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The Ties That Bind: Desistance From Gangs David C. Pyrooz, Scott H. Decker and Vincent J. Webb Crime & Delinquency published online 8 September 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0011128710372191 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cad.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/08/26/0011128710372191

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Crime Delinquency OnlineFirst, published on September 8, 2010 as doi:10.1177/0011128710372191

Article

The Ties That Bind: Desistance From Gangs

Crime & Delinquency XX(X) 1-26 © 2010 SAGE Publications Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0011128710372191 http://cad.sagepub.com

David C. Pyrooz1, Scott H. Decker1, and Vincent J. Webb2

Abstract The present study conceptualizes gang membership in a life-course framework. The authors focus specifically on an understudied aspect of gang membership—desistance. This study’s goal is to further develop our understanding of the process of desisting from gangs. This is done by examining the social and emotional ties that former gang members maintain with their previous gang network. Using a detention sample of juvenile arrestees, the authors first compare differences between 156 current and 83 former gang members at a bivariate level. This is followed by a multivariate analysis of former gang members that (a) examines factors that predict increases of ties to the former gang network and (b) illustrates the importance of gang ties by exploring their effects on victimization. The findings shed light on the correlates and consequences of persisting gang ties. In particular, it is found that ties have direct positive effects on recent victimizations. More important, it is found that longer lengths of desistance matter to the extent that ties are diminished; that is, length of desistance operates indirectly through gang ties to reduce victimization. The study concludes with a discussion of the conceptual and policy implications surrounding gang desistance and how lingering ties to the former gang network are crucial to understanding the desistance process. Keywords desistance, gang ties, gang membership, victimization, life-course processes, reentry, gang programming 1

Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA

2

Corresponding Author: David Pyrooz, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA Email: [email protected]


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Crime & Delinquency XX(X)

Over the past century, gangs and gang members have been observed, interviewed, and surveyed in a variety of contexts. This research has yielded information about the history, demographics, subculture, criminal involvement, membership patterns, and group processes of gangs and their respective members (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Klein, 1995; Klein & Maxson, 2006; Short & Strodtbeck, 1965; Thrasher, 1927). More recently, criminology has examined crime over the life course, due largely to the availability of longitudinal data (Farrington, 2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993). A life-course approach typically examines three distinct periods relative to involvement in crime: onset, continuity, and desistance. It is well known that gang involvement also follows similar patterns—youth join gangs, participate in gang activities, then, for the most part, leave gangs (Esbensen, Huizinga, & Weiher, 1993; Hill, Lui, & Hawkins, 2001; Peterson, Taylor, & Esbensen, 2004). To analyze this process, “gang” can be substituted for the typical life-course variable “crime” and these three stages can be examined analogously. It may be expected that each of these stages would warrant equal attention from the research community, but this has hardly been the case. The preponderance of gang research has focused on onset and continuity. For example, the literature on risk factors for gang joining is large enough that Klein and Maxson (2006) were able to provide a 10-page review of 20 studies examining characteristics of risk (see also, Howell & Egley, 2005). Moreover, a variety of studies examine the reasons why youth join gangs (Decker & Curry, 2000; Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, Smith, & Tobin, 2003; see Tobin, 2007, for a summary). Continuity—behaviors during active periods of membership—has received the most attention, with dozens of studies examining a variety of aspects relative to gangs, including definitional issues (Ball & Curry, 1995; Esbensen, Winfree, He, & Taylor, 2001), group processes (Short & Strodtbeck, 1965), theoretical explanations of the gang/delinquency link (Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, & Chard-Wierschem, 1993), and explanations for gang violence (Decker, 1996; Klein, 1995; Papachristos, 2009). The latter of the three stages—desistance—is an understudied phenomenon in the gang literature. As Klein and Maxson (2006, p. 154) pointed out, “[s] urprisingly little research has been conducted on gang desistance and the processes of leaving gangs.” This is not too far from where the crime desistance literature was a decade ago, when some authors argued that knowledge on the topic was scant (Bushway, Thornberry, & Krohn, 2003; Piquero, Farrington, & Blumstein, 2003). Reducing the length of gang membership would pay dividends in lowering offending and victimization, not to mention both the collateral and direct costs of imprisonment (Clear, Rose, & Ryder, 2001). At this point, however, we do not know much more about gang desistance than when Klein (1971) first called attention to the issue.


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The goal of the current study is to extend the discussion of gang desistance. We do this by examining one aspect of the desistance process—persisting gang ties—that has been qualitatively identified as an important factor associated with former gang membership (Decker & Lauritsen, 2002). The larger criminological literature treats desistance as a process, and it is our belief that gang desistance is no different. We examine desistance by focusing on a sample of former gang members and assessing the role of gang ties to the former gang network. We begin by reviewing the existing literature on gang desistance and pay close attention to the desistance processes. This is followed by a discussion of the implications of offending and victimization for desistance, and the conceptual links between gang and crime desistance. Using a detention sample of juvenile arrestees, we compare differences between former and current gang members. This is followed by a two-stage multivariate test that first explores predictors of social and emotional gang ties among former gang members. To illustrate the importance of these lingering ties, the second stage of the analysis includes gang ties as an explanatory variable in predicting victimization as an outcome.

