MENU TITLE: Youth Gangs: Problem and Response
Series: OJJDP
Published: 10/91
243 pages
558,472 bytes

DRAFT 10/91

Youth Gangs: Problem and Response

Irving Spergel

with the assistance of
G. David Curry, Ron Chance, Candice Kane, Ruth E.
Ross, Alba Alexander, Pamela Rodriguez, Deeda
Seed, Edwina Simmons, and Sandra Oh

National Youth Gang Suppression and Intervention
Program
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

Distributed By:

Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20850
1-800-638-8736

------------------------------
ABSTRACT

This draft report represents the result of an
extensive review of the research literature
available on the youth-gang phenomenon conducted
by a team of researchers at the University of
Chicago, headed by Irving Spergel and sponsored by
the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice.
The report explores the research on such topics as
definitions of youth gang and related terms, the
nature and causes of the gang phenomenon, and the
effectiveness of various responses from law
enforcement, the judicial system, social welfare
agencies, schools, and communities. It concludes
with a summary and conclusions regarding the
nature of the problem, the responses offering the
most hope, and the possible courses for further
research. An extensive bibliography is also
provided. With bibliography, the report numbers
301 pages. 

------------------------------

PREFACE

No region of the United States is without youth
gangs. Gangs exist in many large and middle-size
cities and are spreading to suburban and smaller
communities. Youth gangs increasingly create
problems in correctional and school settings.
Compared with nongang offenders, gang members are
responsible for a disproportionate percentage of
serious and violent offenses and are more likely
to engage in the sale and distribution of drugs.
Race or ethnicity and social isolation,
interacting with poverty and community
disorganization account for much of the gang
problem. Gangs take different shape and character
in the same or different communities over time.
The gang is an important social institution for
low-income male youths and young adults from
newcomer and residual populations because it often
serves social, cultural, and economic functions no
longer adequately performed by family, school, and
the local market. Four major policy emphases for
dealing with gangs have evolved: local community
mobilization, youth outreach, social
opportunities, and gang suppression. Improved
policies require the integration of these
approaches with special emphasis on community
mobilization and targeted social opportunities.

Appreciation is expressed to Malcolm Klein,
Sheldon Messinger, Norval Morris, Michael Tonry,
Walter Miller, and Paul Tracy for comments on
earlier drafts of this report. This project was
supported by grant No. 87-JS-CX-X100 from the
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.

------------------------------

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART A: NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
INTRODUCTION
 Objectives of the Study

CHAPTER I: DATA SOURCES AND DEFINITIONS
 Definitions
 Delinquent Group versus Gang

CHAPTER II: SCOPE, SERIOUSNESS, AND CHARACTER OF
THE GANG PROBLEM
 Estimates of Numbers of Youth Gangs and Youth
gang Membership
 Youth Gang Violence
 Gang and Nongang Member Studies: Violence and
Serious Crime
 Drugs and Violence

CHAPTER III: GANGS AS ORGANIZATIONS
 Gang Alliances 
 Cliques and Gang Size
 Types of Gang Members
 Leadership
 Territoriality

CHAPTER IV: MEMBERSHIP DEMOGRAPHICS
 Class, Culture, and Race/Ethnicity
 Age
 Females and Gangs

CHAPTER V: MEMBERSHIP EXPERIENCES
 Entering and Leaving the Gang
 Individual Status and Gang Cohesion
 Intellectual/Personal Disability

CHAPTER VI: THE SOCIAL CONTEXTS OF GANG
DEVELOPMENT
 Family
 School
 Politics
 Organized Crime
 Prisons

PART B: RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEM
CHAPTER VII: ORGANIZED RESPONSES TO GANGS
 Community organization/mobilization
 Social Intervention/Youth Outreach/Street Work
 Opportunities Provision
 Gang Suppression
 Organizational Change and Development

CHAPTER VIII: SOCIAL INTERVENTION

CHAPTER IX: CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
 Police
 Emerging Strategy

CHAPTER X: PROSECUTION, DEFENSE, AND THE JUDGE
 Prosecutorial and Defense Guidelines
 Defense Attorney
 Judiciary

CHAPTER XI: PROBATION, PAROLE, AND CORRECTIONS
 Probation
 Parole
 Corrections

CHAPTER XII: SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES: SCHOOLS AND
JOBS
 Local School Programs
 Employment Strategy
 Local Employment

CHAPTER XIII: COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND
MOBILIZATION
 Governmental Mobilization
 Local Community Mobilization
 Neighborhood Youth Organizations
 New Federal Mobilization

CHAPTER XIV: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

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PART A: NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

INTRODUCTION

Youth gangs are not unique to contemporary urban
America. They have existed across time and
cultures. Youth gangs tend to develop during times
of rapid social change and political instability.
They function as a residual social institution in
different ways in different communities when other
institutions fail, and they provide a certain
degree of order, solidarity, and sometimes
economic gain for their members. 

Youth gangs have existed in Western and Eastern
societies for centuries. As early as the 1600's,
London was "terrorized by a series of organized
gangs calling themselves the Mims, Hectors,
Bugles, Dead Boys . . . who found amusement in
breaking windows, demolishing taverns, assaulting
the watch. . . . The gangs also fought pitched
battles among themselves dressed with colored
ribbons to distinguish the different factions"
(Pearson 1983, p. 188). In the 17th and 18th
centuries, English gangs wore belts and metal pins
with designs of serpents, hearts pierced with
arrows, animals, and stars. Possibly the oldest
structured pattern of criminal gang organization
is the Hong Kong-based triads, which evolved from
secret societies organized during the 17th century
to overthrow the Manchu Ching Dynasty (General
Accounting Office 1989, p. 3).

Youth gangs in urban centers of the United States
existed before the 19th century (Hyman 1984). A
historian of gangs in New York City writes, "By
1855 it was estimated that the metropolis
contained at least 30,000 men who owed allegiance
to gang leaders and through them to the political
leaders of Tammany Hall and the Know Nothing or
Native American Party" (Asbury 1971, p. 105). The
New York City Civil War draft riots were said to
have been precipitated by young Irish street gangs
(Asbury 1971, p. 105). Prison gangs existed in
Illinois as early as the 1920's. The crimes of
many of these early prison groups were similar to
those practiced today and included "intimidation,
extortion, homosexual prostitution, and other
illegitimate business. Riots and killings were
numerous" (C. Camp and G. Camp 1988, p. 57). The
gang tradition has been particularly strong in
America's Southwest in recent decades. Some gangs
in Los Angeles date back 60 or more years--at
least in terms of name and tradition (Pitchess
1979). Philibosian estimates that gangs are active
in 70 of the 84 incorporated cities in Los Angeles
County (1989, p. 7). One writer reports that
"today a Hispanic in Los Angeles may be a fourth
generation gang member" (Donovan 1988, p. 14).

Outside the United States, youth gangs and gang
problems have been reported in most countries of
Europe, the Soviet Union, Kenya, Tanzania, South
Africa, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Taiwan,
South Korea, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic
of China (Oschlies 1979; Specht 1988). Youth gangs
apparently are present in both socialist and free-
market societies and in both developing and
developed countries.

The Japanese Yakuza (De Vos, Wagatasuma, Caudill,
and Mizushima 1973), the Chinese Triads (Morgan
1960; President's Commission on Organized Crime
1985), and the Italian Mafia (Arlacchi 1986) are
organized criminal adult gangs that have youth
street-gang affiliates or aspirants.

The Japanese Ministry of Justice reports that
52,275 gangsters were arrested in 1983 (excluding
those arrested for relatively minor crimes;
Ministry of Justice 1984a). The number of
juveniles identified as members of gangster
organizations who entered Japanese reformatory
schools in 1983 was 713, or 12.3 percent of the
total of 5,787 juveniles (Ministry of Justice
1984b).

Sir Clinton Roper observes that "ethnic gangs" are
a major problem in New Zealand prisons. "They
behave as a cohesive group . . . are in conflict
among themselves . . . and present a real danger
to prison staff. . . . a predominant gang can
virtually run a wing of a prison. . . . they adopt
stand-over tactics against nongang members, which
results in many inmates seeking protective
segregation where there is little available. . . .
the active recruitment of new members in the
institution is a strong impediment to
reintegrating inmates into a law-abiding life on
release" (Roper 1988).

There were and continue to be different views
about the nature, scope, and severity of youth
gang activities. In earlier times, the American
boy gang was often regarded as spirited,
venturesome, and funloving--mainly a problem of
unsupervised lower-class youth from immigrant
families situated in transitional inner-city areas
(Puffer 1912; Thrasher 1936). Just before and
after World War II, certain researchers (Whyte
1943; Suttles 1968) emphasized the stable,
organized, functionally constructive,
nonaggressive, and community-integrated character
of many youth gangs or street-corner groups.

