious that the “War on crime” policy adopted by the authorities does nothing to help these young people, whose needs remain the same, and whose problems are intensified after the imprisonment of their fathers, thus causing a vicious circle. Rather, these problems can be solved better by mediation, early education, and broader perspectives for the future, provided by means of centers and clubs where the youth can find hobbies and can learn useful skills, but also, where they may find a role model.
References
Agnew, R. “A general strain theory of community differences in crime rates. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 36. 2(1999): 123-155
Piquero, N. & Sealock, M. (2010). Race, crime and general strain theory. Youth Violence and Justice 8(3):176-186.
Winfree, T., Mays, L. & Vigil-Backstrom, T. (1994). Youth gangs and incarcerated delinquents: Exploring the ties between gang membership, delinquency, and social learning theory. Justice Quarterly 11(2): 229-256.
