Welcome to a new post of gang issues in education. In this post I am writing to you from the vast continent of Europe. In order to understand the impact of gangs in the United States, I felt that the impact of street gangs needs to also be studied from abroad. I feel that by understanding the impact of gangs in our educational system we need to know what impact gangs play in other countries and how they are dealing with the situation.
One thing I can state for sure is that gangs are in just about every nook and cranny of most societies in the world, including Europe. I was shocked to learn that the tags we view in the U.S. also are a common theme in Europe, although the symbols are different, the tags I witnessed were similar compared to the states. You still have gangs that try to control an area as their turf by the use of tags and of course you also have the typical over-tagging done by other gangs to show they have control of the same turf.
So why am I doing this research? Mainly to see if the impact of gangs carry over into our country. What I am finding is that if you have a student who is in a gang coming from another country they will bring all their symbols and beliefs with them as well. And how they interact with gang members in the U.S. will dramatically affect the learning environment in our classrooms. So the first question that needs to be answered is why do children get jumped into a gang, and unlike children here in the U.S., it’s that sense of belonging we all need as human beings. So basically they are searching for the same things as an American child joining a gang.
So do gangs members from other countries impact our educational system? I would state that they do, and I would also state that they do so in a negative manner. One of the reasons is if a member from another country gets in with a local gang, their way of tagging and how they interact with others will rub off on the host gang. And sadly, if the new member is a truly hardcore member they may make the host gang that much more violent.
I guess the next question to be asked is if there is anything that can be done nationally to change how gangs move from one area to another? I would say the only real alternative is to have a national database that keeps track of identified gang members, available to law enforcement officials across the U.S. But I would not limit it to just here but maybe create a world database that could be accessed to help in this identification. I know this would be a huge task to undertake and some countries would not want to disperse this information for fear or retaliation from their local gangs.
But to combat the problem of gang movement something must be done do get a grasp of how their movements are coordinated. What needs to be understood is that gangs are now using the Internet and other sources to become connected and this includes gangs from abroad. Because of this law enforcement officials also need to be connected, if anything to at least be kept abreast of how gang movement is occuring. Trust me when I say that gangs are very adept at using such resources, even to the point of getting information from around the globe on how other gang interact with each other.
I know many will be up in arms about such a database because it would infringe on a students rights. But I say a students looses their rights to privacy when they are using the internet to commit crimial activities, and being able to keep track of their movements would help in dealing with gangs on a national level.
I could go on about this issue but I will save it for my next book. I know there is much to learn about gangs and their movements, but in doing this research I hope to shed some light on how street gangs affect our country nationally.
So for now I bid you farewell and please come back for another post of gang issues in education. I hope to have a follow up post on this issue in the near future.
Thank you and come again for another post on gang issues in education. If you need to contact me you may do so at: cabgil@aol.com
Gilbert Cabrera