Crime & Delinquency 60(4)

Crime & Delinquency, June 2014: Volume 60, Issue 4

The Ties That Bind: Desistance From Gangs
David C. Pyrooz, Scott H. Decker, and Vincent J. Webb

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.

It’s Gang Life, But Not As We Know It: The Evolution of Gang Business
James A. Densley

Based on fieldwork with gangs and interviews with gang members in London, United Kingdom, this article illustrates how recreation, crime, enterprise, and extralegal governance represent sequential actualization stages in the evolutionary cycle of street gangs. Gangs evolve from adolescent peer groups and the normal features of street life in their respective neighborhoods. In response to external threats and financial commitments, they grow into drug-distribution enterprises. In some cases, gangs then acquire the necessary special resources of violence, territory, secrecy, and intelligence that enable them to successfully regulate and control the production and distribution of one or more given commodities or services unlawfully. Territory is first claimed then controlled. Likewise, violence is first expressive then instrumental. With each step, gangs move further away from “crime that is organized” and closer to “organized crime.”

Gang Involvement: Social and Environmental Factors
Emma Alleyne and Jane L. Wood

This study examines some of the individual, social, and environmental factors that differentiate gang-involved youth (both gang members and peripheral youth) and nongang youth in a British setting. The authors found that gang-involved youth were more likely than nongang youth to be older, and individual delinquency and neighborhood gangs predicted gang involvement. Using structural equation modeling, the authors examined the relationships between social/environmental factors and gang involvement. As a result, this article found that parental management, deviant peer pressure, and commitment to school had indirect relationships with gang involvement. These findings are discussed as they highlight a need to address the mechanisms in which protective and risk factors function collectively.

The Influence of Gentrification on Gang Homicides in Chicago Neighborhoods, 1994 to 2005
Chris M. Smith

In this study, the author examines the effects of three forms of gentrification—demographic shifts, private investment, and state intervention—on gang-motivated homicides in Chicago from 1994 to 2005 using data from the U.S. Census, the Chicago Police Department, business directories, and the Chicago Housing Authority. The findings suggest that demographic shifts have a strong negative effect on gang homicide. Private investment gentrification, measured here as the proliferation of coffee shops, has a marginally significant and negative effect on gang homicide. In contrast, state-based gentrification, operationalized as the demolition of public housing, has a positive effect on gang homicide.

Latino Street Gang Emergence in the Midwest: Strategic Franchising or Natural Migration?
Mike Tapia

This article explores the role of migration in the recent emergence of Latino street gangs in a large, Midwestern city. Like many other places in the region, Indianapolis, Indiana, has witnessed the growing presence of Latino street gangs over the past decade. Seizing on the opportunity to document and analyze the early stages of formation, competing theoretical perspectives on how and why these gangs emerged are evaluated. The work is supplemented by insights gained in ethnographic work with Latino gang members, nongang Latino residents, public school employees, and police. The result is a contemporary historiography of Latino gang emergence, framed by a description of the social and structural context in which these groups are situated.

Gang Participation
Ho Lam (Eva) Yiu and Gary D. Gottfredson

Schools that require the most help are often those that have difficulty staffing qualified teachers. Data suggest that many teachers who leave their schools or the profession cite student misbehavior and an unsafe work environment as reasons. Although public attention is not at present focused on problems of gang delinquency in schools—focusing instead on educational funding, teacher quality, and achievement levels—there is every reason to anticipate that gangs, school disorder, and teaching quality are closely linked. This research involves a large probability sample of secondary schools surveyed in 1998 merged with U.S. census data on community characteristics. Multilevel models imply that community demographic influences on individual gang involvement (GI) are largely mediated by school and personal variables. School safety and students’ personal sense of safety emerged as important variables that predicted GI.