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In Australia, as with other countries around the world, migrant young people receive significant media and political attention as the alleged perpetrators of significant criminal activity. This has been a consistent feature over time, with ‘Asian gangs’ in the 1990s in the US, UK and Australia, ‘Middle-Eastern gangs’ around the time of 9/11, ‘Turkish gangs’ and ‘Albanian gangs’ in the UK and Europe, and ‘African gangs’ in Australia since the early 2000s. In this research, we investigate the risk factors associated with youth gang membership in Australia. Using data from the Australia Youth Safety Survey from 2,945 young people aged 14–25 years, we examine the importance of first- and second-generation migrant status on gang membership. After controlling for known risk factors, we find that migrant status was not a predictor of gang membership. Results offer important insights into the prominence of morality and self-control as protective factors against youth gang membership, and speak to the role of neighbourhood context in which the young person lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Sudanese youth especially young male youth face racism and discrimination in Australia. This research was conducted with South Sudanese young people, and stakeholders within the South Sudanese community in Melbourne, Australia. The study explored how South Sudanese young people respond to the narrative in the media about 'African Gangs' and how this impacted their personal experiences of racism. The study used an exploratory, qualitative case study approach in a real-world setting, underpinned by the psychosocial conceptual framework. The analysis documented areas of concern, including the poor mental health arising from racism and racial profiling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work uses social learning theory's perspective on continuation and cessation of offending to explore the how rewards and punishments for violence change across the stages of gang membership. Qualitative interviews with a racially/ethnically diverse sample of 39 former gang members within two emergent gang cities in the American south are used to explore the role of violence across the stages of gang affiliation. Inductive analytic techniques are used to analyze gang members' in-depth, semi-structured interviews to identify and further refine emergent themes through the use of modified ground theory. Results indicate that violence is expressed as central to the experiences of youth gang members across the life cycle of gang involvement and alters former members' perceptions of the gang's ability to provide a protective function. The extent to which the role of violence changes over time—as it interacts with youth decision-making specific to the balance of experienced and anticipated rewards and punishments of gang involvement—is integral in understanding its reinforcing effect on gang membership and association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates how exposure to gang-affiliated peers affects social behaviors and attitudes of early adolescents. Much of the literature finds that exposure to gangs contributes to adolescents' antisocial behaviors. According to other studies, however, gang exposure can also promote prosocial behaviors. The present article re-examines this contradictory evidence, exploring potential complementarity of both reactions to gangs. Using a survey of 1,782 adolescents aged ten to 13 from rural Colombia, I compare adolescents who are and are not in a school class with members of youth gangs. I exploit the fact that schools in rural Colombia are unsegregated. Moreover, the presence of youth gangs across these schools is linked to incidence of historic armed conflict rather than typical forms of social disadvantage. This comparative setting thus allows me to establish an unconfounded relationship between exposure to gang-affiliated classmates and social outcomes. The analysis reveals gender differences in the effect of youth gang exposure. I find that girls react to male gang classmate by increased involvement in prosocial organizations. Boys, by contrast, adjust to male gangs by expressing more antisocial attitudes. There are no gender differences in the effect of gang classmates on alcohol consumption (an indicator of antisocial behavior). The article shows that the well-documented antisocial adjustments to gangs are – population-wide – complemented by prosocial adjustments, with gender being a key moderator. I discuss the implications of these findings for theories of violence and social change after conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores interpretations made by the press, specialists, citizens, and authorities of the Mexican capital regarding the phenomenon of youth gangs from 1956 to 1965. The analysis stresses that the city’s socio-spatial differentiation in those years was central in explanations about and representations of youth gangs; such differentiation also played a central role in the actions authorities took against young gangs, and the social perception of their dangerousness. Thus, the aforementioned social sectors outlined two contrasting stereotypes, which shared one common point: sexual violence. Rebeldes sin causa (rebels without a cause) and pandilleros (gang members) were social types that intertwined expressions of moral panic and feelings of insecurity, which perpetuated territorial stigmas concerning proletarian neighborhoods and slums, as well as gender discourses that influenced the urban experience of their inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with experts from non-governmental organizations and life stories with young gang members, it is analyzed the incidence of youth gangs in the Development Agenda in El Salvador and it is identified the risk factors of policies aimed at youth. The main results exhibit how youth gangs, violence and failed public policies have limited the achievement of development goals. Regarding these findings, a series of proposals are presented to reduce violence and its impact on civil society, relying on non-governmental organizations and on the strengthening of institutions and democracy.

