Rival Gangs Research Articles

City and Socio-cultural Situation of Contemporary Man in African Films

The phenomenon of urban violence among young people in need of direction, nostalgic, affected by lack of employment, is a major concern of filmmakers who display it in their works. A precise target which allows us to treat and problematize this phenomenon in African cities (which have become dangerous) on four supports including: Twist in Bamako by Robert Guédiguian, Bakmatoire by Grâce Tengo, Le Mandat by O.Sembene, and Samba Traoré by Idrissa Ouédraogo. As they show, because of stillborn independence, failed dictatorships or democracies and endemic unemployment, the development of safe cities advocating living together has proven to be utopian. This led to an escalation of violence. In the African city now managed by the natives in the aftermath of independence in Twist, this violence takes several forms: exclusion from the political party, arrest and incarceration of the strikers, rejection of the paternalistic figure of the colonist and identification with the figure of the double identity by the Twist dance. Rival gangs organize themselves into armed bands in Bakmatoire to pillage, rape, assault and racketeer from populations. The street becomes the place of exposure to all dangers. And scenes of fraud and corruption are legion in Dakar in Le Mandat , thus depriving the illiterate of receiving his money. When the thieves organized themselves and robbed a gas station in the city of Ouagadougou, they were shot as they fled by the military. One hit, dies and the other, on the run, takes the loot. A whole isotopia of urban violence is readable in the works. These film texts therefore show the excesses of a sick society and the metaphor of permanent danger. Cinematographic language is tainted with every possible disaster. It is the place par excellence of mimesis and catharsis. Which allows the viewer to identify, wonder and question themselves.

Moral reasoning about gang violence in context: A comparative study with children and adolescents exposed to maras in Honduras and not exposed in Nicaragua.

This study examined how youth morally deliberate about conditions of gang violence shaping their communities. Participants (N = 80; 10-11 and 14-15 years; 50% female) exposed to gangs (maras) in Honduras and not exposed to maras in Nicaragua evaluated hypothetical situations of physical harm in contexts of chronic gang violence. Results indicated that mara-exposed youth were more likely to endorse harming a rival gang member in some contexts, but not others. Moreover, in some contexts, males were more likely to endorse harming others as necessary. Few age differences emerged, suggesting comparability among children and adolescents. Discussion focuses on how children and adolescents coordinate different moral and social concepts and concerns pertaining to acts of physical harm in situations involving gangs.

Modeling the effects of competing criminal gangs

Adapting an infectious disease model to study criminal behavior reveals competition interactions between rival gangs.

Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled by Nicholas Allen

<i>Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled</i> by Nicholas Allen

The Proliferation of Criminal Gang Activities on the Cape Flats and the Subsequent Legislative and Policy Responses

The proliferation of criminal gang activity is inextricably linked to the lingering legacy of the apartheid regime. Decades after apartheid, the communities of the Cape Flats in the Western Cape face a continuous onslaught of violence, predominantly brought about by rival gangs competing for drug territories. The purpose of this contribution is to consider the government’s policy and legislative responses to gangsterism through a historical and constitutional paradigm. The contribution, first, provides a brief historical overview of the causative (especially legislative and socio-economic) factors that led to the proliferation of criminal gangs on the Cape Flats. Secondly, it investigates the violent reality of criminal gang activity in a postdemocratic South Africa. This part also focuses on the legislative response to organised crime, in particular chapter 4 of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 (which deals with criminal gang activity), as well as on the various interventions and policies by the national and Western Cape Government to address the challenges related to gangsterism.

A Cold War Gamble: Japan and Shinoda Masahiro’s Pale Flower (1964)

