Feb 5, 2016 - of their dangerous and deviant propensities is precisely what makes them capable ... delinquency peaks during this period of the life course more broadly, and deviance .... Center's (n.d.âa) annual National Youth Gang Survey. .... An alternative function of monitoring gang crime is to compare one city's gang.
8
Gangs and Gang Crime
PR O
O
FS
Chris Melde
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
Street gangs and their members have been the focus of attention as a “special” population in the United States for over a century (Howell and Moore, 2010). While public attention to gangs ebbed and flowed over this time for myriad reasons (for reviews of the history of gangs, see Howell and Moore, 2010; Klein and Maxson, 2006; Decker and Van Winkle, 1996), the preoccupation with street gangs and their members, as displayed by police, policymakers, the media, and researchers, is not without merit. Members of street gangs are routinely associated with serious crime and violence in many communities and contribute disproportionately to overall rates of offending. For example, while gang members accounted for 23 percent of the sample in Fagan’s (1990) three‐city study, these individuals accounted for roughly two thirds of all felony assaults, robberies, and thefts reported across the entire sample. Similarly, while only 30 percent of the sample in the Rochester Youth Development Study (Thornberry, 1998) reported being members of a gang by the end of high school, these individuals accounted for 86 percent of all violent acts reported in the study and for 70 percent of all drug sales. Large‐scale studies of youth in Seattle (Hill et al., 1999) and Denver (Huizinga, 1997) suggested similarly disproportionate rates of offending on the part of gang‐involved youth. It is no wonder that over the last three decades significant resources have been devoted to understanding the causes, correlates, and consequences of gangs and gang membership, to developing gang prevention and intervention programs, and to controlling gang crime through antigang legislation and law enforcement initiatives. In the midst of all this certainty over the social problems that gangs cause for communities, and even for their own members, there remains a curious feature: there is yet no resolution on how best to define and measure gangs, gang membership, and gang crime. The Handbook of Measurement Issues in Criminology and Criminal Justice, First Edition. Edited by Beth M. Huebner and Timothy S. Bynum. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
0002672458.INDD 159
2/5/2016 4:08:41 AM
Chris Melde
160
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
The inability to systematically define, identify, and reliably measure gangs, gang members, and gang crime is not simply an academic problem. This definitional ambiguity has very real consequences for organizations and individuals connected in some way to street gangs. For instance, a recent report from the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO, 2009) suggested that in 2008 alone the United States Department of Justice spent roughly $25 million on specialized antigang interventions located in a small fraction of communities across the country with a documented gang problem. This figure does not include the local‐ and state‐level resources allocated to dealing with gangs and their members, which surely exceed this federal investment. The gist of the GAO (2009) report, unfortunately, was that we know little about our return on investments in these resources – too little to tell whether or not the money directed at gangs could be best spent elsewhere. The reason is that many of the communities in which these tax dollars are spent have little to no capacity to measure their own gang issues, for example the number of active gang members they have or the rate of gang crime amid them, let alone how their interventions may have altered local gang dynamics. The adage “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” is certainly applicable to the dilemma of defining gangs, given that all we “know” about gangs, gang members, and gang crime is shrouded in uncertainty due to our inability to know for sure whether the groups themselves (gang/ nongang), their people (gang member/nongang member), and the actions we attribute to them (gang crime/nongang crime) are indeed what we have labeled them. As a consequence, we have yet to develop best practices for managing our efforts to prevent or control the serious consequences of the existence of gangs in our society. The current chapter will review the most frequent sources of information we use to understand gangs, gang members, and gang crime, paying particular attention to the measurement issues that impact the reliability and validity of our understanding. As will be discussed, it is difficult to garner a complete understanding of the gang phenomenon through any single data source. In fact, if evidence on gangs from any single source were to be reviewed in isolation, this would likely lead to a distorted view of the entire phenomenon. Indeed, what we know about gangs is impacted by our methods of identifying the phenomenon and by our most frequently utilized data sources on the topic, which consist of police data, self‐report surveys, ethnographic and interview‐based studies, and – to a far lesser extent – victimization surveys. In the sections that follow we will discuss each of these data sources and their respective strengths and limitations. First, however, is a discussion of prior attempts to define gangs and gang members and of how such efforts have failed to adequately capture the phenomenon.
Defining Gangs, Gang Membership, and Gang Crime Over a hundred years of journalistic, academic, and practitioner documentation suggest that we are quite confident that “gangs” exist and produce an inordinate amount of harm to communities through their frequent involvement in crime – especially
0002672458.INDD 160
2/5/2016 4:08:41 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
161
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
violence – and disorder; moreover, this involvement also causes widespread anxiety and concern in areas recognized for their “gang problem.” Indeed this is the intended effect of gangs, since public advertising – through graffiti, symbols, shared colors – of their dangerous and deviant propensities is precisely what makes them capable of fulfilling their goals: to intimidate other gangs and community members, protect their own members, and earn money through drug sales and other black market activities. It is gangs’ frequent involvement in acts of crime and violence that makes them noteworthy; without these behaviors, they would not be the target of public concern. There is widespread disagreement on the necessary and sufficient1 conditions that distinguish a gang from other peer groups, a gang member from a nongang‐involved youth, or a gang crime from a nongang‐related incident, each of which needs a unique definition that should articulate the group, personal, and behavioral boundaries between “gang” and “nongang.” Common definitions of gangs, gang members, and gang crimes have been known to produce both type I errors – identifying a phenomenon as gang‐related when it is not – and type II errors – identifying a phenomenon as nongang‐related when it indeed is related to gangs – and such errors have led to large variations in the resulting estimates of the prevalence of these groups, members, and crimes. So why has it been so difficult to define the necessary and sufficient conditions for discriminating gang from nongang groups, for example? First, research on the nature of street gangs suggests that the majority of individuals involved in them are between the ages of 12 and 24, which roughly coincide with the developmental period of adolescence. This is problematic because involvement in crime and delinquency peaks during this period of the life course more broadly, and deviance at this developmental stage is predominantly a group‐based phenomenon. That is, youth regularly experiment with their own moral boundaries around deviant behaviors as they navigate adolescence; and they do so in the company of peers who make engaging in crime and deviance easier and provide the necessary feedback to encourage or discourage the behavior in future situations. The great majority of adolescents who engage in these criminal and delinquent behaviors do not, however, consider themselves gang members, nor do they consider their peer group a gang; neither do their educators, the police, or other concerned parties, for that matter. There is widespread agreement, therefore, that there is a distinction between “ordinary” delinquent peer groups and gangs, such that there is more to being a gang than committing crimes and delinquency in a group. Systematically documenting the nature of this difference for definitional purposes has been difficult, and most would agree that it has yet to be done successfully. Klein (1971) provided one of the most influential definitions of street gangs, which was commonly used in the research literature for many years. Klein defined a gang as any denotable adolescent group of youngsters who (a) are generally perceived as a distinct aggregation by others in their neighborhood, (b) recognize themselves as a denotable group (almost invariably with a group name) and (c) have been involved
0002672458.INDD 161
2/5/2016 4:08:41 AM
Chris Melde
162
in a sufficient number of delinquent incidents to call forth a consistent negative response from neighborhood residents and/or enforcement agencies. Klein (1971, p. 13)
D
PR O
O
FS
This definition, like those suggested before and after, is limited in its ability to help discern gang from nongang groups. With respect to being exhaustive, it includes the characteristics of most, if not all, street gangs that are often thought of in discussions of the phenomenon by policymakers, researchers, and law enforcement. The problem is that this definition is not exclusive. As an example, many college campuses have numerous fraternities and sororities, each of which may have a notable reputation for some feature of its social life. As one might expect, you would not have to search far and wide to discover that certain Greek organizations have garnered a reputation for violence, loud parties with underage drinking, illegal drug use, and drug dealing – among other deviant activities. Fraternities or sororities with such a reputation fit all of Klein’s (1971) criteria, but they do not likely fit our generalized conception of a street gang. An earlier definition of a street gang, suggested by Frederick Thrasher (1927), is perhaps one of the best. Specifically, Thrasher (1927, p. 46) defined gangs as
EC TE
an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict, and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a local territory.
