Research Paper on:
The Behavior of Gangs

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
larger problem of violence. In fact, violence seems to be a part and parcel of gang membership that breeds initiation rights, urban legends and drive by shootings. However, while society  looks to get rid of gangs, more thought should be put into evaluating gangs and looking at them sociologically. In studying gangs, one book is clearly a step above and  beyond average sociological fare as authors of Life in a Gang see the gang from the members point of view. Scott H. Decker and Barrik Van Winkle provide a glimpse  into how gang members feel, why they join, and how they react to the culture that surrounds them. While authors contend that their perspective is aligned with others  who also study gangs in sociology, their work is distinguished by the fact that they look at gang members perspectives in a city that has a known, emerging gang problem  (Decker and Van Winkle 3). In studying this topic, authors had a number of research questions in mind. For example, they wanted to know what the origins of gangs were  as well as how gang membership worked; they also wanted to see how gangs interacted with social institutions (26). Authors also wanted to find out what kept gangs together (26).  These are the questions which most interested these researchers and one can say that in their endeavor to find first hand information, they have been quite successful. Authors have detailed  why gangs emerge and how they interact with the larger society. One has to wonder how the researchers were able to obtain groundbreaking, first hand information. Authors contacted gang members  directly as they feared that those who were, for example, referred by social services, may have different attributes than those that were not involved with those agencies (Decker and Van