A Cold War Gamble: Japan and Shinoda Masahiro’s Pale Flower (1964) Seth Adam Wilder Click for larger view View full resolution An ultra-stylish, pitch-black noir associated with the so-called Japanese “new wave,” Shinoda Masahiro’s1 opaque 1964 drama Kawaita hana (“Pale Flower”) would seem an unlikely site for Cold War history, this despite its director’s insistence to the contrary. After all, it is a film firmly ensconced in the shadowy world of the yakuza. Unlike several roughly contemporaneous Japanese films, Shinoda’s does not foreground the historical forces of that international conflict. Instead, Pale Flower, whose Japanese title translates more faithfully as “withered flower” or “dry flower,” remains fixed on the yakuza’s illicit world, with its illegal gambling dens, simultaneously rigid code and shifting system of allegiances, the ever-present [End Page 32] threat of violence, and orchestrated murder. Still, despite the film’s surface suppression, even effacement, of the looming poles of American and Soviet influence and threat that defined that ideological struggle, Shinoda’s subsequent claim that the film was intended as a Cold War allegory is useful—but not in the form he asserts. On the Criterion release of Pale Flower, Shinoda suggests that the film offers a protagonist standing in for a Japan trapped between yakuza bosses, who stand in for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. But the allegory critiques the position in which Japan finds itself not in the late 1940s, newly defeated, but in the early 1960s, when the nation’s geopolitical location rendered it an indispensable, if not entirely willing, ally to America, containing the spread of communism in Asia. And the parallels are considerably looser and broader than the term “allegory” usually indicates, accommodating a broader yet more incisive analysis of Japanese culture. That a filmmaker working in the postwar era—particularly a filmmaker as preoccupied with history, including in its unfolding form, and an artist as formally restless and experimental as Shinoda—seized on the Cold War as a moment of crisis for Japan is unsurprising. But the genre vehicle of a yakuza eiga modeled stylistically on American film noir, rather than programmatically modeled on sheer historical narrative, suffuses the critique with a startling pessimism, by which these generic, formal, and tonal elements—hanafuda, yakuza eiga, taiyozoku, gambling, murder, and especially the Bible-black, film noir fatalism that pervades the film—exposes and examines this proud postwar nation as an agentless vehicle buffeted by the opposing forces of communist East and capitalist West. The Narrative Based on a story written by Ishihara Shintaro, the leading figure of the taiyozoku (“sun tribe”) genre, and visually rendered as a widescreen noir in rich black and white, Pale Flower tells the tale of Muraki, a middle-aged yakuza freshly released from prison after serving three years for the killing of a rival. Returning to Tokyo and his employer, he finds that the politics have shifted, with a tenuous alliance formed between the two former rival gangs to prevent a third’s encroachment. Although he is called on occasionally to perform tasks for his employer, Muraki spends most of his time aimlessly, purposelessly marking hours and days. He is a man who gambles by day at the horse track and by night in the illegal dens frequented by yakuza. Near the film’s outset, in one of these nocturnal and otherwise predominately masculine environs, he is introduced to someone who identifies herself as Saeko, a beautiful, implacable, and intense young woman gambling large sums of money. They strike up an unlikely and platonic relationship when she expresses interest in even higher stakes games. He agrees to introduce her to this underworld of high-stakes gambling. As they interact in his apartment, in gambling dens, and one memorable street race in her sports car, it becomes apparent that she is on an escalating and reckless path towards self-destruction, which links her to the historical taiyozoku, the so-called “sun tribe” generation of postwar Japanese youth. The two have a falling out after he spots her at a tony country club where she is on a matchmaking date. He loses contact with her when...

Les cinq saisons de L'Avenir: le printemps, qui ne faisait pas qu'écrire sur les murs par Michel Bélil

Reviewed by: Les cinq saisons de L'Avenir: le printemps, qui ne faisait pas qu'écrire sur les murs par Michel Bélil Jeff Kendrick Bélil, Michel. Les cinq saisons de L'Avenir: le printemps, qui ne faisait pas qu'écrire sur les murs. L'Apothéose, 2019. ISBN 978-2-89775-270-5. Pp. 312. This is the third in a series of five planned novels set in the dystopian future city-state of L'Avenir. The series follows the development of main character Joachim O'Bomsawin who is serving as interim chief of police and as the full-time director of public works. Taking place, as the title suggests, during the spring of year near the end of the twenty-first century, the story begins with the double murder of members of two rival gangs vying for control of the streets. Things quickly get complicated when the two members are found dead together—suggesting another force at work as opposed to simple tit-for-tat revenge killings. In charge of the investigation, O'Bomsawin and his assistant, N'guyen, find themselves embroiled in a political scandal that threatens the stability of the city-state, which is already endangered from without, due to its low standing among other city-states in the regional collation known as l'amicale. This savage and professional hit unmasks domestic trouble facing the municipality on two fronts. Graffiti left on the walls of a local restaurant by rebel leader Zita Tanzanie fuels tensions between the "irregular" inhabitants of the city (refugees from southern tribal zones surrounding the city) and its political leaders to the extent that the ghetto [End Page 261] becomes a real tinderbox of emotion and violence. Meanwhile, political intrigue and internal power struggles at the highest levels of local government also menace to tear the city apart. Full of characters with unsuspected interrelationships, this novel will keep the reader on his or her feet trying to keep up with who is who. Furthermore, O'Bomsawin's ever-present understated humor and linguistic acrobatics add another layer of discombobulation that this reviewer found occasionally distracting from the main storyline. The author also intertwines climate change and social problems, such as immigration and integration, in the same way he melds crime fiction and science fiction in this work: at times leaving this reader wondering why he read it and what it was about. A helpful suggestion to anyone interested in this novel would be to tackle the first two volumes first. It seems that the support and background knowledge afforded by becoming familiar with the characters and the relationships between them would increase enjoyment of this third installment. Bélil does succeed in weaving an intricate tale that raises questions of political and national identity. He also allows readers to experience the paradox of living within a society when one is on the "outside" through his presentation of the protagonist's internal linguistic and logical wrangling. Written from a unique first-person perspective, this thriller/political commentary/work of science fiction draws the reader in and creates a space wherein one must literally, as well as figuratively, negotiate meaning. Jeff Kendrick Virginia Military Institute Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French

Analysis of a cross-diffusion model for rival gangs interaction in a city

We study a two-species cross-diffusion model that is inspired by a system of convection-diffusion equations derived from an agent-based model on a two-dimensional discrete lattice. The latter model has been proposed to simulate gang territorial development through the use of graffiti markings. We find two energy functionals for the system that allow us to prove a weak-stability result and identify equilibrium solutions. We show that under the natural definition of weak solutions, obtained from the weak-stability result, the system does not allow segregated solutions. Moreover, we present a result on the long-term behavior of solutions in the case when the product of the masses of the densities are smaller than a critical value. This result is complemented with numerical experiments.

A Thousand Fires by Shannon Price

Reviewed by: A Thousand Fires by Shannon Price Alaine Martaus Price, Shannon A Thousand Fires. Tor Teen, 2020 [304p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-30199-4 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-30198-7 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 In Valerie Simons' San Francisco, class warfare has turned to gang warfare, and her little brother has been killed in the crossfire. Eighteen and desperate for revenge, Valerie allows herself to be recruited by the Stags, one of three gangs vying for control of the city, and she soon learns that the conflict is far more complicated and far more personal than she ever knew. She also finds herself torn between her desire for vigilante justice and her abhorrence of the Wars that took her brother, and torn between a first love who is now the member of a rival gang and a potential new love. With its compelling mix of action and introspection, this novel offers a deeply personal journey of self-discovery that grapples with big ideas about gentrification, revolution, and revenge. Though there's a whiff of West Side Story here, the novel is grounded in a social stratification that is very real, lending the alt-world cityscape an air of authenticity and allowing the dystopian elements to read like realism. Growing tension paired with bursts of action and violence keep the plot moving, but it's the personal that will absorb readers, who will be drawn in by Valerie's story and her evolving friendships. A likely standalone novel with a resolution that packs an emotional wallop, it's an excellent option for those who want a book that makes them think and feel. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Prosthetic Memories in &lt;em&gt;The Sopranos&lt;/em&gt;

Prosthetic Memories in &lt;em&gt;The Sopranos&lt;/em&gt;

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.

Descriptive Epidemiology of Homicides With Victim and Suspect Race or Hispanic Ethnicity Discordance in the United States: Analysis of National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) 2005-2015.

Cross-racial violence is a high-profile issue in the United States; however, there is little empirical research on the epidemiology of cross-racial homicides. The objective of this work was to use national-level data to evaluate the characteristics of homicides in which the victim and suspect are of the same or different race or Hispanic ethnicity. Victims and suspects from National Violent Death Reporting System data (2005-2015) were classified into seven-categories on the basis of race/ethnicity (six non-Hispanic races or Hispanic ethnicity), and 51,454 homicide events were classified as concordant (same race or ethnicity), discordant (different race or ethnicity), or unknown (missing race or ethnicity or no suspect information). While discordancy was observed to be similar across all race and ethnicity groups, it was less likely with relatives, romantic partners, and relatives of romantic partners; less likely to occur at home; less likely to occur in intimate partner violence-related homicides; less likely when the homicide was preceded by an argument over money or property; less likely when the homicide was associated with a family problem; more likely among rival gangs and strangers than other known person relationships; and more likely with drug-involved homicides. There were differences for victims of non-Hispanic Black race. Notably, discordance was more likely for justifiable self-defense and more likely with victim having used a weapon. These results suggest that discordant homicides may follow patterns of peer groups and close relationships in society regardless of victim race/ethnicity, that is, individuals may form closer relationships with individuals of the same race/ethnicity.

Violence in the “balance”: a structural analysis of how rivals, allies, and third-parties shape inter-gang violence

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the role of local structural conditions that facilitate or hinder violence when enmity is present between parties, by examining shooting-involved violence among street gangs in Long Beach, California. Using structural balance theory, this paper investigates whether certain triadic structures in which two rival gangs i and j are related to a third gang is associated with the levels of violence that i will inflict upon j. Based on multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure to adjust for the dependent structure in the network, the results show that after controlling for individual and dyadic explanations, structural conditions are robust predictors of the levels and the directions of inter-gang violence. Structural imbalance indicates a lack of clear dominance in relations and predicts increased violence. Balanced structures tend to be much less violent; however, a gang will initiate violence if by doing so it expects to reinforce its dominant position.

Drawing Boundaries or Drawing Weapons? Neighborhood Master Status as Suppressor of Gang Violence

Criminological scholarship on gangs has documented that attempts to take over territory and drug markets under the control of another gang is a primary motivation of inter-gang violence. However, little is known about situations where competition over territory and drug markets comes from within the territory, or about instances where gang competition does not lead to violence between criminal groups. Drawing on over 140 interviews and over nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Canada’s oldest social housing project—Regent Park—this article describes and analyzes the changing nature of the neighborhood’s gang landscape as a result of neighborhood redevelopment. In particular, it examines why the emergences of a rival gang within Regent did not incite violence as the literature would expect. The article outlines how the emergence of a new rival gang within a territory previously dominated by established criminal groups did not result in the type of violence, in part because the two groups shared a “master status” of being Regent residents, which served to buffer inter-gang violence. Further, it argues that instead of drawing weapons, the established criminal groups expressed their frustration with the loss of their territorial monopoly to emerging groups by morally distinguishing themselves from the new groups. This article concludes by casting a scholarly spotlight on the means through which boundary work develops between criminal groups, and how cultural contexts affect identities and discourses in physical space.

A convection–diffusion model for gang territoriality

We present an agent-based model to simulate gang territorial development motivated by graffiti marking on a two-dimensional discrete lattice. For simplicity, we assume that there are two rival gangs present, and they compete for territory. In this model, agents represent gang members and move according to a biased random walk, adding graffiti with some probability as they move and preferentially avoiding the other gang’s graffiti. All agent interactions are indirect, with the interactions occurring through the graffiti field. We show numerically that as parameters vary, a phase transition occurs between a well-mixed state and a well-segregated state. The numerical results show that system mass, decay rate and graffiti rate influence the critical parameter. From the discrete model, we derive a continuum system of convection–diffusion equations for territorial development. Using the continuum equations, we perform a linear stability analysis to determine the stability of the equilibrium solutions and we find that we can determine the precise location of the phase transition in parameter space as a function of the system mass and the graffiti creation and decay rates.

Youth Gun Violence Prevention in a Digital Age.

Gakirah Barnes, a 17-year old who publicly claimed affiliation with a well-known Chicago gang, was killed just 3 blocks from her home in 2014. She had revealed her address in real time on social media, which directed the perpetrators to her exact location. Her Twitter account revealed a road map of clues about the trauma she endured and her own engagement in violence. Her online history included direct and indirect threats toward known rival gangs, boastful discussions of the perpetration of past violence, images and videos of her with semiautomatic handguns, and countless expressions of loss and grief. Although it is evident that Gakirah’s Twitter posts played a role in her killing, could the same social media information have been used to prevent her death? Firearm violence is a serious public health problem in the United States, where the firearm death rate is 10 times higher than other high-income, industrialized nations. Firearm violence is particularly acute in large cities, where violence tends to cluster in marginalized communities of color. In a report from the University of Chicago Crime Laboratory,1 researchers stated that Chicago experienced a 58% increase in homicides in 2016; 80% of those homicide victims were African American, and within that group, most were males between the ages of 15 and 34 with at least 1 previous arrest. In addition, for the first 6 months of 2017, Chicago logged 327 homicides, which puts it on pace to … Address correspondence to Desmond Upton Patton, PhD, MSW, Columbia University School of Social Work, 1255 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: dp2787{at}columbia.edu

Home in Honduras

Home in Honduras

23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. By Keramet Reiter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. 584 By Keramet Reiter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.In 1996, Los Angeles Times revealed that guards in California's 588 maximum-security prisons had been staging gladiatorial contests 589 between inmates. What's more, the contests often occurred in the 590 state's housing units, solitary confinement facilities 591 designed to keep the most dangerous inmates in continuous isola- 592 tion. guards would remotely unlock the cells of rival gang 593 members at the same time, intentionally releasing them into the 594 same space. Five men died when the fights got out of control and 595 guards shot them. 596Scandals like this one erupted with startling regularity in the state's secure housing units. But while inmates' lawsuits led to some modest reforms, the units themselves were not declared unconstitu- tional by the courts or deemed inhumane by the state legislature. Indeed, at Pelican Bay Prison, the state's first supermax facility, prison administrators spent the better part of the 1990s transform- ing what was once an extraordinary practice-round-the-clock iso- lation in an 80 square foot space-into a common one that some inmates would endure for decades. Pelican Bay's construction in 1988 represented an unprecedented expansion and modernization of the state's secure housing infrastructure, all in the name of secu- rity. Inmates' dangerousness, prison administrators argued, war- ranted both the extreme measure and the enormous discretion judges and legislators had given to corrections personnel about how to implement it.The power of that unchecked administrative discretion hovers over the entirety of Keramet Reiter's 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement, a brilliant and path-breaking biography of a prison that critics called a high-tech dungeon. Studying everything from the creation of the prison's blueprints in the 1980s to the response to the appalling scandals that erupted within it after it opened, Reiter finds that legislators elected to rep- resent the people and judges charged with protecting inmates' con- stitutional rights failed to meaningfully monitor the dramatic expansion of an extreme sanction.Drawing on a wide array of legislative, judicial, and journalistic sources, correspondence with prisoners confined in long-term soli- tary, and-most compellingly-oral histories she conducted with prisoners and prison administrators, Reiter offers an engrossing account of the history of Pelican Bay. Without compromising her scholarly orientation, she writes with the clarity, intensity, and acces- sibility of an investigative journalist.The modern history of solitary confinement in California, Reiter argues, begins with the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and their infiltration into the prison. In corrections adminis- trators' minds, prisoners like George Jackson, a Black Panther whose Soledad Brother had made him a hero to the radical left, were responsible for the spiraling violence in California's prisons. Solitary confinement became a way to isolate ringleaders and prevent the conflicts they created.But reactionary backlash against the radical prison movement only did so much. It is not chiefly to blame for the massive expan- sion of solitary confinement, Reiter finds. Hannah Arendt's famous account of the banality of in Nazi Germany is a more apt point of reference (and one she explicitly invokes). The ongoing imposition of solitary confinement is not deliberate or malicious, she explains. [R]ather, it is the culmination of everyday bureau- cratic functioning and path dependency, in which one day of iso- lation becomes thirty days, and thirty days becomes thirty years (p. 5).Importantly, though, evidence in 23/7 and other studies of hyper-modern punishment suggest that banal evil does not stay banal for long (Dayan 2011; Lynch 2000; Smith 2008). …

A Signaling Perspective on Disengagement from Gangs

Extant theoretical work on gang exit has focused more on the pushes and pulls that motivate de-identification, rather than the mechanisms underlying the process of disengagement. How gang members successfully communicate their unobservable “inner change” to outsiders and eventually escape the grip of the gang is unresolved. This article reinterprets the current inventory of knowledge on gang disengagement through the lens of signaling theory. We position de-identification as private information that the gang member must signal to competing stakeholders—the gang, rival gangs, crime control agents—in order to successfully progress through the stages of disengagement established in prior theory and research. We explore how mechanisms of signaling, screening, and credible commitments underline continuity and change in levels of gang embeddedness and examine the role of the receivers of signals in validating disengagement. We conclude with testable hypotheses, the generality of the model, and associated implications for research and practice.

How Can Violence Among Urban Youth Be Stopped?

How Can Violence Among Urban Youth Be Stopped?