Close connections between delinquent and adult
criminal groups or gangs were noted in the early
research of Thrasher (1936) and Shaw and McKay
(1943) but somehow disappeared in much of the
theoretical speculation and research of gangs in
the 1950's and early 1960's (Cohen 1955; Miller
1958; Short and Strodtbeck 1964; however, see
Cloward and Ohlin 1960; Spergel 1964). These
connections were reemphasized in the 1970's and
1980's (Moore 1978; Spergel 1984; Needle and
Stapleton 1983; Maxson, Gordon, and Klein 1985; G.
Camp and C. Camp 1985; C. Camp and G. Camp 1988).

How much youth gangs in the United States have
changed over the years, especially in the last two
or three decades, is unclear. According to Miller
(1975, p. 75), the President's Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967),
and the National Advisory Committee on Criminal
Justice Standards and Goals (1976), "youth gangs
are not now or [sic] should not become a major
object of concern. . . . Youth gang violence is
not a major crime problem in the United States. .
. . what gang violence does exist can fairly
readily be diverted into `constructive' channels
especially through the provision of services by
community agencies." Miller's study (1975, p. 75),
based on a national survey, however, concludes
that the youth gang problem of the mid-1970's was
then of "the utmost seriousness."

Walter B. Miller's 1975 report, Violence by Youth
Gangs and Youth Groups as a Crime Problem in Major
American Cities, was the first nationwide study of
the nature and extent of gang violence. The Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,
U.S. Department of Justice, supported this pilot
study by Dr. Miller to determine whether there was
"enough substance to claims of increasing gang
problems in major cities" (p. 2). He gathered
national-level information based on a variety of
local data sources, mainly through site visits to
12 of the Nation's largest cities and use of an
interview guide to gather information from expert
informants from at least 18 types of
organizations--including criminal justice, youth-
based, grassroots, and planning agencies.

Dr. Miller's data sources were handicapped by lack
of reliable data on gangs and lack of a single
agency "which takes as a continuing responsibility
the collection of information based on explicit
and uniformly applied data collection categories
which would permit comparability from city to city
and between different periods of time" (p. 3). To
this day, this basic methodological problem
continues to handicap national estimates of the
scope and seriousness of the gang problem and the
effectiveness of efforts to address it.

Dr. Miller's major contributions to the research
on gangs were to begin to assess the problems of
violence by youth gangs and delinquent groups as
separate entities and to provide preliminary rough
estimates of the scope of the problem. He
concluded his study with the statement that "Youth
gang violence is more lethal today than ever
before [and] . . . represents a crime problem of
the first magnitude which shows little prospect of
early abatement" (p. 76).

Since publication of Miller's 1975 study, a number
of local studies and media reports have continued
to demonstrate the spread and increase in severity
of the gang problem in many cities. For example,
Tracy's study (1982), based on findings from the
Philadelphia cohort studies (Wolfgang, Figlio, and
Sellin 1972), demonstrates that youth gangs
account for a substantial share of serious and
violent crime in the city. High levels of fear of
gang crime in or about schools are reported in
several recent studies (Chicago Board of Education
1981; Miller 1982; Rosenbaum and Grant 1983; Dolan
and Finney 1984; Kyle 1984).

In the late 1980's, gang problems received
national attention, much of it stimulated by
reports from California--especially Los Angeles.
The executive director of the Office of California
Criminal Justice Planning claims in a recent
newsletter that "gangs are a violent and insidious
new form of organized crime. Heavily armed with
sophisticated weapons, they are involved in drug
trafficking, witness intimidation, extortion, and
bloody territorial wars. In some cases they are
travelling out of State to spread their violence
and crime" (Howenstein 1988, p. 1).

Some recent reports indicate the variability and
complexity of gang problems: white-power gang
activities have increased somewhat in various
cities (Coplon 1988); the school busing of youth
from inner-city to other neighborhoods and the
suburbs has brought more gang problems, at least
temporarily, to some communities (Hagedorn 1988);
Hispanic and black gangs continue to be largely
responsible for drive-by shootings; white gangs
tend to be a major source of graffiti, vandalism,
theft, and burglary; undocumented Latin American
youth are now present in some established gangs or
are forming their own gangs; many of the recent
arrivals from Latin America, the Caribbean, and
Asia have become suppliers of drugs; conflicts
between some black gangs over drug turf have
escalated in some communities; the drug problem
within and among black and Hispanic gangs across
communities appears to be different in terms of
sale and use patterns; a variety of Asian and
Pacific Island ethnic-group gang problems is
spreading (Duran 1987).

Youth gangs may be both an endemic and acute
feature of urban culture that varies over time in
form, social meaning, and antisocial character.
The late 1980's and early 1990's in the United
States may be a time in which--especially in some
cities and communities--youth gangs have taken
especially disturbing form and character.

Objectives of the Study

This survey of the literature is part of the first
stage of a four-stage research and development
program to develop and test promising approaches
to the youth gang problem. The stages include:
assessment, model development, creation of
technical assistance manuals, and field testing.
The review has three objectives: to describe what
is known about youth gangs in the United States;
to explain gang phenomena, mainly within social
disorganization and poverty perspectives; and to
describe and assess, where possible, organized
responses to the problem.

The study is organized into two parts. Part A,
Nature of the Problem, includes chapters I through
VI. Chapter I examines definitional issues and
data sources. Chapter II considers the scope and
seriousness of the gang problem. Chapters III
through V consider, respectively, the group
character of youth gangs, membership demographics,
and membership experience. Chapter VI discusses
the social contexts of youth gang development.

Part B, Response to the Problem, focuses on
organized responses to the gang problem with
special attention given to existing and evolving
strategies, policies, and programs of youth
service, criminal justice, community-based
(including local school and grassroots)
organizations; and Federal and State legislative
initiatives. Chapter VII deals with historical
roots, and development, of key antigang
strategies. Chapter VIII discusses social
intervention strategies with special attention to
evaluation. Chapter IX begins a discussion of
criminal justice system, in particular, police
suppression strategies. Chapter X examines the
approaches of prosecutor, defense, and judges in
addressing the gang problem. Chapter XI focuses on
current and emerging probation, parole, and
corrections strategies. Chapter XII emphasizes the
importance of social opportunities, especially
improved educational and employment opportunities,
targeted to gang youth. Chapter XIII is concerned
with issues of community organizing and mobilizing
both agencies and neighborhood residents. Finally,
Chapter XIV summarizes key findings of the study
and provides policy recommendations.

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CHAPTER I: DATA SOURCES AND DEFINITIONS

Society needs to better understand youth gangs.
The sources of knowledge concerning youth gangs
are diverse and provide little consistency, and
basic research and program evaluation findings are
scant. However, recent media, justice system, and
academic interest has resulted in a sharp increase
in attention as well as information available. I
have drawn selectively upon government documents,
agency and conference reports, the mass media,
practitioner or "expert" experience, and, as fully
as possible, academic and research literature.
Some news reports, agency data, and various
analyses of youth gang problems--not consistently
of the best quality--have been used when more
reliable research sources were not available.

Accurate national assessments of the scope of the
gang problem do not yet exist. The nature of the
"migration" of gang members and the possible
related spread of drug-related phenomena across
States, cities, and neighborhoods is unclear
despite extensive police and media attention.
Fairly good general estimates, however, can be
made about certain types of gang-related violence
within some large cities for particular periods. 

Various reasons exist for the lack of "good" data
on gangs. The most immediate or direct data
source, the gang member, is unreliable. Gang
members tend to conceal and exaggerate information
and, in fact, may not know the scope of the gang's
activities (Klein 1971; Miller 1982; Spergel
1984). The news media do not consistently or
regularly report gang events and often exaggerate
or sensationalize the subject (Downes 1966; Cohen
1972; Patrick 1973; Gold and Mattick 1974). Miller
suggests that the national media, centered in New
York City, ignored the gang problem in other
cities in the 1970's. For example, about 300 gang
killings in 1979 and 350 in 1980 in Los Angeles
went largely unreported nationally (Miller 1982;
however, see Klein and Maxson 1989).

There is no national center or agency for
reporting gang data. Neither the U.S. Census
Bureau, the U.S. Department of Justice, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of
Health and Human Services, the National Institute
of Mental Health, nor the U.S. Department of
Education collect or compile national-level data
on youth gangs. However, in the past year or two,
the Drug Enforcement Administration and the
General Accounting Office have begun to report on
the drug-related scope and character of the youth
gang or street-gang problem nationwide.

