  urlLink Can Education Play a Role in the Prevention of Youth Gangs in Indian Country? One Tribe's Approach. ERIC Digest. This ERIC Digest is by A. Hernandez. It examines the issues around youth gangs on Indian reservation.
From the ERIC Digest: Poverty, family stress, and school dropout characterize the lives of gang members. More than 70 percent of incarcerated delinquents also have learning disabilities (Morgan, 1979; Murphy, 1986; Stanley & Hudson, 1981) which factor into the chronic truancy, school failure, and alienation that accompany gang involvement (Hernandez, 1998; Huff, 1998). Incarceration among gang members is normative, as are drug use, violence, and criminal activity. The literature has long reported that underlying these negative attributes is a detachment from hope--gang members believe they have nothing to lose.
Gang youth seldom finish school, have few prospects for employment, and find conventional opportunities out of their reach (Curry & Spergel, 1988; Hernandez, 1998; Lattimore et al., 1995; Richardson, 2001; Rodriguez, 1993; Thrasher, 1936; Vigil, 1988 & 1989). The sum of handicaps associated with gang involvement has been termed "multiple marginality" by Vigil (1988) and discussed by others (Hillet al., 1999; Loeber & Farrington, 1998; U.S. Department of Justice, 1999), including factors specific to girls (Campbell, 1987; Moore & Hagedorn, 2001). 
