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Hate Speech
Hate Speech
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Hate Speech
Hate speech has been happening all over the US targeting specific races, gender, ethnicity, disability, and religion. Hate speech is any form of writing or speech that is threatening or abusive and portrays preconceptions against a specific group based on their sexual orientation, religion, or race (MacAvaney et al., 2019). Different individuals spread hate speech in the name of freedom of speech through online and in-person platforms. The fact that people often engage in hate-speech-related actions nconsciously makes it even much difficult for people to avoid bringing harm to the affected. For instance, many people talk down on people from minority backgrounds using words that mock their heritage and culture without considering the possible consequences of their actions. This is because we grow up hearing different negative assertions about others, and since there is no effective strategy set by different governments to ensure people do not hate on others, we just continue joking around with hate-related words while ignoring the feelings of the concerned people. Hate speech causes immense psychological damage and generates a feeling of exclusion. Furthermore, most hate speeches are protected because the government finds it difficult to ban hate speech without limiting freedom of speech, and there is no legal definition of hate speech under our law. The hate crime reports in the United States are forwarded to the FBI by more than 15,000 precincts countrywide. However, it is reported that 87% of the precincts did not report any hate crime in 2017 (Sales, 2021). Meanwhile, race and ethnicity-based violence are increasing globally. So how are we going to prevent hate speech to decrease all these traumas caused by it? This paper will explore researches that have been done on survivors and their stories as well as other researchers that suggest different methods of prevention. Specifically, it will be focusing on examining the trauma racial hate speech causes and how it impacts society. It will provide a proper understanding of the hate speech within our societies and the trauma it causes to examine and recommend the possible forms of prevention methods.
Recent Hate-Speech Related Incidents
The annual hate crime statistics report by the FBI shows that more than 10,000 individuals in the United States reported having been victims of heat crime due to their ethnicity or race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability (Carrega, C., & Krishnakumar, 2021). Therefore, verbal attack on people is evidently on the rise according to the different events that happened recently such as anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ bias, anti-Black bias, and anti-Asian hate. The onset of COVID-19 has contributed to the increasing hate crimes against Asian people. Among the total hate speech-related reports, women accounted for 63.3% of the cases, and 48.1% of all reports involved at least one hateful assertion about anti-China or anti-immigrant rhetoric (Carrega, C., & Krishnakumar, 2021). More than a thousand people have experienced anti-Asian incidents ranging from verbal attacks to physical attacks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the resumption of outdoor activities and schools as well as returning to workplaces, it is likely that the vulnerable such as seniors, women, and children will be at risk.
Furthermore, hate crimes in general increased by 13% with anti-Asian hate crimes rising more than 73% in 2020 (Sales, 2021). This shows that individuals from Asian countries especially China are likely to experience hate crimes. The pandemic is believed to have originated from China, and as such, most people attribute the current global crisis that has crippled economies and caused massive deaths to people of Asian descent prompting hateful actions against them. There are numerous incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes that have been reported and even tried in courts. For instance, Carolyn Heard was sentenced to at least 270 days of incarceration for perpetuating hate crimes against a member of the Asian community. Heard was charged with approaching an Asian person and threatening to kill the victim with a knife, saying, “I will kill you, you have coronavirus; go back to China.” This is one of the many cases that have been reported relating to anti-Asian hate crime. A report by Gover et al. (2020) shows the rise in hate crime incidents that connect Asian people to COVID-19, that is, an increase of 107% in 2020.
Another hate speech-related incident pertains to other minority groups such as African-Americans and Hispanics. Hate crimes against people of color have been evident in the United States for centuries dating back to slavery. Therefore, the issue of white supremacy has been the primary contributor to the unending hate crimes against people from Black and Hispanic communities. There are a lot of incidents where African American people have been harassed and verbally assaulted for their color. For instance, Dushko Vulchev of Houlton was reported to have sent messages of hate crime, calling out for all African Americans to be wiped. He also went on to burn down Martin Luther King Jr. Community Presbyterian Church in Springfield in December 2020. It is, therefore, clear that hate speech being just an assertion can further lead to physical violence. Furthermore, it is reported that hate crimes against Black people, that is, Anti-Black or African American hate crime increased in recent years from 1,972 to 2,871 in 2020 (Carrega, C., & Krishnakumar, 2021). The apparent increase in hate crimes on the basis of race or ethnicity shows the lack of proper laws that protect people from incidents of hate speech and other hate-related crimes. For instance, more than 56% of the total all cases of bias against African Americans comprised mainly of hate crimes offenses connecting to race, and are primarily motivated by anti-African American or Black bias (Gover et al., 2020).
