Hells Angels Research Articles

Hunter S. Thompson: Sportswriter

On a winter's night in 1968, in a yellow sedan barreling down a dark New Hampshire highway, Richard M. Nixon talked football with Hunter S. Thompson. Nixon would soon win the state's Republican primary—an important kickoff for his deliberate, disciplined campaign. Thompson was an unlikely choice for an intimate audience with the buttoned-down candidate. The outlaw writer in shabby jeans, a chronicler of hippies and Hell's Angels, cast Nixon as a “foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad.”1

Inside the Dutch Hells Angels: an empirical study into the club’s entry mechanisms

AbstractOutlaw biker clubs have drawn considerable attention of law enforcement agencies across European countries. Despite law enforcement efforts, the popularity of the outlaw biker subculture has been on the rise recently. There is, however, still little understanding of how individuals become engaged in the outlaw biker subculture. Using unique data from interviews with current members of the Dutch Hells Angels (N = 24), this article addresses the entry mechanisms into the club and how individuals become full-patched members. The results show that active recruitment by the Hells Angels MC and gradually growing into the club’s membership are common entering mechanisms. Pre-existing social ties, both on the club and the individual level, play a significant role for involvement in Dutch Hells Angels membership. Moreover, the Dutch Hells Angels apply various mechanisms to establish the trustworthiness, loyalty, and suitability of a person before becoming a full-patched member of the club.

Criminal nomads: The role of multiple memberships in the criminal collaboration network between Hells Angels MC and Bandidos MC

ABSTRACT Outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have received increased attention from both law enforcement agencies and the research community. This study investigates the criminal collaboration patterns of two OMGs with a long history of hostilities. We use government data on individuals registered as belonging to Hells Angels MC, Bandidos MC and individuals with multiple OMG memberships, and suspicion data from 2011 to 2016 to build co-offending networks. Our results show that members of multiple OMGs tend to have higher centrality and clustering. These members also have the highest levels of suspicions per capita, and most of the co-offending is related to nexus links involving multiple membership individuals. They can be described as ‘criminal nomads’, collaborating with individuals from different organisations. Our results suggest that core members tend to engage in white-collar crime to a greater extent than those on the periphery, which tend to engage more in violence and drug crime.

Shame On You! Unpacking the Individual and Organizational Implications of Engaging with a Stigmatized Organization

AbstractHow and when does engagement with a stigmatized organization lead to the transfer of its stigma to organizations and individuals associating with it? To answer this question, we conduct an inductive study of the process of stigma transfer and the conditions determining social actors’ susceptibility to such courtesy stigma. We build our process model using interview and archival data on two art exhibitions engaging with Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) Norway. Our study identifies purposeful shaming as a key element in the stigma transfer process, and shows that shaming attempts take on different forms at the individual and organizational levels. We also illustrate that contestation of shaming attempts through impression management tactics is conditional upon the status of the stigma ‘target’. This provides novel insights into when and how status moderates the stigma transfer process.

A Survey of the Rise of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in East Asia

Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMCG) have been growing in almost every nation in the world. Men across the world are forming new clubs using the Hells Angels’ model of outlaw clubs. East Asia is seeing exponential growth of clubs and the arrival of foreign clubs. But these events are not uniform across the region. Nonetheless, it is strange that a very American model of social deviance could become popular in the communitarian cultures of East Asia. The expansion of the culture presents the possibility of local adoption of the criminogenic culture of Western OMCG. This paper tracked the rise of locally formed clubs in each nation of East Asia as well as the arrival of international clubs with chapters in the region. It compared club growth to GDP per capita, the gender inequality index and authoritarianism of governments, to determine if there were correlations. The study found 310 locally formed clubs in East Asia, most of which have formed in the last two decades. No substantial correlations were found to club growth by local clubs or arrival of international clubs.