Existing Gang Desistance Research Decker and Lauritsen’s (2002) study of 24 former St. Louis gang members focused on the path followed to leave the gang. The semistructured interviews revealed that their sample of gang members either left the gang abruptly or gradually desisted from the group. These departures are comparable with the life-course desistance concepts of “knifing-off” (Elder, 1998) or treating desistance as a “developmental process” (Bushway, Piquero, Broidy, Cauffman, & Mazerolle, 2001). With respect to the former, Maruna and Roy (2007) described the term knifing-off as a purging of one’s previous ways, social roles, including associates, disadvantage, stigma, and opportunities. The term is applicable to a variety of concepts, but for gang members, it applies to severing ties with gang associates and thus eliminating (or reducing) criminal opportunities. The second gang desistance pattern that Decker and Lauritsen (2002, p. 66) described was a more gradual departure, with gang members “simply drift[ing] away” from the gang. Their research suggested that the process of gang desistance was characterized by an accrual of perceptions running opposite to the gangs’ purpose (e.g., victimization of friends, age-graded maturation, increasing commitment to family). This process parallels Vigil’s (1988) findings for gang members in Southern California. Vigil (1988, p. 109) found that the desistance process is marked by a “succession quality” that included a “combination of reasons or series of events” acting in concert with one another pushing or pulling the individual away


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from the gang. Such events culminate in a decision to leave the gang. This departure usually involves the individual gradually reducing time spent with the gang by attending to family or getting a job (Spergel, 1995, p. 105; Vigil, 1988). These desistance patterns of abrupt versus gradual departures may also be dependent on additional factors, such as the level of engagement within the gang. The gang literature clearly finds that there are core and peripheral members within age-graded subgroupings of the gang (Klein & Maxson, 2006; McGloin, 2005; Vigil, 1988). Horowitz (1983) found that it was more difficult for core members to leave than peripheral members, consistent with Klein’s (1971) research in Los Angeles that core members are more involved in gang activities and better integrated into the group. For members at the fringe of the gang, it may be easier to drift in and out of the gang because of less allegiance or weaker bonds to the group or other gang members (Hagedorn, 1994; Spergel, 1995; Starbuck, Howell, & Lindquist, 2001). Regardless of membership status (core vs. fringe), powerful events such as violence have been found to be an important part of the desistance process (Decker & Lauritsen, 2002; see Vigil, 1988, pp. 106-109). In fact, Decker and Lauritsen’s (2002) sample of former gang members indicated that violence was the most frequently cited reason why youth chose to leave their gang. There is an upper limit to gang violence and the tolerance that individual gang members have for that violence (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996, p. 272). Decker and Lauritsen (2002, p. 61) noted this paradox, and stated that “[t]he very activity that may keep gangs together appears to have provided the impetus for the majority of this sample to leave the gang.” For this reason, violence and other life-course transitions are important to understand.

Offending and Victimization: Implications for Leaving the Gang Gang desistance has important implications for those interested in reducing youth violence. Despite the perception that gang membership is “for life,” involvement is typically short-lived for teenage youth. Longitudinal findings in Denver, Seattle, and Rochester revealed that the majority (55% to 69%) of gang members remain in a gang for 1 year or less (Esbensen et al., 1993; Hill et al., 2001; Thornberry et al., 1993). Those data also show that for every 100 gang members, roughly 5 continue in a gang beyond 4 years. Herein lies the problem. These same longitudinal studies (in addition to a number of cross-sectional studies) find that, compared with their nongang peers, gang members are disproportionately involved in crime and delinquency (Hill et al., 2001; Thornberry, 1998; Thornberry et al., 2003). These findings are an important motivation for our efforts to better understand the gang


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desistance process, as hastening departure from the gang should pay dividends for crime reduction. Involvement in illegal activities is an integral characteristic of gangs. In fact, many scholarly definitions of a gang include “illegal activity” as a defining component (Klein & Maxson, 2006, p. 4). After all, if gangs were not extensively involved in crime and delinquency they would not be perceived as a distinct social problem. But the research findings are consistent: Involvement in gangs enhances involvement in delinquency and victimization. For example, Thornberry (1998) found that gang members, despite comprising a minority (31% in Rochester and 14% in Denver) of the youth in the samples, contributed the majority (69% and 79%, respectively) of the violent acts. Because gang members are often the targets of other gang members’ violence, it should come as no surprise that those involved in gangs are also disproportionately victimized. In a survey of St. Louis middle school youth, Curry, Decker, and Egley (2002) reported that gang youth were six times more likely to get shot at and four times more likely to have been shot than nongang-involved youth. Moreover, using one wave of GREAT (Gang Resistance Education and Training) data, Peterson et al. (2004, p. 805) found that gang members were more likely than nongang youth to report having been victims of assault (66% vs. 48%), robbery (25% vs. 7%), and aggravated assault (43% vs. 9%) over the past year (see also, Taylor, 2008). The research stemming from Thornberry et al.’s (1993) proposed models of the link between gangs and delinquency has been quite consistent.1 Joining a gang corresponds with an increase in offending and victimization, especially for violence (Delisi, Barnes, Beaver, & Gibson, 2009; see Krohn & Thornberry, 2008, for a summary). Thornberry et al. (2003) stated that “after adolescents leave the gang, they generally exhibit substantial reductions in their level of violent offending” (p. 108). The support for even modest facilitation effects tells us that leaving the gang is associated with a change in behavior. If gangs facilitate offending and victimization, then studying desistance is that much more important and supports work stating that intervention efforts are needed rather than letting “nature take its course” (Klein & Maxson, 2006, p. 263). But for this to happen, it is necessary to better understand what exactly constitutes former gang membership.

