GangTok: Street gang content, culture, and roleplay on TikTok

since the earliest days of gang research, such as the classic study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago conducted by Thrasher (1927), scholars have noted the disproportionate contribution that gang members make to the level of crime in society. Indeed, the observation that gang members, as compared with other youths, are more extensively involved in delinquency – especially serious and violent delinquency – is perhaps the most robust and consistent observation in criminological research.

SUMMARY Recent information from epidemiological studies of alcohol and other drug use among gang members has documented that alcohol and other drug use is a serious problem among Latino gang members. Despite the extensive body of research on the onset of alcohol and other drug use among high-risk adolescents and the drug-using behaviors of gang members, particularly Latino gang members, there is a limited amount of research on the onset of alcohol and other drug-using behaviors among Latino gang members. The study described in this paper explores the patterns of alcohol and drug use initiation among male Latino gang members. Data presented in this report is from a preliminary analysis of 40 male gang members from a larger study of 81 male gang members. This preliminary analysis suggests important age and drug of choice differences between Latino gang members and other populations. Understanding the differences will assist in developing more effective programs to prevent the onset of alcohol and other drug use among Latino adolescent gang members

How Can Violence Among Urban Youth Be Stopped?

While gangs and gang culture have been around for countless centuries, The Gang is one of the first academic studies of the phenomenon. Originally published in 1927, Frederic Milton Thrasher's magnum opus offers a profound and careful analysis of hundreds of gangs in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. With rich prose and an eye for detail, Thrasher looked specifically at the way in which urban geography shaped gangs, and posited the thesis that neighborhoods in flux were more likely to produce gangs. Moreover, he traced gang culture back to feudal and medieval power systems and linked tribal ethos in other societies to codes of honor and glory found in American gangs. Thrasher approaches his subject with empathy and insightfulness, and creates a multifaceted and textured portrait that still has much to offer to readers today. With handsome images that evoke the era, this unabridged edition of The Gang not only explores an important moment in the history of Chicago, but also is itself a landmark in the history of sociology and subcultural theory.

Youth Gangs

Gangs, Sociology of

cerned with gangs, while those who teach in unstable neighborhoods and areas of high drug use and violence do need to be concerned about gangs (Johnson 2005). First of all, what constitutes a gang? A gang is a group of individuals who have sworn allegiance to each other, have selected a name to represent their allegiance, and seek to enhance their status through criminal activities (Esbensen, Winfree, and He 2001; Joliet Police Department 2004). Gangs claim areas, or turf, which they will defend by any means possible; gang involvement includes activities such as bullying others and receiving and selling stolen goods. Gangs also take part in other criminal activites, which are designed to strengthen their reputation within the community and provide members with material goods and money (Decker and Gurry 2000; Radley 2002). Gang membership creates a unique bond between its members that is exclusive to all other individuals. This loyalty is to the gang above all else, including family, school, or community. The gang in many instances becomes the family of choice for individual members (Nawojczyk 1997; Zatz and Portellos 2000). Gangs of various ethnic and national origins have existed across the nation for many years. Irish gangs were the first street gangs to be documented in New York City (Walker 2005). By the 1920s there were over one thousand gangs in Chicago, and gangs were beginning to impact California's major cities. Recent immigrants from Central America have also had an impact on Latino gangs across the nation. Gangs are not unique to any ethnic background or economic conditions; the members of the Boyz gang are white male teenagers from an affluent area in the Las Vegas area (Koch 2003). The 311 stands for the eleventh letter of the alphabet-the K-repeated three times, or KKK. No matter what the origins of gangs, they have become a major problem in our schools. Because many teachers have had little or no exposure to gang behavior other than what is portrayed in the media, how can a teacher identify students who have ties with gangs? While there are several key indicators of involvement, it is becoming harder to identify other indicators, because gang members are becoming subtler in their display of signs and paraphernalia. Clothing is important to gang members for several reasons, and as such, clothes are perhaps the most identifiable sign of membership. The style of the clothing may aid students in carrying and concealing weapons: oversized pants and shirts can even leave enough room for students to conceal not one but several weapons. Some gangs also wear a specific type or style (such as a sleeveless basketball jersey) of clothing so that other gang members can easily identify them. Members wear clothes that contain the gang's specific colors or deliberately wear clothes that are clearly absent of the gang's colors. Such combinations of clothing help members to distinguish each other while making it more difficult to be identifited as such by school personnel. The colors and styles of clothes are relatively direct methods of visually indicating membership. But there are other small details that reflect gang alliance, and administrators and teachers, busy with many students

