4 : Joining The Gang
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Responses from law enforcement agencies in the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS) indicate that among the characteristics of greatest importance in defining a gang are group identity and criminal activity, a group name, and accompanying signs and symbols that outwardly represent the group to others.
On a national scale, the gang problem has changed over the decades, as evidenced by the growing number of gangs and gang members, the availability and use of firearms, and the emergence of a persistent, long-standing gang presence (despite constant turnover in membership) in major cities across the United States. These trends represent reliable findings, which can be used to characterize the gang problem as a whole.
More recently, discovered involvement of one or a few gangs in criminal offenses that have been considered atypical of street gang criminal behavior is getting national attention. Recent examples include white-collar crimes, human trafficking, prostitution rings, infiltration of governmental and criminal justice agencies, usage of social networking sites and other Internet sites to coordinate criminal activity, and affiliation with domestic extremist groups. While it is important to recognize the emerging and evolving criminal activities of gangs, it is critical not to overgeneralize these as trends that are representative of most gangs in the United States. Without reliable and methodologically sound empirical evidence collected over time, it is careless to assume that the discovered involvement of one or a few gangs in a criminal activity is an emerging trend that applies to all gangs.
In order to properly assess changes in the national gang problem over time, reliable indicators of the gang problem must be collected from a large and representative sample of law enforcement agencies across the United States. Between 1996 and 2012, the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS) provided the only national data source for assessing long-term and annual changes in the gang problem across the following areas: (1) the emergence, presence, and stability patterns of gang problems within jurisdictions over time (prevalence measures); and (2) the relative size of the problem across such indicators as the number of gangs, the number of gang members, and the number of gang-related homicides and other crimes (magnitude measures).
The decline in gang prevalence rates across smaller cities and rural counties, coupled with increases in the number of gangs and gang members in densely populated areas (especially larger cities), suggests that the gang problem is becoming more concentrated nationally in urban areas. While local reports to the contrary are not uncommon, it must be remembered that these results are based on a nationally representative sample of all law enforcement agencies across the United States, which is the only appropriate method to assess nationwide changes in gang activity.
Because of the commonly known and widespread limitations of officially recorded data on gang crime (see FAQ number 5), other data sources, such as self-report studies, are typically used to explore this issue. Studies of large urban samples reveal that gang members are responsible for a large proportion of all violent offenses committed during the adolescent years. Across separate large-scale studies (both longitudinal and representative) in three large cities, gang members made up between 15 and 30 percent of the sample but accounted for 65 to 85 percent of the violent offenses recorded. These findings demonstrate the disproportionate contribution gang members make to the overall crime rate.
The types of gangs that often receive the most attention from media are characterized as gangs with nationally recognized names, portrayed as highly organized, extremely violent, and focused on one criminal operation, such as drug trafficking. The public is often left with the impression that all gangs, and their gang members, are excessively violent and out of control. These characterizations do more than enough to promote fear and little to help develop successful responses to the gang problem in any given community. In reality, there are a variety of gangs across the United States. Understanding how gangs and their members are both different and similar is essential in developing and implementing appropriate prevention and intervention programs, as well as targeted control strategies.
A common assertion regarding all gangs is their involvement in drug trafficking, distribution, and/or sales. However, while the overlap of gangs and drugs is well-documented, the proportion of gangs that are centered around drug distribution and that effectively control the operations thereof is relatively small. To be sure, gang members are significantly more likely to be involved in drug sales, but numerous research projects have revealed that these members rarely reinvest drug-sale profits into the gang as a whole; rather, they typically keep the profits for themselves. This finding, replicated over time and place, suggests a more nuanced description of the gang-drug connection, such that gangs provide an entrance into drug sales, primarily in street-level distribution, which when viewed superficially perpetuates the assertion that gangs control the distribution of drugs.