Making Sense of Stigmatized Organizations: Labelling Contests and Power Dynamics in Social Evaluation Processes

How do social audiences negotiate and handle stigmatized organizations? What role do their heterogenous values, norms and power play in this process? Addressing these questions is important from a business ethics perspective to improve our understanding of the ethical standards against which organizations are judged as well as the involved prosecutorial incentives. Moreover, it illuminates ethical concerns about when and how (the exploitation of) power imbalances may induce inequity in the burdens imposed by such social evaluations. We address these questions building on two event-based case studies involving Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Norway, and contribute to organizational stigma theory in three ways. First, social evaluations of a stigmatized organization by multiple audiences are found to interact, collide and combine in a labelling contest. Second, we show that labels employed in this contest are pushed to either negative extremes (‘moral panic’) or positive extremes (‘moral patronage’). Finally, we show when and how power represents a double-edged sword in social evaluation processes, which can be wielded either to the benefit or to the detriment of the actors under evaluation.

Hells Angels, Head Hunters and the Filthy Few: The History of Outlaw Bikers in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Aotearoa New Zealand has recently seen a growth in outlaw biker membership since the Australian Rebels MC patched over several chapters of the tribesmen MC in 2011. From these bases, they spread throughout Aotearoa New Zealand becoming one of the largest outlaw biker clubs in the country. The Rebels were not the first overseas-based club to establish a presence in Aotearoa New Zealand and would not be the last as Australia deports outlaw bikers with Aotearoa New Zealand citizenship back to their birth country. This paper provides an overview of the two major phases of outlaw biker internationalization in Aotearoa New Zealand while highlighting the developmental and historical changes in this process between the twentieth and the twenty-first century. In so doing we can compare the nuances of expansion within Aotearoa New Zealand and emphasizing continuities and similarities, but also departures from the global experience of outlaw biker internationalization. This article provides an up-to-date account of outlaw bikers in Aotearoa New Zealand up to 2020 since Jarrod Gilbert’s historical account in 2013, extending our knowledge of a little known part of the outlaw biker world.

How Similar Are Modern Criminal Syndicates to Traditional Mafias?

Five organizations exemplify organized crime organizations, or “mafias”: the American and Sicilian Cosa Nostras, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, Chinese triads, and Japanese yakuza. Newer syndicates have emerged that are often called organized crime organizations but most importantly differ from the exemplars. Drug trafficking syndicates in Colombia and Mexico are large, wealthy, and extraordinarily violent but have proven fragile in the face of aggressive law enforcement, do not have fully formalized internal structures or elaborate cultures, and only occasionally attempt to exercise political power or provide dispute settlement services in the criminal world. The Primeiro Comando da Capital in Sao Paulo, originally a prisoner self-protection group, comes closer. It has a formalized internal structure and an elaborate culture that permit it partly to control drug markets and provide an alternative justice system in parts of Brazil. Rio de Janeiro’s Commando Vermelho, also originally prison-based and now extensively involved in drug trafficking, has some mafia-like characteristics. Other criminal syndicates are better thought of as “candidate criminal organizations” because they are not fully consolidated (e.g., the Neapolitan camorra), are not fully criminalized (e.g., Hells Angels), or aim mainly at political subversion and have only subsidiary involvement in profit-making crimes (e.g., the Colombian FARC).

Emergency landing: The Aviator

Martin Scorsese's biopic of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) presents its subject in two modes. “Go” mode is thrilling—Hughes will make a snap decision to buy an airline, or break an aeronautical record, or reshoot a whole silent film (Hell's Angels), this time with speech. In “go” mode he doesn't ask “Can I?”; he doesn't so much as check with his accountant—after all what's a few more million? —he just acts. Forward motion comes in huge bounds. He's a fast-living visionary. He flies. He crashes.

Outlaw biker violence and retaliation.