U
N
C
O R
R
This definition focuses primarily on the group processes that differentiate gang from nongang groups, and this strikes at the essence of the difference between the two types. Such a definition may be needed in order to avoid the overidentification or underidentification of gang groups in the population. This type of definition is, however, especially problematic for many stakeholders concerned with the identification of gangs, gang members, and gang crime. Specifically, how would one go about operationalizing this definition in practice? Take, for instance, the case of police officials interested in systematically identifying all of the gangs in their local jurisdiction, including identifying the membership roster of each respective gang. How useful is a definition based upon group processes inherent in a gang, even if it were to capture the primary factors differentiating gangs from nongang groups? The likely answer to this question is: not at all. The amount of intelligence needed to document this group history and evolution would be inordinate and impractical. Such intelligence would be difficult to substantiate in a court of law and would require constant surveillance, as groups of youth in the local jurisdiction transition into and out of adolescence. From an academic standpoint, Thrasher’s (1927) definition is praiseworthy in that it attempts to capture how gangs differ from other peer groups; but such a definition is simply too cumbersome for most parties concerned with documenting and understanding gangs in a systematic and efficient manner.
0002672458.INDD 162
2/5/2016 4:08:41 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
163
Despite the difficulty of defining gangs, however, particular stakeholders continue to identify and document gang groups in a manner that serves their own purposes – which we now discuss.
The Use of Official Police Data
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
Given the robust association between gangs, gang members, and heightened levels of involvement in crime and violence, police departments across the country have a vested interest in finding out what the number of gangs in their communities is, who the members of these gangs are, and how these groups contribute to the crime problem. By necessity, however, identifying and documenting gangs, gang members, and gang crime cannot be accomplished using a single definition; each poses a unique challenge for law enforcement. In order for police departments to monitor the extent and nature of the gang issue in their local area and to control the effectiveness of gang prevention and intervention programs, they often develop gang databases to monitor these three dimensions of gang activity (i.e., gangs, gang members, gang crime). For all the strengths associated with having stable organizations such as the police collecting such data, the problems inherent in police data collection and management in general also plague the collection and monitoring of gang data. Official police data offer some important advantages over other data sources with respect to the identification and tracking of gangs, gang members, and gang crime. For example, official data may be used to study gang violence at the city, county, state, or even national level on an ongoing basis, in a process similar to what is accomplished through the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). The best example of this sort of ongoing monitoring of gangs across the United States is the National Gang Center’s (n.d.‐a) annual National Youth Gang Survey. This annual survey allows concerned parties to track trends in gang‐related issues at the national and subnational levels, and thus can be used to monitor the relative threat posed by these groups across time and place. Given the stable and bureaucratic nature of police departments, standardized departmental, state, and federal guidelines for identifying gangs, gang members, and gang crime, including a system of checks and balances designed to strengthen the reliability and validity of the definitional process are also possible. As we discuss below, however, law enforcement agencies have yet to take full advantage of this potential strength. The use of official police data for the identification of gangs and gang crime can be criticized on many fronts. Many of these criticisms are similar to those that plague official police crime data more generally. In general, police crime data are criticized on the grounds of the lack of objectivity in how police officials document criminal and delinquent events, which can lead to serious recording errors and can negatively impact the validity of crime data for calculating crime rates or for properly evaluating the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions (Black, 1980; Brownstein, 2000; Sherman and Glick, 1984). While recording errors that result from human error are
0002672458.INDD 163
2/5/2016 4:08:42 AM
Chris Melde
164
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
understandable, some have blamed such errors on purposeful manipulation for political or financial gain (Brownstein, 2000). Official gang crime databases suffer from similar limitations. Officer and administrative discretion, again, is at the heart of many of the limitations related to what is labeled as a gang, what is labeled a gang crime, who is labeled a gang member, and how gang members’ files are updated across time. Take, for instance, the different possible definitions used across jurisdictions to identify a gang in relation to other known peer groups. Box 8.1 provides a few examples of different definitions of gangs that have been used across the federal, state, and local levels. As you can see when comparing these definitions, each law enforcement jurisdiction provides a unique definition of what constitutes a street gang, but each allows for ample discretion in deciding which group is actually labeled a street gang. The federal definition provides the most detailed description of particular qualifiers for street gangs, while the city of Chicago uses a broad definition, similar in many respects to that used by Klein (1971), which has the disadvantage of possibly including groups that many may not consider street gangs (e.g., fraternities). In this respect, by setting a low threshold for considering a group a gang, the city of Chicago relies more heavily on police discretion to identify gang from nongang groups. Other fundamental differences also exist across these definitions. For instance, in Iowa – and in the majority of other states that have codified a definition of street gang not listed in Box 8.1 – a group needs only to have three members in order to meet the criteria of a street gang, while Michigan set this threshold at five members. Michigan is also unique among these jurisdictions in that it requires there to be a hierarchical command structure in place in order to label a group a gang, while many other jurisdictions do not include such a factor in their respective definitions. As Howell (2007) discussed quite extensively, many (if not most) street gangs do not have a hierarchical structure, and thus Michigan’s formal definition excludes many groups that other states would identify as gangs. The use of official data to make cross‐jurisdiction comparisons about the total number of gangs is therefore extremely problematic. The National Gang Center, recognizing that these discrepancies may impact its national survey of law enforcement, provides respondents with the following definition for jurisdictions that report their youth gang estimates: a youth gang is “a group of youths or young adults [the responding agency is] willing to identify as a ‘gang’” (National Gang Center, n.d.‐b). By using this broad definition, the National Gang Center recognizes and accepts that no singular definition is yet possible when drawing national estimates of the number of gangs, and therefore highlights the difficulties inherent in any attempt to do so. A similar issue also plagues official gang crime data, as is discussed next.
