Free Custom «Minorities in Society» Essay Paper

While most youth gangs are racially and ethnically homogenous, applying race and ethnic-specific strategies by law enforcements would bear both negative and positive effects. Since criminal gangs are formed from in certain subcultures with peculiar needs and attitudes, which are portrayed through criminal activity, specific strategies to address the racial and ethnic-specific issues would be beneficial. On the other hand, such strategies may be deemed to be discriminatory and may inflame the subcultures into more acts of deviance and violence.

Law enforcement strategies ought to possess practical neutrality in controlling gangs and crime situation. It has to be acknowledged that race and ethnicity play a significant role in predicting felonious behavior and, thus, neutrality would defeat the ends of practicality. However, it would be prudent if the adopted strategies would not be reckoned stereotypical by the various racial and ethnic groups targeted.

Thus, police departments face the dilemma of ensuring practicality in crime actions prediction. They have to ensure that they are not considered to be stereotypical and discriminatory in their approach while, at the same time, use evidence of racial and ethnic predictor dynamics in tackling gangs and crime issues.

 

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The formulation of strategies to fight ethnic and racial gangs, involved in crime, will inevitably result in both social and contextual discrimination. Institutionally, the decision making organs of law enforcements have to acknowledge that racial stereotypes are good predictors of criminal activity, to some extent. Contextually, the law enforcement agencies will also have to put in place strategies and methods that will be reckoned discriminatory yet practical in the fighting of crime.

The Strain theory offers the most appropriate explanation for crime prevalence in the United States. American society is consumed with the notion of the “American Dream” which is a particularly strong psychological and cultural motivation. Since it is impossible for every person or group of people to achieve the dream due to the socioeconomic structure, which offers lesser opportunities to certain individuals, these groups or persons will resort to crime and subcultural groups, such as gangs, to attain the dream.