Gang-related Crime Research Articles

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Gang Membership in a Brazilian Birth Cohort

There is no longitudinal evidence on risk factors for gang membership in low- and middle-income countries, despite organized crime groups posing major challenges, including high homicide rates in Latin America. Furthermore, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been largely overlooked in gang-related research worldwide. To examine the associations of ACEs up to 15 years of age with past-year gang membership at 18 years of age and to compare crime and criminal justice involvement between gang members and non-gang members. This cohort study assessed children from the 1993 Pelotas (Brazil) Birth Cohort-an ongoing population-based, prospective study. Assessments were undertaken perinatally (1993) and when the children were ages 11 (2004), 15 (2008), 18 (2011), and 22 (2015) years. All children born in 1993 were eligible (N = 5265), and 5249 (99.7%) were enrolled at birth. The study sample (N = 3794 [72.1%]) included those with complete data on ACEs. Data analyses were conducted from February to August 2024. Twelve ACEs were assessed up to 15 years of age via child self-report and/or maternal report, including physical neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, maternal mental illness, parental divorce, ever being separated from parents, parental death, poverty, discrimination, and neighborhood fear. These experiences were examined using a single adversity approach, cumulative risk, and latent classes. The main outcome was past-year gang membership at 18 years of age, assessed via self-report and analyzed using multivariate imputation. Of 3794 participants, 1964 (51.8%) were female and 1830 (48.2%) were male, and 703 (18.5%) were Black, 2922 (77.0%) were White, and 169 (4.5%) were coded as "other" race or ethnicity (no additional details are available to further disaggregate the other category). On the basis of the imputed data, 1.6% (SE, 0.2 percentage points) of participants reported gang membership at 18 years of age. Physical abuse (odds ratio [OR], 2.76; 95% CI, 1.27-5.98), emotional abuse (OR, 2.76; 95% CI, 1.51-5.02), domestic violence (OR, 3.39; 95% CI, 1.77-6.48), parental divorce (OR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.17-3.54), and separation from parents (OR, 3.13; 95% CI, 1.54-6.37) were associated with an increased risk of gang membership. A dose-response association was observed, with 4 or more ACEs increasing the risk (OR, 8.86; 95% CI, 2.24-35.08). In latent class analysis, the class with child maltreatment and household challenges was associated with a higher risk of gang membership than the low-adversities class (OR, 7.10; 95% CI, 2.37-21.28). There was no robust evidence that children exposed to household challenges and social risks were at increased risk of gang membership (OR, 2.28; 95% CI, 0.46-11.25). In this prospective cohort study, ACEs, particularly child maltreatment and family conflict, were associated with gang involvement when examined individually, cumulatively, and as clusters in a high-crime environment in Brazil. These findings underscore the value of integrating the ACE framework into gang-related research and the potential to reduce gang-related crime by reducing ACEs.

«Jeg vil bli en å regne med»

AbstractYoung men’s desistance from gangs involved in crime is a pressing social issue in the Nordic countries. Drawing from a larger study comprising life story interviews with previously incarcerated men across different life stages, this article elaborates the narration of desistance among three young men who desisted from gang-related crime in their early twenties. By telling their stories of involvement in crime and their desistance process as career shift narratives, continuity in their »real me« is emphasised. Their stories make them come across as rational agents concerned with independence, ambition and a goal-oriented agency proving their capacity and willingness to take responsibility through hard work in the construction industry. This narrative identity can be understood as the young men’s ideals of masculinity, which intertwine their earlier values and previous experiences with a new maturity gained by social relations to role models in the labour market and significant others. In line with this, ideals of masculinity may be seen as a narrative resource which may shape and enhance possibilities for secondary and tertiary desistance in early adulthood.