The online and political rhetoric that stigmatizes people of color and people of Asian descent has promoted the continued increase in hate crime incidents. For instance, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s main campaign narrative was against people of color, the non-whites. Such situations make it hard for people to refrain from engaging in hating on non-whites, thus bolstering white supremacy. However, there is no proper definition of hate speech in the constitution nor effective ways to prevent people from engaging in abusive or threatening altercations based on color, sexual orientation, or religion. This has allowed numerous incidents of hate crime to go unreported, making it hard for people to be punished while allowing perpetrators to continue hating on others. Hate crimes against people from the LGBTQ community have been constantly reported in the past years making it also a key contributor to hate speech-related trauma. For instance, an FBI report shows that more than 1,300 cases, 19% of all reported hate crimes in 2018 stemmed from anti-LGBTQ bias (Fitzsimons, 2019). This is an increase from the 1,217 incidents reported in 2017. As such, this demonstrates that hate crimes cut across all domains and as such can cause a lot of harm.
Delivery of Hate Speech and Related Trauma
Hate speech can be conveyed in person or via other means of communication including online platforms and electronic devices. Many people have utilized social media platforms to perpetrate hate crimes since it allows them to establish anonymity and also invite others to join their campaign against their victims. For instance, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have allowed individuals to create pseudo-user accounts that they use to perpetrate hate-related crimes such as writing posts that attack individuals based on their ethnicity or race, religion, or sexual orientation. This, therefore, has contributed to a global increase in violence attributed to online, an outcome of issues of free speech and censorship on broadly used technology platforms (Bliuc et al., 2018). The primary victims of inflammatory speech online are people from minority backgrounds, mainly African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. Changes in political climate also encourage an increase in hate crime worldwide in which social media acts as the discord magnifier. The fact that nearly a third of the world are active Facebook users alone means that almost everyone uses a social media platform at any point in time, and as such, persons inclined to misogyny, racism, or homophobia perceive these tech platforms as avenues that reinforce their views (Alkiviadou, 2019). This is evident by the widespread use of social media by violent actors to publicize their acts including making statements that undermine the dignity of people from specific minority groups.
Notable examples of online hate crime are the white supremacist attacks circulating amongst racist communities online in the United States. The white supremacists utilize social media to communicate their acts to their followers. For instance, the Charleston church shooter who murdered nine black clergy and worshippers in 2015 was revealed to have engaged in an online self-learning process that gave him the idea that the white supremacists’ goal mandated violent action (Cohen-Almagor, 2018). Another hate crime incident is the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 where the shooter was a member of the social media network Gab whose strict rules have appealed to many extremists expelled by larger platforms. The shooter’s participation in the tech platform imprinted in his mind the conspiracy that Jews wanted to bring immigrants into the U.S and render whites a minority. As a result, the shooter killed 11 worshippers at a refugee-themed Shabbat service (Cohen-Almagor, 2018). Racist communities such as the white supremacists have utilized online interaction platforms to propagate their ideologies and objectives that are meant to undermine nonwhite birth rates and immigration. Different anti-racial organizations use social media and other tech platforms to propagate hate-mongering posts that encourage them to hate on others within their respective communities. Hate groups can also use social media to organize and recruit their members as well as peddle conspiracies (Matamoros-Fernández & Farkas, 2021).
Online users’ experiences are mediated by algorithms designed and implemented in specific social media platforms to maximize user engagement, usually, unconsciously promoting extreme content. For instance, the auto-play function that allows the player to tees up a related video at the end of the video can be particularly pernicious (Matamoros-Fernández & Farkas, 2021). These algorithms entice individuals to view videos that encourage conspiracy theories that mislead or divide individuals in society. YouTube, therefore, is considered the most radicalizing channel of the twenty-first century. As such, YouTube announced in June 2019 that alteration in its recommendation algorithm managed to halve the views of contents that encouraged disseminating misinformation (Alkiviadou, 2019). It is therefore apparent that YouTube has been used as an avenue for brainwashing individuals by racist organizations and encouraging them to hate on the people of color and other minority groups. This has resulted in numerous negative impacts on the victims of hate crimes such as trauma and physical violence. For instance, cyberbullying online users is key to hate crime where individuals post photos of individuals with racist-related captions as well as share posts that body shame people or racially abuse other online users (Bankov, 2020). This is mainly because social media lack the editorial oversight of the massive contents posted daily which makes it hard to regulate what people post on their pages.