This paper aims to present the specific nature of youth street gang activity in the context of radicalization. In practice, the paper delivers recommendations based on the research results, aiming at creating models within which one could work with radical groups in the local context. In particular, the recommendations are addressed towards teachers and educators, social workers, probation officers, streetworkers, police offi cers, policymakers and all those who wish to improve their knowledge and understanding of the often complex relationship between children’s activity on the streets and the activity of youth street gangs.

Decades of research have categorized risk and protective factors for youth gang involvement in social contexts that include individual, family, peer, school, and community factors. However, most studies are cross-sectional and only examine 1 or 2 social-ecological contexts. This study, which used a time-to-event model with time-variant and time-invariant predictors, adds to this literature by using longitudinal social-ecological factors to examine increases in the hazard of gang entry among serious juvenile offenders followed for 7 years during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Lower socioeconomic status (SES), higher rates of exposure to violence, self-reported offending, and time spent in jail were associated with higher hazards rates of gang entry. Temperance (suppression of aggression and impulse control) was associated with decreases in the hazard of gang entry. Among family characteristics, higher parental hostility and having a father who had been arrested were associated with increases in the hazard of gang entry. Resistance to peer influence was a protective factor for gang entry. In addition, individuals who reported associating with delinquent peers or who had a higher proportion of friends who had been arrested had significant increases in the hazard for gang entry. School orientation was a significant protective factor, and neighborhood disorganization was associated with increases in the hazard for gang entry. Strategies for early intervention and prevention efforts are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the tacit endorsement of male youth gang members engaging in "race"-based conflict to gain localized levels of power. It examines the importance of belonging to an "in-group" for these young people via their connectedness to the broader residents, through cultural essentialism toward a Roma "out-group." The young, male gang members, drawing on what they perceive to be their role, adopt physical and symbolic strategies to assert their control over their space and to concretize their sense of belonging with the wider community in-group. The article considers how a labeled and excluded group of male youth gang members from wider social structures find connection, commonality, and belonging in hardening their self-image through an othering process against those deemed inferior to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that adolescents' involvement in bullying (as perpetrators, victims, or both) is related to more negative outcomes than noninvolvement, and a small subset of studies has connected bullying to the specific outcome of gang involvement. However, most of these studies have been cross-sectional and have not examined causal pathways by which bullying and gang involvement may be related. Furthermore, some studies find sex differences in prevalence, type, and outcomes of bullying as well as in the relationship between bullying and gang involvement, suggesting important prevention implications, yet this remains under examined. Our study explicitly examines these issues identifying the overlap in bullying outcomes with antecedent gang risk factors, and suggesting potential direct and indirect effects of bullying on gang involvement; we test these relationships, and potential sex differences, using longitudinal data from the second National Evaluation of Gang Resistance Education and Training to overcome limitations of prior research. Consistent with our expectations, we find that (1) bully-victims exhibit the highest levels of risk; (2) bullies, victims, and bully-victims have increased odds of later gang joining, compared to uninvolved youth; (3) the inclusion of risk factors partially mediates the effect of bullying involvement on gang onset for bullies and victims and fully mediates the effect for bully-victims; and (4) some evidence of sex differences exists. Given these insights, greater connections between bullying and gang prevention efforts may be worthwhile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the public policy benefits of gang research. In particular, the author highlights the benefits of longitudinal research on gang members in several cities and multi-city tracking of gang problems nationwide. Remarkably, the accumulated research led directly to expanded federally sponsored gang research, program development and program evaluations—a clear-cut case in which research influenced public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflection paper aims to provide insights into the gangs in El Salvador based on expressions of identity reconfiguration produced in the frame of a participatory photography experience with a group of men who belonged to those collectives. With their accounts, descriptions, and exercises of action-reflection they created an encounter of voices and views that dialogically analyzes, interprets and rebuilds some fragments from their realities, anchored to their realities and the meanings thereof. Identity in the context of a gang, the forms and meanings of violence as mediation in the social relationships, and the social stigma as a device producing the otherness are the three analytical lines allowing understanding how difficult it is to build an identity in the context of a stigmatizing society. All this also allows for the new self-concept built after the distancing from the violent practices as well as the awareness on the possibilities for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling for basic demographic variables, parental knowledge, prosocial peer associations, and precursor measures of each outcome, the current study sought to compare two putative intervening mechanisms for the gang affiliation–participant delinquency relationship: a social learning mechanism (proactive criminal thinking) and a self-control mechanism (reactive criminal thinking). The two mechanisms were explored in 3,136 (1,519 male, 1,612 female) early adolescents (mean age = 12.14 