Code of the Streets: Videogames and the City

There have been growing claims in media circles and law-enforcement settings that street gangs and criminal groups are turning to Internet-based social networking sites for various reasons ranging from the showcasing of their images and exploits to the suspected recruitment of members. The present study investigates whether such a trend is, in fact, in place. The presence of street gangs on these Internet sites is referred to as cyberbanging. While there is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that gangs are turning to social networking sites, there is little available research on exactly how street gangs and criminal groups use the Internet. Our main argument is that gang culture is in many ways an individualized phenomenon and this feature ties in directly with recent assessments of the Internet as a setting that is governed by a process of networked individualism. This theoretical link between the individualized gang setting and the presence of gang members on social networking sites helps us understand why recruitment is improbable even in a context where people are openly diffusing their image and exploits to a growing number of Internet users. The empirical segment of this research adds to this general outlook. Based on a keyword search of over 50 street gang names, the three main social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace) were monitored for street gang presence. Results illustrate that gang presence on social networking sites is linked primarily to promoting a general gang or street culture through individual displays. In regard to the visitors to such sites, there is no evidence that they are being tricked or manipulated in any way. They are, however, showing their curiosity in regard to such groups and, for those who share their comments and opinions, signs of support are evident. Thus, whereas criminal gangs are not proactively using the Internet to convert anyone into being gang members, social networking sites are creating a new venue for people who share or are sensitive to the values underlying street gang lifestyle to come together. These sites essentially create a new convergence setting for gang members to interact with a wider number of people who would probably never have been exposed to their lifestyles and exploits through physical interactions. The study's conclusion extends these findings toward further research in this area, as well as outlining the more relevant implications for law-enforcement monitoring of this growing phenomenon.

Certain aspects of the opportunity structure paradigm were operationalized in a study of delinquent gangs in Chicago. Negro and white lower-class gang boys were compared with lower-class nongang boys from the same neighborhoods, and with middle-class boys, of the same race. The ranking of the six race-by-class-by-gang-status groups on official delinquency rates corresponded more closely to ranking on perceptions of legitimate opportunities than to ranking on perceptions of illegitimate opportunities, which is consistent with the assumption that illegitimate opportunities intervene after legitimate opportunities have been appraised and found wanting. Gang members perceived legitimate opportunities as available less often than nongang boys, lower-class boys, less often than middle-class, and Negro boys, less often than white. Differences in perceptions of illegitimate opportunities were in the reverse direction, as expected. Language: en

Hypertension is a major cardiovascular risk factor. Gang violence is an unfortunately common reality in urban communities and violence is associated with worse cardiovascular outcomes. However, the relationship between street gang territories and cardiovascular risk is unknown. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to determine if residence within a street gang territory is associated with higher blood pressure compared with demographically similar patients who resided outside of gang territories within Chicago. A balanced dataset of 1,016 unique-but-demographically-similar patients with at least 3 available pre-pandemic ambulatory blood pressure measurements at our urban, academic tertiary-care center were sampled from over 70,561 available patients. Patients were matched for the number of BP measurements, age, race, sex, and other sociodemographic variables. Patients were geo-coded and mapped, and known street gang territories were similarly geo-coded and mapped using publicly available data from the Chicago Police Department data portal. Out of 66 known street gangs in Chicago, our institution served patients from 28 unique gang territories. Patients residing within a known street gang territory had on average 6.2 mmHg higher BP than those living outside any known street gang territory (median = 133.2 vs 127.0, respectively,p<0.001). SBP control in each unique street gang territory was highly variable with medians ranging between 108.8 to 165.0 mmHg (Figure). In conclusion, we find that residence within a street gang territory is associated with significantly higher systolic blood pressure compared with demographically similar patients who do not live in a gang territory. While poverty and other social determinants of health are known to affect hypertension and cardiovascular risk, residence within a gang territory may represent a new social risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