There has been some progress in the development of
reliable statistics on gang crime in a growing
number of large and medium size cities. However,
only gross estimates of gang violence are
available in most cities. Some police gang units
collect gang crime data, mainly on homicide and
sometimes on felony assault and robbery; other
index and nonindex gang crime data tend to be
sporadically collected (see Needle and Stapleton
1983). Data on gang crime are collected mainly on
an incident rather than on an individual-offender
basis. Consequently, it is difficult to target
repeat offenders or to determine the extent of
solo offending or nongang companionate crime
committed by gang members (Reiss 1987).
Considerable interest has developed recently in
the creation of information systems at city,
county, and State levels and in correctional
institutions at different jurisdictional levels
(C. Camp and G. Camp 1988). Law enforcement
officials have cited the need for a nationwide
tracking and identification methodology,
specifically for those gang members and criminal
groups that appear to carry on illegal activities
with other gangs and expand into areas outside
their neighborhoods (General Accounting Office
1989, p. 57).

Local values and traditions, political
considerations, public pressures, organizational
predispositions, news media pressures, academic
influences, and statutory language all influence
how law enforcement authorities and community-
based agencies establish their definitions of
gangs, gang members, and gang incidents. There are
striking differences between cities' and States'
definitions (Overend 1988).

In a recent sample survey, over three-quarters of
the police departments surveyed responded that
violent behavior was the key criterion for
distinguishing groups as gangs (Needle and
Stapleton 1983). The Los Angeles Police Department
defines "gang-related crime" as homicide,
attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon,
robbery, kidnapping, shooting at an inhabited
dwelling, or arson in which the suspect or victim
is identified in police files as a gang member or
associate member (usually on the basis of a prior
arrest or identification as a gang member). In
Chicago, a wider range of crimes may be classified
as gang related but only if the incident grows out
of a gang function, gang motivation, or particular
circumstances. Any robbery involving a gang member
is gang related in Los Angeles, but a "gang-
related robbery" in Chicago must be due mainly to
gang purpose or grow directly out of gang
structure and interest. Philadelphia, Boston, New
York City, and other cities (even within the State
of California) have different criteria for
identifying and classifying an incident as gang
related (Miller 1975, 1982).

A variety of theoretical and methodological
problems have hindered the development of adequate
knowledge about gangs. The approach to the study
of gangs has been categorical rather than variable
(Kornhauser 1978). Categories and concepts have
not been clearly defined or distinguished. There
has often been a failure to distinguish norms from
behaviors, subcultures from gangs, gangs from
delinquent groups, different ethnic gang patterns,
variability in gang problems in different cities,
and gang patterns within the same city over time.

Researchers have tended to employ
nonrepresentative or age-truncated samples and
limited data-gathering technologies. Small
nonrandom samples of gangs served and supplied
through local police, youth agencies, or
correctional agencies have been studied, usually
without control or comparison groups. Adolescent
gangs, until recently, have been almost the
exclusive focus of research or program evaluation,
to the exclusion of preadolescent and young adult
gangs. Observational studies have been time
limited--usually 1 to 3 years with no long-term
systematic followup. Conspicuously absent have
been studies of the socialization of gang youths
compared with other nongang youths and studies of
the socialization of different subgroups of youths
in the same gang, of those who use or sell drugs
and those who do not, and of those who are
extremely violent and those who are not.
Longitudinal studies that examine the stability
and changing character of these structures and
processes over time have not been conducted.
Participant observation has been the favored mode
of study, at times resulting in very limited
perspectives and sometimes researcher
overidentification with subjects. Also,
insufficient use has been made of official
statistics, systematic self-reports, or surveys of
youths or adults in high-crime or gang-crime
areas, although each of these have their
methodological limitations as well. Variations
among gangs across neighborhoods, cities, and
countries and across schools, prisons, and other
institutional contexts often have been disregarded
(however, see Spergel 1964; Downes 1966; Patrick
1973; McGahey 1986; Fagan 1989; Sullivan 1989).

Definitions

The term "gang" can mean many things. Definitions
in use have varied according to the concerns and
interests of law enforcement, policymakers, media,
community residents; academic fashions; and the
changing social realities of the gangs.
Definitions in the 1950's and 1960's were often
related to issues of etiology and were based on
liberal, optimistic, social-reform values.
Definitions in the 1970's and 1980's were more
descriptive, emphasized violent and criminal
characteristics, and may have reflected more
conservative social philosophies (Klein and Maxson
1987).

Gang definitions evoke "intense and emotional
discussions" (Miller 1977, p. 1) and can become
the basis for quite varied policies, laws, and
strategies. Definitions determine whether we have
a large, small, or even no problem; whether more
or fewer gangs and gang members exist; and which
agencies will receive most of the funds to address
the problem.

Some of the more benign conceptions of the gang--
used by gang members, agency personnel, and a few
academics--stress the gang's residual communal or
social-support function. According to one gang
member, "Being in a gang means if I didn't have no
family, I'll think that's where I'll be. If I
didn't have no job that's where I'd be. To me it's
community help without all the community. They'll
understand better than my mother and father"
(Hagedorn 1988, p. 131).

A former gang member, later a staff member of a
local community organization, says: "A gang is
what you make it. A gang is people who hang out;
they don't have to be negative or positive" (Allen
1981, p. 74). Sister Falaka Fattah, director and
founder of the House of Umoja, a model residential
and community-based program deeply committed to
the social support and development of gang youth,
observes: "A traditional Philadelphia black street
gang was composed of friends who lived in the same
neighborhood and usually had kinship links
developed over generations with ties to the South.
Many of these traditional gangs were founded by
families, since recruitment took place at funerals
where families and friends gathered in mourning"
(Fattah 1988, p. 5).

The gang may be viewed, in this perspective, as
performing significant social functions. It is an
interstitial group, integrated or organized
through conflict. While its opposition may include
other baseball teams, parents, storekeepers, and
gangs on the next street (Thrasher 1936), the
"gang is not organized to commit delinquent acts.
. . . The gang is a form of collective behavior,
spontaneous and unplanned in origin" (Kornhauser
1978, p. 52). Morash observes that "gang-likeness
is not a necessary condition to stimulate members'
delinquency" (1983, p. 35; see also Savitz, Rosen,
and Lalli 1980).

Miller observes that there are at least two ways
to perceive gang activity as constructive or
benign. Some community groups, agencies, and gangs
may perceive gang behaviors as "normal and
expectable" so long as such behavior is relatively
unserious or infrequent (Miller 1977, p. 11). Gang
members may be perceived as protecting their
respective communities by attacking and driving
out "unwanted" elements, including drug dealers or
members of other races or ethnic groups (Miller
1977, pp. 13-14; see also Suttles 1968). Recently,
gangs have been regarded as collectives or
organizations integrated into local community--
even bringing in local commerce and resources (for
example, through drug dealing).

Some veteran gang researchers have recently
changed their minds as to gang character, in large
measure because gang behavior has probably
changed. Earlier, Miller viewed the gang as a
stable primary group, neither especially
aggressive nor violent, that prepared the young
male for an adult role in lower-class society
(1958, 1962, 1976b). More recently, because of
increased levels of violent or otherwise illegal
behavior, Miller concludes that "contemporary
youth gangs pose a greater threat to public order
and a greater danger to the safety of the
citizenry than at any time during the past" (1975,
p. 44; see also Miller 1982).

Similarly, Klein initially characterized the gang
as an adolescent group perceived by both
themselves and others as involved in
delinquencies, but not of a serious or lethal
nature (1968, 1971). In recent years, Klein and
his associates report that gangs commit a large
number of homicides and participate in extensive
narcotics trafficking, although perhaps not as
much as is commonly believed (Klein, Maxson, and
Cunningham 1988; Klein 1989).

Yablonsky, by contrast, has consistently portrayed
gang boys--particularly leaders and core members--
as law-breakers trading in violence and primarily
organized to carry out illegal acts (Yablonsky
1962; Haskell and Yablonsky 1982).

The principal criterion currently used to define a
"gang" may be the group's participation in illegal
activity. Miller suggests that the term can be
applied broadly or narrowly by the key definers of
the phenomena, law enforcement officers. Police
departments may apply the term quite narrowly in
large cities, but more broadly in small cities to
cover more types of offenses (Miller 1980). Needle
and Stapleton (1983, p. 13) suggest that
perception of youth gang activities as major,
moderate, or minor problems varies with the number
and size of youth gangs, the problems they are
believed to cause, and the prevalence of youth
gang activity as a proportion of total crime. The
media, distressed local citizens, and outreach
community agencies tend to use the term more
broadly than do the police to cover more
categories of youth behavior.