A systematic evidence map of intervention evaluations to reduce gang-related violence

Abstract Objective To identify and map evaluations of interventions on gang violence using innovative systematic review methods to inform future research needs. Methods A previous iteration of this map (Hodgkinson et al., (2009). “Reducing gang-related crime: A systematic review of ‘comprehensive’ interventions.”) was updated in 2021/22 with inclusion of evaluations since the original searches in 2006. Innovative automatic searching and screening was used concurrently with a ‘conventional’ strategy that utilised 58 databases and other online resources. Data were presented in an online interactive evidence gap map. Results Two hundred and forty-eight evaluations were described, including 114 controlled studies, characterised as comprehensive interventions, encompassing more than one distinct type of intervention. Conclusion This suggests a substantial body of previously unidentified robust evidence on interventions that could be synthesised to inform policy and practice decision-making. Further research is needed to investigate the extent to which using automated methodologies can improve the efficiency and quality of systematic reviews.

The pandemic did not interrupt LA’s violence interrupters

PurposeThe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on crime has been highly variable. One possible source of variation runs indirectly through the impact that the pandemic had on groups tasked with preventing and responding to crime. Here, this paper aims to examine the impact of the pandemic on the activities undertaken by front-line workers in the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD).Design/methodology/approachThe authors use both autoregressive integrated moving average modeling and a regression-based event study design to identify changes in GRYD Community Intervention Worker proactive peacemaking and violence interruption activities induced by the onset of the City of Los Angeles “safter-at-home” lockdown.FindingsAnalyses show that the proactive peacemaking and violence interruption activities either remained stable or increased with the onset of the lockdown.Originality/valueWhile the City of Los Angeles exempted GRYD’s Community Intervention Workers from lockdown restrictions, there was no guarantee that proactive peacemaking and violence interruption activities would continue unchanged. The authors conclude that these vital functions were indeed resilient in the face of major disruptions to daily life presented by the pandemic. However, the causal connection between stability in Community Intervention Worker activities and gang-related crime remains to be evaluated.

Recidivism into Criminal Gangs as a Problem of Social Identity—Some Applications from the Perspective of Pragmatism

AbstractMany measures have been taken to counter recidivism into gang criminality, amongst other the efforts to prevent arrested gang members to return to their gangs after imprisonment. Whereas the conditions for successful intervention may be hard to unravel, this article will claim that some efforts may be destined to failure by default, because they do not adequately address issues of social identity as a central part of the problem, e.g. replacing one identity with another when leaving one community to establish a meaningful life in another. This article presents some views on social identity from the standpoint of pragmatism and demonstrates how their application on recidivism into gang-related crime reveals problematic issues for social work. To that end, this article takes departure in outlaw-biker communities as illustrative example and make use of two interviews with former presidents of a well-known club.

Gang-related crime in Los Angeles remained stable following COVID-19 social distancing orders.

Research SummaryThe onset of extreme social distancing measures is expected to have a dramatic impact on crime. Here, we examine the impact of mandated, city‐wide social distancing orders aimed at limiting the spread of COVID‐19 on gang‐related crime in Los Angeles. We hypothesize that the unique subcultural processes surrounding gangs may supersede calls to shelter in place and allow gang‐related crime to persist. If the normal guardianship of people and property is also disrupted by social distancing, then we expect gang violence to increase. Using autoregressive time series models, we show that gang‐related crime remained stable and crime hot spots largely stationary following the onset of shelter in place.Policy ImplicationsIn responding to disruptions to social and economic life on the scale of the present pandemic, both police and civilian organizations need to anticipate continued demand, all while managing potential reductions to workforce. Police are faced with this challenge across a wide array of crime types. Civilian interventionists tasked with responding to gang‐related crime need to be prepared for continued peacekeeping and violence interruption activities, but also an expansion of responsibilities to deal with “frontline” or “street‐level” management of public health needs.