Furthermore, the artificial intelligence of social media accounts such as Facebook is poorly adapted to local languages with little effort by the company to employ and train staff who are fluent in these languages (Van Klinken & Aung, 2017). Employing insufficient staff who understand few local languages will encourage online users to propagate misleading information or incite other users to engage in racial violence. For instance, the anti-Muslim violence that started in 2012 was related to the conducive Facebook environment where ultranationalist Buddhist monks exploited to propagate hate speech to new Internet users who have been under a closed autocratic system for decades (Van Klinken & Aung, 2017). It was only after 700,000 Rohingya when Facebook admitted to having done too little to prevent it. As a result, Facebook banned military officials in 2018 and promised to employ more moderators with fluency in local languages. This will ensure that hate crimes that are conveyed using local language can be intercepted and their intent confirmed before it causes a lot of harm.
Consequently, the widespread online hate speech has profound effects on the victims. For instance, racial trauma is a major outcome of hate crime that is common worldwide. Hate and bias incidents are very common in colleges and campuses where students of color and students with disabilities experience discriminatory profiling. These students will find such experiences mentally and emotionally disturbing, thus resulting in trauma. This also applies to other members of the society who constantly face racial, religious, or sexual bias from white supremacists and those that consider minority groups as inferior (Cohen-Almagor, 2018). Therefore, persons who have encountered unexpected, emotionally painful racist encounter is predisposed to suffering race-based traumatic stress injury. Most victims of racial trauma in the United States are Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) since they live under a system of white supremacy, making them more vulnerable. For instance, there are more than 1,500 incidents of anti-Asian racism that include verbal and physical attacks and anti-Asian discrimination of private businesses in just one month following the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States (Liu & Modir, 2020). Considering the fact that Asians were also affected by the pandemic both economically and health-wise, hating on them and attributing the pandemic to them can cause serious trauma injury. Some people have been brought up in an environment that encourages negative attitudes towards people of color and other religions. As such, this will prompt them to racially profile and discriminate unconsciously or consciously in an attempt to emulate their predecessors. A good example is a report where 38% of the Latinx population were attacked verbally for speaking Spanish in 2018 (Lockwood & Cuevas, 2020). They were referred to as racial slurs and unfairly treated by others while being asked to “go back to their countries.”
Other cases include the 4.2 million anti-Semitic Twitter tweets that addressed a myriad of racial slurs, stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and discrimination. Such incidents either individuals or systemic racist actions can cause vicarious traumatic stressors that result in detrimental impacts on mental health BIPOC just as direct traumatic stressors do (Chakraborti, 2018). Experiencing mentally disturbing incident that is meant to attack one’s race, sexual orientation, or religion can cause serious trauma. For example, access to videos online that pertain brutal killing of African American people such as one for the murder of George Floyd or other materials that expose the serious prejudice against people of color can cause traumatic stress reactions in the persons accessing the content, particularly those who identify with the victims. Therefore, with the increasing dominance of tech platforms that allow propagation of any form of content to billions of people worldwide, minority groups are more vulnerable to traumatic experiences and compromised well-being. This is because the Internet allows everybody to access any form of information, and as such, individuals such the people of color can see information regarding challenges their people have faced in the past and are still facing to date, resulting in transmitted trauma. A good example is the chattel enslavement of Africans in the United States and other nations that has prompted perpetual traumatic stress among the black communities. As such, the Black people have been developed a sustained collective trauma that predisposes them to vulnerability towards mental health illnesses (Myers & Lantz, 2020).
Furthermore, incidents such as the Holocaust have left the descendants of the event’s survivors to become vulnerable to establishing psychological disturbances which also adds to the stressors related to the Holocaust loss. The vulnerability developed by the descendants is directly related to the negative life encounters by predecessors. Therefore, it is clear that hate crimes do not only affect their immediate victims but can affect generations to come, resulting in sustained trauma. This is evident in the continued racial discrimination of Native Americans and the trauma they feel from the experience of their past generations. Specifically, Native Americans share a historical trauma resulting from massacres, boarding schools, and forced violent removal from their tribal lands reveals a fatal communal loss, serving as a source of traumatic stress and victims of racial prejudices (Vergani et al., 2021). Therefore, victims of hate crimes such as Native Americans, Latinx, and African Americans today continue to experience signs of substance dependence, depression, health disorders, and lack of employment as a result of trauma-related psychological impacts.