The most widely used definition was developed by
Klein almost 20 years ago: a gang refers "to any
denotable adolescent group of youngsters who (a)
are generally perceived as a distinct aggregation
by others in the neighborhood, (b) recognize
themselves as a denotable group (almost invariably
with a group name), and (c) have been involved in
a sufficient number of delinquent incidents to
call forth a consistent negative response from
neighborhood residents and/or law enforcement
agencies" (Klein 1971, p. 111).

Miller differentiates among 20 different
categories and subcategories of law-violating
youth groups of which "turf gangs," "fighting
gangs," and "gain-oriented gangs" are three
subtypes (1982, chapter 1). He provides a
definition of a youth gang that emphasizes
organization and control of turf or criminal
enterprise:

A youth gang is a self-formed association of peers
united by mutual interests with identifiable
leadership and internal organization who act
collectively or as individuals to achieve specific
purposes, including the conduct of illegal
activity and control of a particular territory,
facility, or enterprise (Miller 1982, p. 61).

According to the California Penal Code, section
186.22, a "criminal street gang" is defined as
"any organization, association, or group of three
or more persons whether formal or informal . . .
which has a common name or common identifying sign
or symbol, where members individually or
collectively engage in or have engaged in a
pattern of criminal activity." These criminal acts
are identified as follows: assault with a deadly
weapon; robbery; unlawful homicide or
manslaughter; and the sale, possession for sale,
transportation, manufacture, offer for sale, or
offer to manufacture controlled substances.

We find also that certain problem youth groups,
such as racist "skinheads" and neo-Nazi groups,
may be identified distinctively by their dress and
codes of behavior. They engage in violent and
criminal activities for ideological--including
political and religious--ends and are increasingly
under the purview of gang units of the police and
probation departments, as well as legislative
commissions studying youth gang problems. These
changes suggest a further extension and
specification of the concept of the youth gang
(Reddick 1987).

Delinquent Group versus Gang

Much juvenile crime is committed by groups of
young people (Erickson and Jensen 1977; Zimring
1981). Is the "gang" simply equivalent to the
concept of "delinquent group?" Shaw and McKay were
interested in the companionate character of the
delinquent acts for which 8 out of 10 youths were
brought to juvenile court, but they used the terms
"gang" and "delinquent group" interchangeably
(Shaw and McKay 1931).

Thrasher (1936) implicitly recognized the
difference between the gang and the delinquent
group. Whyte's (1943) and Suttle's (1968) gangs or
street-corner groups were not particularly
delinquent, and certainly were not violent. The
major theorists and researchers of gangs in the
1950's and 1960's generally viewed the delinquent
gang and delinquent group as equivalent or
synonymous, although reference was made to core
delinquent cliques in gangs (Cohen 1955; Cohen and
Short 1958; Miller 1958, 1962; Cloward and Ohlin
1960; Short and Strodtbeck 1965; Klein 1968,
1971). More recently, a researcher in Scandinavia
conducted a series of sophisticated network
analyses on the assumption that the term "gangs .
. . simply signifies groups" (Sarnecki 1986, p.
11). However, an academic informant recently
stated that Sarnecki has changed his mind.
Sarnecki now believes that Scandinavian delinquent
groups are not gangs, at least not in the sense
the term is used in the United States (Klein
1989). Gangs and delinquent groups are more likely
to be viewed as equivalent in the study of
juveniles than of older adolescents and young
adults.

A number of theorists and researchers have tried
to distinguish between gangs and delinquent groups
(Kornhauser 1978; Morash 1983; Cohen 1969a,
1969b). Bernard Cohen insists that "gang and group
delinquency are different forms of juvenile
deviance and should be approached etiologically,
as well as for purposes of treatment and
prevention, from different starting points"
(1969a, p. 108). Based on police data, he found
that gang offenders were a little older and more
homogenous with respect to age, race, sex, and
residence patterns than nongang group offenders.

Curry and Spergel provide an extended definition
that attempts to distinguish delinquent groups
from gangs with some attention to the variability
and complexity of gang structure and behavior.
Group delinquency is defined as law-violating
behavior committed by juveniles in relatively
small groups that tend to be ephemeral--that is,
loosely organized with shifting leadership. The
delinquent group is engaged in various forms of
minor or serious crime. A current variant or
subcategory of delinquent group or youthful
criminal organization, particularly popular in
Eastern States is the "crew" or "passe." It can be
diffuse or well organized directed primarily to
illegal gain activity, especially drug
trafficking.

We define gang delinquency or crime as law-
violating behavior committed by both juveniles and
adults in or related to groups that are complexly
(although sometimes diffusely) organized and are
sometimes cohesive with established leadership and
rules. The gang also engages in a wide range of
crime--but significantly more violence--within a
framework of communal values in respect to mutual
support; conflict relations with other gangs; and
often a tradition of turf, colors, signs, and
symbols. Subgroups of the gang may be
differentially committed to various delinquent or
criminal patterns, such as drug trafficking, gang
fighting, or burglary. The concepts of the
delinquent group and the youth gang are not
exclusive of each other but represent distinctive
social phenomena. (Curry and Spergel 1988, p. 382)

Maxson and Klein's recent work on gang homicides
has indicated also that "gang violence is
substantially different in character from nongang
violence. . . . the character of reported gang
violence is primarily a function of the setting
and participant characteristics of the violent
event and the investigative and reporting
procedures of the police . . . The character of
`big city' gang violence is quite similar to that
found in smaller cities with more recent
development of street gangs" (Maxson and Klein
1989, p. 18). 

It is also possible to argue, based on recent
survey data (Spergel et al. 1989), that
nondelinquent and delinquent groups in some cities
can be converted or organized into youth gangs.
Much depends on population change, particularly
the movement of families with gang members to
nongang areas, the entrepreneurial efforts of gang
drug traffickers, and the gang socialization of
delinquent or criminal youths that takes place in
prisons. Youth gangs, in turn, may be changed or
co-opted into criminal organizations of various
forms. Some youth gangs, gang members, and
cliques--or their current equivalent--may no
longer fit traditional images of youth with
identifiable clothing, colors, or signs concerned
primarily with intimidation, protecting turf, or
developing reputation, but are now directed toward
making money through a variety of, or even
shifting, criminal activities.

In the pages that follow, the term "youth gang" is
used generally to refer to groups and behaviors
that represent an important subset of delinquent
and sometimes criminal groups and their behaviors.
Although the more inclusive term "delinquent
group" is useful for some purposes, the purpose
here is to examine gang phenomena of contemporary
interest to researchers, policymakers, and program
personnel; for this purpose it is "gangs," not
"delinquent groups," that is our focus.

------------------------------

CHAPTER II: SCOPE, SERIOUSNESS, AND CHARACTER OF
THE GANG PROBLEM

In this chapter, we provide evidence on numbers of
gangs and gang members, gang members'
participation in serious crime, and, particularly,
gang violence and the relation between drug
trafficking by gangs and violence associated with
the drug trade. Although data sources are diverse
and of varying reliability, some substantive
information is available that provides a possible
basis for forming conclusions about magnitudes and
trends.

Youth gangs today are found in almost all 50
States, including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and
other American territories, with possible
exceptions in a few Northeastern States and North
Central Mountain States. Miller (1982, chapter 3)
estimated that in the late 1970's, gangs were
present in almost 300 U.S. cities, or 13 percent
of all cities with populations of 10,000 or more.
Miller (1982, chapter 2) also found that 5 out of
6, or 83 percent, of the largest cities had gang
problems, as did 41 out of 150 cities with a
population of 100,000 or more. Needle and
Stapleton (1983) report a somewhat similar
proportion: 39 percent of cities with populations
between 100,000 and 249,999 have gang problems.
Gangs now exist in smaller cities and suburban
communities but do not necessarily exhibit the
same degree or intensity of criminality and
violence. Sometimes these gangs share names and
loose ties with gangs in nearby large cities
(Rosenbaum and Grant 1983).

The reason gangs are present or a more serious
problem in certain cities and regions of the
country than others is not clear. Although no
region is without youth gangs, gangs seem to be
concentrated and problematic in certain Western,
Midwestern, and Southeastern States. A substantial
number of smaller cities and communities in these
States now have gang problems. At the same time,
however, there appear to be many more cities with
delinquent youth groups than with specific gang
problems (Miller 1982; Needle and Stapleton 1983).
Some cities do not have gang problems even though
they are in regions with high concentrations of
youth gang problems. 

The existence of gangs in certain areas has waxed
and waned over the past several years. Cities that
reported gang problems in the 1970's or early
1980's are without these problems in the late
1980's (Spergel et al. 1989), and some cities with
current youth gang problems did not have or were
not aware of these problems in the 1960's and
1970's. The terms "emerging," "chronic," and even
"reemerging," should be regarded as variables and
are now used to describe the different and
changing nature of gang problems experienced in a
variety of cities and jurisdictions. 