Crime Desistance and Gang Desistance: The Confounding Role of Persisting Ties to the Former Gang Network The crime desistance literature is clear when stating that a termination in offending is what constitutes true desistance (Bushway et al., 2001). Similarly, departing from


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the gang should constitute true gang desistance. Both processes are comparably wedded to age, but problems such as intermittency plague the operationalization of these processes. For instance, Laub and Sampson (2001, p. 6) posed the question: “Can desistance occur after one act of crime?” False interpretation of desistance due to intermittency-related measurement is an issue for desistance research (Kazemian, 2007). Intermittency does indeed exist for gang membership (Starbuck et al., 2001; Thornberry et al., 2003), but the existing gang literature does not permit gangs to be so fluidly substituted for crime in this regard. The reason is that belonging to a gang is a state while committing a crime is an act (you cannot really “belong” to crime; see Kissner & Pyrooz, 2009; Maruna, 2001). Both involvement in and disengagement from the “state” of gang membership have typically been operationalized via self-report (see Esbensen et al., 2001; Katz, Webb, & Decker, 2005) and treated in absolute terms (e.g., in gang vs. not in gang). At this point in gang research, the impetus to empirically address issues of intermittent involvement has not developed similar to crime desistance, although emerging research is heading in that direction (Lovegrove & Thornberry, 2008). For gang desistance, the operationalization of “former” gang membership was called into question by Decker and Lauritsen (2002). They identified a gray area occupied by many former gang members after leaving their gang. The problem with this gray area is that it rests on whether “desistance” precludes any lingering ties to the gang including any hanging out, drinking, playing sports, watching television with a cousin (who is a gang member), eating lunch in the high school cafeteria, or participating in illegal activities with other gang members that could warrant police involvement. Decker and Lauritsen (2002, p. 66) examined these enduring ties to the gang (see also, Fleisher, 1998) and found that defining a former gang member was more difficult than they anticipated because “self-described ex-gang members continue to report varying degrees of attachments and activities with others in the gang, and the process of disengagement is often gradual.” This leads us to agree with Bushway et al.’s (2001) and Maruna’s (2001) conceptual and methodological contentions that gang desistance should also be understood and treated as a process. A blurry line exists, however, for when the gang desistance process starts and when it ends; thus, more research is necessary to study this process and to examine adolescents who no longer self-nominate to current gang membership. In our view, lingering social and emotional gang ties are a key to understanding gang desistance. The present investigation takes a step in this direction by focusing on the correlates and consequences of the ties that bind.

The Present Study It is our objective to advance the notion that gang membership can be better conceptually and empirically informed by a life-course framework. The ensuing goal


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of the present study is to examine the “gray area” of gang desistance—the presence of social and emotional gang ties to prior networks—that Decker and Lauritsen (2002) exposed in their St. Louis study. Focusing on this aspect of gang involvement is informative for both policy and theory purposes. In spite of some discussion of gang desistance within the literature, the research has not advanced our knowledge of the topic commensurate to the policy implications for law enforcement officials and policymakers interested in gang-related behaviors. Shortening the length of gang involvement has both direct and indirect relevance for reducing crime and victimization and for criminal justice system related costs. We move the desistance research agenda forward by examining a cross-sectional sample of juvenile arrestees in Arizona.

Data and Methods The data in this study come from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program that was established by the National Institute of Justice in the late 1980s. The ADAM program was created to monitor substance use patterns (e.g., behavioral patterns) among those recently arrested. Although the program extended across 35 sites throughout the United States, we focus on the Maricopa County site that collected data from booking facilities in around the Phoenix region. This site was chosen because the survey instrument contained a gang addendum with measures tapping into the core concept of this study: gang ties, or continued connections to a former gang network. Consistent with our study goals, we restrict our attention to those who reported to “ever” being a member of a gang. Indeed, those who never reported gang membership would not possess the direct familiarity of the social or structural process of the gang experience (e.g., organization, rivalries). Nor would they experience having ties to their “former” gang. We partition our sample by immediate gang status (i.e., former or current gang member). To establish whether a respondent was a gang member, we employed the self-nomination technique that has been found to be a “particularly robust measure of gang membership” (Esbensen et al., 2001, p. 124; see also Katz et al., 2005).2 Respondents were first asked whether they were “currently a gang member.” Those who responded no were later asked if they had “ever been a gang member.” The resulting sample consisted of 239 individuals (156 current, 83 former gang members) who at one point were involved in a gang. Because the ADAM data were collected from a juvenile detention facility of arrestees interviewed within 48 hours of booking, this sample better reflects “the street” than community-, school-, or prison-based samples. Detention sample have a greater likelihood of capturing more delinquent- and gang-involved youth who are freshly removed from the street. These youth have a direct familiarity with recent happenings and changes in gang activities. Of the juveniles who were approached,


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more than 96% agreed to participate. Over 14 days each quarter, trained local staff conducted interviews with youth within the first 48 hours of booking. Data were combined over multiple quarters to capture a larger sample.3

Dependent Variables As mentioned above, we conduct a multivariate two-stage analysis focusing solely on former gang members. There are two outcome variables of interest: gang ties (DV1) and victimizations (DV2). In the second stage with victimizations as the outcome variable, gang ties becomes a predictor variable. As we discussed in our theoretical framework, the sustained gang ties of former gang members is the focus of this article; we use victimization to demonstrate the importance of these ties. The first dependent variable, gang ties, explores the extent to which a former gang member retained ties to his or her previous gang network. This index includes six items relative to persisting social and emotional ties (“respond if gang was disrespected;” see Table 1 for descriptions). These items were summated to create an index that ranged from 0 to 6. These items exhibited acceptable internal consistency (α = .78; Xr = .44)4 and Table 1 indicates that former gang members on average reported over two ties to their prior gang network. “Gang ties” was treated as an ordered-categorical measure and was consistent with the parallelism assumptions of ordered logistic regression (Norusis, 2008). The second outcome variable is a variety score measure of victimizations. Respondents were asked if they had been victimized in any of seven ways over the past 30 days (e.g., “robbed” or “assaulted;” see Table 1 for descriptions). The responses were dummy coded and then summated to create a variety score that we treat as a count measure. More than 40% of the respondents reported at least one type of victimization in the last month, ranging from 0 to 4 victimizations. Although the survey instrument did not allow us to determine how many times a subject was a victim of a specific crime, based on the existing literature (see Melde, Taylor, & Esbensen, 2009; Taylor, Peterson, & Esbensen, 2007), we hypothesize that former gang members with strong ties to the gang will be recipients of more types of victimizations. We focused on victimization rather than offending because of the importance Decker and Lauritsen (2002) placed on personal and vicarious violence in the gang desistance process. The victim-offending overlap is well known in the criminological literature (Lauritsen & Laub, 2007; Meier & Miethe, 1993; Sampson & Lauritsen, 1990) and possibly even more consistent with respect to modeling gang involvement with offending and victimization. Research has found that gang involvement facilitates both offending (Thornberry et al., 2003) and victimization (Taylor, 2008) and leaving the gang corresponds with decreases in both.5