There are racially motivated hate crimes that happen in colleges and campuses across the United States that expose students to physical dangers as well as traumatic episodes that compromise the victims’ mental health. However, learning institutions do not have adequate resources required to respond to students’ needs effectively. In 2016, more than 1,000 hate crimes were reported on campuses, and as such, expensive mental health fees, long wait times, and lack of counseling staff diversity will continue to worsen the trauma experience by hate crime victims (Vergani et al., 2021). It is, therefore, apparent that hate crime can cause detrimental effects on the mental health of its victims, and therefore, it is necessary to find ways to prevent hate crime-related activities such as hate speech from perpetuating to future generations.
Hate Speech Prevention Methods
With the current advancement in technology and the continued rise in internet users around the globe, racist organizations or communities will find an easy niche for publicizing their actions and inciting others to join their course. It is, therefore, important to find possible prevention methods to ensure future hate crime incidents will not happen. Notably, education is the most effective approach that can be implemented to help people understand the dynamics of hate crimes such as how it manifests and its possible effects. Education will bolster awareness which in turn helps individuals especially kids to avoid hate-related crimes such as using abusive or threatening language that portrays prejudice against members of given minority groups (Evenden-Kenyon, 2020). Often, individuals who grow up in white supremacy environments end up continuing the tradition of hating on immigrants and other religions, and sometimes, without any known reason or unreasonably. These people perpetuate racial profiling and verbal attacks unconsciously, and as such, educate them about the existence of hate crimes and how they manifest and affect people in society. This will allow them to develop their perception of people especially those from minority backgrounds instead of depending on what they were told to do or what they observed others do. Teaching people to embrace diversity and equality will extremely promote the prevention of hate speech and other hate crimes that result in severe traumatic experiences (Evenden-Kenyon, 2020).
Social media is revealed to be a major contributor to hate crimes and related trauma, and as such, employing censoring algorithms that ensure people do not use racially sensitive words that promote hate crime against social media users (Siregar et al., 2020). As such, social media platforms should have detection methods for hate speech to reduce cyberbullying. This involves mandating social media companies to have adequate staff who monitors instances of hate speech in the posts and delete the accounts posting these posts as well as remove the posts and respective viewership. Another important detection approach that social media can implement is to employ sufficient staff with fluency in local languages to facilitate the detection of hate speech that is propagated using local languages (Chakraborti, 2018). Without moderators who understand local languages, social media users will post racial insults or slurs that will only be understood by the intended recipient, and as a result, the victim will suffer further insults since no one will intervene. Similarly, social media platforms should improve their customer services to ensure that inquiries and complaints are responded to in real-time to facilitate the proper reporting of hate crimes (Siregar et al., 2020). This is a major problem that victims of hate crime face since even when they try to report the experience of hate crime they rarely receive help, leaving them to live with the negative impacts such as trauma and physical harm. Therefore, with a proper reporting system, it makes it easy for incidents to be addressed at early stages, thus preventing instance people of color from experiencing brutal and prejudiced treatments.
Another important recommendation is the implementation of effective physical and online reporting systems in the communities and schools that provide anonymity. This is because most people tend to avoid reporting hate crimes with the fear that the perpetrators will come after them, and as such, they will continue to suffer at the hands of racist communities (Schweppe et al., 2020). As such, having an anonymous platform will enable individuals to report incidents in real-time which in turn will allow concerned authorities to enforce hate crime-related law accordingly. Schools also need to have adequate staff who provide counseling to victims of racial trauma to prevent transmitted trauma.
Conclusion
It is evident that hate speech is rampant in the current technological environment since most people have access to devices and are connected to the Internet. As such, perpetual hate speech that is prejudiced towards minority groups can cause serious impacts such as trauma that affects individuals bother mentally and physically. These impacts can be mitigated via extensive awareness programs, effective social media regulations, and proper reporting systems. However, these recommendations should be implemented with the balance between freedom of speech and hate speech. Policymakers should ensure that approaches to regulate social media platforms and allow people to freely and easily report hate crimes should not unjustifiably impair freedom of speech. For instance, social media platforms need to remain transparent on the contents they remove and make it easy for research and the public to scrutinize their data. Similarly, the authorities or those handling hate speech reported incidents should be fair in their judgment to ensure victims receive justice while preventing false accusations.
