Abstract
BACKGROUND Youth gangs are frequently associated with high levels of crime and violence in low- and middle-income countries – creating fear, reducing social cohesion, costing billions of dollars in harm and many thousands of lives diverted to criminality. However, youth gangs are also seen to fill a void, as a means of overcoming extreme disadvantage and marginalization. Preventive interventions focus on capacity building and social prevention, and are designed to work proactively to stop crime before it occurs, either by preventing youth from joining gangs or by reducing recidivism by rehabilitating gang members outside of the criminal justice system. By addressing the causes of youth gang membership, these interventions seek to reduce or prevent gang violence...
Highlights
Youth gang membership and the crime that it generates is a serious problem in lowand middle-income countries, involving many thousands of young people and resulting in billions of dollars of crime, loss of life, and social disruption
We urge the research and practitioner communities to develop a program of rigorous evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative, in order to establish a benchmark for best practice and to systematically capture important learnings from a range of low- and middleincome country contexts
We suggest that the motivations for joining and remaining with a gang may differ across regions for a variety of reasons, including the extreme poverty and lack of services found in some low- and middle-income countries, problems with police corruption and the rule of law, and because many low- and middle-income countries experience – or have experienced – some form of war or conflict
Summary
Youth gang membership and the crime that it generates is a serious problem in lowand middle-income countries, involving many thousands of young people and resulting in billions of dollars of crime, loss of life, and social disruption. We conducted an extensive search of the published and unpublished academic literature, as well as government and non-government organization reports to identify studies assessing the effects of preventive youth gang interventions in lowand middle-income countries. The involvement of young people in gangs and gang crime is an issue in highincome nations, and across low- and middle-income countries. Gang activities – and those of youth gangs – contribute significantly to the violent crime problem in low- and middle-income countries.
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