All over the United States, violence is one of the biggest problems. But in Chicago, specifically, gang violence takes the crown. In 2019, the Erikson Institute of Chicago Homicide analyzed data on how violence affects young children. Their data showed that most children under five years old are living in the most violent communities in Chicago. Additionally, around 60 percent of those neighborhoods saw an outstanding increase in homicides.
Overview of the Effects Violence Has on Youth in Chicago
As most of the children are in very violent communities, the number of youth who have witnessed shootings or stabbings has increased. With the rise of gang activity following this upward trend, most of the stabbings and shootings that the youth witnessed were between their family and friends, which caused mental damage. Additionally, the mental damage caused by gang violence will affect the child in a certain way, such as the child becoming more hostile towards people, an increase in the child misbehaving, lower social skills, and a decrease in education.
Another of the many effects violence had on children was the youth who have experienced violence where they lived, making them question their safety inside their own neighborhood. The very same children who saw violence also would end up becoming more worried and fearful when leaving their homes and would develop sympathy for victims or other cases develop anger towards people. But a part of the youth who went through the violence would end up becoming desensitized towards the murders, stabbings, shootings, and robberies that would occur. Additionally, they felt it was inevitable for them to become a victim of one of these crimes.
Statistics of gang members
The Chicago gang member database had 134,242 people marked as “gang affiliated” in 2019 and it was found that 95 percent of the people in that database were Black and brown. Because of this discovery, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police officials pushed the database to be fixed to show accurate results as the old database leaned towards marking more people of color as gang members. But as the new database was made, the number dropped from 134,242 members to a stunning 35,091 confirmed gang members.
How this is a serious problem
Gang violence might just seem like all physical damage, but this isn’t the case at all. Violence also affects a person’s mental health in a very noticeable way. But in some cases, these changes happen over time and become harder to spot. With all the violence that comes with being in a gang, or being a victim, comes a lot of mental challenges, which is something that the youth are already taking the hardest hit of. This means that the youth who are experiencing this violence will be in the worst mental spots of all time.
Why are people joining gangs, and how can it be slowed?
Most of the challenges that gang members experience are mental. During a time when the biggest problem is mental health. The number of gang members is increasing due to poor mental health and other factors such as having low esteem, a sense of hopelessness about their futures due to being in a bad financial situation, having very limited education, having little to no adult supervision, living in an area with high gang activity, having a family history of gangs, and violence inside the home. These are all the main reasons people tend to join a gang.
There are ways a parent or guardian can help in ensuring their child doesn’t go down this path. One way is to inform the child about gangs and the path which it will lead to. Another way is meeting the child’s friends or whoever they are hanging out with. One of the other methods that can be applied is closely monitoring the child.
By Samuel Cruz
Sources:
Chicago police department: Annual Reports
WTTW: How Exposure to Violence Impacts Young Children in Chicago
OJJDP: Youth and gang violence
OJP: Psychological Effect of Exposure to Gang Violence on Youth: A Pilot Study
AACAP: Gangs and Children
CBS NEWS: Gun violence has killed 1,165 American teens and children so far this year: “These kids are on the street, and it feels like they’re hunters”
WTTW: Police Oversight Board Votes to Permanently Scrap New Chicago Gang Database
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of David Flickr Page–Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of Nitram242 Flickr Page–Creative Commons License