References
Alkiviadou, N. (2019). Hate speech on social media networks: towards a regulatory framework?. Information & Communications Technology Law, 28(1), 19-35.
Bankov, K. (2020). Cyberbullying and hate speech in the debate around the ratification of the Istanbul convention in Bulgaria: a semiotic analysis of the communication dynamics. Social Semiotics, 30(3), 344-364.
Bliuc, A. M., Faulkner, N., Jakubowicz, A., & McGarty, C. (2018). Online networks of racial hate: A systematic review of 10 years of research on cyber-racism. Computers in Human Behavior, 87, 75-86.
Carrega, C., & Krishnakumar, P. (2021, October 26). Hate crime reports in US Surge to the highest level in 12 years, FBI says. CNN. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/30/us/fbi-report-hate-crimes-rose-2020/index.html.
Chakraborti, N. (2018). Responding to hate crime: Escalating problems, continued failings. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 18(4), 387-404.
Cohen-Almagor, R. (2018). Taking North American white supremacist groups seriously: The scope and the challenge of hate speech on the Internet. International journal of crime, justice, and social democracy, 7(2), 38-57.
Evenden-Kenyon, E. (2020). Educating the English: the role of universities in tackling hate speech and Islamaphobia in post-EU-Referendum Britain. Papeles de Europa, 32(2), 129-144.
Fitzsimons, T. F. (2019, November 12). Nearly 1 in 5 hate crimes motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias, FBI finds. NBCNews.com. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/nearly-1-5-hate-crimes-motivated-anti-lgbtq-bias-fbi-n1080891.
Gover, A. R., Harper, S. B., & Langton, L. (2020). Anti-Asian hate crime during the COVID-19 pandemic: Exploring the reproduction of inequality. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 45(4), 647-667.
Liu, S. R., & Modir, S. (2020). The outbreak that was always here: Racial trauma in the context of COVID-19 and implications for mental health providers. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(5), 439.
Lockwood, S., & Cuevas, C. A. (2020). Hate crimes and race-based trauma on Latinx populations: a critical review of the current research. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 1524838020979688.
MacAvaney, S., Yao, H. R., Yang, E., Russell, K., Goharian, N., & Frieder, O. (2019). Hate speech detection: Challenges and solutions. PloS one, 14(8), e0221152.
Matamoros-Fernández, A., & Farkas, J. (2021). Racism, Hate Speech, and Social Media: A Systematic Review and Critique. Television & New Media, 22(2), 205-224.
Myers, W., & Lantz, B. (2020). Reporting racist hate crime victimization to the police in the United States and the United Kingdom: A cross-national comparison. The British Journal of Criminology, 60(4), 1034-1055.
Sales, B. (2021, September 2). FBI reports drop in 2020 antisemitic crimes, amid rise in total hate crimes. The Times of Israel. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.timesofisrael.com/fbi-reports-drop-in-2020-antisemitic-crimes-amid-rise-in-total-hate-crimes/.
Schweppe, J., Haynes, A., & MacIntosh, E. M. (2020). What is measured matters: The value of third party hate crime monitoring. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 26(1), 39-59.
Siregar, G., Siregar, S. A., & Silaban, R. (2020). Legal Implementation of Electronic Information and Transaction Law in Preventing the Spread of Content Containing SARA Issues through Social Media. International Journal of Innovation Crativity and Change, 13(10), 1418-1431.
Van Klinken, G., & Aung, S. M. T. (2017). The contentious politics of anti-Muslim scapegoating in Myanmar. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47(3), 353-375.
Vergani, M., Navarro, C., Freilich, J. D., & Chermak, S. M. (2021). Comparing Different Sources of Data to Examine Trends of Hate Crime in Absence of Official Registers. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 46(3), 445-460.
