Rl Mason

Youth Gangs and Youth Violence: Charting the Key Dimensions

Abstract This article examines issues surrounding the relationship between youth gangs and violent behaviour by considering the complex definitional and methodological problems surrounding these matters. By drawing upon a recent survey of school students in Perth, Western Australia, it highlights the importance of and need for developing increasingly sophisticated ways of interpreting youth group formations and group activities. For example, a distinction can be made between gangs and gang-related behaviour. The importance of gang membership and nongang membership in shaping social behaviour also needs to be acknowledged. We argue that most teenagers appear to engage in very similar types of activities, including violence. However, the intensity and dynamics of this behaviour varies greatly depending upon the type of group membership in question. Typologies are presented to show the differences in antisocial behaviour depending upon gang or nongang membership.

Learning opportunities in a residential aged care facility: the role of supported placements for first-year nursing students.

The residential aged care sector is reportedly a less attractive career choice for nursing students than other sectors. Research shows that students are often fearful of working with residents with dementia when they are inadequately supported on clinical placements by aged care staff. Thirty first-year nursing students attended a 2-week placement in one of two Tasmanian aged care facilities as part of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre Teaching Aged Care Facilities Program, which aims to provide students with a quality aged care placement focusing on dementia palliation. Placement experience and dementia knowledge were evaluated through preplacement and postplacement questionnaires and weekly feedback meetings with mentors and students. Students had more positive attitudes related to aged care and higher dementia knowledge at the end of placement. Students described their interactions with residents with dementia and thought that the placement had increased their capacity to provide quality care to these residents. The findings indicate that residential aged care placements can be productive learning environments for novice nursing students.

Bullying and gangs

Abstract Background: Although bullying is associated with gangs, questions arise as to whether bullying, as such, takes place within gangs. Objective: To provide a critical analysis of bullying as this pertains to youth gangs and especially to violence within gangs, and as applied to the behaviour of individual gang members. Study group: Young men between 12 and 25 years of age. Methods: Review of relevant literature with a view to theorising the nature of the relationship between bullying and violence within a youth gang context. Results: Bullying is associated with the reasons why individuals join gangs and with gang-related behaviour, but the violence within a gang is of a different character than that usually described by the term bullying. Conclusion: Bullying has implications for related and/or subsequent types of street violence, but is less relevant for descriptions of violence within a youth gang context as such.