Gangs are present in State and Federal
correctional systems and in many school systems.
In a 1981 study, Caltabriano calculated that 53
percent of State prisons had gangs. G. Camp and C.
Camp (1985) found that 32 out of 48, or 67
percent, of the State prison systems studied had
gangs present, as did the Federal system. Youth
and young adult gangs were identified in State
prisons on the West Coast as early as the 1950's
and 1960's and in Midwestern States in the 1960's
and 1970's. In Chicago, all public and some
parochial high schools, and many suburban high
schools reported the presence of gangs or gang
members and gang problems. (Chicago Board of
Education 1981; Spergel 1985). Gangs or gang
problems are increasingly present in inner-city
school systems in Midwestern and Western States.
However, the number of gang members in most
schools may be quite small.

Estimates of Numbers of Youth Gangs and Youth gang
Membership

It is not possible to devise meaningful estimates
of the number of youth gangs in the United States,
partly because there is no standard or national
definition for the term "gang." Often gangs and
delinquent groups and/or criminal youth
organizations are confused. Also sometimes a
number of different gangs that share the same or
similar names are considered one gang, and
sometimes factions of a fairly small gang are
reported as separate gangs. National estimates
have been made primarily for rhetorical purposes.
Dolan and Finney (1984, p. 12) claim that "since
the close of World War II, the number of youth
gangs has grown astonishingly, with a recent study
revealing that there are now far more than 100,000
in the country." The estimate is sufficiently
exciting that the U.S. Department of Justice,
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, used it in the introduction to a
recent public request for proposals on gang
research (Federal Register 1987).

It is difficult to determine the consistency or
meaning of the following estimates: 760 to 2,700
gangs in the 8 largest cities of the United States
(Miller 1975, p. 18); 2,200 gangs in approximately
300 U.S. cities and towns (Miller 1982, chapter 4,
pp. 30-31); 1,130 gangs in the 10 largest gang-
problem cities between 1970 and 1980 (Miller
1982). Furthermore, how would these estimates
compare--or can they be compared--to Thrasher's
(1936) estimates of 1,313 gangs in Chicago in the
1920's?

A somewhat more meaningful estimate may be that
law-violating delinquent youth groups other than
gangs far exceed the number of gangs, perhaps by
50 times. Miller (1975, 1982) suggests that the
number of police-recognized gangs has remained
fairly constant over the past 2 decades in some
cities. More recent observations suggest a sharp
increase in some cities and a sharp decline in
others (Spergel et al. 1989).

Increases in numbers of gangs, gang members, or
gang incidents have been reported in the following
cities in recent years. In Dade County, Florida,
there are reported to have been 4 gangs in 1980,
25 gangs in 1983, 47 gangs in 1985, and 80 in 1988
(Reddick 1987; Silbert, Christiano, and Nunez-
Cuenca 1988). In Los Angeles County, California,
there were 239 gangs reported in 1985, and 400 to
possibly 800 gangs in 1988 (Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department 1985; Gott 1988; Knapp 1988;
see also Philibosian 1989). In Santa Ana, Orange
County, the number of cases assigned to the gang
detail jumped from 286 cases in 1986 to 396 cases
in 1987, including 8 gang-related homicides--the
highest number since 1979, when there were 13
(Schwartz 1988). 

In San Diego County there were 3 gangs and fewer
than 300 street gang members in 1975, but 19 to 35
gangs, if factions are included, and 2,100 street
gang members in 1987 (Davidson 1987). In Phoenix,
reports of numbers of gangs have seesawed: 34 in
1974, 74 in 1982, and down to 31 gangs in 1986. In
the past year, a surge of gang drug activity has
been blamed on an influx of black young adults
from Los Angeles (Frazier 1988).

In other cities over the same period, there were
reports of sharp declines in gangs, membership,
and gang activity. In New York City, there were
315 gangs and 20,000 members reported in 1974, 130
gangs and 10,300 members in 1982, and 66 gangs and
2,500 members in 1987 (New York State Assembly
1974a; Galea 1982; Kowski 1988). In Fort Wayne,
Indiana, there were 6 gangs with over 2,000
members reported in 1985-86, but only 3 gangs and
50 members in 1988 (Hinshaw 1988). El Monte, in
Los Angeles County, reported 10 to 12 gangs and
1,000 gang members in the mid 1970's, but noted
only 4 gangs and about 50 active gang members in
1988 (Hollopeter 1988). The police department in
Louisville, Kentucky, reported 15 gangs and 40 to
50 gang incidents per month in 1985, but only 5
gangs and 1 gang incident per month as recently as
July 1988 (Beavers 1988).

It is not clear what accounts for these shifts in
different cities over similar time periods. We do
not know if overall juvenile or young-adult crime
rates or patterns of crime have changed in each of
the cities. Gangs may affect the form and process
of delinquent or criminal activity rather than its
incidence or prevalence over time. It is possible
that, if the members of gangs age in a particular
community, if patterns of violent behavior are
constrained, if opportunities for legitimate jobs
increase, or if more rational income-producing
illegal activity such as drug trafficking, rises,
then group activity may no longer be conducted
through traditional turf structures.

Estimates from law enforcement or police agencies
may be slightly more useful, particularly if such
figures are based on arrests or focus on clearly
defined "high profile" gangs. Police prevalence
figures tend to be on the conservative side, and
those of news reporters, academics, and community
agency informants are often higher. For example,
in the 1940's, the police estimated that there
were 60 to 200 gangs in New York City, but a
contemporary observer reported that there were
then at least 250 gangs in Harlem alone (Campbell
1984b). One police commander estimates that there
were 127 active gangs in New York City in the
1970's, with another 144 gangs that were less
active. (Hargrove 1981, p. 90). Another claims
that there were 130 "delinquent" gangs in the
early 1980's and an additional 113 gangs under
investigation (Galea 1982), but an academic
researcher estimates that there were 400 gangs in
New York City in 1979 (Campbell 1984b). The New
York City Police Department reports there were 37
gangs (23 delinquent, 14 marginal, and 51 other
youth gangs) under investigation in 1988 (Galea
1989).

Miller (1975, p. 13) states there were 1,000 gangs
in Chicago in the 1960's but that the number
dropped to 700 by 1974. In his 1982 report, Miller
claims the number of Chicago gangs was only 250
between 1970 and 1980. Chicago Police Department
estimates of the number of gangs were 110 in 1985,
and 135 in both 1986 and 1987.

Estimates of the number of prison gangs may also
be meaningless unless the character, size,
frequency, and seriousness of criminal behavior
are indicated. Estimates have varied from 47 gangs
in 24 prisons in a 1981 report by Caltabriano, to
114 gangs in 33 prisons in a 1985 report (G. Camp
and C. Camp 1985). Camp and Camp also indicate
that the figure could go as high as 219 gangs if
gangs with the same names in different California
State prisons are counted. Thus a gang such as the
CRIPS in the California prison system is counted
once in reports but a different set of CRIPS gang
may exist in many different California
institutions. CRIPS is made up of at least 180
street gangs whose membership is reported to be in
the thousands (G. Camp and C. Camp 1985).

Estimates of gangs in public schools have also
been made for some of the large cities. Spergel
estimated that there were 53 male and 7 female
gangs in 60 public high schools in Chicago in
1985. These were school gangs with names of high-
profile street gangs. The number represented 211
male factions in the 60 public high schools.
Furthermore, based on police data, 19 male and 4
female major youth gang factions were also found
in the city's Catholic high schools (Spergel
1985). One witness testifying before a Senate
subcommittee hearing estimated that there were 207
gangs operating on public school campuses of the
Los Angeles Unified School District in 1983
(Philibosian 1983, p. 4). We need to know,
however, how many gang-related or nongang
delinquency problems were caused by gang members
on school property. It is quite possible that
schools with many gangs, but with small numbers in
each of them, may experience fewer problems of
social disorder or deviance, particularly if such
schools are well run and have reasonably high
academic standards, than poorly managed schools
with one or two gangs (Spergel 1985).

Membership numbers for youth gangs have also been
estimated with little attention to such critical
factors as membership statuses or roles or the
extent and degree of members' participation in
delinquent behavior. Miller estimates that there
were 96,000 gang members in 300 American cities
and towns in the 1970's, with an average of 48
members per gang. Gangs are larger on average than
are other law-violating youth groups. Although
there are 50 times more law violating youth groups
than youth gangs, members of law-violating youth
groups are only 15 times as numerous as gang
members (Miller 1982).