Defining gang crime: Membership or motivation? There are a number of reasons why police agencies would desire to document whether crimes are gang related; tracking the level and nature of gang versus nongang crime across time and monitoring the effectiveness of special efforts to
0002672458.INDD 164
2/5/2016 4:08:42 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
165
Box 8.1 Examples of federal‐, state‐, and local‐level definitions of street gangs.
FS
Federal definition (United States Department of Justice, n.d.): The federal definition of “gang,” as used by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is:
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
(a) an association of three or more individuals; (b) whose members collectively identify themselves by adopting a group identity, which they use to create an atmosphere of fear or intimidation, frequently by employing one or more of the following: a common name, slogan, identifying sign, symbol, tattoo or other physical marking, style or color of clothing, hairstyle, hand sign or graffiti; (c) whose purpose in part is to engage in criminal activity and which uses violence or intimidation to further its criminal objectives; (d) whose members engage in criminal activity or acts of juvenile delinquency that, if committed by an adult would be crimes with the intent to enhance or preserve the association’s power, reputation or economic resources. (e) The association may also possess some of the following characteristics: 1. The members may employ rules for joining and operating within the association. 2. The members may meet on a recurring basis. 3. The association may provide physical protection of its members from others. 4. The association may seek to exercise control over a particular geographic location or region, or it may simply defend its perceived interests against rivals. 5. The association may have an identifiable structure.
U
N
C
State of Iowa definition (State of Iowa, n.d.): Criminal street gang means any ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons, whether formal or informal, having as one of its primary activities the commission of one or more criminal acts, which has an identifiable name or identifying sign or symbol, and whose members individually or collectively engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity. State of Michigan definition (State of Michigan, n.d.): “Gang” means an ongoing organization, association, or group of 5 or more people, other than a nonprofit organization, that identifies itself by all of the following: (i) A unifying mark, manner, protocol, or method of expressing membership, including a common name, sign or symbol, means of recognition, geographical or territorial sites, or boundary or location.
0002672458.INDD 165
2/5/2016 4:08:42 AM
Chris Melde
166
(ii) An established leadership or command structure. (iii) Defined membership criteria.
O
PR O
1. A gang name and recognizable symbols. 2. A geographic territory. 3. An organized, continuous course of criminality.
FS
Chicago Police Department definition (Block and Block, 1993): The Chicago Police Department defines “street gang” as an association of individuals who exhibit the following characteristics in varying degrees:
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
reduce gang crime in particular neighborhoods in their city are among such reasons. An alternative function of monitoring gang crime is to compare one city’s gang crime problem with other cities’, in order to determine whether or not local offense patterns reflect broader changes that take place in other locations or are the product of more concentrated issues. As Maxson and Klein (1990) demonstrated, however, such between‐jurisdiction comparisons are extremely difficult to make unless one is certain that police agencies define gang crime according to the same standards, which may not be the case. For example, over the past decades the cities of Los Angeles, California and Chicago, Illinois have made a concerted effort to document whether or not crimes are gang‐related. To do so, however, they have utilized quite different definitional standards for what constitutes gang crime, which renders the comparison of gang crime rates between these cities difficult to achieve through official statistics. In particular, Los Angeles uses a member‐based definition, while Chicago uses a motivation‐based classification system. In fact municipalities throughout the United States have copied the tactics of either Chicago or Los Angeles, by picking one of these strategies to meet their own needs. In order to officially label an incident as a gang crime, a member‐based definition of gang crime, such as that used in Los Angeles, simply requires that either the offender or the victim is a documented gang member. A motivation‐based definition, however, is far more stringent with respect to identifying a crime as gang‐ related. Motivation‐based definitions require the presence of evidence that gang membership or gang activities were directly related to the motivation(s) for a given crime. For example, gang crimes identified on a motivation‐based definition must be traced back to such activities as retaliation for previous crimes, recruitment of new members, or defense of a territory (Maxson and Klein, 1990). As one might surmise from these two types of definitional criteria, all else being equal, police departments that adopt membership‐based definitions will evince higher gang crime rates than police departments that adopt motive‐based strategies, because it is unlikely that all the crimes committed by or against gang members are in some way motivated by gang activities or gang membership. Indeed, in a comparison of gang homicide figures for Los Angeles under these two definitional standards, the total
0002672458.INDD 166
2/5/2016 4:08:42 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
167
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
number of gang homicides dropped considerably when the motivation‐based definition was applied instead of the city’s regular membership‐based criteria (Maxson and Klein, 1990). As the above examples demonstrate, police officials have wide latitude in identifying gangs and gang crime. Beyond the definitional ambiguities associated with determining whether a group is a gang or whether particular crimes are gang‐ related, errors associated with identifying individuals as gang members can have serious and long‐lasting consequences, given the advent of sentence enhancements for gang crimes across many states. Sentence enhancements are penalties that are added to a normal sentence; thus, if an individual is found guilty and convicted on a charge of felony robbery, and if the prosecution successfully demonstrates that the crime was gang‐related, a number of extra years can be added to the prison sentence. Bjerregaard (2003) provided a nice overview of antigang legislation, which includes the use and potential misuse of sentence enhancements for gang members. Some have questioned whether official procedures for documenting individuals as gang members – and, later, for updating gang members’ lists by removing those who are no longer gang‐involved – are applied in practice (Katz, 2003; Klein and Maxson, 1989). After studying a gang task force unit that was responsible for verifying gang member lists and for updating the rosters so that they may reflect changing gang‐member statuses, Katz (2003) suggested that official standards for documenting gang members were rarely applied in practice. He found that the method by which individuals in his study were most frequently identified as gang members was through individual patrol officers’ crime reports. But the system of checks and balances put in place to eliminate the potential for misidentifying individuals as gang‐involved was never utilized to override a patrol officer’s judgment on an individual’s gang membership status. So either the officers were 100 percent correct in their assessment or the rules and processes put in place were largely ignored. This led Katz to conclude that gang statistics were not “the product of the application of official definitions, or