The number of outlaw bikers is growing globally. Despite this, little research exists on these groups and their alleged violent tendencies. To address this, the current paper uses unique data to examine whether gang violence causes outlaw biker violence. The period examined runs from mid-2008 until early 2012 during which violent clashes occurred between outlaw bikers and street gang members involved in an alleged conflict in Copenhagen, Denmark. A precise description of each individual act of violence would make it possible to identify whether specific acts were carried out in furtherance of the alleged conflict. This would allow one to determine whether outlaw bikers commit violence on behalf of their club. However, such knowledge is unavailable. The paper therefore takes a different approach by examining whether acts of violence committed by the two groups are statistically associated. In other words, it considers whether one or more acts can be described as retaliatory during the observation periods. The sample consists of 640 individuals involved with the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club or with non-biker street gangs–both of which are present in Copenhagen. Statistical models are used to predict 143 violent events committed by 196 outlaw bikers. The results suggest that violence committed by gang members predicts violence committed by outlaw bikers. This indicates that violent acts committed by outlaw bikers are at least partly a form of retaliation carried out on behalf of their club. The paper expands the literature on the kinds of inter-group, micro-level processes that can lead to reciprocal violence by including outlaw bikers in a literature that has previously focused on non-biker street gangs.

Russia's Fifth Column: The Influence of the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club

ABSTRACTWhile the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club's (NWMC) roots are similar to Western counterparts such as the Hells Angels MC and Bandidos MC, they have evolved into a proxy of the Russian state who unite combat-ready diasporas. The NWMC nongovernmental organization provides soft propaganda while they operate alongside the Russian military and imbed military tactics into foreign Russian populations through their corporate entity Wolf Holding of Security Structures. This case study explores the evolution from outlaw motorcycle club to political force and their integration into Russia's information operations and conflict. The NWMC activities in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine, highlight how this motorcycle club has been able to cultivate a fifth column to agitate domestic politics and increase ties to the Kremlin.

Outlaw and economics: Biker gangs and club goods

Today, outlaw motorcycle gangs are best known for their involvement in an international criminal network dealing in narcotics, human trafficking, and arms smuggling. Law enforcement agencies in three continents have identified groups like the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, and the Bandidos Motorcycle Club as a major threat to public safety. Before their descent into organized crime, outlaw bikers captured the imagination of the American public due to their peculiar look and outrageous behavior. They dressed in dirty sleeveless leather jackets and Nazi paraphernalia, their arms covered in tattoos of Nazi and White-supremacist symbolism. They drove highly customized, loud, and heavy American bikes—almost always Harley-Davidsons—and despised Japanese vehicles. They were notorious for their erratic behavior, in particular, the propensity to use violence in an idiosyncratic way when interacting with non-bikers and the public display of nudity and sexual practices. Unlike standard treatments of outlaw bikers, which draw from criminology, sociology, and psychology, I propose an explanation for these seemingly irrational and certainly odd practices rooted on the economic approach. Following the literature on the economic theory of religious sects, I argue that these odd practices served as effective obstacles to the ability of outlaw bikers to free ride on the club goods provided by these organizations.

Criminal organizing applying the theory of partial organization to four cases of organized crime

We explore how the idea of partial organization can provide insights in the study of organized crime. Studying criminal organizing with a theoretical framework used for other social organizing phenomena can help us see the interplay between different forms of criminal collaboration under a single analytical lens, and start a discussion on whether criminal organizing is intrinsically different from other types of social organizing. We analyze four cases of criminal collaboration in Sweden between 1990 and 2015: the Syriac mafia, the Hells Angels Mc Sweden, the street gang Werewolf Legion, and the Hallunda robbery. While the outlaw motorcycle gang, and to a certain extent the street gang, are complete organizations, the mafia is based around and heavily parasitic on other institutions. We have also shown that time-bounded projects are found in the criminal context, with these emerging from strong network relations. Our results show that most of the elements of criminal organizing are not formalized and that partial organization is at least as important and powerful as complete organization.