The proportion of a youth population in a
particular city or locality estimated to be gang
members may range over time. Thrasher (1936, p.
412) reported that "one tenth of Chicago's 350,000
boys between the ages of 10 and 20 are subject to
the demoralizing influence of gangs." But Klein
(1968) estimated that the census tract with the
highest known number of gang members in Los
Angeles in 1960 had only 6 percent of 10- to 17-
year-olds affiliated with gangs. A Pennsylvania
civic commission report of 1969 reported that only
6.4 percent of all juvenile arrests in 1968 were
of known gang members (Klein 1971, p. 115). Vigil
(1988) recently estimated that only 3 to 10
percent of boys in the Mexican barrios of Los
Angeles are gang members.

A variety of self-report studies has been
conducted, and the proportion of youths declaring
they are gang members does not seem to have
changed radically over the past two decades, with
a few exceptions. Savitz, Rosen, and Lalli (1980)
determined that 12 percent of black and 14 percent
of white youths in Philadelphia who claimed to be
gang affiliated members had Philadelphia Police
Department records. Another self-report study
found that 10.3 percent of black youths in
suburban Cook County said they were gang members
(Johnstone 1981). In a self-report study in
Seattle, 13 percent of youth said they belonged to
gangs (Sampson 1986). In an as-yet-unpublished
study of several very poor inner-city
neighborhoods of Chicago, the following
percentages of adult males 18 to 45 years old
reported they "had belonged" to gangs:
Mexican/Mexican-Americans, 3.5 percent; Puerto
Ricans, 12.7 percent; white, 10.7 percent; and
blacks, 13.8 percent (Testa 1988). In another
recent self-report study of four inner-city
neighborhoods in three large cities across the
country, one male in three reported gang
membership; however, this sample may have been
preselected for gang membership (Fagan, Piper, and
Moore 1986).

Recent informant or "expert" estimates of the
percentage of gang youth in large cities have
ranged from 0.7 percent in San Antonio to 7.3
percent in New York City (Miller 1982). A
California State task-force report estimates that
there were 50,000 gang members in Los Angeles
County (California Council on Criminal Justice
1986). However, a later estimate places membership
at 70,000 in Los Angeles County (Gott 1988). A Los
Angeles newspaper reports "there are 25,000 CRIPS
and Blood gang members or `associates' in Los
Angeles County--an estimate based on arrests and
field interrogation of persons stopped but not
arrested. That represents 25 percent of the
county's estimated 100,000 black men between the
ages of 15 and 24" (Baker 1988a). Another estimate
is that there are 70,000 CRIPS and Bloods alone in
Los Angeles County (O'Connell 1988). Estimates of
gang membership in Chicago have ranged from
"12,000 to as many as 120,000 persons" (Bobrowski
1988, p. 40). Spergel estimates that 5 percent of
students in elementary school, 10 percent in high
school, 20 percent in special school programs, and
35 percent of school-age dropouts between age 16
and 19 are gang members in Chicago. This produces
a figure of 38,000 public school-age students who
were gang members in Chicago (1985).

The estimated figures for gang members as a
proportion of population necessarily are higher in
criminal justice settings. They range from 0 to 90
percent or more. G. Camp and C. Camp (1985)
estimated that 34 percent, or 5,300, of Illinois
prison inmates were active gang members as of
January 1984 and, not quite consistently, that 90
percent of Illinois prison inmates "are, were, or
will be gang members" (p. 134). A family court
worker reported that 20 percent of children going
before the Queens County, New York, Family Court
were involved in gang-related activities (New York
State Assembly 1974b). One study of Cook County
juvenile court probationers indicated that 22.7
percent were gang members (Utne and McIntyre
1982). Orange County's probation department
reports that it currently provides services to
approximately 520 active gang members or 17
percent of the total juveniles supervised by
probation (Orange County 1989, pp. 7-8). A
California Youth Authority study found that 40 to
45 percent of the wards could be identified as
gang members in 1979, but the estimates had
increased to between 70 and 80 percent in 1982 and
1983 (Hayes 1983). However, an official in the
California Youth Authority more recently estimated
that approximately a third of its 13,152 wards
were "gang identified" (Lockwood 1988).

These estimates, variable and unreliable as they
may be, indicate that gangs are present in
significant numbers in a variety of social
contexts. Furthermore, gang membership may have
reached critical proportions in certain cities,
schools, and prison systems. However, the data are
not clear as to the relationship between numbers
and proportion of gang members to problems of
social disorder or criminality. Certain gangs and
gang members may be only peripherally involved in
delinquency or gang crime or not at all. It is
likely that the larger and more concentrated the
number of gang members from different gangs in a
relatively small area, such as a prison, the more
likely serious gang-related disorder and crime are
to occur (C. Camp and G. Camp 1988).

Youth Gang Violence

Reasonably adequate data have begun to be
available on the current nature and scope of
violence committed by gang members. There is good
evidence of an increase in gang-related violence
and that gang members, at least those with arrest
records, are responsible for a disproportionate
amount of violent crime. This, however, tends to
be concentrated in particular areas. The
proportion of serious gang-related violence may be
very high in a certain neighborhood, school, or
correctional institution at a particular time.
However, the proportion of serious, including
violent, crime by youth gang members tends to be
small on a city, school system, or prison system
basis. Bobrowski, who uses a definition of "gang
incident" based on gang-related function or
motivation rather than individual gang membership,
indicates that for Chicago "Part I street gang
offenses measured less than 0.8 percent of
comparable city-wide gang crime [between January
1986 and July 1988] . . . The seriousness of the
problem lies not in the extent of street gang
activity but in its violent character and relative
concentration in certain of Chicago's community
areas" (1988, p. 41). Property crime is still the
major type of offense committed by gang members,
often in a nongang capacity.

The classic research on types of offenses by
juveniles, youths, or young adults in delinquent
groups or gangs suggests that violent crime was
less common in earlier periods than it is now
(Thrasher 1936; Shaw and McKay 1943). Whyte (1943)
stressed that street gangs in Boston did not
typically engage in brawls or gang fights that
resulted in serious injury. Miller (1962) and
Klein (1968, 1971) insisted that the gangs they
evaluated in the 1950's and 1960's were not
particularly violent. Miller's (1962, 1976a)
Boston gangs rarely used firearms, and their gang
fights seldom resulted in serious injury. Klein
(1971, p. 115) noted the relative rarity of the
"truly violent act" among East Los Angeles
Hispanic gangs in his project areas over a 4-year
period. Bernstein (1964) and Short and Strodtbeck
(1965) reported that delinquency and violence by
juvenile gangs were relatively mild. More fighting
took place within the gang than against opposing
gangs. The most common form of offense appeared to
be "creating a disturbance," noisy roughhousing,
or impeding public passage (Miller 1976a).
Yablonsky (1962) and, to a lesser extent, Spergel
(1964) were in the minority of observers when they
reported that New York gangs of the 1950's
frequently could be violent, with homicides
occurring.

Gangs were different, however, in the 1970's and
1980's: "the weight of evidence would seem to
support the conclusion that the consequences of
assaultive activities by contemporary gangs are
markedly more lethal than during any previous
period" (Miller 1975, p. 41); "the cycles of gang
homicide now seem to end higher and retreat to
higher plateaus before surging forward again. If
homicide is any indicator, gang violence has
become a far more serious problem during the most
recent decade" (Klein and Maxson 1987, p. 4).
Miller (1975, pp. 75-76) makes stark claims:
violent crime by gang members in some cities was
as much as one-third of all violent crime by
juveniles. Juvenile gang homicides were about 25
percent of all juvenile homicides in approximately
65 major cities in the United States. Block's
study (1985, p. 5) more recently finds, based on
police data, that gang homicide accounted for 25
percent of teenage homicides in Chicago between
1965 and 1981 and 50 percent of all Hispanic
teenage homicides. In the last few years, Los
Angeles may have supplanted Chicago as the
country's worst gang-violence city. There were 387
gang-related homicides in Los Angeles County in
1987, 452 in 1988, and 554 in 1989.

On the other hand, we note that some smaller
cities may have higher gang homicide rates than
either Chicago or Los Angeles City or County.
Ponce, the second largest city in Puerto Rico,
with a population of about 200,000 recorded 21
gang homicides for the first half of 1989, a rate
far higher than Chicago or Los Angeles (Office of
the Governor, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico 1989).