A related topic is the gang-drug-violence connection. Incidents involving gangs and drugs, resulting in the use of violence, attract greater coverage by the media, thus reinforcing this connection to the public. Gang violence, however, entails both expressive crimes and instrumental crimes. Expressive crimes pertain to incidents arising from ongoing conflicts and rivalries between gangs (e.g., disrespect, symbolic dominance), while instrumental crimes pertain to incidents surrounding economic functions (e.g., drug sales). While it is difficult to determine with precision the proportion of gang violence related to each, it has been demonstrated convincingly that instrumental-type incidents are much rarer than widely believed. In multiple studies over the past 25 years, a repeated finding is the lack of a drug component surrounding gang-related homicides. That is, in a large majority of these cases, the motives for the events pertained to the expressive and not the instrumental nature of gang violence. Thus, similar to drug sales, while the connection between gangs and violence is well-known, it is important to remain aware of the form this violence typically takes and not overgeneralize based on a few incidents, which can jeopardize the development of effective responses to local gang activity.
The results from this analysis indicate that gang member migration is notably dynamic and not accurately portrayed through reliance on singular accounts of migration for franchising purposes. (See also NGC Newsletters Summer 2012 and Winter 2013). First, the largest proportion of agencies that reported the migration of gang members into their jurisdictions were agencies already experiencing an established gang problem and agencies located in primarily urban areas. That is, outside metropolitan areas, gang member migration was infrequently reported, and when it did occur it typically followed an already established local gang problem. Second, the relative size of gang member migrants as a proportion of the total number of gang members was characteristically small. A clear majority of nonmetropolitan agencies indicated that gang member migrants made up a relatively small percentage (less than 25 percent) of gang members in their jurisdictions. Conversely, very few agencies stated that gang member migrants made up more than half of their documented gang members. Third, the reasons behind the movement of gang members according to law enforcement respondents were not as criminally motivated as is widely believed. In fact, the migration of gang members for social (legitimate) reasons such as moving for employment and/or educational opportunities far outweighed illegitimate reasons (e.g., drug distribution, other illegal activities, recruitment) as the motivating factors behind gang member migration.
Because of inherent limitations in law enforcement data and ethnographic studies, determining the proportion of adolescents and young adults who join street gangs is best accomplished through self-report studies of a specified target population. Based on a national study properly weighted to be representative of all youth, recent research finds that approximately 8 percent of all youth have joined a gang by their twenties. This estimate is also highly dynamic. In a multisite study in cities with known and significant gang problems, the percentage of youth who joined a gang peaked in the early teens and declined precipitously thereafter. These estimates, of course, vary across localities and are highly contingent on the type of gang problem observed in a given community. Studies conducted in some urban cities with long-standing gang problems have found that 15 percent or more of youth joined a gang at some point during their adolescent and youth-adult years.
In sum, joining a gang is not a rare event, relatively speaking. However, a corollary finding also emerges from these systematic studies: Even in the most gang-ridden areas across the United States, most youth do not join a gang. Comparatively, law enforcement agencies report older, more adult-aged gang members in the NYGS (in 2011, approximately two-thirds were 18 and over), reflecting the tendency of agencies to focus primarily on the more embedded (hard-core) members of gangs. This is especially the case in urban areas with long-standing gang problems, where adult-aged members make up a clear majority; in newer gang-problem areas outside the larger cities, this proportion is noticeably smaller.
Reflecting the racial/ethnic divide along socioeconomic lines across the country, the largest percentage of gang members in the NYGS belong to minorities, with around half reported as Hispanic/Latino and approximately one-third as African American/black. Around 10 to 15 percent of gang members are reported as white/Caucasian. A multisite study of school-aged youth finds comparable proportions. In contrast, a national survey of youth reports a much lower percentage of blacks (25 percent) and Hispanics (19 percent). Clearly, there is much variation across cities, counties, and states in the racial/ethnic composition of gangs, but ultimately, this descriptive characteristic of the gang problem is best regarded as a reflection of the social and economic inequalities that persist across the United States. 59ce067264
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