years) from the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) study. A three-wave path analysis of Waves 1 to 3 of the G.R.E.A.T. study revealed a significant social learning pathway (gang affiliation → proactive criminal thinking → delinquency) and a nonsignificant self-control pathway (gang affiliation → reactive criminal thinking → delinquency). These findings were then replicated using data from Waves 4 to 6. From these results, it is concluded that gang affiliation may increase future delinquency by providing youth with increased opportunities to learn proactive criminal thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This systematic review aims to explore the lived experiences of young gang members to explore the processes that mediate gang membership and offending. Rationale: Gang membership disproportionately effects young people (Home Office, 2016). The link between gang membership and inordinately high levels of severe offending characteristics is well represented in research (Thornberry, 1998). However, the processes that mediate gang membership and offending are poorly understood (Melde & Esbensen, 2011). Young gang members are often passively conceptualised within research and need to have their voices uncovered to better elucidate the psychological processes that link gang membership to offending. Method: A systematic review of qualitative research was carried out following the Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statement for reporting (Moher et al., 2009), Six papers were identified which represented samples from both the UK and US. These were reviewed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Checklist (2016) and were subsequently analysed using thematic synthesis. Findings: Young gang members associated offending with its role in reinforcing a community of belonging, providing material and non-material capital and as a response to living within an oppressive context. Conclusions: This research suggests that the internal psychological processes within a gang play an important interacting role with the external marginalised contexts they occupy. Implications of the need for policy, research and practice to better account for this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study evaluates adolescent gang involvement using cross-sectional survey data from 1,475 adolescents living in a disadvantaged Comuna in Medellin, Colombia. Specifically, we examine the prevalence of former and current gang membership, affiliation with gang members, and lives untouched by any gang association. Once these groups are established, we identify variation in membership on the basis of demographic and theoretical variables, and determine whether such variation can be described by using the selection, facilitation, and enhancement models developed by Thornberry et al. While our results, consistent with many prior findings using North American samples, support the selection model for most theoretical variables and enhancement for behavioral outcomes, our strongest contribution is our study’s ability to demonstrate the temporal impact of gang involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I juxtapose Pentecostal churches with youth gangs, two popular barrio institutions that at first glance appear to be irreconcilable but when considered together evince organic parallels that reveal important insights into contemporary life in urban poverty. Reflecting on ethnographic data from the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, I argue that due to an analogous ritualization of everyday life - through rigorous rules and clearly defined consequences for breaking them - both Pentecostal churches and youth gangs, despite their ostensible differences, afford a unique kind of freedom in constraint, and by providing reliable spaces of predictability, control, and mastery, have become popular stages for managing the precariousness of barrio life in late modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to define the main dimensions of gang, its structure, mutual connections and influence on the contemporary society at national and international level. This paper is based on knowledge about the issues of gang and presents the main differences and characteristics of formalized and non-formalized gang and the main identical and different characters. It comes from a study of current knowledge on the issue of gang and discusses its general forms. In this paper, a discussion of existing studies and typologies of these peculiar social groups, including an explanation is provided. The next section will introduce the particular qualities of the crimes committed by (mostly youth) gangs and explain their possible causes. The main findings of the paper is putting relations between formalized and non-formalized gang and their influence on the present and future society in the social, psychological, economic, ethnic and criminal dimension.

Much of the existing scholarship on gang membership predominantly focuses on adolescence as being the formative time period for the development of gang identities; however, there has thus far been more limited attention towards the childhood experiences of gang members, (i.e., pre-adolescence). The organising principle of this paper is to articulate the retrospective accounts of gang members’ childhoods, and how these recollections form a central role to the emergence of gang identities. The data presented in this paper were collected during fieldwork in two adult, men’s prisons in England; interviews were conducted with 60 active and former prison gang members, identified through prison databases; a small number (n = 9) of interviews were conducted with ‘street’ participants, such as ex-offenders, outreach workers and gang researchers. This paper aims to show that many gang members romanticise accounts of their childhoods, in spite of often having experienced adverse childhood experiences:, so too do many gang members view their childhood experiences as part of their mythologised narrative of life in ‘the gang’. Nevertheless, a tension exists between how gang members seek to portray their childhood experiences around gangs and the negative labelling and strain they experienced during their childhood; often, romanticised accounts seek to retrospectively neutralise these harms. In so doing, the lens through which childhood gang membership is viewed is one which conceptualises childhood gang involvement as being something non-deleterious, thus acting as a lens that attempts to neutralise the harms and vicissitudes of gang affiliation.

