Criminal Law
Mara Salvatrucha Gang or the MS-13 Gang
Based on the report of the Committee on Internal Relations of the House of Congress (2005), one of the famous notorious gangs known all over the world is Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang. MS-13 is a violent gang that is composed of Central America Immigrants who originated in Los Angeles, California and has spread across America. The gang members come from various parts of the world including Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The National Drug Intelligence Center estimates that there are 8,000 to 10,000 members of MS-13. Although such group is considered as loosely structured in the U.S., the threat of the group is based on violence and continuous to grow.
Criminal Activities/Delinquency and Illegal Behavior of MS-13
The Committee on Internal Relations (2005) revealed that the criminal activities of MS-13 include drug-trafficking of cocaine, cracked cocaine and marijuana, rape, murder, extortion, auto theft, alien smuggling and robbery. MS-13 is also reported to have been engaged in human smuggling, extortion, weapons trafficking, money laundering and murder-for-hire activities (Wills, 2013). Wills (2013) reported that the findings of the American State Department regards MS-13 as a transnational criminal organization (TNO) that has members in more than 300 cities within 40 states that has expanded its membership in Europe and South America. The group has recently changed its rules by accepting even non-Salvadoran and non-Latino members for the first time in during the group’s inception. The MS-13 group is able to expand its network by asking their members to apply for deportation in countries where the group intends to establish new operation centers (Wills, 2013). In fact, the findings of the U.S. International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC) has shown that MS-13 has learned sophistication in commission of crimes by working closely with a more experienced group, the Los Zetas in the perpetration of human trafficking within Central America (Wills, 2013). MS-13 engages in a complicated network which can transfer persons from the Northern Triangle of Mexico to America in less than 72 hours wherein they seek the help of Los Zetas to gain mutual benefit from their joint criminal activities.
Sociological and Psychological Theories in relation to Gangs
These three theories namely: the Social Control Theory, Control Theory and Social Learning Theory explains the causes of gang membership by taking in account all the delinquency factors that may influence a person to adopt the deviant behavior at an early stage in life (Alleyne and Wood, 2010). According to Alleyne and Wood (2010) the Interactional Theory is closely identified as the primary cause of gang membership that was brought about by the reciprocal relationship between a person and his peer groups, social structures, weak social bonds and lack of education that reinforce delinquency. A member of a gang comes from poverty-stricken communities, impoverished families and deficient school environments. A child who is born of poor parents will have to find means to support the family at a young age and look for means to survive even if it means breaking the law. The three main reasons why the youth join gangs is because they seek love that their parents cannot give them; they want to feel accepted due to the discriminative treatment they get in school; and finally, they are influenced by the materialistic work.
According to Hess (2009), the youth are drawn to join gangs because they are given a sense of belongingness and acceptance that their own families cannot give them. Aside from poverty, the high divorce rate in society results to children coming from broken families or having been raised by a single parent. Juvenile gang members have the tendency to seek for love and attention from other people, which they found in the group. In school setting, some of the gang members became victims of discrimination so they sought protection from gangs by joining the group. It has been cited that another reason for the rise in gang membership in academic institutions is the need for the members to acquire material benefits, especially its poor members who derive income by engaging in criminal activities. Other reasons that caused increased gang membership are globalization, modern culture and lack of proper values. According to the report of Alleyne and Wood (2010), family factors such as poor parental management, familial criminality and gang-related family members will expose the youth in a home environment that promotes gang-related activities and delinquent behavior. Aside from this, delinquent friends and peer-pressure will increase the likelihood of antisocial behavior. O’Brien (2013) argued that youth gang members when compared to nonmembers are shown to have higher rates of delinquency before they decided to join gangs. During the height of gang membership, it was shown that the member is involved in drug, property, and violent offenses while there is an active gang membership. Thus, there was evidence that revealed that juvenile delinquency shall be dependent on the function of gang membership, consistency of the facilitation effects and the offending behavior increases criminality when young people decide to join gangs (O’Brien, 2013).
The weakened social bonds among indigent families will also foster criminality. Under the Control Theory provides that people who engage in deviant behavior do so when their bond to society grows weaker. On the other hand, the Social Learning Theory believes that the effects of antisocial influence such as delinquent friends will influence gang membership since crime was acquired through the development of beliefs such deviant behavior is acceptable due to the positive reinforcement criminality (Alleyne and Wood, 2010). This resulted from the approval of their peers or to acquire financial gains. Majority of gang members come from families with low socioeconomic background, neighborhoods with existing gangs and high juvenile delinquency (Alleyne and Wood, 2010).
In addition, low self-esteem has plays an essential role in promoting delinquency, antisocial behavior, aggression and factors that characterize of gang membership (Alleyne and Wood, 2010). Studies have shown that youth people who have low confidence and self-esteem, weak bonds with pro-social environment and network, represented by academic institutions and families increases the tendency of gang membership. Another psychological factor that has a relation to gang membership and its related criminal conduct include “impulsivity, risk-seeking, and peer pressure” (Alleyne and Wood, 2012).