even informal definitions[,] but rather were the product of inadequate communication within the gang unit and between the gang unit and its operating environment” (Katz, 2003, p. 485). After persons (typically, adults – to the exclusion of juveniles) are documented as a gang member by police officials, inefficient record‐keeping practices may lead to the production of outdated gang member lists, which can be used for administrative and prosecutorial purposes. Given the high turnover rate in gang membership (Esbensen and Huizinga, 1993; Hill, Lui, and Hawkins, 2004; Peterson, Taylor, and Esbensen, 2004; Melde and Esbensen, 2011; Thornberry et al., 2003), if official gang member lists are not continuously updated according to standard practices, there is a high likelihood that such documents would soon contain names of inactive gang members (Spergel, 1995). Further, if names are added to the list at a faster rate than they are purged, these rosters will produce an inflated picture of the total number of individuals considered to be active gang members. The evidence produced by Katz (2003), as discussed above, confirmed this possibility, as police staff in the department he studied routinely failed to purge the files of inactive gang members, as they should
0002672458.INDD 167
2/5/2016 4:08:42 AM
Chris Melde
168
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
have done according to the procedures put in place to ensure that the individuals listed were indeed still active participants in their groups. In fact, a 9th circuit court of appeals ruling in California made it mandatory that suspected gang members had the opportunity to challenge their official designation in a court of law before they could be included in a civil gang injunction2 (Leal and Koerner, 2013). While errors are likely to be associated with any system designed to track the ebb and flow of gang‐member status across individuals, when errors are systematic and pervasive, they can have serious consequences for our ability to understand the extent and nature of the gang population. Worse yet are the potential ramifications of the misidentification of individuals as gang‐involved during civil proceedings and criminal trials, where sentence enhancements can cost persons years of freedom. Beyond these problems, which are found in the process of documenting gang membership, some speculate that official gang statistics are compiled and reported in a manner that best suits the needs of the reporting agency. Bursik and Grasmick (2006) outlined the potential benefits of having a documented gang problem in certain jurisdictions, especially as it relates to the acquisition of federal funding for combating gang crime. That is, unless an organization can demonstrate a particular need for combating gangs and gang crime in its local jurisdiction, it is almost impossible to acquire competitive antigang grant dollars that can be used to purchase equipment, hire additional officers, and pay for the overtime hours necessary to carry out specialized police operations. Departments across the country that face budgetary challenges to offering services in an effective manner may feel pressure to overstate their local gang problem in order to procure competitive grant funding. Zatz (1987) suggested that such practices took place in the Phoenix police department in Arizona. In particular, Zatz suggested that the police overstated the number of active Chicano gangs, where official documents demonstrated an increase from five to more than 100 gangs across a two year period. McCorkle and Miethe (1998) reported a similar phenomenon: Las Vegas police officials in Nevada reported a 400 percent increase in documented gang members over a one‐year period, which coincided with requests for substantial increases in financial and staff resources. A consequence of the improper documentation and maintenance of gang member lists is that they impact the validity and reliability of the official data used by researchers to investigate the role of gang members in crime and whether or not interventions targeting gang groups have had a desired effect. Inconsistent record‐keeping has been blamed for a number of inconsistent findings related to gangs in the extant research literature. As an example, McCorkle and Miethe (1998) used official police data from Las Vegas to determine the extent to which gang members in the city contributed to the overall crime rate – in other words, whether gang members were disproportionately involved in crime and violence. On the basis of these data, they concluded that gang members were not disproportionately involved in acts of crime and violence in Las Vegas, which was inconsistent with the conclusions of similar studies in other locations across the United States. Specifically, those identified as gang members by the police were responsible for less than 5 percent of all drug offenses and for less than 15 percent of all violent crimes. So, while the police and public officials characterized
0002672458.INDD 168
2/5/2016 4:08:43 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
169
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
the gang problem as a growing and serious concern in their community, McCorkle and Miethe concluded that “a ‘ripple,’ not a wave, may be a better characterization of the trend in gang activity during the period examined” (1998, pp. 59–60). In what is hopefully a sign that police officials are becoming more capable of identifying and maintaining lists of active gangs and gang members, more recent literature suggests that police data are a valid and reliable source of information on local gang issues. Katz, Webb, and Schaefer (2000) found that officially documented youth gang members accounted for 16.9 percent of their sample but for 40 percent of all documented burglaries. In fact the gang‐involved youth in the sample were disproportionately involved in every criminal offense examined in the study. In 2012 Katz led another team of researchers, in an examination of the reliability of National Youth Gang Survey data from 2005 through 2009 (Katz et al., 2012). Through the use of a number of measures of reliability, the team concluded that police reports of the number of gangs and gang members were highly reliable across jurisdictions and that gang homicide figures for cities of over 200,000 inhabitants also provided consistent estimates. Decker and Pyrooz (2010) offered further support for the idea that police data on gang homicide were indeed a reliable source of information. While the documentation of gangs, gang members, and gang crime through official police data suffers from known limitations, recent evidence suggests that many jurisdictions have improved their capacity to collect information in reliable ways. Still, the duties associated with law enforcement agencies – to investigate crimes and to protect public safety – likely produce an incomplete picture of gang activity. That is, when dealing with gangs, police are likely to interact most frequently with those gang members they see as presenting the highest risk for engaging in crime and violence, while at the same time they ignore other facets of street gangs, which they may deem less worthy of their attention. Perhaps the best example of this incomplete view of street gangs taken by law enforcement officials was discussed extensively by Miller (2001) in her research on female gang members. As she argues, police departments, almost as a matter of policy, routinely failed to acknowledge the existence of female gang members in official reports and focused exclusively on males located in known gang areas. While police departments across the country now more readily identify females as gang members and as potentially serious criminals, this long‐ standing practice of ignoring upwards of half the actual gang population goes to show that the way law enforcement views gangs can seriously affect its resulting measures of the phenomenon. Given these limitations, many have advocated for a multimethod, triangulated approach to understanding gangs, gang membership, and gang crime (Bursik and Grasmick, 2006; Rennison and Melde, 2009).
