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The lack of recent national data collection on juvenile gangs is because of a lack of federal funding, experts say. James Howell, a senior research associate with the National Gang Center in Tallahassee, Florida. In 2012, the National Youth Gang Survey estimated that there were 850,000 criminal gang members however, this number includes both juvenile and adult gang members, given that law enforcement agencies typically come in contact with older and more criminally involved gang members, according to Dr. In 2010, there were more than 1 million juvenile gang members, according to self-reported data collected in a 2015 Journal of Adolescent Health report. “When you’re a child – when I was a child at least – there’s never a time for safety.” (Portrait taken remotely by Gabriela Szymanowska/News21) “There is no safety net for gang bangers,” he says. Ruben Saldaña, pictured outside his home in Orlando, Florida, joined a gang when he was 12. “It makes you more likely to be a victim and it makes you more likely to be an offender.” “Gang involvement is a risk factor for negative outcomes,” Cesar said. Once children join a gang, experts say, a range of consequences puts them at a heightened risk to enter the juvenile justice system, including an increase in criminal offending and a higher probability of arrest. These at-risk children across the United States are exposed to a variety of factors that increase their likelihood of joining a gang, including a lack of supervision, poverty and gang-affiliated families, according to a 2020 article in the journal Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, which Cesar co-authored. “They are kids that faced adversity in life and didn’t have the social capital and the social network resources to absorb that trauma and overcome it,” Cesar said. “For all intents and purposes, I grew up in a gang,” he said.Ĭesar described gang-affiliated children as “traumatized youth.” (Photo courtesy of Ruben Saldaña)Īlthough he was never officially affiliated with a gang, Cesar would hang around older kids who would sell drugs and commit crimes. In 1990, at 14, Ruben Saldaña says he became the baby godfather of his gang, where he had 60 to 70 “soldiers” working for him. Gabriel Cesar, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University, grew up in Inkster, Michigan, outside Detroit, where he was always surrounded by a criminal element of drugs, gangs and violence. And then that’s what I became, a blind leader.”ĭr.
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Children who were misguided by misguided kids. “It wasn’t even like Chicago organizations who were fighting over millions of dollars of drugs,” he said. Saldaña said the crimes committed by juvenile gangs had little purpose.
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“I became a gang member before I even hit puberty,” said Saldaña, who now runs a mixed martial arts diversion program for kids in high-crime areas in central Florida. Ruben Saldaña was 12 when he joined a gang after moving to a part of Homestead, Florida, that he called a ghetto.
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Saldaña runs Ru Camp, a free mixed martial arts program for kids in Orlando, Florida, who come from areas of high violence and crime.