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Pyrooz et al. Table 1. Summary Statistics (N = 239) Variables

Mean

SD Range

α (Xr)

Gang membership status Former 0.35 — 0-1 Demographic Age 15.43 1.44 9-17 Male 0.83 — 0-1 Hispanic 0.59 — 0-1 School disruption 0.43 — 0-1 Behavioral Serious delinquency 0.34 — 0-1 Victimizations (count) 0.76 1.06 0-4 .50 (.11) Threatened with a gun? 0.21 — Shot at? 0.13 — Shot? 0.01 — Threatened with another weapon? 0.15 — Injured with another weapon? 0.05 — Jumped or beaten up? 0.16 — Robbed? 0.06 — Gang delinquency (% involvement) 51.45 30.21 0-100 .74 (.28) Tagging with the gang? 0.56 — Stealing with the gang? 0.54 — Intimidation/threatening people with the gang? 0.56 — Robbing people with the gang? 0.36 — Jumping or attacking people with the gang? 0.57 — Drive-by shooting with the gang? 0.27 — Killing people with the gang? 0.03 — Sell drugs with the gang? 0.24 — Environmental Gang organization (index) 3.22 1.97 0-7 .71 (.25) Does the gang have a leader? 0.34 — Does the gang have regular meetings? 0.39 — Does the gang have rules? 0.51 — Are there punishments if rules are broken? 0.43 — Does the gang have colors, symbols, or signs? 0.86 — Do members have responsibilities to the gang? 0.35 — Do members give money to the gang? 0.32 — Gang neighborhood (index) 2.64 1.61 0-5 .72 (.34) Is there gang activity in your neighborhood? 0.75 — Are people living on your street in gangs? 0.66 — Are there rival gangs in your neighborhood? 0.53 — Is there pressure to join a gang? 0.22 — Problems due to gangs? 0.49 — (continued)


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Table 1. (continued) SD Range

α (Xr)

Variables

Mean

Former gang member specific Length of desistance (months) Gang ties Emotional Would you: respond if the gang was disrespected? retaliate if a member of former gang was hurt? Social Have you: hung out with members? worn colors? drank or got high with members? flashed gang signs?

20.39 18.99 0-95 2.11 1.94 0-6 .78 (.44) 0.94 0.89 0-2 0.44 — 0.50 — 1.43 1.65 0-4 0.37 — 0.31 — 0.27 — 0.24 —

Note. SD = standard deviation; α = Cronbach’s alpha; Xr = mean interitem correlation. Rows with italicized text indicate that the variable was used in our analyses (other items were used to construct indices).

Independent Variables Gang organization was tapped using seven dummy-coded items to create an index. The respondents were asked whether their current or former gang had leaders, regular meetings, rules, punishment for rule violation, colors/symbols/signs of membership, responsibilities of membership, and if members give money to the gang. These items were summated to create an index score (α = .71, Xr = .25) ranging from 0 to 7, similar to prior research (Decker, Katz, & Webb, 2008). Gang neighborhood was measured with five items that assessed the degree to which respondents live in neighborhoods embedded with gangs. These binary items were summated to create a composite score (α = .72, Xr = .34). Youth living in neighborhoods with more gang activity should be more likely to involve themselves in the day-to-day activity of the gang, thus retaining ties to the former gang network (Curry & Spergel, 1988; Thornberry et al., 2003; Vigil, 1988). Gang delinquency was examined to determine how involved the subjects were in their gang, tapping into an aspect of core/fringe membership (Klein, 1971; Griffin & Hepburn, 2006). The logic behind this measure is that those more deeply embedded in gang activity will retain more ties (McGloin, 2005; Papachristos, 2006; Thornberry et al., 2003, p. 43). Subjects were asked, for example, “Did your gang sell drugs to other gangs?” A yes response would prompt the follow-up, “Did you ever do that with them?” To create the measure, the numerator was the sum of


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binary gang delinquent activities a respondent was involved in and the denominator was the sum of the activities that respondent’s gang was involved in (α = .74, Xr = .28).6 The initial response scale was between 0 and 1. For ease of interpretation, we multiplied that number by 100 to reflect a percentage. Length of desistance was measured by asking respondents to provide us with the year and month in which they left the gang. We then compared month of desistance with the date of the interview. Of the original sample of 85 former gang members, 11 could not provide a month and of those, 2 could not provide a year. The latter two were removed from the analysis (thus leaving a sample of 83) and for the former nine, we used the mid-point of the year they indicated desisting to reduce measurement error. Former gang members, on average, reported desisting for more than 20 months. With the mean age just less than 16 years, this finding is consistent with the research (Huff, 1998; Klein & Maxson, 2006, p. 41; Thornberry et al., 2003), especially being that the majority of gang members join at a young age and remain in a gang for 1 year or less (Esbensen et al., 1993; Hill et al., 2001; Thornberry et al., 1993; Thornberry et al., 2003).