Organizing on two wheels: uncovering the organizational patterns of Hells Angels MC in Sweden

During the last decades, Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMCs) have become a concern for crime prevention and law enforcement agencies. The general perception of OMCs is ambiguous. They are seen either as highly structured criminal organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs for conducting sophisticated criminal enterprises, or as clubs built around the camaraderie of freedom-seeking bikers. Using unique Swedish longitudinal data on gang membership and co-offending patterns, we study the organizational dynamics of Hells Angels MC Sweden and its sub-organizations Red & White Crew and Red Devils MC. Our results reveal a complex picture. Co-offending network patterns and offense type distributions vary for each sub-organization, indicating potential differences in organizational dynamics. Red & White Crew has features that are more similar to street gangs than OMCs, and Red Devils MC has a more decentralized and chapter-based pattern of criminal collaboration than Hells Angels MC. Besides increasing our understanding of OMC collaboration structure, our results have implications for crime prevention strategies. We suggest that social responses and law enforcement efforts should take into account the heterogeneity of OMCs in order to avoid counterproductive consequences in terms of increased group cohesiveness.

The independent’s edge in an illegal drug distribution setting: Levitt and Venkatesh revisited

Popular imagery and scholarly research have differed significantly in their perceptions and understanding of the structure and scope of organized crime and gang settings. While the common image is that of the corporate-like or formal criminal organization, past research has been more likely to argue and demonstrate in favour of market and network flexibility. In this study, we pursue this latter line of inquiry by demonstrating the market and network features that shape illegal drug distribution settings. In doing so, we rely on the Quebec Hells Angels accounting books for a one-year period, which brings us within the same empirical domain as Levitt and Venkatesh’s (2000) study of the Black Knights in 1990s Chicago. Our study sways from the main premise that oriented the Black Knight’s case study—namely that performance within the illegal drug distribution structure was directly tied to that organization’s rigid hierarchical structure. While the Hells Angels can be analyzed as a corporation, this does not mean that Hells Angels members are, by definition, at an advantage because of their organizational status in the illegal drug distribution setting in which some members are active. What our findings indicate is that a participant’s ability to adapt to market dynamics and take on a core network position within an illegal drug market (cocaine, in this study) matter most. Overall, we demonstrate that: 1) Quebec’s cocaine market was structured primarily around traditional market forces; 2) the transaction network around the Hells Angels was not centralized around a single person or small group of people; 3) Hells Angels members were not the most active participants; and 4) being a Hells Angels member did not increase one’s volume of transactions within the network—quite differently, core network positioning did.

Free Riders: The Economics of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

This paper investigates the organizational structure of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, one of the largest and best known North American motorcycle gangs. Within the first few decades since their establishment, the Angels developed a hierarchical organizational form, which allowed them to overcome internal conflict and exploit the gains from their involvement in criminal activities. This organizational form, I argue, played a central role in the rapid success of the Angels in the North American (and international) criminal landscape.

Rights-Scrutiny Cultures and Anti-Bikie Bills in Australian State Parliaments: ‘A Bill of Rights for the Hell's Angels’

This paper analyses how four Australian state parliaments debate the rights implications of anti-bikie bills that restrict various individual rights. It focuses on three state parliaments–those of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales–which have committees that scrutinise all bills for their rights implications and it compares the debate in these parliaments with that of South Australia where such systematic rights-scrutiny of all bills is absent. The paper considers whether the existence of a formal parliamentary committee for rights-scrutiny strengthens or diminishes the process of parliamentary scrutiny of bills for their rights implications. Overall the paper argues that, regardless of the system in place, parliamentary rights-scrutiny remains weak in the four surveyed Australian states when parliaments debate law and order bills. However, this weakness is manifested in different ways, with full and frank rights-deliberation deficient in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales and systematic and well-informed rights-scrutiny absent in South Australia.

