This is only part one of three of an episode from the History Channel show Gangland and it focuses on females in gangs. The video really highlights a lot of what we’ve been seeing in the assigned readings.
The women interviewed are from Compton, California, a city known for poverty and violence. This plays into the stereotype that lower classes are more likely to become involved in crime. Slyvia Nunn, one of the main women intereviewed, lived in the area when it was still predominantly white and admits to being part of the middle/upper class, becoming involved with gang activity only after the Watts riots when her dad taught her to use a gun to protect herself. I think it’s really important that the shows creators made it known that this women turned to gangs not because of her economic status.
Susan Cruz, former gang member and gang expert, says that women turn to gangs out of circumstance. Women join in order to create relationships that they are missing out on at home or because someone they are already in a relationship with (brother, father, boyfriend) has joined. This goes back to Lombroso’s belief that women are lead to commit crimes because of an excess of feminine traits. Intimacy (sexual or emotional) is a trait commonly associate with women and it is exactly what they seek in gang membership.
Cruz also mentions that some of her coworkers would rather work with male gang members than female ones. Since it’s believed that women do not generally exhibit violent or aggressive behavior, when they do no one, in this case it is rehabilitation workers, is unsure how to deal with them because their actions are so unfamiliar and scary. Female gang members admit that they are more successful at crime for that very reason, no one suspects them.
The only reason we find it unusual for females to commit crime is because society has made a stereotype and bias that criminals are men. People are capable of being criminals. Criminals come in all different forms. You got criminals who people never believed to be one doing horrendous things. Is that not why when you watch a modern day scary movie/thriller featuring some sort of mentally deranged killer, the tries to make that person as normal as possible. It is because now criminals vary so much, they seem to forget women are also capable of this stuff too. Anyone is capable of committing a crime just if that person chooses to. And there is nothing saying a woman can not do such a thing. It is probably also because we correlate crimes with physical violence of some sort, like war, and it stimulates a image of men. It is society who structures the minds of its people and society likes to make massive contradictions to itself. People are suppose to be a certain way, or more correctly men and women are suppose to behave differently and if one behaves like the other there is a problem. People can not function to be who they are or do anything, or better yet do something, and society will judge them based off the definition of what is what.