Preventive Measures
The society’s response to the subculture must be to implement effective methods to prevent gang formation. The best approach is to target juvenile delinquency by creating programs that provide rehabilitative treatment and facility to youth offenders who are members of gangs and involved in criminal activities, drug abuse and alcohol addiction. The youth offenders should be tried in the juvenile court and must not be tried as adults and by imposing sentence in accordance to the juvenile system. The purpose of creating juvenile courts is to achieve short-term goals of drug treatment engagement, treatment attendance and drug test which may reinforce the long-term goal of abstinence (Seiter, 2011).
The society should develop diversion programs and community-based programs which will encourage the youth offenders for reformation. These community-based programs are considered as alternative measures that aim influence juvenile delinquents to an environment that is conducive for self-improvement and foster law-abiding behavior in the community. The creation of juvenile courts recognizes the rights of juvenile delinquents that promote their well-being (Seiter, 2011). The community should adopt methods and programs that will allow them the opportunity to correct their past mistakes. For the non-violent youth offenders, the establishment of Comprehensive Community Correction Programs can be resorted to as an alternative approach for imprisonment that has a strong connection to the principle of restorative justice. Alarid (2012) stated that restorative justice confirms the importance of community corrections programs because it guarantees that the youth offenders achieve a certain level of dignity. The values that the program aims to achieve are congruent with social work values since social work is a value based profession that is aimed to alleviate lives of others’ in the service for the people who need help (Beckett and Maynard, 2005). The community programs should promote the values of social workers, by assisting in the changing the perception of those individuals who undergo personal problems that deal with family-related matters. The four core values of social work should be integrated in the program namely: service to others, social justice, dignity and worth of a person. Therefore, maintaining human relationships should be achieved to ensure the efficiency of the programs.
Every state should promote the facilitation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program in schools. Esbensen (2004) conducted a study for the National Institute of Justice and it was revealed that the said program in an efficient approach to reduce gang problems in campuses. This type of program is used as a preventive measure since it is different from other gang programs which are usually directed against the active gang members. The target of the program is to educate young students who may be lured in joining gangs in the future. The difference about such program is that the information on gang membership is being shown inside classrooms and intended to stop any attempt of the students to join gangs. It is specifically aims to target the middle school students to discourage criminal behavior inside and outside the classrooms. It keeps the young people informed about the consequences of dealing with gangs and encourages them to develop positive relations with the law enforcement agencies. It bears stressing that the role of the teachers is to impose upon the teachers the integration of the program during class discussions in order to help their students to understand the consequences of gang affiliation and membership. Finally, it is recommended that the academic curriculum should focus more on active learning rather than applying the didactic approach to educate the students on the negative effects of gang membership (Esbensen, 2004).
References
Alarid, L.F. (2012). Community-Based Corrections, 9th ed. California: Wadsworth Cengage.
Alleyne, E., and Wood, J. L. (2010). Gang Involvement: Psychological and Behavioral Characteristics of Gang Members, Peripheral Youth and Non-gang Youth. Aggressive Behavior, 36(6), 423-436.
Beckett, C. and Maynard, A. (2005). Values and Ethics in Social Work. London: SAGE.
Committee on Internal Relations of the House of Congress (2005). Gangs and Crime in Latin America. Hearing Before the Committee of Internal Relations. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Connors, E., Webster, B., Miller, N., Johnson, C., Fraser, E., and Falcon, B. (1998) Urban Street
Gang Enforcement. New York: DIANE Publishing.
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Esbensen, F. A. (2004). Evaluating G.R.E.A.T.: A School-Based Gang Prevention
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<https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/198604.pdf>.
Hess, K. M. (2009). Juvenile Justice. California: Cengage.
Howell, J.C. (2011). Gang Prevention: An Overview of Research and Programs. USA: DIANE
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McCabe, K and Martin, G. (2005). School Violence, the Media and Criminal Justice Responses.
New York: Peter Lang.
O’Brien, K., Daffern, M., Chu, C.M., and Thomas, S.D.M. (2013). Youth Gang affiliation, violence, and criminal activities: A review of motivational, risk and protective factors. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 18(4), 417-425.
Ortmeier, P. J. (2006). Introduction to law enforcement and criminal justice, 2nd ed. Upper
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Seiter, R. P. (2010). Corrections: An Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Will, S. (2013). 4 Things You Need to Know About MS-13 and This Mexican Cartel. Abcnews.com. Web. Retrieved on September 24, 2013, from
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/ABC_Univision/mara-salvatrucha-gang-mexican-cartel-united-states-problem/story?id=18920021.