Hate Speech (2)
Gang Involvement and Victimization
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Gang Involvement and Victimization
Introduction
Gang involvement is a gradual process that is influenced by an individual’s trajectory of life and familial, individual, and social experiences. Therefore, gang participation is considered illegal under particular circumstances, and can therefore be defined as a group of three or more individuals whose main activity includes engaging in certain criminal activities (Augustyn et al., 2017). Gang involvement starts at an early age which makes youth and school children the most probable candidates for gang membership. Reports of gang existence in schools started appearing in the 1970s and 1980. However, it is indicated that the prevalence of gangs in learning institutions has been decreasing since the 1990s, evident from the reported 12% gang presence in schools in 2013 down from 28% in 1995 (Carson & Esbensen, 2019). Despite the apparent decrease, gang involvement in schools remains a serious issue among policymakers and school officials since gang membership is associated with a myriad of disruptive acts and safety issues. The prevalence of gangs is connected to serious school-based violence/delinquency such as substance abuse, high-risk sexual behavior, and drug trafficking that can result in arrests, incarcerations, and augmented risk of experiencing violent victimization (Carson & Esbensen, 2019). This paper, therefore, intends to provide a better understanding of gang involvement and victimization as well as how the former increases the risk of the latter. Victimization can be understood as the act of rendering individuals victims through harming or killing them. Therefore, gang members engage in risky lifestyles such as drug dealing as well as involvement with gang-motivated crimes that increase the risk of becoming a victim of serious violence (Leverso & O’Neill, 2021). As such, this research will provide an overview of the debate about whether gang involvement increases victimization risk and outline the prior literature that has investigated this assumption.
Literature Review
Numerous research has been conducted to address the persistent discussion of gang involvement and related victimization within society. Research by Carson & Esbensen (2019) shows that involvement in gang-related activities exposes its members to experience direct or indirect victimization among other perceived incivilities such as gang graffiti and dress codes (P. 6). The research further explains lower levels of fear among individuals engaging in delinquent lifestyles, those who are considered to be more likely to be victimized continue to perpetuate gang-related activities. It is also evident that the youth who are involved in gang activities are aware of the high risk of experiencing victimization but instead they perceive these risks to be less salient (Carson & Esbensen, 2019). It is, therefore, evident that gang involvement exposes youth to risks of being victims of serious violence which is also bolstered by their low perception of risk. For instance, the youth who engage in join gangs and get involved in criminal activities are usually less forward-thinking as a result of their decreased levels of self-control. This encourages them to engage in a myriad of criminal acts without sufficiently assessing the possible risks they may encounter. Some of the risks that they may encounter include physical altercations with other gang members or the law enforcement officers resulting in serious injuries or even death. Gagnon (2018) also cites fear as a key contributor to the increased likelihood of victimization as a result of gang involvement (pp. 4124-4126). It is also apparent that the gang-involved youth tend to distinguish victimization based on their level of seriousness and consider the more serious instances of victimization to be less common, and as such, develop less fear. This will encourage a lot of careless undertakings that renders them more vulnerable to a series of violent victimization. The fact that gang-involved youth normally perceive themselves as being more ‘streetwise’ than none-gang members gives them the confidence to risk their lives and end up becoming victims of serious violence (Gagnon, 2018). This is also coupled with the aspect of the perceived protection that gang-involved youth expect from their gang attachments and their perceived status in society.
A more detailed approach was taken in the research conducted by Watkins & Melde (2018) which compared the effects of gender-based gang involvement on victimization and involvement in a crime. Specifically, the authors revealed that male gang members are more predisposed to engaging in criminal acts and becoming victims of serious violence compared to their female counterparts (Watkins & Melde, 2018). However, it is also evident from the research findings that female gang members bring a generally more pronounced impact on serious crime, demonstrating the fact that females are more criminogenic as much as males. As such, both males and females who are involved in gang activities both in school and within their respective communities are equally vulnerable to becoming victims of serious violence. This is because the implications of engaging in violence do not recognize the victims based on their gender rather deliver the consequences without prejudice. However, there is limited research on female gang membership making it difficult to establish a clear involvement and the resulting victimization. Timchenko et al. (2020) conducted research to further elaborate and enrich the public with knowledge on female gang membership by analyzing females from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). The research revealed that females are more likely to engage in gang-motivated criminal activities that will ultimately expose them to victimization (Timchenko et al., 2020). For instance, it is evident that victimization experiences are a result of increased involvement in violent crime and delinquency among gang members. As such, individuals who engage in these violent crimes will be at a higher risk of being arrested and imprisoned or even killed in the events of physical altercations. Similarly, victimization outcomes are not solely issues of incarceration, injuries, and death rather it can be health effects such as trauma and other mental health disorders.