Blue Collar Brawlers and Harley Vagabonds: Masculinity in the Tavern and on the Road

Outlaw motorcycle clubs, such as the Hells Angels, provide a modern interpretation of male working-class culture. Most notably, 19th century working-class taverns and fraternal orders can be seen as forerunners to the culture of outlaw motorcycle clubs, or ‘bikers.’ Within the confines of these spaces, men were able not only to learn male behaviour from others, but to reinforce their own masculinity through ritualized acts, such as drinking, singing, and fighting, resulting in an earned image for the culture and the space as one of violence, filth, and danger to those outside of the culture. This cultural reputation has carried over into the modern context of bikers. Originally formed to provide an adventurous outlet to, predominantly, young white men, biker culture has now become a complex and powerful subculture and image. Where early tavern culture was practiced largely in private, biker culture is defined and practiced in the public space, reinforcing its own reputation and image in the process. Despite, or perhaps because, of this public image, bikers have become deeply rooted in our collective subconscious, and represent, to some, a modern reinterpretation of the lone cowboy, making their own society in the face of all challenges. Bikers provide a modern examination of gendered spaces and masculinity. They have an element of danger and homosocial activities that make them particularly appealing to men looking for a masculine identity within a culture that they otherwise found less than welcoming – and which, in turn, did not welcome them.

The Production of White Male Heterosexuality

The Production of White Male Heterosexuality Jane Ward's Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men, New York: NYU Press, 2015Why do straight white men find so many opportunities to have sex with each other? In Jane Ward's analysis, real question is, don't they do it more? Ward's fundamental assertion in Not Gay is that sex between straight white men is a productive act, and specifically that it constitutes production of for these men and for their larger social worlds. It is logical to approach this book with a lot of skepticism: Aren't these men really gay? Aren't straight men really being exploited? Aren't straight ones who are not exploited really just bisexual? Ward addresses those concerns head on. She doesn't rule out that those explanations could be relevant some of time, but she also refuses to assume that they are final word on these sexual interactions. In other words, she is not as quick to explain away sexual component of these sexual interactions as rest of us tend to be.Not Gay takes readers on a tour of a wide range of settings in which straight white men have sex with other men, usually also straight and white, but not always. In chapter 2, she uses George Chauncey's work to introduce us to queer urban spaces of early twentieth century, spaces that afforded straight men opportunities for sex with other men. She uses Hunter S. Thompson's work to introduce us to man-on-man sexuality of Hells Angels in 1960s. Laud Humphrey's research then provides a lens into public bathroom sex of straight men. Finally, we are reminded of many religious and political leaders in late twentieth century who survived scandals following same-sex encounters, and continued to live their lives as straight men.One reaction to stories like this is to insist that these men are really gay. Ward essentially asks her readers to interrogate what we mean by word really. What is true meaning of sexual identity, and what agency do we have to define our own sexualities? Ward rejects born this ideology that has become de facto explanation of sexuality for LGBTQ folks and their allies in twenty-first century. Born this has been embraced as a powerful political strategy because it implies that our sexual orientation is programmed into us, irreversible and untamable, and must therefore be tolerated as something beyond our control. When debating sexuality with a conservative religious person, born this has added benefit of suggesting that our sexuality is a gift from God, and part of way that we are created. Ward critiques born this ideology throughout book, but most definitively in chapter 3, where she explores the popular science of sexual fluidity.Ward disputes long-term value of embracing an explanation of sexuality simply for its momentary strategic value. In a different culture, born this could just as easily provide justification for queer genocide-not at all far-fetched when we think of persecution and killing of homosexuals under Nazi reign. Why not embrace our agency and demand freedom to define our sexualities on our own terms? For Ward, is not an original or normal condition, though she does discuss how it operates as such, and it is not a classification of someone's behaviors or desires. Rather, is defined by . . . investment in heterosexuality (116). By extension, homosexuality is defined by investment in homosexuality and not simply by sexual behavior or desire. And same goes for bisexuality. Straight men are straight because they are invested in heterosexuality, even when they have sex with men-or perhaps precisely because they have sex with men.Ward is particularly fascinated by intricate rules around these male sexual practices that help to make sex with men very clearly not gay and therefore heterosexual. …

Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing since the 1960s. Alex Houen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+282.

<i>Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing since the 1960s</i>. Alex Houen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+282.