The Use of Ethnographic Studies Early, foundational criminological research on street gangs was based primarily on ethnographic methods. Researchers such as Thrasher (1927), Klein (1971), and Short and Strodtbeck (1965) spent years gathering ethnographic and interview
0002672458.INDD 169
2/5/2016 4:08:44 AM
Chris Melde
170
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
data on gangs and their members in order to garner firsthand accounts on the lives and behaviors of group members and on how gangs were produced and interacted with their environment. The hallmark of ethnographic research is that it can illuminate the inner workings and dynamics of street gangs – a feature that is often lacking in studies that use official data or self‐report survey methods, since with these methodologies it is difficult to tap into issues of group process, the meaning of gang membership for members themselves, and especially the more routine and noncriminal behaviors and activities engaged in by these individuals (Bursik and Grasmick, 2006). Unfortunately, the focused and intense attention needed to produce ethnographic data diminishes the capacity of such research to make these data generalizable. That is, what ethnographic studies gain in depth, through focused attention, they lose in breadth, because so few gangs or gang members can be studied at any one time. This means that the information collected through these methods has unknown applicability across time and place. While the inability to draw broad conclusions from ethnographic research is a limitation of this methodology more generally, the way in which gangs are chosen for study can also lead to conclusions that are not applicable to gangs across place or time. As Bursik and Grasmick (2006) point out, gangs are not likely chosen at random, but for more practical reasons – such as notoriety or convenience – or through the work of social service agencies that provide access to particular members of street gangs, who act as gatekeepers for the group. And what are the processes that may lead a researcher to identify, seek out, and garner access to a gang for intense study? If the researcher became aware of a gang as a result of its notoriety in the community – be that due to its high levels of violent criminal activity, its high rate of female gang membership, or some other facet of the gang that made it stand out – then findings from an ethnographic study of this group are not likely to apply to the more typical gang, either in that location or elsewhere. If the researcher gained access to the group through a social service worker or agency that deals with that particular gang or gang members, then it becomes necessary to understand how the social service worker or agency identified the members of the group in question. Again, if there are particular reasons why social service was offered to one gang but not to others in the same local area, then this, too, would obviate the ability to draw general conclusions about gangs and their members from ethnographic methods. Thus it may be that the very existence of irregularities, which lead researchers to study particular gangs, is what limits the applicability of such research to other gangs across place and time. Because ethnographic research is often focused on a limited number of subjects and because gang members may take great pride in deceiving outsiders through exaggerated or fully fictional accounts of gang life, it is particularly difficult for ethnographic researchers to discern fact from fiction. In his research, Klein (1971) provided a number of such examples, including gang members’ tendency to embellish their story when recounting particular criminal and violent exploits. He referred to this practice as a “mythic system,” as gang members in his study had a proclivity to “one‐up” their fellow gang members through stories of violent crimes, even
0002672458.INDD 170
2/5/2016 4:08:44 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
171
though such talk far outweighed the frequency with which they were actually involved in such behaviors (Klein, 1971, p. 85). While exaggerated rhetoric and storytelling are not unique to gangs, Bursik and Grasmick (2006) also reminded us that gang researchers are largely dealing with deviant persons, who just might take pleasure in fooling unsuspecting social workers or researchers into believing wildly inaccurate accounts of their actions. As Bursik recounted,
PR O
O
FS
during a conversation with a friend who formerly had been a central member of one of Chicago’s most notorious fighting gangs … He described with great pleasure how during times of boredom, members of his group would have an informal competition to see who could convincingly tell the most outrageous story to a social worker who had been assigned to the group. (Bursik and Grasmick, 2006, p. 8)
EC TE
D
Decker and Van Winkle (1996) described ways in which they limited this practice, including by having their fieldworker introduce the respondents to the purpose of the study and explain how such storytelling was not acceptable. They also limited the number of respondents who could be interviewed from any one gang at any one time. This practice sought to limit the potential for group influence on their interviews, so that respondents would not feel compelled to one‐up each other. Second‐hand reports from those (supposedly) involved in gang violence are usually what ethnographers are left to work with in their research, as they are rarely at the scene of gang violence. As Klein (1971, p. 123) described:
O R
R
Offhand, I can think of few categories of people who are less exciting to observe than gang members simply because, by and large, they just stand around and do nothing … In studying gang delinquency, then, it is well to remember that one is studying a very minor sample of daily behavior, that this sample remains primarily undetected, and therefore that detected delinquent behavior is a lousy base from which to draw generalizations.
U
N
C
Last but not least, ethnographic research has also been criticized for the real possibility of its producing what is known as the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect is a situation where the simple presence of an outsider (i.e., someone not normally present in the setting under study, such as a researcher) changes the behavior of those being observed in their natural setting. Thus it is questionable whether or not gangs and their members behave naturally when they are being observed by a researcher. Both Klein (1971) and Short and Strodtbeck (1965), for instance, produced evidence that added attention from outside agencies such as law enforcement or social services may actually lead to increases in gang violence, if it is applied in a way that enhances group cohesion or is viewed as a threat to the group’s status (or both). Thus, for all that ethnographic research can offer in the way of a more nuanced and complete understanding of particular gangs, such research is necessarily limited in other respects, including a broad‐based understanding of the causes and consequences of gang membership. To overcome this limitation in
0002672458.INDD 171
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Chris Melde
172
particular and to better understand the epidemiology and etiology of gang membership, self‐report survey methods have been utilized quite extensively over the past three decades.
The Use of Self‐Report Methods
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
There are a number of advantages related to the use of self‐report survey methods. One advantage is the ability to gather information on the “dark figure” of crime – that is, those cases that are not reported to the police – on so‐called “victimless crimes” such as drug use and drug selling, and on minor delinquent behaviors that take place at school or in other formal institutions, are handled outside the formal legal system, and hence are not likely to come to the attention of authorities. In addition to these behaviors, survey methods also allow one to collect in‐depth information on gang members themselves, for example on their beliefs and attitudes, on their involvement in nondelinquent activities (e.g., school activities, grade point average, legitimate employment, athletics), and on demographic (e.g., family information) and descriptive data. A second advantage is that self‐report surveys enable researchers to collect systematic data from a wide array of gang members across space and time. For instance, unlike official statistics, which are based definitional standards that vary across jurisdictions (see above), self‐report surveys can utilize a single standard for eliciting gang membership status. Third, self‐report surveys allow researchers to gather systematic data across a large number of respondents in a relatively short period, and they allow for the analysis of change through the use of consistent measurements across time. There are a number of well‐known limitations associated with self‐report methods as well. Perhaps the most important limitation is our inability to define a proper sampling frame (Bursik and Grasmick, 2006). After all, if a strength (and also a goal) of survey methods is to acquire more generalizable information than is possible with ethnographic studies or with official data, this strength is only truly realized if we are certain that our samples are representative of some known population. As in the case of self‐report crime surveys in general, where it is particularly difficult to gain the cooperation of active criminals (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981), garnering the cooperation of gang members for the purposes of taking a survey may be especially difficult. Even if gaining the trust and cooperation of gang members could be accomplished, where would one find a location where a representative sample of gang members could be drawn? Options might include juvenile justice facilities, local jails, and prisons, but these places likely encompass only a small fraction of the entire gang population, and their use may lead to an overrepresentation of extremely crime‐prone gang‐involved persons. Locations such as schools and community centers suffer from the opposite problem, as they may not host the most violent or antisocial gang members who may have dropped out of school or might no longer be welcome at such institutions. This reality led Bursik and Grasmick (2006, p. 10) to conclude that, “in general, it is extremely difficult to draw a representative sample of gang members.”
