Is gang membership from 10-17 year olds influenced by parenting or ethnicity?
My research question analyses the relationship between two variables, parenting and ethnicity, and aims to evaluate the influence they have on gang membership throughout teenage years. Literature suggests that poor parenting and ethnic minorities are more subjected to joining a gang. Furthermore Smith and Bradshaw (2005:3) suggest that gang members are younger with 20% of young people belonging to a gang at the age of 13, and just 5% by the age of 17. In this analysis I will investigate how prominent ethnic minorities and poor parenting are in gang culture and the effect these variables have on gang membership.
Firstly I selected one of my independent variables to be ethnicity because of the controversy over racism in 2006: the data I will use for analysis was taken from the OCJS 2006. Ethnic issues in society were heightened at this time because of the cold case review that was to begin the next year into the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (Cathcart: 2012). Revisiting such a tragic event meant the issues were at the front of the public mind. It was therefore intriguing to study ethnicity as a contributor to gang culture in youth today to see the relative impact it had. Research on ethnicity has been dominated by the labelling of ethnic minorities as offenders and arguably it is merely a scapegoat for the heart of society’s problems. In this report I will analyse whether improper labelling and thus ethnic disproportionality has contributed to gang membership. My ethnicity variable ‘ethnic4’ was recoded from the original 20 responses available to respondents into 5 categories – these were White, Mixed, Asian or Asian British, Black or Black British or Other.
The second independent variable is that of parenting. I chose this variable to represent parenting because it is unsurprising that research