Hjørnestenene i den danske kriminalforsorg:

AbstractThe principles of normalisation and openness are cornerstones of modern prison philosophy. Normalisation involves making prison life as similar as possible to normal outside life and openness counteracts the negative effects of the total institution (Rentzmann, 1996). Both normalisation and openness imply that it should be the norm to place a person in an open prison. He or she should only be placed in a closed prison if there is a concrete, real risk of escape or if the prisoner is considered dangerous. The question is: does the Danish prison system in the era of the millennium still pay tribute to these two cornerstones when it comes to prisoner placement and furloughs? Since sentence length and disciplinary offences can determine both prisoner placement and prison furloughs, the article also explores developments in determinate sentencing and disciplinary punishment. Based on statistics and legislation, the analysis reveals that the severity of penalties increased during the period 2002-2019, e.g., average sentence length increased, more prisoners were placed in closed prisons, fewer prison furloughs were permitted, and more prisoners were exposed to disciplinary punishment. These developments can be explained by laws and rules implemented to deal with gang-related crime andgang-connected prisoners, who make up about 10 percent of the total prison population. While these strict laws and rules are designed to discipline the few, they have influenced the many and undermined the basic principles of normalisation and openness in Danish prisons.

Gang Rivalry and Crime: A Differential Game Approach

AbstractThis study contributes to the modern literature on the economics of crime by proposing and solving two models of a differential game that considers the dynamic strategic behavior of two gangs engaged in a territorial conflict. The police force acts as the leader in the game. In the first model, each gang is concerned solely by the actions of the other, thus leading to an equilibrium wherein the greater one gang’s criminal activity, the greater the rival gang’s criminal activity. In the second model both gangs account primarily for police activities aimed at maintaining law and order, thus leading to an equilibrium wherein the gangs respond directly to the law enforcement activities of the police force. Exploratory analyses employing gang-related crime and police activities in Los Angeles provide empirical support for the main features of both models of the differential game, such as how gang rivalry fuels criminal activity and how the role of police is crucial in reducing gang-related crime.

Disaggregating gang activity: an exploratory study of the socio-demographic context of gang activity

This paper examines the social ecology of gang activity in Fort Worth, Texas, a community with decades-long and recent growth in Latino immigrant populations. Focusing on the contextual correlates of police-defined gang incidents, the paper explores the relationship between traditional social ecological measures of concentrated disadvantage, residential stability, Latino immigration and racial composition and police-defined gang crime activity in Fort Worth communities. To better understand the social ecological dynamics that correlate with gang activity, the analysis uniquely disaggregates gang activity using 1) the police department’s gang-related classification system and, 2) four categories of gang crime behaviors within police classifications. Overall, the findings reveal that traditional social ecological indicators are significantly related to gang activity; however, the relationship collapses with disaggregation by gang-involved and gang-related crime behaviors and the four disaggregated crime classifications. Implications for research, theory, and policy are discussed.

Patterns of criminal threat in television news coverage of ethnic minorities in Flanders (2003–2013)

ABSTRACTDespite a strong cognitive association in the minds of native citizens between ethnic minority presence and crime, compelling evidence demonstrating a real-world relationship between crime and ethnic diversity is limited. This study adopts a media-based approach to contribute to the debate on the origin of the perception of criminal threats. By means of a content analysis of 11 years of crime news (2003–2013) in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), portrayals of ethnic minority and majority perpetrators are systematically compared to assess whether ethnic minorities are portrayed in a significantly more threatening way. Moreover, building on ethnic hierarchy theories, comparisons are made between various outgroups. Findings demonstrate that ethnic minority perpetrators are depicted in a more threatening manner: they are more likely to be associated with violent, property, and gang-related crime. Additionally, they are more likely to be anonymised and to be associated with explicit manifestations of threat. Group differences exist, however, as the most distant outgroup (i.e. North Africans) is covered in a more threatening way than the other outgroups. Implications for intergroup relations are discussed.

