Juvenile Gang Research Articles

The Roots of Organized Crime

The hierarchy of organized crime is a new economically powerful and politically influential class in American society. Once the servant of politics, business, and labor in social struggles, organized crime now reaches out to become the master: an economy behind the economy, a government behind govern ment. Its roots lie deep within the American culture, drawing nourishment from the traditional virtues as well as the popular ized vices of our civilization. Our revolutionary tradition is a proud expression of our desire to be a free people; yet this same readiness to challenge the established order when it denies what individuals and groups consider to be their rightful heritage has made America a lawless nation. Our material riches are our international boast; yet this pursuit of riches was institutional ized by generations of "robber barons" whose unethical patterns of behavior became sanctified when sufficiently aged in gilt. The challenge to accumulated wealth, coming from the "lower" orders, continued the pattern of subordinating means to ends. The frontier provided the social background for continuing the tradition of advancing "rights" and "riches" through a process of organized anarchy; when the open frontier ran out, the metropolises produced the "internal" frontier, the pockets of deprived, alienated, but aspiring subcultures that challenged the established order. Out of the clash issued new gangs, the nuclei of organized crime. Even our desire to be pure has added more than its share to the impurity known as organized crime. A puritan heritage, superimposed on a materialistic pragmatism, has created a widespread hypocrisy in which Amer icans collectively outlaw the practices in which they privately indulge. In this inner clash of values, the organized criminal provides the "outlawed" services that the "respectables" crave. While the top gangster tends to move from violence to di plomacy, from strong arm to investment, from hood to statesman, the institution of gangsterism is constantly renewed from the ranks of the juvenile delinquent gang, youth alienated from the dominant culture by age, by poverty, and by ethnic diversity.

Juvenile Gang Delinquency in Paris

Juvenile Gang Delinquency in Paris

Juvenile Gang Delinquency in Paris

Juvenile Gang Delinquency in Paris

Crime and Delinquency in the United States: An Over-All View

To describe the scope, nature, and trends of criminality in any country, it is necessary to rely upon crimi nal statistics. The task is made difficult in the United States by the multiplicity and diversity of jurisdictions, each state as well as the federal system having its own criminal legislation, its own police, courts, and correctional agencies, and its own methods of compiling and publishing criminal statistics. The most important national series of criminal statistics is pub lished by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was claimed that 89 per cent of the United States population resided in the areas covered by those reports in 1959. There exists the general limitation that statistics are based on crimes known to the police. Also, the picture of criminality will depend on the stage in the law enforcement process at which statistics are gathered, because a process of selection operates at each stage between offense and sentence. As traditionally constructed and published, criminal statistics are deficient in a number of respects. They do not, for example, reveal occupation, em ployment status, or social class of offenders, nor do they show the existence of organized crime or gang, even juvenile gang, activity. The social and financial costs of criminality are great enough to warrant information sufficiently detailed to provide an improved basis for preventive action and repressive meas ures.—Ed.

Delinquent Boys: A Critique

Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the is critically examined as a substantive theory of the and as a contribution to a general theory of delinquency. Three major criticisms are made about the theory of the delinquent subculture: (1) The social and cultural bases of the boy's problem are ambiguous and subject to equally plausible alternative interpretations. (2) The working-class boy's ambivalence toward the middle-class system does not provide the psychological conditions which would warrant the introduction of the concept of reaction-formation. (3) The reaction-formation thesis raises the question of the independence between the description of the delinquent subculture and the theory which proposes to explain it. Cohen's theory as stated presents added problems of theory and method which render either a direct or indirect test of the theory impossible. The theory of the delinquent subculture is discussed in relation to the value-transmission theories of delinquency, and Cohen's propositions are reformulated to provide hypotheses for an empirical test of his theory. (Abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1959. Copyright © 1959 by the American Sociological Association) Juvenile Delinquency Male Offender Juvenile Offender Juvenile Male Male Delinquency Professional Criticism Delinquency Causes Subculture of Delinquency Subculture Theory Juvenile Gang Male Gang Sociocultural Factors 07-02

The Group Basis of Politics: Notes for a Theory

The chief social values cherished by individuals in modern society are realized through groups. These groupings may be simple in structure, unicellular, so to speak, like a juvenile gang. Or they may be intricate meshes of associated, federated, combined, consolidated, merged, or amalgamated units and subunits of organization, fitted together to perform the divided and assigned parts of a common purpose to which the components are dedicated. They may operate out of the direct public gaze like religious organizations, which tend to have a low degree of visibility. Or they may, like Congress and many other official groups, occupy the front pages for weeks at a time. National organizations are usually conspicuous; indeed, so much is this so at times that they tend to divert the eye from the great number of groups which stand at the elbow of the citizen of every small town. Everywhere groups abound, and they may be examined at close range and from afar.The literature of many disciplines agrees, as it does sometimes in little else, on the central importance of groups to an understanding of men in their relations with each other.