Across the world, youth workers have been active in helping vulnerable youth groups. In Hong Kong, government-funded youth services are conducted by professional social workers to help vulnerable youths. This article adopted a case study approach to investigate a youth group who committed a murder. Nine murderers and two social workers were interviewed. It aims to uncover the structure and activities of the group and analyse the gang intervention prior to the murder to find out what had gone wrong and identify the lessons that social workers can learn from the murder. Four misconceptions in gang intervention have been identified. First, because of the Triad (Chinese-organised crime) affiliation, this is not just a group of deviant youths but a youth gang. Second, because it is a gang, the social workers should not group them but should instead degroup them to avoid contamination. Third, diagnosis is different from labelling. With the right diagnosis, services can be tailor-made to delabel them. Fourth, when the youths are diagnosed as a gang, outreach work instead of centre work should be provided-social workers should reach out to the gangland to uncover the youths' gang participation and crime involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on twenty-four months of ethnographic research, this article examines the role of violence among northern Thai youth gangs at the intersection of global capitalism and local culture. Contrary to dominant representations that depict youth gang violence as a means for psychologically coping as victims of dramatic social change, I argue that youth violence may be viewed as active and creative ways of negotiating change under conditions of rapid urbanization and modernization. For gang youth in northern Thailand, violence offers an opportunity to “fit in and stick out” in an anonymous cosmopolitan city. While some Chiang Mai youth subcultures draw primarily on global cultural resources as a means of standing out and enhancing one’s “subcultural capital,” northern Thai youth gangs rely more heavily on local culture to achieve status and a sense of self-worth, particularly in relation to enduring Thai values of masculinity centered on notions of invulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the importance of organizational structures and formal affiliations with the Hong Kong triads to delinquency among youth street gang members in Hong Kong. More specifically, this study examines the relative importance of the number of organizational structures and triad affiliation to patterns of delinquency in a sample of active members of youth street gangs ( N = 201). With the aid of outreach social workers, a convenience sampling method was used to recruit a gender-balanced sample of at-risk youths. Logistic regression analysis of the survey data that was gathered indicated that formal affiliation to Hong Kong triads and the presence of organizational structures significantly increased the odds of delinquency (independently of each other). Suggestions for future research on gang membership and delinquency, with particular reference to the Asian context, are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on fieldwork conducted in five alternative provision schools across three large cities in England, this article explores the relationship between young people's involvement in urban street gangs and their attitudes and behaviour in school. By applying and developing a lens of social field theory, the article highlights the ways in which gang‐involved young people navigate their way between two distinct social fields, namely that of the street gang and that of the school. Although pupil gang involvement can raise significant issues for schools, particularly around violence and educational engagement, our findings challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that depicts an entirely negative portrait of the effects of gang involvement on pupils’ attitudes and behaviour. Instead, through an analysis of interview and observational data, we argue that there is nothing inevitable about the internal logic of a gang social field permeating a school's gates. Young people involved in gangs do not typically spend their entire waking hours wedded to a ‘gang member’ identity—if they are given the opportunity to transition away from the gang social field when they enter the school gates, they will often embrace it. In short, the links between pupils’ involvement in gangs, violent behaviour in school and engagement in education are more contingent and nuanced than is suggested by the literature on gangs and schools to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, “the youth” have captured (or perhaps recaptured) public attention in South Africa. This paper reflects on South Africa’s experience of generational conflict and places it in the broader context of South African history. After attempting to define “youth,” this paper makes two key points. First, far from being a recent development, generational tension has been a continuous feature of Southern African history since at least the late nineteenth century. Second, organized political mobilization is not the way this tension usually manifests itself. Mass youth politics is a specific phenomenon, which needs to be explained historically rather than assumed. The paper focuses on three historical examples to illustrate this: early migrant labor in South Africa, the formation of urban youth gangs, and the sustained youth uprising from 1976 until the early 1990s. It concludes with a tentative attempt to draw some parallels between that phase of rebellion and recent student upheavals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade has seen increased reports of street gangs across a range of contexts. In Europe, anxieties over street‐based youth has led to the development of gang‐specific policies across a range of jurisdictions, most notably the UK. Following a similar pattern of policy mobility in criminal justice, many of these policies have origins in the US system. In this review of international gang policy developments, we critically examine a number of these policies in a comparative context ‐ including gang policing units and intelligence databases ‐ and interrogate their efficacy. Drawing on cogent examples from the UK, we argue for caution in adopting US gang intervention tactics due to the lack of empirical evidence relating to their applicability or efficacy, and the corresponding potential for discrimination toward the most marginalised and socially excluded children and young people in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young street gangs (YSGs) in Scotland are considered recreational youth outfits bound up in issues of territoriality and protest masculinities. While YSGs occasionally engage in territorial violence, they are nonetheless viewed as distinct entities from organized crime (OC). However, following qualitative interviews (n= 35) with offenders involved in OC, namely illegal drug supply, the author concludes otherwise and presents evidence which suggests that YSGs retain evolving capabilities. The author presents an evolving gang model in which the key sequential stages are outlined as recreational, criminal, and syndicate and argue that, aided by globalization, gang organization has become a means for gang business. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Across the globe, the phenomenon of youth gangs has become an important and sensitive public issue. In this context, an increasing level of research attention has focused on the development of universalized definitions of gangs in a global context. In this article, we argue that this search for similarity has resulted in a failure to recognize and understand difference. Drawing on an alternative methodology we call a ‘global exchange’, this article suggests three concepts—homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity—that seek to re-engage the sociological imagination in the study of gangs and globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research adds to the scholarly argument that "work is still needed to provide a more complex picture of young women's involvement in gangs" (Sutton, 2017: 150). Focusing on Gugulethu (a black township in Cape Town, South Africa), this paper discusses selected aspects of intimate relations between female youth and men involved in gangsterism. It goes beyond describing these women as simple victims of these male gangsters' ego by paying attention to cases where these "girls" are in control of their men. The conclusion suggests that masculinity expected in gangsterism and the South African township culture are among the outstanding causes behind the manipulations, abuses, and other forms of gender-based violence that women inflict upon their gangster men and which remain overlooked in research as well as in the community. The research found that there are cases where the gangsters' girlfriends are not just the most benefitting socio-economically from the unlawful activities their men get involved in, but they are also the masterminds behind their men's crimes which are often accompanied with violence and arrests. The paper draws on the ethnographic approach in the townships, observations, life stories, in-depth interviews and follow-up interviews in Gugulethu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Penal Code (NPC) of Romania gave up on punishing minor offenders, in favor of educational measures. Thus, the minor following a final conviction, will not be subjected to the prohibitions, detentions or incapacity attributable to the penalties applicable to major offenders. Thus, the emphasis is moved from punishment, to prevention, re-education and social reinsertion. The New Penal Code delimits from the previous one, the institution of the educational measures depriving of liberty from that of non-custodial educational measures. Psychiatric forensic expertise of the minor plays a key role in the court decision, through its conclusions regarding the existence of discernment at the time of committing the act. In the case of determining the presence of discernment at the time of committing the act, the psychiatric forensic board will also make recommendations on the educational measure that should be instituted. In the recommendations made, the board considers both personality deficiencies and social etiology, dissociating the meaning of behavior from the social situation in which the subject of law is. Thus, the recommendations made by the board of psychiatric forensic expertise are the result of a thorough analysis of the minor's psychic state, the nature of the committed act, corroborated with the concrete circumstances of committing it, with the opportunity to appreciate critically the act because of the education received and with the influences of the environment. In addition, in recommending educational measures, the board also takes into consideration the family support that the minor benefits or not, essential support in his social reintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to create a measure of risk for gang affiliation, for use in the UK. A pilot stage invited gang affiliated and non-gang affiliated participants between the ages of 16–25 years to retrospectively self-report on 58 items of risk exposure at the age of 11 years. Based on performance of these items, a 26-item measure was developed and administered to a main study sample (n = 185) of gang affiliated and non-gang affiliated participants. Categorical Principal Component Analysis was applied to data, yielding a single-factor solution (historic lack of safety and current perception of threat). A 15-item gang affiliation risk measure (GARM) was subsequently created. The GARM demonstrated good internal consistency, construct validity and discriminative ability. Items from the GARM were then transformed to read prospectively, resulting in a test measure for predictive purposes (T-GARM). The T-GARM requires further validation regarding its predictive utility and generalisability. However, this study has resulted in the first measure of gang affiliation, with promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the development of Nicaragua's policies for providing transitional justice and preventing youth gang violence. Topics discussed include critical nature of the police-community interaction; criminal justice system of the U.S.; and providing restorative justice through education and rehabilitation.

The article focuses on the development of Nicaragua's policies with its implications for U.S. police forces. Topics discussed include its role in providing transitional justice, and shaping role of youth gang violence; its interaction with criminal justice system; and promotion of political commitment to reform and public legitimacy in the country.