Therefore, Wood & Dennard (2017) researched the levels of exposure to violence, PTSD symptoms, and other mental health issues experienced by a gang and non-gang prisoners. The study showed that street gang prisoners mainly encompassed the youth, and portrayed evidence of compromised mental health due to the serious violence they experience when perpetrating gang-related activities (Wood & Dennard, 2017). The implication of being incarcerated is also another contributor to their undermined mental health since their long enjoyed freedom in the streets is curtailed when detained in controlled environments. As such, Wood & Dennard (2017) suggests that the policies and intervention strategies should be initiated and implemented within the justice system to identify and address the mental health needs of gang-involved prisoners, and as such, rehabilitating them and preparing them to return as lawful members of the society (pp. 39-40). Similarly, another recent research by Dierkhising et al. (2021) strived to discuss the interrelated problems of previously incarcerated youth with regards to issues of traumatic grief, behavior health, loss, and instance of self-reporting. The study findings show significant turning points among the formally incarcerated gang-involved youth. For instance, gang involvement exposed the youth to extreme community violence as perpetrators or witnesses, which triggered serious posttraumatic stress as well as substance abuse (Dierkhising et al., 2021).
Specifically, gang-involved youth as likely to experience a myriad of street violence that may change the way they perceive people and things within their surroundings, which can change them for better or for worse. The resulting mental and emotional disturbance from active involvement and witnessing of gang-motivated criminal activities can cause perpetual posttraumatic stress and consequently severe mental disorders. Furthermore, gang-involved youth can resort to substance abuse as a way of trying to forget the violence and harm they cause to the public during their daily gang endeavors (Wood & Dennard, 2017). This, therefore, requires sufficient interventions that will support posttraumatic growth on formally incarcerated youth who are recovering from the trauma developed during their gang membership and in prison. Furthermore, victimization from gang involvement is also evident from traumatic loss and grief that gang-involved youth encounter when they fall victims to violent crime as well as get arrested and incarcerated (Dierkhising et al., 2021). This mandates adequate access to trauma-focused treatment for previously incarcerated youth to help them make peace with their past as well as recover from grief and loss.
Another important study by Conway-Turner et al. (2020) focuses on providing emphasis on the social and emotional outcomes of youth who are involved in gang activities. As such, it was deduced that victimization resulting from gang involvement directly relates to negative emotionality among gang-involved youth (Conway-Turner et al., 2020). It is also evident that most peer victimization is rare among the gang-involved youth, with implies that there is reduced negative emotionality among this group unlike those not in gangs. Within gang memberships, there is general support amongst members that facilitate avoidance of instance of victimization and stigmatization that may result in emotional disturbance. Gang-involved youth tend to support and protect each other, and as such, reduce negative emotionally unlike those not in gangs (Conway-Turner et al., 2020). Furthermore, victimization-related negative emotional outcomes are revealed to be more severe on children in middle school compared to those in high school. This is because most young gang members are have limited experience with serious violence associated with gang memberships, and as such, find it hard to fathom the criminal activities they actively engage in and witness daily. In more recent research, Leverso & O’Neill (2021) explore the relationship between gang involvement and different forms of victimization. It was, therefore, revealed that gang membership or organization directly exposes its members to becoming victims of both simple and aggravated assault (Leverso & O’Neill, 2021). Another deduction from the study is that gang centrality positively influences individuals’ aggravated assault victimization while being a gang leader reduces the chance of experiencing aggravated assault. This demonstrates the dynamicity of gang involvement and the fact that different levels of involvement trigger different forms of victimization. Therefore, it is evident that victimization of gang-involved youth varies based on their age, roles in the gang, nature of activities one engage in, among other risk factors.
Discussion and Conclusion
Gang involvement is a major concern to policymakers, community authorities, and school officials as it prompt victimization issues that disrupt the safety and well-being of the members of society. For instance, the fact that gang involvement can directly or indirectly render people, victims of serious violence, arrests and incarcerations, and mental health issues, makes it a major societal problem (Carson & Esbensen, 2019). Fear is a notable contributing factor to the victimization of gang-involved youth. Gang-involved youth consider serious victimization as less probable, thus becoming less afraid and engaging in violence that may victimize them. Furthermore, the low forward-thinking capacity of young gang members bolsters their fearlessness since they often fail to consider the possible consequences of their actions, thus predisposing them to victimization. It is also evident that both males and females who are involved in gang activities communities are equally vulnerable to becoming victims of serious violence because victimization does not discriminate (Timchenko et al., 2020). Gang involvement and related criminal activities are also portrayed to undermine the mental health of the victims by exposing them to extreme and disturbing incidents that prompt symptoms of PTSD among gang-involved youth especially children in middle school. Similarly, gang involvement results in negative emotionality as a result of exposure to episodes of serious violence either actively involved or witnessing (Conway-Turner et al., 2020). The studies reviewed in this paper mainly utilized data from single sources focusing their findings on a specific group of people within a given geographic location. As a result, this limits the generalization of results since a single group cannot be sufficient to make assumptions for the entire population. As such, there is the need for further research that conducts extensive research using samples from all the states while engaging both formally incarcerated and active gang-involved youth to ensure both perspectives are considered for better conclusions. Besides, future research should attempt to focus more on primary data to ensure they access data that represents the current trends in gang involvement and victimization. This will promote policy initiations that are relevant to the current challenges accruing from gang-related victimization. Major policy implementation that can come out of this approach is one that unites law enforcement, the education system, parents, religious organizations, the community, and youth towards the fight against gang involvement, and hence mitigating victimization (Brisson et al., 2020).
