Many teens join gangs because they do not have a safe family or home. Twenty-one percent of teens say that a family member that lives in the home has a crack or heroin addiction. Fifty-two percent of young teens report being sexually abused (Miller 2). Many teens do not join gangs because their friends do. Instead they join gangs in replacement for a family because they feel that gangs give them the support and stability a "real" family can.
Parental involvement is extremely important and needed during teen years. The National Crime Prevention council says, "Parents not only influence their own children's choice to join a gang, they can also be agents of prevention in the neighborhood." Some kids do not have two parents, but that is okay, even one parent will do if they are emotionally there to provide stability and comfort (Miller 3). One way to get teens out of gangs is to get them involved in the community with drug-free kids. Doing so can keep teens drug and gang-free. .
If the parents are physically there does not mean they are emotionally there for their kids. More than sixty percent of teens who are involved in gangs report having multiple family problems such as violence, weak attachment to parents, sexual abuse, and or alcohol abuse (Miller 2). Some of these parents are themselves in gangs. " Gang members were much more likely to have siblings in gangs and were more likely to have two or more gang-involved family members"(Miller 5). Scary but true, parents sometimes even urge their children to join gangs so they won't have to look after their own children.
Many teens join gangs because they have no place to go and home is a bad place. But how can gangs possibly feel like a family? Lisa Wolff states, "Street gangs promise to take care of their members and provide them with arms and back them up in fights-(Wolff 23). Most teens in a gang think joining a gang is the only way to be at least fifty percent safe, with no gang to back them up they that think they are 0% safe (Wolff 24).