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Originally Posted by Buckmark.35
I think that some of these points are valid. The issue herein, is that for a majority of criminals, crime and other illegal activity is a culture. You can't "help" someone who doesn't first want to help themselves. There is an entire culture that like being criminal. You can throw education, money, time, and effort at these problems, but as long as the crime culture remains nothing will change. "Gangsta rap", mob movies and other forms of entertainment that glorify and idealize the crime culture will ultimately breed more who buy into the crime culture. The solution to these problems is diffucult
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That's not quite true, at least not for the real so-called ghettos. When privileged Johnny with his Lawyer Mommy and Doctor Daddy starts sporting "tats", a lowered impala and "colors", that's cultural, it's part of a culture of rebellion that tries to find the most comfortable element that fits. It's a rebellion against parents who don't have or won't find the time to be parents and listen to their children. All those emotions and troubles that you and I faced growing up, these kids face it too (and sometimes more of it). The only difference is, parents are becoming increasingly less involved in the lives of their children. All of that emotion has to go somewhere, and for the kids that don't have a counselor or a parent to listen and thus they don't have an outlet, those feelings get trapped inside and kids, not liking what's within start to focus outward on their image. The more shocking or popular or independent that image is, the better those kids think they feel. Emo kids, Goth kids, wannabe-gangsta kids, it's all the same and it has nothing to do with entertainment media. On some level, they identify themselves by hiding behind or within what an artist is saying, whether it be DMX, Eminem, Marylin Manson or whatever other cultural shock-rod you want to name.
I grew up in gang neighborhoods. I grew up with gangs and gangbangers, for most of them, it's not the culture that drives them, that's for surbanized kids of status. What drives them is the basic need to survive. When you live with apes, you just can't keep clean; and when you're surrounded by predators, the only language a predator understands is, well, that of another predator. On some level, these predators identify with what the artists and media they prefer are saying. They're not hiding behind it, they're nodding their heads and saying, "yeah, my life is like that".
Most of the kids in the inner-cities aren't really criminals at their core, they're nothing more than organisms engaging in mimicry (both Batesian and Mullerian). If you somehow wiped Philly's population off of the map, the problem would go away, but only for a short time. There's an environment there that tends to breed predators, and unless that changes, cleansing is only a short-term adhesive bandage. Inner-city crime in this country has more to do with environment than it does with cultural or entertainment media.