0002672458.INDD 172
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
173
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
Another difficulty inherent in self‐report research in general and that may be particularly problematic in criminological research concerns the veracity of the information collected from respondents. Can we be sure that gang members will be truthful when filling out a survey? Evidence exists that self‐report surveys do produce valid data (Huizinga and Elliott, 1986). Such evidence is not straightforward, however, as it appears that the criminality of the respondents under study impacts the degree of truthfulness with which they report on their behaviors and other related phenomena. Hindelang and colleagues suggested: “Questionnaires and interviews appear to have differential validity depending on the criminality of the respondent. Thus the higher the level of criminality, the lower the validity of the crime measures” (Hindelang et al., 1981, p. 249). Given evidence that gang members are particularly deviant, there remains a concern that self‐report data on gang membership and behavior may not be accurate. Researchers have not yet agreed upon a standard definition of what constitutes a gang. How, then, do survey researchers identify such persons in self‐report studies? While there is no single, unitary way in which researchers have operationalized gang membership across studies, the general practice of using such methods has received considerable support (see, e.g., Esbensen et al., 2001; Decker et al., 2014). For instance, researchers directing the International Self‐Report Delinquency study (Junger‐ Tas et al., 2010; see also Melde and Esbensen, 2011) utilized a question that focused on the peer group. They asked, namely: “Do you consider your group of friends to be a gang?” This tactic was used so that individual respondents would not feel uncomfortable about reporting on their own gang membership status, which may produce underreports of the total number of gang‐involved youth, even while providing a measure of gang involvement. The majority of self‐report studies simply ask: “Are you a member of a street gang?” or “Are you now in a gang?” – with slight variations across projects. Some researchers prefer a more restrictive operationalization of gang membership; they will be more limiting in their questions by imposing additional restrictions. For example, the Add Health longitudinal study asked respondents whether they “had been initiated into a named gang in the past 12 months” (DeLisi et al., 2009; emphasis added). Not all youth or young adults who consider themselves gang members could respond in the affirmative on this survey, because not all gang youth have had to be initiated. Although this is likely rare, there may be individuals who consider themselves gang members even though their gang does not have a name. Lastly, such a question also means that respondents who were initiated into a named gang more than a year before the survey would be free to respond “no” as well. At the opposite end of such a measurement tactic, other researchers prefer a more inclusive survey item; for instance the researchers who were part of the Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental study asked respondents: “During the past 12 months, were you part of a group or gang that did reprehensible acts?” (Tremblay et al., 2003; emphasis added). According to this question and how it has been used as a measure of gang membership, respondents need not even consider themselves gang members to respond in the affirmative, and thus to be treated as gang‐involved.
0002672458.INDD 173
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Chris Melde
174
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
There is certainly room for debate as to which measurement technique produces the most valid measure of gang membership. There is a growing body of research to suggest that self‐report data from gang members are both valid and reliable. Webb, Katz, and Decker (2006), for example, examined this issue with a sample of self‐ reported gang members by comparing self‐reports of drug use and urine samples collected as part of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program. They concluded that respondents were generally truthful about their drug use and that gang members were no more likely to provide false answers than nongang respondents; of course they were also no less likely. Decker and colleagues (2014) also provide compelling evidence that self‐reported gang members are truthful when reporting on their gang status and associated constructs. By using the relationship between self‐reported gang membership and a scale of gang embededness as a measure of construct validity3 (for this, see Maxfield and Babbie, 2014), they were able to determine that those who reported current and ongoing membership in a gang were more heavily immersed in their delinquent peer group than former gang members and those who were never involved. Decker and colleagues’ (2014) results suggested that this was exactly the case; thus responses were consistent across groups in a manner that indicated that respondents were not simply answering at random. Esbensen and colleagues (2001) provided one of the strongest and most highly cited assessments of the robustness of the self‐nomination technique by using a sample of roughly 6,000 students from across the United States. Through a comparison of a number of more and less restrictive definitional criteria for identifying gang youth, they concluded that “the self nomination technique is a particularly robust measure of gang membership capable of distinguishing gang from nongang youth” (Esbensen et al., 2001, p. 124), at least insofar as it relates to antisocial attitudes and behaviors. Curry (2000) used a measure of criterion validity4 in order to ascertain the validity of self‐reported gang membership by comparing data from a self‐report survey with official police data on gang youth in Chicago. His study demonstrated substantial overlap between the self‐reported gang youth and those classified as such by the Chicago police department. In fact, the correlation measured by Curry (2000) was very similar to those of previous studies that have assessed the overlap between self‐ reported delinquency and official police crime data (Thornberry et al., 2003). A limitation of the self‐report method for identifying gang members often found in the literature is that all gang members from all types of gangs are treated similarly; gang members are lumped together even though they are a part of distinct groups. Klein and Maxson (2006) provided a framework for classifying gangs that has been successfully applied across the United States and globally. Their research suggests that a relatively small number of neighborhoods in a few major cities in the United States (e.g., Los Angeles, Chicago) have stereotypically large and well‐organized gangs, which have survived through multiple generations. Active membership rosters for these “traditional” or “neo‐traditional” gangs (Maxson and Klein, 1995) go easily over 100 persons, with possibly over 1,000 living former and inactive members. These stereotypical gangs, often depicted in movies and in the news media, include such groups as the founding sets of bloods and crips in Los Angeles and the
0002672458.INDD 174
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
175
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
vice lords, gangster disciples, and Latin kings in Chicago. The modal category of gangs that is found in cities throughout the world is, however, that of “compressed” gangs (Maxson and Klein, 1995). The membership roster for this type of gang ranges from roughly 10 to 50. Membership in these gangs last roughly for one to three years, if the gang itself lasts that long.5 It would be difficult to confuse these groups with one another, but self‐report methods often fail to distinguish between members of these unique groups unless additional questions are included in the survey and used during analysis – which is often not the case. For developmental criminologists, who are often concerned with how gang membership changes the life‐course trajectory of individuals across a number of relevant domains, drawing distinctions between types of gang members on the basis of group characteristics may not, however, be necessary. That is, if a respondent reports that s/ he is in a gang, even though that gang does not live up to our preconceived notions of what a gang is (e.g., it has no leadership structure, no name, or no symbols), are we in a position to claim that the respondent is lying or naive? Should we ipso facto eliminate or de‐identify such youth from our analyses? There is yet no research to support such a practice. For example, in a study of youth in Montreal, Le Blanc and Lanctot (1998) suggested that the structure of the gang was unrelated to the attitudinal and behavioral profiles of gang‐involved youth. Rather they came to the conclusion that “participation in a group involved in illegal activities seems[,] in itself, more of an activator than the nature of the group” (Le Blanc and Lanctot, 1998, p. 24).
Conclusion
U
N
C
O R
R
Each of the methods used to identify gangs, gang members, and gang crime discussed above is subject to a number of limitations. Official statistics on gangs, gang members, and gang crime have a tendency to overestimate the number of gang‐ involved persons at any one time and may produce an inaccurate portrayal of the characteristics of gang members. Police data have a tendency to undercount female gang members (Miller, 2001) as well as younger gang members (Curry, 2000). Ethnographic research has produced a wealth of knowledge on particular gangs and gang members in particular places at particular times, but such studies cannot be replicated across places or time, which leaves the generalizability of findings from such studies an unknown factor. Self‐report survey methods are often plagued by the inability to identify a representative sample and to ensure that the data are valid and reliable. Findings derived from these methods, together, have produced a great deal of information on gangs, gang members, and gang crime, which has aided our understanding of the role of gangs in society. As with any scientific enterprise, however, when we consume information from any of these sources it is best to keep in mind the strengths and limitations associated with its collection. That said, as the study of gangs and their members continues, we should heed the advice of Egley and colleagues (2006, p. xiii), who encouraged the use of a “pluralistic approach” to the study of gangs.