The Potential Costs of Police Databases: Exploring the Performance of California’s Gang Database (CalGang)

Informatics and databases used to track crime are an increasing part of crime prevention strategies and hold promise for identifying individuals likely to be involved in crime so they can be more easily tracked to prevent future crimes. This article uses cost analysis techniques to explore the utility of California’s gang prevention database (CalGang) from 1997 to 2010. Costs included the primary operating costs of the database and secondary costs associated with Type I and Type II errors. CalGang tracks more than 235,000 individuals implicated in gang activity statewide. Although the primary costs of operating the database were relatively low, secondary costs resulting from errors were much larger and led to an overall greater cost to society. In addition, it appears that CalGang has not been successful in reducing the rate of gang-related crime in Los Angeles. Resources for CalGang may be better spent on other crime prevention activities that are less costly to society and lead to greater prevention.

Measuring UK crime gangs: a social network problem

This paper describes the output of a study to tackle the problem of gang-related crime in the UK; we present the intelligence and routinely-gathered data available to a UK regional police force, and describe an initial social network analysis of gangs in the Greater Manchester area of the UK between 2000 and 2006. By applying social network analysis techniques, we attempt to detect the birth of two new gangs based on local features (modularity, cliques) and global features (clustering coefficients). Thus for the future, identifying the changes in these can help us identify the possible birth of new gangs (sub-networks) in the social system. Furthermore, we study the dynamics of these networks globally and locally, and have identified the global characteristics that tell us that they are not random graphs—they are small world graphs—implying that the formation of gangs is not a random event. However, we are not yet able to conclude anything significant about scale-free characteristics due to insufficient sample size. A final analysis looks at gang roles and develops further insight into the nature of the different link types, referring to Klerks’ ’third generation’ analysis, as well as a brief discussion of the potential UK policy applications of this work.

Rogues of the Racecourse

This article focuses on the reporting of racecourse crime, exploring the shifting cultural contexts in which the press constructed outbreaks of metropolitan gang-related crime. The first part of the article looks at the extended coverage of what became known as the ‘racecourse wars’, concentrating on three key themes which permeate the accounts of racecourse crime between 1920 and 1925: the organisation of crime, the use of firearms and the mobility of criminals. The coverage of these events, which can be traced across a number of different newspapers, was often described in ways that reflected concerns about the organisation and professionalisation of crime. After 1925, despite continuing outbreaks of violence and racecourse-related crime, the press coverage subsided. However, in 1936 the racing men once again became ‘folk devils’, and the final part of the article explores the re-emergence of press reportage by considering the responses to the Lewes Racecourse Affray in June 1936. In this latter period, the rising influence of the American gangster film (as well as coverage of events in American cities such as New York and Chicago) meant that a newer language of gangsterdom would become increasingly embedded in British cultural forms.

PROTOCOL: Predictors of youth gang membership in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A systematic review

BACKGROUND The Problem There is evidence of gang violence in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia, and the prevalence of gangs is particularly well documented throughout Central and South America (Decker & Pyrooz, 2010; Gatti et al., 2011). Official estimates of gang membership in Central America estimate approximately 69,000 members, while academic estimates believe this figure to be closer to 200,000 (UNODC, 2007). Some estimates are as high as 500,000 gang members in the region including South America and the Caribbean, and gangs have been identified as “the primary threat to regional stability and security” (Muggah & Aguirre, 2013). While reporting and recording issues make it difficult to estimate rates of gang violence, the homicide rate in Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador and Guatemala are substantially higher than those of European and North American countries (Decker & Pyrooz, 2010; UNODC, 2007). Gangs are also active in South Africa, with an estimate of 100,000 members in Western Cape alone (Reckson & Becker, cited in Decker & Pyrooz, 2010); however, to date, there is limited research examining gangs in Africa and Asia...

Gang-related crime: the social, psychological and behavioral correlates

This study examined the behavioral, social and psychological factors associated with gang-related crime. By comparing group crime committed by non-gang youth and gang members, this study sought to identify the kinds of criminal activity gang members engage in and identify the specific characteristics that differentiate gang-related crime from other group crimes. We found that gangs map out their territory with graffiti and intimidate others via threats. We also found that high levels of individual delinquency and the presence of neighborhood gangs were significant predictors of gang-related crime. Contrary to our expectations, the perceived importance of social status, moral disengagement and anti-authority attitudes did not predict gang-related crime; however, further analyses showed that the perceived importance of social status and high levels of moral disengagement predicted gang-related crime with anti-authority attitudes acting as mediator. These findings highlight a need to examine more closely, the psychological and social factors that contribute to gang membership and gang-related crime.