It has been a century since Frederic Thrasher researched his pioneering text on youth gangs in Chicago. In it he depicts gangs as a street-based phenomenon that emerged from the combined forces of urbanization, migration, and industrialization—with new migrant groups seeking to find a toehold on the American Dream. Gangs were discrete and highly localized, drawing on names from popular culture and the neighborhood, seeking ways to survive and thrive amid the disorganization of the emerging city. In the 21st century, street gangs have been identified in urban contexts all over the world and have become increasingly viewed as a transnational phenomenon that is qualitatively different from Thrasher’s neighborhood groups. Processes of globalization have created a degree of flow and connectedness to urban life that is unlike any other stage in human history. Yet a close reading of Thrasher shows that some of the key themes in the study of gangs in a global context—urban exclusion, grey economies, human mobility, and cultural flow—were presaged in Thrasher’s work. In a global era, however, these processes have intensified, amplified, and extended in ways that could not have been predicted. We elaborate the spatial, economic, social, cultural, and technological implications of globalization for gangs across five principle areas: (1) Gangs in the Global City; (2) Gangs, Illicit Markets, and the Global Criminal Economy; (3) Mobility, Crimmigration, and the “Transnational Gang”; (4) Gangs and Glocalization; and (5) The Gang Mediascape. Taken together, these themes seek to offer both a conceptual vocabulary and empirical foundation for new and innovative studies of gangs and globalization. Empirical evidences from Europe, the United States, and beyond, emphasize the uneven impacts of globalization and the ways in which national and cultural dynamics are implicated in the study of gangs in the 21st century.

Decades of research from a wide range of disciplines has highlighted the relegation of African Americans from distressed inner-city communities to the peripheries of the conventional economy, particularly following the intensification of urban deindustrialization in the 1960s and 1970s. In the wake of deindustrialization, and particularly following the onset of the crack epidemic in the mid-1980s, black gangs in Chicago reoriented themselves around the illicit drug trade, employing thousands of youth who had been locked out of the conventional economy. Recent research with gang members on Chicago's South Side, however, reveals that the decline of the crack epidemic and the transformation of illicit drug markets have created widespread occupational displacement from the drug trade. Young African American gang members today find themselves marginalized within both the conventional as well as underground economies.

A model of the development of two types of violent gangs is presented. Data on the scope and seriousness of the gang problem in Chicago, community characteristics associated with the issue, and the integrative and segmentive nature of violent gangs are provided. A community intervention model within a larger social policy or social development framework is also elaborated.

This study uses observational, social network, and self-report survey data from a large study of male gangs in Chicago, 1959–62, to examine intragroup relationships and behaviors among their female auxiliaries, particularly the Vice Ladies and Cobraettes. Unlike descriptions of the female gang as forming a cohesive “sisterhood,” our findings revealed frequent intragroup conflict and loosely connected friendship networks. Consistent with the bulk of contemporary literature, the Chicago gang girls appeared to maintain ties with one another less for affective reasons than for the benefits they provided in the streets (e.g., peer backup). Regarding their behaviors, the Chicago gang girls engaged in both socio-sexual and stereotypically male activities, including strong-arm robbery and purse-snatching. Although sex sometimes was used to gain favor with boys, we found no evidence of it being valued and rewarded with prestige among homegirls. Instead, the most sexually active girls tended to be the least popular in the gang. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of “bad girl femininity” performed by gang girls and gang involvement as a resource for “bargaining with patriarchy.”