0002672458.INDD 175
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Chris Melde
176
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
Future gang research will have the opportunity to uncover many as yet misunderstood or unidentified facets of gang life. These opportunities stem directly from the foundation of knowledge provided by the numerous gang researchers who have left a lasting legacy in this area of study. For instance, the emergence of a number of longitudinal data sources in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the twenty‐first century will permit long‐term studies on the lives of gang‐involved persons. In fact we are starting to see such research efforts, where respondents involved in scientific research as adolescents are now young adults with their own children. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, for instance, have been used to identify the consequences of adolescent gang membership on parenting practices (Augustyn, Thornberry, and Krohn, 2014), the socioeconomic implications of gang membership, and the likelihood of arrest in early adulthood (Krohn et al., 2011). Given other such data sources (e.g., the Denver Youth Survey, the Pittsburgh Youth Survey, the National Evaluations of the Gang Resistance Education and Training Surveys, the Seattle Social Development Project), the time is ripe for comparative research on the long‐term impact of gang membership. Researchers can also make use of new and emerging data analysis packages and sources of information to collect unique data on the lives of street gang members. For example, the emergence of user‐friendly data analysis packages has made the use of social network analyses accessible to a growing body of researchers, which is reflected in recent scholarship on gang homicide (Papachristos, 2009). Geospatial modeling practices have allowed for the testing of theories related to the emergence and spread of gangs and gang crime (e.g., Zeoli et al., 2014). Similarly, big data sources – such as the Internet, cell phones, and social media – and associated methods for analyzing such data can be put to use in order to gather streaming, real‐time information on the behaviors of gang‐involved youth and adults in a way that will better test prominent theories of crime and deviance, while also informing policymakers and practitioners about the causes and consequences of gangs and gang membership. Perhaps most importantly, such sources of information create the capacity to collect information that integrates individual‐level information on gang members and their behavior with microlevel group processes and macrolevel structural data, in conformity with the recommendations of Decker, Melde, and Pyrooz (2013).
0002672458.INDD 176
Notes
1 There is a vast philosophical literature on the problem of necessary and sufficient conditions, but this is beyond our present concerns. Here we use these concepts in the ordinary sense, as defined in Merriam‐Webster: a necessary condition is “a state of affairs that must prevail if another is to occur” and a sufficient condition is “a state of affairs whose existence assures the existence of another state of affairs” (Merriam‐ Webster Online Dictionary, 2013). 2 Civil gang injunctions are court orders that permit communities to call upon justice officials to regulate criminal and noncriminal behavior (e.g., associating in groups of
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
177
References
PR O
O
FS
more than three individuals in a public place; wearing gang colors; being outside after midnight) deemed to be gang related and injurious to those communities’ health and well‐being. 3 Construct validity uses the relationship between two constructs in the same study in order to determine whether their association is consistent with expectations (Maxfield and Babbie, 2014). 4 Criterion validity uses the relationship between a measured construct and some outside source in order to determine whether the association between the study variable and the outside measure is consistent with expectations (Maxfield and Babbie, 2014). 5 Gangs are also different in many other respects, for example leadership hierarchy, organizational characteristics, and the nature of the offending behaviors.
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
Augustyn, M. B., Thornberry, T. P., and Krohn, M. D. 2014. Gang membership and pathways to maladaptive parenting. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 24 (2): 252–267. Bjerregaard, B. 2003. Antigang legislation and its potential impact: The promises and the pitfalls. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 14 (2): 171–192. Black, D. J. 1980. The manners and customs of the police. New York: Academic Press. Block, C. R., and Block, R. 1993. Street gang crime in Chicago. Research in Brief. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice. NCJ 144782. Bursik, R. J. J., and Grasmick, H. G. 2006. Defining and researching gangs. In The modern gang reader, edited by A. J. Egley, C. L. Maxson, J. Miller, and M. W. Klein, 3rd edn., 2–14. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Brownstein, H. 2000. The social production of crime statistics. Justice Research and Policy, 2: 73–89. Curry, G. D. 2000. Self‐reported gang involvement and officially recorded delinquency. Criminology, 38 (4): 1252–1274. Decker, S. H., Melde, C., and Pyrooz, D. C. 2013. What do we know about gangs and gang membership and where do we go from here? Justice Quarterly, 30 (3): 369–402. Decker, S. H., and Pyrooz, D. C. 2010. On the validity and reliability of gang homicide: A comparison of disparate sources. Homicide Studies, 14: 359–376. Decker, S. H., Pyrooz, D. C., Sweeten, G., and Moule Jr., R. K. 2014. Validating self‐nomination in gang research: Assessing differences in gang embededness across non‐, current, and former gang members. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 30 (4): 577–598. doi: 10.1007/s10940–014–9215–8. Decker, S. H., and Van Winkle, B. 1996. Life in the gang: Family, friends, and violence. New York: Cambridge University Press. DeLisi, M., Barnes, J. C., Beaver, K. M., and Gibson, C. L. 2009. Delinquent gangs and adolescent victimization revisited: A propensity score matching approach. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 36: 808–823. Egley, A. J., Maxson, C. L., Miller, J., and Klein, M. W., eds. 2006. The modern gang reader, 3rd edn. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Esbensen, F.‐A., and Huizinga, D. 1993. Gangs, drugs, and delinquency in a survey of urban youth. Criminology, 31: 565–589.
0002672458.INDD 177
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Chris Melde
178
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
Esbensen, F.‐A., Winfree, L. T., Jr., He, N., and Taylor, T. J. 2001. Youth gangs and definitional issues: When is a gang a gang, and why does it matter? Crime and Delinquency, 47 (1): 105–130. Fagan, J. 1990. Social processes of delinquency and drug use among urban gangs. In Gangs in America, edited by C. R. Huff, 183–219. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. GAO. 2009. Combating gangs: Better coordination and performance measurement would help clarify roles of federal agencies and strengthen assessment of efforts. Report to the ranking member, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives. Washington, DC: US Government Accountability Office. Hill, K. G., Howell, J. C., Hawkins, J. D., and Battin‐Pearson, S. R. 1999. Childhood risk factors for adolescent gang membership: Results from the Seattle social development projects. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 36: 300–322. Hill, K. G., Lui, C., and Hawkins, J. D. 2004. Early precursors of gang membership: A study of seattle youth. In American Youth Gangs at the Millennium, edited by F.‐A. Esbensen, S. G. Tibbetts, and L. Gaines, 191–199. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Hindelang, M. J., Hirschi, T., and Weis, J. G. 1981. Measuring delinquency. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Howell, J. C. 2007. Menacing or mimicking? Realities of youth gangs. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 58 (2): 39–50. Howell, J. C., and Moore, J. P. 2010. History of street gangs in the United States. National Gang Center Bulletin, 5. Washington, DC, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Huizinga, D. 1997. Gangs and the volume of crime. Paper presented at the Western Society of Criminology, Honolulu, Hawaii, February. Huizinga, D., and Elliott, D. S. 1986. Reassessing the reliability and validity of self‐report measures. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2: 293–327. Junger‐Tas, J., Marshall, I. H., Enzmann, D., Killias, M., Steketee, M., and Gruszczynska, B., eds. 2010. Juvenile delinquency in Europe and beyond. New York: Springer. Katz, C. M. 2003. Issues in the production and dissemination of gang statistics: An ethnographic study of a large Midwestern police gang unit. Crime and Delinquency, 49 (3): 485–516. Katz, C. M., Fox, A. M., Britt, C. L., and Stevenson, P. 2012. Understanding police gang data at the aggregate level: An examination of the reliability of National Youth Gang Survey data. Justice Policy and Research, 14 (2): 103–128. Katz, C. M., Webb, V. J., and Schaefer, D. R. 2000. The validity of police gang intelligence lists: Examining differences in delinquency between documented gang members and non‐ documented delinquent youth. Police Quarterly, 3: 413–437. Klein, M. W. 1971. Street gangs and street workers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Klein, M. W. 2006. Street gangs: A cross‐national perspective. In The modern gang reader, edited by A. J. Egley, C. L. Maxson, J. Miller, and M. W. Klein, 3rd edn., 104–116. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Klein, M. W., and Maxson, C. L. 2006. Street gang patterns and policies. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, M. W., and Maxson, C. L. 1989. Street gang violence. In Violent crime, violent criminals, edited by N. A. Weiner and M. E. Wolfgang, 198–234. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Krohn, M. D., Ward, J. T., Thornberry, T. P., Lizotte, A. J., and Chu, R. 2011. The cascading effects of adolescent gang involvement across the life course. Criminology, 49: 991–1028.
0002672458.INDD 178
2/5/2016 4:08:45 AM
Gangs and Gang Crime
179
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
PR O
O
FS
Le Blanc, M. L., and Lanctot, N. 1998. Social and psychological characteristics of gang members. Journal of Gang Research, 5 (3): 15–28. Leal, F., and Koerner, C. 2013. Court: Suspected gang members get to challenge claim. Accessed 30 July, 2014. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gang‐535021‐injunction‐ orange.html. Maxfield, M., and Babbie, E. 2014. Research methods for criminal justice and criminology, 7th edn. Boston: Cengage Learning. Maxson, C. L., and Klein, M. W. 1990. Defining gang homicide: An updated look at member and motive approaches. In Gangs in America, edited by C. R. Huff, 2nd ed., 3–20. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Maxson, C. L., and Klein, M. W. 1995. Investigating gang structures. Journal of Gang Research, 3: 33–40. McCorkle, R. C., and Miethe, T. D. 1998. The political and organizational response to gangs: An Examination of moral panic in Nevada. Justice Quarterly, 15: 41–64. Melde, C., and Esbensen, F.‐A. 2011. Gang membership as a turning point in the life course. Criminology, 49: 513–552. Merriam‐Webster Online Dictionary. 2013. Accessed December 15, 2015. http://www.merriam‐ webster.com. Miller, J. 2001. One of the guys: Girls, gangs, and gender. New York: Oxford University Press. National Gang Center. n.d.‐a. National Youth Gang Survey. Accessed July 29, 2014. http:// www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey‐analysis. National Gang Center. n.d.‐b. National Youth Gang Survey Analysis. Accessed December 2, 2010. http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey‐Analysis/Methodology. Papachristos, A. V. 2009. Murder by structure: Dominance relations and the social structure of gang homicide. American Journal of Sociology, 115 (1): 74–128. Peterson, D., Taylor, T. J., and Esbensen, F.‐A. 2004. Gang membership and violent victimization. Justice Quarterly, 21: 794–815. Rennison, C. M., and Melde, C. 2009. The use of victim surveys to study gang crime: Prospects and possibilities. Criminal Justice Review, 34 (4): 489–514. Sherman, L., and Glick, B. 1984. The quality of police arrest statistics. Washington, DC: Police Foundation. Short, J. F., and Strodtbeck, F. L. 1965. Group process and gang delinquency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Spergel, I. A. 1995. The youth gang problem: A community approach. New York: Oxford University Press. State of Iowa. n.d. Chapter 723A: Criminal street gangs. Accessed July 1, 2014. http://coolice. legis.iowa.gov/cool‐ice/default.asp?category = billinfo&service = iowacode&ga = 83& input=723A. State of Michigan. n.d. Section 750.411u. Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.legislature.mi.gov/ (S(0rkfhqfrossvafnidl1dvy45))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname = mcl‐750–411u. Thornberry, T. P. 1998. Membership in youth gangs and involvement in serious and violent offending. In Serious and violent juvenile offenders, edited by R. Loeber and D. P. Farrington, 147–166. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Thornberry, T. P., Krohn, M. D., Lizotte, A. J., Smith, C. A., and Tobin, K. 2003. Gangs and delinquency in developmental perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Thrasher, F. 1927. The gang. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tremblay, R. E., Vitaro, F., Nagin, D., Pagani, L., and Sequin, J. R. 2003. The Montreal longitudinal and experimental study: Rediscovering the power of descriptions.
0002672458.INDD 179
2/5/2016 4:08:46 AM
Chris Melde
180
PR O
O
FS
In Taking stock of delinquency: An overview of findings from contemporary longitudinal studies, edited by T. P. Thornberry and M. D. Krohn, 205–254. New York: Kluwer. United States Department of Justice. n.d. What is a gang? Definitions. Accessed July 1, 2014. http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gangs/Pages/definitions.aspx. Webb, V. J., Katz, C. M., and Decker, S. H. 2006. Assessing the validity of self‐reports by gang members: Results from the Arrestee Drug‐Abuse Monitoring program. Crime and Delinquency, 52: 232–252. Zatz, M. 1987. Chicano youth gangs and crime: The creation of a moral panic. Contemporary Crises, 11: 129–158. Zeoli, A. M., Pizarro, J. M., Grady, S. C., and Melde, C. 2014. Homicide as infectious disease: Using public health methods to investigate the diffusion of homicide. Justice Quarterly, 31 (3): 609–632.
Further Reading
U
N
C
O R
R
EC TE
D
Decker, S. H., and Pyrooz, D. C. 2012. Contemporary gang ethnographies. In Handbook on criminological theory, edited by F. T. Cullen and P. Wilcox, 274–293. New York: Oxford University Press.
0002672458.INDD 180
2/5/2016 4:08:46 AM