References
Augustyn, M. B., Ward, J. T., & Krohn, M. D. (2017). Exploring intergenerational continuity in gang membership. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40(3), 252-274.
Brisson, J., Pekelny, I., & Ungar, M. (2020). Methodological strategies for evaluating youth gang prevention programs. Evaluation and Program Planning, 79, 101747.
Carson, D. C., & Esbensen, F. A. (2019). Gangs in school: Exploring the experiences of gang-involved youth. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 17(1), 3-23.
Conway-Turner, J., Visconti, K., & Winsler, A. (2020). The role of gang involvement as a protective factor in the association between peer victimization and negative emotionality. Youth & Society, 52(3), 469-489.
Dierkhising, C. B., Sánchez, J. A., & Gutierrez, L. (2021). “It Changed My Life”: Traumatic Loss, Behavioral Health, and Turning Points among Gang-Involved and Justice-Involved Youth. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(17-18), 8027-8049.
Gagnon, A. (2018). Extending social learning theory to explain victimization among gang and ex-gang offenders. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 62(13), 4124-4141.
Lane, J., & Fox, K. A. (2020). Race and ethnic differences in fear of property, personal, and gang victimization among people involved in crime: testing the effects of perceived neighborhood characteristics. Victims & Offenders, 15(4), 395-417.
Leverso, J., & O’Neill, K. (2021). Youth Gangs and Victimization: An Investigation of the Impact of Gang Dynamics on Experiences of Victimization. Deviant Behavior, 1-17.
Timchenko, K., Rima, D., Mukhamadiyeva, G., Duzbayeva, S., & Beaver, K. M. (2020). Female involvement in the criminal justice system and risk of violent victimization: an examination of gang involvement. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 45(6), 1040-1059.
Watkins, A. M., & Melde, C. (2018). Gangs, gender, and involvement in crime, victimization, and exposure to violence. Journal of Criminal Justice, 57, 11-25.
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America should convert to the metric system
The metric system refers to a decimal measurement system that is agreed internationally. Logically the metric system is based on decimals which are easy to calculate and remember. The current system is very confusing with numbers and without a specific pattern. America is currently the only industrialized country that has not officially adopted the metric system. This makes it isolated, making it a barrier to trade because it leaves a country disadvantaged. For the current generation converting to the metric system is quite difficult but it will have long term benefits. The metric language was created with a lot of simplicity and ease in mind (Challen, 2010). This is because the only thing that anyone using it is required to do is to divide or multiply by the factors of ten. This makes it very efficient to use unlike the old system.
In the current globalized world we are competing for jobs in both science and mathematics while the rest of the world is using different measurement units. The English measurement system is hindering the USA from international trade because other countries do not want to use it, as they have already adopted the metric system. Lack of fluency in the metric system can obstruct communication and collaboration across borders. It can also lead to additional costs since America has to make more than one kind of products one for America and the other for other countries because they are on different units (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1997).
The imperial system is confusing many consumers, manufacturers and the public in general (Challen, 2010). Children find it very difficult to understand the volume, the inches and the numerous fractions that are associated with it. In the metric system, the major features are a set of related base units and prefixes that are in powers of ten.
America should therefore move to the metric system because the English system of measurement is not just complex and confusing with many problematic questions but also has numerous disadvantages to the country, unlike the metrics system which is easy to understand.
References
Challen, P. C. (2010). The metric system. New York: Crabtree Pub.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S.). (1997). The United States and the metric system: A capsule history. Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology.