Gangs: Bloods vs. Crips

Criminology 3023
Paper 2
Cari Berlin
3/13/13

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When it comes to the high crime rate throughout our country we are quick to blame almost everything other than what is actually at fault; but lately the country has been starting to realize what is causing all of the problems and trying to adapt to find ways to fix it. There are many theories for why the crime rate is so high and each of them has many valid points, but the two that seem the most accurate are the Social Disorganization Theory and Cloward and Ohlin’s Differential Opportunity Theory. They both focus on very different angles while still somehow being quite similar in their opinions of the crime rate today. They both believe that the adolescent age group is responsible for the majority of our high crime rate, and I can’t say I disagree. But they are both on different sides of the spectrum on why adolescents are responsible.
When explaining lower-class crime and delinquency the two theories focus on two different reasons. The social disorganization theory believes that most of the gangs or delinquent groups all resided in areas that either had persistent poverty and unemployment or high minority residence. Basically this theory didn’t think it was necessary to blame the crime rate on aspects outside of the person’s control, such as ethnicity, culture, or traits they inherited rather than developed on their own. While the differential opportunity theory focused more on gangs and crime rate having more to do with opportunity than anything else. They also believed that a child’s relationship with their elders also had a large impact on how an adolescent felt about crime. This theory believed that the elders of a community could influence you from the beginning and mold your feelings about crime. If you lived in a community with a tight bond between generations it was way more likely for an adolescent to believe they are simply just “following in the footsteps of their family” than actually doing something they shouldn’t. They
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also thought that you would be more likely to commit a crime if the opportunity arises around you rather than to hunt the crime out on your own. Most of the people that support this theory believe that the adolescents are born into the organized crime that’s already happening rather than having much choice in the matter.
There are many movies, films, documentaries, and books on these theories, each one trying to get a better understanding than the one before it on why our crime rate is so high. One of the documentaries is Crips and Bloods: Made in America. This was basically a documentary based on the history of the Crips and Bloods gangs in the United States, and just figuring out how they came to be. While watching this video you will feel insanely terrible for the adolescent children growing up in such conditions; however, the movie does help show relation to the theories scholars are trying to study to get the crime rate down. In the social disorganization theory there is a definite link between what the director of this movie was trying to prove and the actual crime rate being shown. In the video the main cities that the Crips and Bloods lived in were extremely high in poverty and unemployment for a very long time. The social disorganization theory stated that the main reason crimes even began in that area was because there was a weak “collective efficacy”, which basically means the neighborhoods drifted apart and stopped trusting one another and the local police. This was around the time of race riots and many of the racial differences in these areas caused a large amount of tension that ended up boiling over into something much worse than even the police would have imagined at the time. This theory also dealt with the “misused” areas and areas that are both professional and community oriented at the same time. The misused areas were tricky to control due to the fact that there was always spots that were less cared for and clearly more mistreated than other areas.
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Then there was the problem of always having stores, gas stations and other areas of business on these streets that would cause a divided society among the two gangs by each claiming certain gas stations or sides of the streets as their own, making it almost a death threat if someone from the opposing gang dared to cross that threshold. The differential opportunity theory was a little more accurately portrayed in this particular movie solely because a majority of time the organized crime already exists before the children are even born into it. The movie shows how the Crips and Bloods all started about 50 years ago and the nature of the streets they were produced on. The children being born now have absolutely no say in if they’re going to join the gang that resides on their street. They are expected to even want to join the gang, to defend their families honor. As one guy stated in the movie, “you had no choice but to join the gang, it gave you power in numbers, and it was either join the gang and kill or be killed yourself.” The adolescents being born into certain gangs keeps the crime rate at a constant level, where there is almost no chance the police would ever be able to rid of crime completely without just shifting the crime to another area because the gang members would just move to another city. Another reason the differential opportunity theory was more accurate was because that area is also very high opportunity for crime. Gangs in areas like these are not going out of their way to commit any crimes, they live in an area that have plenty of motive, they have guns and other weapons, and a whole gang to back them if anyone tries to stand in their way. Who wouldn’t believe committing a crime would be an easier answer with that behind you?
When it comes to theories trying to solve and lower a crime rate there is almost always something that could be tweaked to improve the research and credibility of these theories. The social disorganization theory is one theory that has some very strong evidence towards its
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opinions but it also has many things it lacks, one of the main issues being a backbone. The theory needs to have more strength then just saying there has to be high unemployment and poverty. In this day and age with the economy being as terrible as it is now and still having so many children being produced this leaves a high crime expectancy chance almost anywhere. This theory needs to focus on other aspects then just the economy and things outside of the adolescents control because not each adolescent in the gang was being forced into it. The differential opportunity theory is a little more stable since the things it chose to focus on have a more evidence to defend the honor of it, it is still lacking in certain areas as well. First off, in this era there are way more types of criminals then the three they originally came up with to base the research off of. It is also quite evident that criminals now a day will actually make an opportunity to commit a crime rather than to just wait on the opportunity to show itself. Unfortunately it is actually proving to be more likely that adolescents will plan things out in order to not get caught committing the crime, rather than to just wait and see if an opportunity arises to steal or rob somewhere and hope that they can figure out an escape route. The crime rate will always have things in our society that keep it functioning at all times.
Overall both theories show a very strong understanding of what crime and gang violence is like. They both understand that you need either opportunity or a close personal relationship with someone in the community, and they also need an actual need for some of the crime they commit, like in a poverty stricken communities the adolescents might just steal or rob a company because they need food for dinner or to feed a family rather than just to rob a store for their money and spending it on drug addictions. Both theories could fix themselves in many areas, but are mostly quite stable on their own. We have to come to terms with the fact that our country
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will always have a higher crime rate, we have too much opportunity and means to do so for our police force to even be able to scratch the surface of stopping it. This doesn’t mean that we can’t try to sustain some of the crime to a lower percentage than it has been, we just need to hold ourselves to a realistic expectation of it. The Crips and Bloods are just two gangs in a gang filled country, there are so many aspects of the crime ridden areas that we know nothing of, and those communities are well aware of that. Many theories are good at depicting why crime is still an evident thing in majority of our cities, but solving these crime rates is a whole different story since the theories are just that, theories.