Control Variables Five control variables were included in this analysis: age, gender, ethnicity, delinquency, and school disruption. At the bivariate level, these variables are important for providing descriptive differences between former and current gang members. At the multivariate level, these variables are included as statistical controls. Control variables included age (respondent’s age in years), male (1 = male, 0 = female), and Hispanic (1 = Hispanic, 0 = other). For serious delinquency, those who were booked for serious crimes (e.g., violence, Part I index offenses) were coded “1” and those booked for less serious crimes (e.g., drug possession, probation violation) were coded “0.” For school disruption, the subject was first asked whether they were still in school. Those who responded “yes” were coded “0.” Those who responded “no” were asked the reason they were no longer in school. Subjects who dropped out from school or were expelled were coded “1,” whereas those who reported graduating or completing their GED were coded “0.”

Analytic Strategy We begin our analysis by first comparing the individual, group, and environmental characteristics of former gang members with current gang members. This is done for both descriptive and conceptual purposes; being that our sample is young and delinquent (collected at juvenile detention facilities), and at a ripe age for gang membership (Huff, 1998; Thornberry et al., 2003), this provides a good opportunity


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to examine differences between the two groups. Although we do not expect to find demographic differences (Esbensen et al., 2001), some group and behavioral differences may be present (Katz et al., 2005). We do this by analyzing the bivariate associations (Pearson’s r) and mean differences (χ2) after partitioning the sample according to gang membership status (former or current) to compare differences across the study variables. The second portion of our analyses examines former gang members only. Because the goal of this study is to determine the relevance of enduring gang ties, we use victimization to demonstrate the efficacy of those ties in examining gang desistance. A two-stage regression model is used to examine the outcome variables. This model will allow us to examine the direct and indirect effects of the independent variables on victimization. Regressing both gang ties and victimizations on the control and explanatory variables using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression could produce misleading results due to violating OLS assumptions (Long, 1997). To account for the ordered-categorical nature of the outcome variable gang ties, we employ ordered logistic regression. The second outcome variable, victimizations, has a positively skewed distribution requiring a regression model that can account for a rare event dependent variable (Long, 1997). Consistent with the literature on variety measures (Hindelang, Hirschi, & Weis, 1981; Sweeten, Bushway, & Paternoster, 2009), we employ a Poisson distributed regression model for the analysis.7

Findings Descriptive Characteristics of the Sample The mean age of our sample was nearly 15.5 years old, allowing plenty of time for gang joining and leaving. The sample was overwhelmingly male (83%) and Hispanic (59%), consistent with prior gang research (Curry et al., 2002; Egley, 2002). We mentioned earlier that the detention-based nature of this study is beneficial for delinquency and gang research because it captures an element of the population that escapes school-based research. This is demonstrated in our finding that nearly 43% of the arrestees in our sample had either dropped out or had been expelled from school. The sample averaged nearly one type of victimization per person (mean = 0.76) over the course of the past 30 days. The respondents reported participating in at least half of the property and violent delinquencies their gang participated in, with the majority reporting having tagged, stolen, assaulted, or intimidated/threatened with the gang. On average, respondents reported living in a neighborhood with at least some gang activity (mean = 2.64) and being involved in gangs that exhibit some degree of organization (mean = 3.22).


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Pyrooz et al.

Table 2. Former Gang Members’ Ties to the Gang and Months of Desistance (n = 83) Number of Ties

Percentage of Former Gang Members With Emotional

0 1-2 3-4 5+

42 42 58 39 19 1.17 (1.23) 0.94 (0.89)a

Total

Desistance: Months Since Leaving the Gang

31 27 26 16 2.10 (1.94)

26.04 (25.12)a 19.91 (17.25) 19.27 (15.12) 11.92 (8.87) 20.39 (18.99)

Social

a. Mean (standard deviation) across the row/column.

With respect to the former gang members, Table 2 reveals the distribution of gang ties by months of desistance. On average, former gang members reported over 20 months of separation from the gang. Former gang members reported an average of over two ties to the gang, with over half reporting an emotional tie. As the number of months of desistance increased, the number of ties to their former gang network decreased—best evidenced in the moderate bivariate correlation presented in Table 3 (r = −.24, p < .05). This indicates that time is an important factor in the desistance process.

Bivariate Analysis In Table 3, the goal was to partition the data according to self-reported gang status to examine the bivariate associations and mean differences across our study variables. The upper diagonal contains the associations for former gang members. Age was positively correlated with length of desistance, and negatively correlated with school disruptions and ties to the gang. This suggests that school disruptions occur at younger ages. In addition, as these former gang members grow older, it would be expected that they would have desisted for longer periods of time and that gang ties diminish. Finally, those reporting recent victimizations also reported desisting from more organized gangs. The lower diagonal in Table 3 displays the bivariate correlations for current gang members. Age was negatively correlated with serious delinquency. Male was positively correlated with Hispanic. Gang organization was negatively correlated with Hispanic and school disruption, suggestion that non-Hispanics and those with reportedly stable school experiences were involved more organized gangs than their counterparts. Consistent with former gang members, as the organization of the gang increased, so did the reporting of recent victimizations. Finally, bivariate


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.01 — .23* .09 .08 −.05 −.06 .01

−.10

0.75* (0.44)

0.87 (0.34)

−.01

15.64 (1.42)

15.32 (1.45)

X2

— −.06 .07 .14 .10 −.12 −.07 −.16*

X1

0.60 (0.50)

0.57 (0.50)

.04

−.05 .16 — .21 .03 −.24* .04 .11

X3

0.46 (0.50)

0.37 (0.49)