We are not convinced that these statistics portend
an inexorable upward spiral of gang violence, even
though Los Angeles and Chicago may currently be
recording the highest level of gang homicides in
their respective histories. There are peaks and
valleys in the number of gang homicides over
fairly long time periods. Gang homicides averaged
about 70 per year in Chicago between 1981 and
1986, 63 per year in the next highest period of
1969 to 1971, but only 25 gang homicides were
noted per year in the period between 1973 and
1978. Furthermore, gang homicides based on
official statistics have sharply declined in New
York City and Philadelphia in the past 15 years.
Gang homicides in Chicago as a percent of total
homicides have ranged from 1.71 percent in 1975 to
11 percent in 1990. During the recent 1990 peak
year in Chicago, 101 gang homicides occurred.

Bob Baker, a Los Angeles Times reporter, adds
critical qualitative meaning to analysis of the
gang homicide problem. He argues that these less
organized attacks, in which one or two members
shoot somebody because they are trying to settle
their own score, should not be called "gang
killings." "In most of Los Angeles, gang members
contend that for all the publicity about killings,
the gangs themselves are pretty quiet . . .
Assaults by one group of gang members on another
are far less frequent than they were at the turn
of the decade when turf lines were less hardened
and incursions tended to be more explosive. . . .
For all the attention being paid to spectacular
violence committed over soured drug deals and
arguments over territory, the largest number of
gang killings still occur in this haphazard
chaotic way" (Baker 1988b).

Again, depending on how one reports and interprets
these homicides, the basic youth violence
situation in Los Angeles may be little different
than it is in Chicago or New York. Although the
New York Police Department claims a very low level
of gang crime, youth violence and drug violence
currently "may be at an all time high" (Galea
1988). The rate of youth violence generally may be
higher in Detroit than in Chicago, although
Detroit police claim a very low level of youth
gang activity.

The puzzles of gang-crime statistics and what they
mean are not easy to resolve. The proportion of
violent crime attributed to gang members is
relatively higher than the proportion of violent
crime committed by nongang members in most social
contexts. Yet we are not clear about the
relationship of gang to nongang violent crime in
seemingly similar cities. In 1987, gang homicides
were 25.2 percent of the total number of homicides
in Los Angeles City, but 6.9 percent of the total
number of homicides in Chicago. Gang felonious
assaults were 11.2 percent in Los Angeles, but 4.3
percent in Chicago. Gang-related robberies were
6.6 percent of the total robberies in Los Angeles,
but only 0.8 percent of the total robberies in
Chicago. These differences may reflect not only
different definitions but also different police
practices, different local situations, and
fluctuations over short-term periods.

The increase in gang violence in some cities in
the past 8 to 10 years has been attributed to
several factors. Gangs have more weapons (Miller
1975; Spergel 1983) than they have had in the
past. Guns are used more often from a moving car
(drive-by shooting). The ready availability of
improved weaponry (.22's, .38's, .45's, .357
magnums, AK 47's, Uzis, and sawed-off shotguns) is
associated with the changing pattern of gang
conflict. The "tradition," "report," or myth of
intergang rumbles based on large assemblages of
youth arriving for battle on foot, which may be
easily interdicted, has been supplanted by
smaller, mobile groups of two or three youths,
usually in a vehicle, prowling for opposing gang
members. Although shootings are sometimes planned,
spur-of-the-moment decisions to attack targets of
opportunity are common (see also Horowitz 1983).
Klein and Maxson suggest that increased gang
violence may not reflect "greater levels of
violence among and between gangs [but] . . . a
growth in the number of gangs or gang members . .
. or an increasingly violent society [or perhaps]
. . . more sophisticated gang intelligence [and
law enforcement]" (1989, p. 218).

The older ages of gang members may also be
responsible for greater use of sophisticated
weaponry and consequent violence. More and better
weaponry may be available to older teenagers and
young adults than to juveniles. For the past 10
years, the median gang homicide offender in
Chicago has been 19 years old with a 20-year-old
victim. (Spergel 1986). Los Angeles data (Maxson,
Gordon, and Klein 1985) and San Diego police
statistics (San Diego Association of Governments
1982) also indicate that older adolescents and
young adults are mainly involved in gang
homicides.

Motorcycle and prison gangs also appear to have
become more lethal. Motorcycle gangs are no longer
simply "free-wheeling riders" but now may engage
in struggles over domination of a prison or a
territory's lucrative vice or narcotics trade,
prostitution, extortion, protection, and murder
for hire (Davis 1982a, 1982b). These somewhat
older gangs are still only partially disciplined
and engage in internecine combat and brutality (G.
Camp and C. Camp 1985). Half of all prison
homicides are estimated to result from gang
activity. Some State prisons are particularly
violent. Of 20 gang killings in prisons in 1983, 9
occurred in the California system. Between 1975
and 1984, there were 372 gang-related homicides in
California prisons, "a record unsurpassed by any
other organized crime group in California" (G.
Camp and C. Camp 1985, p. 2).

Gang and Nongang Member Studies: Violence and
Serious Crime

The relationship between gangs and violence is
most evident when patterns of behavior by gang
members and nonmembers are compared. Gang youths
engage in more violent crime than do nongang but
delinquent youths. Klein and Myerhoff (1967, pp.
1-2) observed that "the urban gang delinquent is
different in kind from the urban nongang
delinquent . . . Gang members have higher police
contact rates . . . and become involved in more
serious delinquencies than nonmembers." Most
recently a Swedish researcher found that
delinquents who were group or "network" related
committed more frequent and serious offenses that
were nongroup or non-network delinquents (Sarnecki
1986). Orange County probation statistics indicate
that gang-affiliated minors had significantly
higher technical and new law-violation rates (55.1
percent) than nongang affiliated minors (26.4
percent) in 1987 (Orange County 1989).

The most consistent and impressive differences
between gang and nongang offense patterns of
delinquents arise from findings by different
researchers in Philadelphia over a 20-year period.
Bernard Cohen (1969a, pp. 77-79), using data
collected by the Philadelphia Police Department's
gang unit, found evidence that "gangs engage in
more violent behavior than do delinquent nongang
groups," as 66.4 percent of gang events but only
52.6 percent of delinquent-group events fell into
violent offense categories. Only 1.4 percent of
gang events, but 13.7 percent of group events,
were property crimes. Gang members' offenses were
more serious and more often involved display or
use of a weapon.

Friedman, Mann, and Friedman (1975) sought to
distinguish gang, nongang delinquents, and
nondelinquents in the early 1970's. They found
that violent behavior differentiated street-gang
members from nongang members better than all the
other legal, socioeconomic, and psychological
factors studied. Gang members were also
characterized by the attributes of more police
arrests for nonviolent crime, more truancy, and
more alcohol and drug abuse (Friedman, Mann, and
Friedman 1975, pp. 599-600).

Based on a sample of the 1945 Philadelphia cohort
study (Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin 1972), Rand
(1987, pp. 155-56) found support for her
hypothesis that "boys who join a gang are more
delinquent than those who do not. The 31 boys who
reported gang affiliation represented 29 percent
of the total offender sample and were responsible
for 50 percent of the offenses."

Tracy (1987, p. 14) is currently analyzing
criminal characteristics of gang and nongang
members, using the 1945 and 1958 Philadelphia
birth cohort studies, based on official police
records and juvenile and adult self-reports.
Official offense data of the 1945 cohort show that
juvenile gang membership is associated with
significantly higher levels of delinquency. The
offenses of gang members have higher average
seriousness scores.

For nonwhites, the rate of nonviolent offenses is
about 1.7 times as high for gang members as for
nongang delinquents; the rate for violent offenses
is almost twice as high; and, for aggravated
assault, it is three times as high. The pattern
for whites is less consistent. Analysis of the
1958 cohort, not yet complete, suggests a quite
similar pattern (Tracy 1982, 1987). The self-
report components of Tracy's 1945 cohort study are
consistent with the official data findings.

Gang influence on criminality does not stop at the
end of the juvenile period. When offense frequency
and seriousness based on official and unofficial
records are examined for the adult period, 18 to
26 years of age, gang members equal, if not
exceed, the magnitude of differences observed for
the juvenile period. Thus, gang membership appears
"to prolong the extent and seriousness of the
criminal career" (Tracy 1987, p. 19). These
conclusions are consistent with those of a
Philadelphia researcher, who more than 20 years
earlier noted that a "large portion of 'persistent
and dangerous' juvenile gang offenders become
'even more serious' adult offenders" (Robin 1967,
p. 24).

Finally, a California Department of Justice study
(G. Camp and C. Camp 1985, p. 108) found that gang
members who have been released from prison commit
many serious crimes. Two hundred and fifty gang
members were randomly selected from California
prison gangs (Nuestra Familia, Mexican Mafia,
Black Guerilla Family, and Aryan Brotherhood
Gangs), and their careers were tracked. Between
1978 and 1981, 195 of the 250 gang members were
arrested, often repeatedly, for the following
crimes: 65 misdemeanors and 350 felonies,
including 24 arrests for murder, 57 arrests for
robbery, 46 arrests for burglary, 31 arrests for
narcotics offenses, 44 arrests for weapons
offenses, and 28 arrests for assault with a deadly
weapon.

