You can involve your child in other activities and limit unstructured time. Many communities have local gang prevention task forces. Police departments have Juvenile Officers who are willing to meet with parents to with early gang intervention. Juvenile Officers are familiar with gang behaviors and repeat offenders, and can tell you if your child is on dangerous path. A trained mental health professional can help parents evaluate and treat mental health problems that may have contributed to gang involvement.
Your support will help us continue to produce and distribute Facts for Families , as well as other vital mental health information, free of charge. You may also mail in your contribution.
Box , Washington, DC The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry AACAP represents over 9, child and adolescent psychiatrists who are physicians with at least five years of additional training beyond medical school in general adult and child and adolescent psychiatry.
Hard copies of Facts sheets may be reproduced for personal or educational use without written permission, but cannot be included in material presented for sale or profit.
Preventing Youth Violence. Minus Related Pages. What is youth violence? How big is the problem? Some youth are at greater risk than others. Research shows: Sexual minority teens are more likely to experience multiple forms of violence compared to their heterosexual peers. Youth violence disproportionately impacts Black or African American youth and young adults. Black or African American youth and young adults are at higher risk for the most physically harmful forms of violence e.
What are the consequences? How can we prevent youth violence? Top of Page. To receive email updates about this page, enter your email address: Email Address. What's this? Related Links. Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website.
These types of gangs can be involved in varied forms of serious criminality that can have a significant impact on local communities.
OCGs are made up of members who plan, coordinate and carry out serious crime on a continuing basis. Their motivation is often, but not always, financial gain. OCG structure varies but often consists of a core of key individuals, surrounded by subordinates and other more transient members, as well as an extended network of associates.
Many OCGs are loose networks of criminals that come together for a specific criminal activity, acting in different roles depending on their skills and expertise. OCGs will often use violence and intimidation in communities in order to operate. Gangs often have strong ties with affiliated serious organised crime offenders, based on a shared acquisitive interest and peripheral links formed in prison. The ties provide a pathway for individuals to be drawn into OCGs, leading to more serious offending.
Gangs often prey on young and other vulnerable people, coercing them to become involved with crime. Violence may be threatened or used to ensure new recruits stay with the gang and carry out criminal activity to fund its existence and its hierarchy.
County lines gangs use a range of tactics to minimise the risk of being identified and arrested, including the use of children and young and vulnerable people to service the drugs lines see the County Lines typology. These young or vulnerable people are often trafficked away from their homes, and can be the victims of other violent crimes committed to ensure there is control over the gang.
The drugs runners face severe penalties, including injury by stabbing and shooting, potentially including death, if they are suspected of assisting the police or a rival gang. Alternatively, some runners may work for multiple OCGs and are treated as a commodity. Drug dealing is the root cause of a significant amount of gang offending.
It provides wealth to a select group at the top of the hierarchy. Many gang members carry weapons to protect themselves during drug dealing activity. Gangs may also use acid and other corrosive substances as weapons to attack victims in retribution.
They may post videos online that seek to taunt rivals, incite violence or glamorise criminality. The videos often show the brandishing of weapons, include incendiary remarks about recent incidents of young people being killed or seriously injured, and threats to stab or shoot specific individuals and members of rival groups.
If such an allegation is referred to the CPS prosecutors should consider whether a substantive offence is disclosed. The offending is enabled by the use of illicit substances, mobile phones and SIM cards smuggled into prisons.
This contributes to violence in prisons. Gang membership and offending in the community is linked to violence between rival gangs in prisons. Existing gang affiliations will continue in prison and new gangs form.
The women and girls may be sexually assaulted, threatened with sexual assault and prostituted for sexual favours in payment for drugs. Some females are purposefully befriended by gangs who then enter into a relationship with the female. These females may be vulnerable and this behaviour could be viewed as a type of grooming.
In County Lines, a trend has been seen where gang members enter into a relationship with a female, and then use her address for dealing drugs. The females become intimidated by the gang member and continue with the relationship through fear. They may be controlled through coercive or abusive behaviour to the point that they are used for prostitution. It is important to recognise that some women and girls may be complicit with the gang and active members themselves. When selecting charges in response to gang criminality prosecutors should have regard to Paragraph 6.
Where the prosecution case focuses on gang activity, it will be necessary to prove the existence of the gang and explain its relevance to the circumstances of the case. Forensic evidence may assist, for instance to prove that weapons were used in more than one incident. Expert witnesses may also be used to provide evidence of group identity.
This may include witnesses who have experience of gang communications and can give an expert opinion on their interpretation to assist the jury. Or the evidence of police officers who, beyond giving observation evidence proving the association of a gang member, may have expertise about gangs. Care must be taken to ensure that this evidence complies with the requirements of expert evidence.
In each case a police officer testified about the gangs involved and the feuding between them. He was treated as an expert witness testifying on their territories, feuds, allegiances and behaviour.
The Privy Council provided a close analysis of the relevant law of evidence, returning to first principles. Note that the decision is based on common law authorities and does not deal directly with the CJA so not all of the opinion of the Board is useful for English and Welsh courts.
The Judicial College E-letter crime November provided a helpful summary of the relevant aspects of the decision:. Such an application should not be left until the beginning of the trial but should be made well beforehand.
If directions given are not complied with, that will be relevant both to whether the witness has established a proper basis for giving expert evidence and to whether his evidence ought to be excluded. Prosecutors should note that Lord Hughes emphasised the importance of distinguishing between explanatory evidence and evidence of propensity:.
Claims by prosecutors that the evidence is necessary to understanding of the case, or, as is sometimes asserted, to discourage the jury from wondering about the context in which the events discussed occurred, need to be scrutinised with care.
It is only where the evidence truly adds something, beyond mere propensity, which may assist the jury to resolve one or more issues in the case, or is the unavoidable incident of admissible material, as distinct from interesting background or context, that the justification exists for overriding the normal Makin prohibition on proof of bad behaviour.
The evidence assisted the jury to resolve the disputed issue as to possession of those items [10]. The conviction of one of the participants for carrying a knife at the time of the earlier killing was admissible because it was highly relevant evidence of the background to the case.
It was important explanatory evidence about the motive for the murder, namely a revenge attack. R v Lewis [] EWCA Crim 48 : Evidence of gang membership was relevant to a number of issues in the case, including identifying those at the scene of a riot, to rebut innocent presence at the scene and to provide evidence of common purpose []. R v Awoyemi [] EWCA Crim : Evidence of gang affiliation provided a link between the accused and a gang that glorified violence, used firearms and threats of violent retribution towards those who crossed them.
The prosecution could thereby establish a motive for the shooting, an association with firearms and lethal violence and could rebut innocent presence and association. The evidence indicated the extent to which the accused had signed up to gang and gun culture [33]. R v Sode and others [] EWCA Crim The judge had not erred in admitting evidence of the dispute between gangs in the local area. There could be no doubt that gang-affiliation evidence was relevant.
The shooting bore all the hallmarks of gang-related revenge for a slight, which was real or may have been imagined [48]. One was found to be in possession of a samurai sword and a loaded firearm. The other was wearing body armour and had a balaclava helmet. The prosecution alleged the defendants were members of a violent gang called the Harlem Spartans and were in joint possession of the items.
0コメント