−.06

−.43* −.18 .07 — .07 −.21* .05 .15

X4

57.69 (28.37)

39.74* (30.37)

.11

−.10 −.03 .06 −.01 — .12 .11 −.11

X5

3.22 (1.95)

3.20 (2.02)

.25*

−.04 −.37* −.18 .13 .15 — .15 −.02

X6

2.91 (1.50)

2.12* (1.67)

.11

−.04 −.19 −.10 −.04 −.01 .07 — −.08

X7

0.35 (0.48)

0.33 (0.47)

−.09

−.10 −.07 .04 −.11 −.14 −.07 −.10 —

X8

20.39 (18.99)

.30* −.15 −.05 .17 −.08 .13 .08 .04 —

X9

2.11 (1.94)

−.28* −.20 −.02 −.26* .18 .19 .20 .13 −.24* —

Y1

0.88 (1.14)

0.53* (0.86)

−.12 .07 −.03 .08 .19 .23* .05 −.01 −.01 .19 —

Y2

−.16*

.11 −.16* −.03 −.09 −.28* −.01 −.24* −.02

X11

Note. Former gang membership associations are depicted in the upper diagonal (current in the lower diagonal). X11 is a binary variable for gang membership status (former = 1, current = 0) where positive correlations are associated with former gang membership. W ith respect to the mean differences between former and current gang members, significant differences were established using traditional chi-square and phi statistics. *p < .05.

X1 Age X2 Male X3 Hispanic X4 School disruption X5 Gang delinquency X6 Gang organization X7 Gang neighborhood X8 Serious delinquency X9 Length of desistance Y1 Gang ties Y2 Victimizations Former gang members (N = 83) Mean Standard deviation Current gang members (N = 156) Mean Standard deviation

Variable

Table 3. Means, Standard Deviations, and Bivariate Associations for Study Variables by Gang Membership Status

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associations were examined between gang membership status (X11; former = 1; current = 0) and the other nine applicable variables. Former gang membership status corresponded with negative associations across the variables male, gang delinquency, gang neighborhood, and recent victimizations. These associations are reflected in the mean differences that can be seen at the bottom of Table 3. It is important to note that because these are bivariate correlations, especially being that these data are cross-sectional, any inferences should be made with caution because they do not account for extraneous influences. Bivariate associations by gang membership status corresponded with statistically significant mean differences between the two groups with respect to gender, gang delinquency, gang neighborhood, and victimization. Former gang members were less likely to be male (former = 0.75, current = 0.87), to have participated in gang delinquency (former = 40%, current = 58%), lived in active gang neighborhoods (former = 2.12, current = 2.91), and experienced fewer victimization over the past 30 days (former = 0.53, current = 0.88). These findings show that, even within a detention-based sample nearly identical in age, there are contextual differences between the two groups.

Multivariate Analysis Table 4 displays the results of the two-stage analysis. In the first stage, we estimated an ordered logistic regression and regressed our outcome variable—number of gang ties—on our explanatory and control variables to determine what factors increased the number of ties to the gang. Model 1 indicates that three variables—school disruption, gang neighborhood, and length of desistance—exhibited statistically significant changes in the outcome variable. Those who drop out or who are expelled from school maintain 65% of gang ties compared to former gang members in school or who have graduated. This suggests that in this sample of former gang members, it may be the case that school is the heart of gang activity, not inconsistent with existing research (Brunson & Miller, 2009; Curry et al., 2002; Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 2001). Leaving school in this context may mean cutting ties to the gang. A one-unit increase in neighborhood gang activity is expected to increase gang ties by nearly 30%. This should not come as a surprise considering variables such as “hanging out with individuals in one’s prior gang network” and “drank/ got high with former members” are operationalized as gang ties. This would make nearby associations difficult to avoid, especially among teenage youth. Finally, we find that 1-month increases in length of gang desistance translate into 3% decreases in the number of gang ties. On the surface this sounds trivial; however, 1 and 2 years of desistance translates into 30% and 50% reductions in ties, respectively. In our second stage, we regressed victimization on our control and explanatory variables and included gang ties into the model. The goal was to determine whether


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Table 4. Regression Models Predicting Gang Ties and Recent Victimizations of Former Gang Members (n = 83) Variable

Model 1: Gang Ties Coefficient

Age −0.08 Male −0.92 Hispanic −0.37 School disruption −1.04 Gang delinquency 0.01 Gang organization 0.21 Gang neighborhood 0.26 Serious delinquency 0.70 Length of desistance −0.03 Gang ties Model χ2 Pseudo R2

z-Test

Model 2:Victimizations IRR

Coefficient

−0.51 0.92 −0.22 −1.75 0.40 0.95 0.86 1.44 −0.17 −2.10* 0.35 0.80 1.14 1.01 0.01 1.84 1.23 0.19 1.96* 1.30 0.06 1.61 2.02 −0.08 2.50* 0.97 0.01 — 0.17 29.56** .10

z-Test

IRR

1.79 2.24* 0.48 1.99* 1.48 2.15* 0.57 0.21 0.92 2.00* 20.05* .12

0.80 2.58 0.85 2.23 1.01 1.21 1.06 0.93 1.01 1.19

Note. IRR = incidence rate ratio. Model 1 was estimated using ordered logistic regression in STATA 10. Model 2 was estimated using Poisson regression in STATA 10. *p < .05. **p < 01.

gang ties had a statistically significant, positive effect on victimization. More important, we wanted to determine whether predictors of gang ties (e.g., length of desistance) would also have a direct effect on victimization. If those effects were not present, it would indicate an indirect relationship on victimization via gang ties. The findings are presented in Model 2 of Table 4. Four variables predicted increases in victimizations: male, school disruption, gang organization, and gang ties. Males and those who experienced school disruption are both expected to increase victimizations by nearly two and one-half times compared to females and those remaining in school or graduates. The gender finding is consistent with the literature on victimization (Gartner, Baker, & Pampel, 1990; Lauritsen & White, 2001) whereas the school disruption finding might reflect a transitional shift to an even riskier, nonconventional lifestyle (Hindelang, Gottfredson, & Garofalo, 1978; Taylor, Freng, Esbensen, & Peterson, 2008; see also Sweeten et al., 2009). Additionally, a one-unit increase in gang organization corresponds to a 20% greater risk of victimization. Those involved in gangs experience threat from a number of sources, and more organized gangs might react with violence or threats of violence upon desistance (Decker & Lauritsen, 2002; Papachristos, 2009; Vigil, 1988). Our key variable, gang ties, exhibited a statistically significant effect on victimizations. A one-unit increase in the number of gang ties is expected to


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increase victimizations by nearly 20%. What is important about Model 2 is that gang neighborhood and length of desistance are not significant, meaning that they operate indirectly on victimization through gang ties. The larger implication of this is that the effect of gang activity in one’s neighborhood and the length of desistance in months matter for victimization only to the extent to which one retains gang ties. What this means is that for former gang members, living in gang-active or gang-free neighborhoods and desisting from gang membership for a few months or a few years is only important for risk of violent victimization so long as one’s ties to the gang are sufficiently attenuated. This emphasizes how lingering ties to the gang are crucial to the desistance process.

Discussion This article has addressed the issue of leaving the gang in the context of a life-course framework. Similar to the implications of crime desistance (Laub & Sampson, 2001; Lebel, Burnett, Maruna, & Bushway, 2008), leaving the gang is both an important conceptual and practical matter. The life-course framework requires the explanatory power of theory to account for all three gang processes (onset, persistence, desistance). It is shown here that lingering ties to the gang are important in understanding the point in time at which group process (Short & Strodtbeck, 1965) loses its power over individuals and they are able to cut their ties to the group. Practically, leaving the gang is an important matter because gang research consistently shows that during periods of membership individuals have consistently higher rates of victimization and involvement in delinquency (Peterson et al., 2004; Thornberry et al., 2003). Hastening the process of leaving a gang, or reducing the length of gang membership, is likely to pay valuable dividends in reducing victimization and delinquency. These are both important processes given the costs of long-term involvement in crime and punishment to communities, governments, and individuals (Clear et al., 2001). With these conceptual and practical matters in mind, four points guide our discussion. First, the life-course approach provides a theoretical framework for understanding and organizing gang membership and gang processes over time. We began this article by linking life-course processes to gang membership, and noted that research has focused on onset and continuity at the expense of desistance. In the course of our analysis, persisting gang ties among former gang members emerged as an important theoretical and empirical construct. The severing of ties provides a transitional phase between active gang membership and former gang membership. As such we direct future research to pay particular attention to this process that characterizes desistance, as it has important implications for host of gang-related areas


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of research (e.g., definitions, policing policies, the effect of gang membership on delinquency, group processes, reentry). The current research examined the processes and relationships that produce ties, as well as the impact of ties throughout the life course. We find that gang ties were increased by the presence of gangs in the neighborhood and decreased by the length of time since desisting from the gang. Individuals who belonged to gangs exhibiting stronger organizational characteristics experienced more victimizations as did males and those with more gang ties. School disruption plays an important role for both gang ties and victimizations (see Brunson & Miller, 2009). School disruption is negatively related to the number of gang ties, but positively related to victimizations. These patterns suggest that leaving the gang, as well as desisting from crime, is a complex process replete with pushes and pulls to conformity and back to the gang (Bjorgo, 2002; Decker & Lauritsen, 2002; Vigil, 1988). Ties to the gang had an impact on victimizations once an individual had left their gang. Individuals with more ties to their former gang experienced higher levels of victimization. More important, for victimization the effect of living in neighborhoods with less gang activity and longer periods of desistance mattered precisely to the extent that gang ties had diminished. This makes sense—both for gangs and for crime—when viewed from a life-course framework. If desistance is a process, we would expect that the number of ties to former gang members or delinquent associates will diminish over time, and that a larger number of ties should be related to more involvement with former associates. But it appears that an integral step in reducing victimization is to be found in reducing ties to the gang. Second, approaching definitional issues in the context of desistance may aid in the pursuit of conceptual and operational clarity of gang membership. Classifying an individual as a “former” gang member raises a host of questions for researchers. To be sure, declaring oneself an “ex” gang member is not functionally the same thing as having no contacts with former gang associates. Indeed, individuals in our sample who had been out of their gang for long periods of time still reported having social and emotional ties with members of their former gang. Is someone with extensive social and emotional ties to other gang members still a gang member, even though they proclaim to have quit their gang? To the degree that current or former gang membership is determined via self-nomination they are not; however, this gets to the heart of the gang definitional issues discussed in many different outlets (Ball & Curry, 1995; Decker & Kempf-Leonard, 1991; Esbensen et al., 2001; Klein, 1995; Klein & Maxson, 2006), and merits further conceptual and empirical scrutiny. Recent research employing varying components of the Eurogang definition have been able to explore this (Esbensen, Taylor, & Peterson, 2009), however, those pursuing research on gang persistence and desistance should be well aware of the overarching definitional issue and consider gang ties in their research endeavors.


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Third, these findings are particularly important for gang programming, which typically treats all gang members as being the same on a number of dimensions, such as involvement in crime, role in the gang, and—most important for the current investigation—ties to the gang (see McGloin, 2005). Our findings highlight the fact that some gang members, even those who express a desire to leave their gang and change their lives, remain enmeshed in a series of ties to their former network of gang members. When gang programming does not consider the variability in gang ties and gang networks, which differentially affect the ability and readiness of a gang member to break free (or “knife off”) from their former gang, they are likely to be less successful. This conclusion is true for gang members on the street as well as those leaving prison to reenter the community (Huebner, Varano, & Bynum, 2007; Olsen & Dooley, 2006; Scott, 2004). A fuller explanation of the number, intensity, and priority of gang ties is essential to understanding desistance, as well as to creating programming that enhances efforts to desist. Finally, this article concludes with many more questions than it does answers. This is because of the limitations of the current study in combination with the lack of attention the gang desistance research agenda has received. We recommend that future work surmount cross-sectional research design limitations in favor of a longitudinal approach. Multiple points of measurement for gang status, gang ties, and important life-course concepts (e.g., transitions, trajectories, and turning points) should prove invaluable for assessing gang desistance. Moreover, the current study was limited to one jurisdiction, which constrains the generalizability of the results. The sample consisted of individuals who had been arrested. Although this setting has many advantages (Decker et al., 2008), field-, agency-, and school-based samples should be pursued in future research. Despite these limitations, however, this work represents a significant advance on what is known about gang desistance. As others have noted (Krohn and Thornberry, 2008, p. 153), unraveling this understudied area of gang involvement should be a “high priority” for scholars of the gang, criminal networks, and juvenile delinquency. We recommend starting with understanding the role that peer and family networks play in the desistance process (Kissner & Pyrooz, 2009; Schreck, Fisher, & Miller, 2004; Warr, 1998). It is important to remember that for many youths, the gang offers a source of social support. Leaving that network, however difficult it may be, means losing friends, protection, and identity in favor of a more isolated life. Particular emphasis should be drawn toward accelerative and ensnaring factors (Hussong, Curran, Moffitt, Caspi, & Carrig, 2004; Jacques and Wright, 2008) that help or hinder the desistance process. With the above key points in mind, it is our belief that future survey and ethnographic research focus on the ties that bind individuals to gangs.


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Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes 1. Thornberry et al. (1993) conceptualized three models—selection (type of person), facilitation (type of group), and enhancement (mixed model)—to explain the gang’s influence on offending and victimization. Selection effects emphasize the individual differences whereas facilitation effects emphasize group differences that facilitate delinquency. More important are the larger theoretical implications of these relationships, with selection effects supporting “types of people” trait- and control-based theory and facilitation effects support “types of groups” learning- or socializationbased theory. Thus, researchers have advertised the gang context as an ideal testing ground for trait/control and socialization/learning theories by treating gang involvement as “treatment” and using nongang-involved youth as the control group (Thornberry et al. 2003). 2. Although we recognize the irony of using the absolute method to operationalize gang member status after arguing that desistance is a process, the goal of this study is to determine whether gang ties should be considered a part of the process. As such, we use the traditional method of operation that is established in the literature. 3. Although it is possible that individuals could have been interviewed on multiple occasions, we suspect that the likelihood is slim and unable to influence results. As an added measure of reliability, we analyzed a number of demographic and gangspecific variables for former gang members for idiosyncrasies. None were found, giving us confidence that our analyses are not confounded by this potential issue. 4. Xr = mean interitem correlation. 5. We use victimization data rather than offending data for conceptual as well as data availability reasons. Victimization is an important measure in its own right, as gang, delinquency, and life-course research demonstrates. In addition, the ADAM data do not provide a 30-day measure of offending as it does for victimization. Because of the cross-sectional nature of these data, we want to use measures more temporally proximate to the independent variables; those data are available for victimizations, it is not for offending. 6. We did this because of the potential issue of a respondent’s gang only being involved in some of the items (e.g., the gang was involved with tagging and robbing


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people and nothing else), we wanted to get a sense of the extent to which they were involved in those same activities. The Maxson/Klein gang typology holds that not all gangs have cafeteria-style offending patterns (Klein & Maxson, 2006). 7. The likelihood ratio test of alpha (χ2 = .02; p = .44) allowed us to conclude that overdispersion was not an issue. Thus, the distributional characteristics (mean = 0.53; variance = 0.74) of the dependent variable followed a Poisson distribution of event counts (Osgood, 2000). Nevertheless, we estimated a negative binomial model that revealed similar parameter estimates with respect to effect sizes, direction, and significance.

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Bios David C. Pyrooz, MS, is a doctoral student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. He received his BS and MS in criminology from California State University, Fresno. His research interests revolve around gangs and social networks, life course criminology, and violent crime. He has coauthored articles that appear in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Policy Review, and Journal of International Migration and Integration. Scott H. Decker, PhD, is a professor and Director in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. He received his BA in social justice from DePauw University, and MA and PhD in criminology from Florida State University. His main research interests are in the areas of gangs, criminal justice policy, and the offender’s perspective. His most recent books include European Street Gangs and Troublesome Youth Groups (Winner of the American Society of Criminology, Division of International Criminology Outstanding Distinguished book award, 2006) and Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling: Lessons from the Inside (2008, CHOICE Academic Press Book of the Year). His forthcoming book (with Hugh Barlow) Criminology and Public Policy: Putting Theory to Work will be published in 2010. Vincent J. Webb, PhD, is Dean and Director of the George J. Beto Criminal Justice Center at Sam Houston State University. He has more than 35 years of experience conducting policy and evaluation research. He has conducted research on a variety of gang-related topics, including serving as coinvestigator of a multicity study of the police response to gangs, the Mesa, Arizona component of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s evaluation of the Spergel gang reduction model and on the Urban Institute’s evaluation of the OJJDP gang reduction project in Los Angeles GRP site. He is a coauthor of the award winning book Policing Gangs in America (2006).