EXITING GANGS: EXAMINING PROCESSES AND BEST PRACTICE WITHIN AN ALBERTA CONTEXT

Gangs and gang-related crime have been an increasing concern in Alberta in recent decades. Gang exit strategies have been identified in the Alberta Gang Reduction Strategy (Government of Alberta, 2010) as a key activity in reducing gang-related violent crime and violence in the province. The purpose of this article is to explore available academic and gray literature on gang exit to support the development of gang exit interventions in the province. Findings from the review point to the diversity and complexity of gang involvement and membership, and the consequent need for multi-dimensional approaches to gang exit. Exit programs must address the root causes of membership, and identify and address barriers to pro-social activities. The complexity of gang membership also requires a strategic approach to programming that includes single case management, intensive training, and targeted outreach, as well as multiple systems involvement. Importantly, as Alberta moves forward with its Gang Reduction Strategy, systematic, comprehensive research studies on the “gang problem” in Alberta and its associated impact on the community are vital for the development of effective intervention strategies.

The Impact of Hope VI Housing Policy on Gang-Related Crime: A Case Study of the Pico-Aliso Neighborhood in Los Angeles

The Impact of Hope VI Housing Policy on Gang-Related Crime: A Case Study of the Pico-Aliso Neighborhood in Los Angeles

‘I thought people would be mean and shout.’ Introducing the Hobbema Community Cadet Corps: a response to youth gang involvement?

Hobbema, Alberta, Canada is a community comprised of four First Nations. As with many of Canada's Aboriginal communities, Hobbema's population is young. High rates of socio-economic disadvantage, violence, family dysfunction, and substance abuse are linked to colonization, residential school policies, and discrimination. Crime rates, including gang-related crime in the area, are disproportionately high. In 2005 two police officers created the Hobbema Community Cadet Corps, a program which offers youth a pro-social alternative to criminal activity and gang involvement. The program provides youth with the opportunity to learn the value of group identity, discipline, and camaraderie. It also provides opportunities for recreational activities and travel otherwise unavailable to many in this impoverished area. This paper provides a description of the HCCCP, an overview of its activities and structure, and situates it within the crime prevention through social development framework which emphasizes the importance of building protective factors and reducing risk factors surrounding youth. Finally, a preliminary evaluation which highlights some of the challenges faced by program instructors is offered. The authors caution against relying solely on individualizing imperatives in attempts to deal with social structural issues of the types faced by citizens in Hobbema.

Insider Gang Knowledge: The Case for Non-Police Gang Experts in the Courtroom

Drawing on data from surveys and interviews administered to non-police gang experts, the authors argue that police gang detectives are often erroneous in their definition of gang membership and gang-related crime. Police gang experts often mistake signs of urban youth culture for gang membership and criminal conspiracy. Evidence is presented on the ways in which knowledge about gangs is often determined by the social position of the gang expert. Former gang members and community workers may demonstrate a more nuanced and accurate knowledge of gangs than gang detectives. We see the admission of non-police gang expert testimony to the courtroom as a viable way of countering social perceptions that view aspects of gang membership and racial membership interchangeably and possibly help counter disproportionate prison sentences bestowed upon black and Latino youth.

Exploring Fear of General and Gang Crimes among Juveniles on Probation

This exploratory study examines fear of general and gang-related crime among juvenile probationers. Most had used alcohol and marijuana before, and many had committed at least one crime during the study period. Most were afraid of shooting and murder, and about one third were afraid of other crimes. More participation in drug use and delinquency behaviors was generally unrelated to fear.