Drugs and Violence

The relationship between gangs, drug use, and drug
trafficking has not been clear and has received
only passing attention in the classic street-gang
literature (however, see Short and Strodtbeck
1965). Alcohol and drug use usually have been
addressed in tandem or not distinguished (Klein
1971). The relation between drug use and drug
selling also was not systematically explored.
Chein and his associates (1964) found little drug
use or selling by youth gangs contacted by New
York City Youth Board workers. The existence of
drug using and selling by gangs was not clearly
demonstrated in the 1950's and 1960's (Cloward and
Ohlin 1960; Short and Strodtbeck 1965). Spergel
(1964) found a close relationship between drug use
and limited drug dealing by older youth gang
members making a transition out of the gang.

The relationship among gangs, drug use, and
trafficking has been found most consistently in
criminal justice system populations. Of 276
documented gang members on probation in San Diego
County, 207 (or 75 percent) had drug convictions
(Davidson 1987). The Orange County Probation
Department found that 71 percent of gang members
under supervision by its Gang Violence Suppression
Unit displayed occasional or frequent drug and/or
alcohol use (Orange County 1989). Moore (1978)
found an integral relationship between Hispanic
imprisoned gang members and drug trafficking; and
a close relationship between prison gangs and drug
trafficking has been observed in certain State
prisons over the past two decades (G. Camp and C.
Camp 1985; C. Camp and G. Camp 1988). A recent
study of 589 property offenders from three prison
intake centers in Ohio found that drugs,
unemployment, alcohol, and gangs, respectively,
were the most important factors in property crime
(Dinitz and Huff 1988). Recently, a great deal of
media attention has been directed to the
relationship between gangs and major drug
trafficking, especially rock cocaine in Los
Angeles and increasingly in other cities.

Earlier gang studies indicated a certain
ambivalence or even negative reaction by gang
members to drug use or sale in the local area.
Reports of core gang members forcing drug-abusing
members out of the gang, particularly those using
or "shooting up" heroin, and threatening
neighborhood drug dealers to stop trafficking were
not uncommon (Spergel 1964; Short and Strodtbeck
1965). Many gangs, however, traditionally
tolerated use of marijuana. Street workers, who
work with community-based programs, reported that
42.5 percent of black gang members and 33.6
percent of white gang members used "pot" in the
late 1950's or early 1960's. However, such drug
use then had very low legitimacy among these
youths (Short and Strodtbeck 1965, p. 82).

In the early 1970's, New York City officials
believed that most youth gangs were not
extensively involved in the sale of narcotics
(Collins 1979). A New York State Assembly report
(1974a, p. 5) indicated that "many gangs engage in
shakedowns of area merchants, residents, and
others trafficking in soft drugs, such as
marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine."
By the late 1970's, however, there was evidence
that gangs, particularly those containing older
members with prison experience, were significantly
engaged in drug dealing. The Blackstone Rangers,
now the El Rukns, were a continuing target of the
Chicago Police Department for drug dealing, shady
property investments, and other organized criminal
activities.

By the middle 1980's, there were reports of
extensive drug use and selling by gang members in
both small and large cities. Hagedorn indicates a
very heavy use of drugs by gang leaders in
Milwaukee. "Less than 5 percent of those
interviewed said that at this time they never used
drugs . . . 60 percent . . . admitted they used
drugs (mainly marijuana) most or all of the time"
(1988, p. 142). A recent Florida legislative
report indicates that 92 percent of gang members
admitted experimenting with narcotics, mainly
marijuana and cocaine (Reddick 1987). Fagan,
Piper, and Moore (1986) report that individual
prevalence rates for both drug use and delinquency
were higher for gang youth in several inner-city
neighborhoods than for general adolescent
populations in the same area.

Limited drug dealing has long been a means by
which gang members support their individual drug
use or habits. Drug selling has increasingly
become a means of making a living. Nearly half of
the 47 gang "founders" interviewed by Hagedorn
said they sold drugs regularly: "over two-thirds
said that members of the main group of their gang
sold drugs `regularly' and nearly all said someone
in the main group sold at least `now and then'"
(1988, p. 105).

Recently, the County of Los Angeles Probation
Department reports that "gang members are now
rarely addicts. Traditionally drug dealers were
addicts selling to support their own habit . . .
Typical monthly data from specialized drug
pusher/seller intensive . . . caseload reveals
that only 2 of 39 probationers had positive or
`dirty' narcotic test results. Current gang drug
dealers are not habitual drug users" (Los Angeles
County Probation Department 1988, p. 2).

With media reports of extensive drug trafficking
by gang members has come the belief that drug
selling by gang members is now closely associated
with an increase in urban violence. Law
enforcement officials and the media in many parts
of the country, but especially in the Los Angeles
area, have voiced extreme alarm (Los Angeles City
News Service 1988). All 300 black street gangs
within the city are blamed for selling rock
cocaine. "These gangs have a hierarchy of drug
selling, with young teens at the bottom who start
as lookouts or runners and later move into selling
at the top of the hierarchy . . . city-wide police
blame gangs for 387 homicides in 1987, almost all
of it drug-related" (Washington 1988). Another
newspaper reporter indicates that young
neighborhood males seeking to make "fast money
through drugs [must] pledge at least surface
loyalty to a neighborhood gang if they wanted a
piece of the action" (Baker 1988b).

The claims of the General Accounting Office in a
recent report are a little less dramatic and
inclusive. It concludes that "10 percent of all
gang-related murders involve narcotics [and that]
. . . more than half of gang-related homicides
involve individuals who are not associated with
gangs." On the other hand, the report states that
within the past 3 to 4 years the CRIPS and the
Bloods "have gained control of 30 percent of the
crack cocaine market in the United States." Los
Angeles street gangs are viewed as a
nontraditional "sophisticated criminal
organization" (GAO 1989, pp. 3, 19).

Criminal justice agencies are apparently deeply
concerned. The Federal Drug Enforcement
Administration (1988) claims that Los Angeles
street gangs, especially older former members of
CRIPS, have been identified with selling drugs in
46 States. The National Council of Juvenile and
Family Court Judges has recently recommended that
judges take drastic action in responding to a
presumed drug-gang crisis: "Beginning in the mid-
1980's, some youth gangs with origins in the large
urban centers of Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago,
Detroit, and New York became major criminal
entrepreneurs in the supply of illicit drugs. In a
very short time, many of the gangs have developed
intrastate and interstate networks for the purpose
of expanding . . . in the . . . national drug
sales market . . . Ominously these gangs are even
more committed to the use of violence than the
most notorious old-line criminal organizations"
(Metropolitan Court Judges' Committee 1988, pp.
27, 30).

A range of contrasting views accounts for the
gang/drug crisis. The origin of the problem in
many cities is often claimed to be the
transportation of drugs from some other city. "Los
Angeles is now the main port of entry for cocaine
nationwide as well as the home of 30,000 black
gang members" (Donovan 1988, p. 2). Yet the
explanation or blame for the current state of
affairs is laid to the "1982 Federal crackdown on
cocaine smugglers in Miami . . . The movers of
dope decided it might be better for them to move
their important drugs to another location [Los
Angeles]" (Washington 1988). However, officials in
Miami claim that the connection between gangs and
drugs is now bigger than ever. A key problem is
the trafficking of drugs by gang members traveling
from cities in the Northeast to Miami.

Law enforcement officials in many cities, for
example, Denver; Boston; Washington, D.C.;
Columbus; Fort Wayne; Seattle; Milwaukee;
Minneapolis; and Jackson, Mississippi, claim that
the "crack" problem and the gang violence problem
were developed in the course of an incursion of
black drug gang-related entrepreneurs from the
central cities of New York, Chicago, and Los
Angeles. Often violence was reputed to have been
associated with a deliberate plot to takeover and
transform local traditional turf-based black youth
gangs into drug market criminal gang-related
organizations. The spread of the "crack" gang-
related problem, however, is increasingly
attributed more to market forces and normal
migration patterns of individuals and families
seeking economic opportunities than to a
centralized, bureaucratic franchising campaign.

Available research, however, suggests neither
strong nor clear inter-relationships among street-
gang membership, drug use, drug selling, and
violence. Fagan (1988) found both violent and
nonviolent black and Hispanic youth gangs in
inner-city communities of Chicago, Los Angeles,
and San Diego, whether the gang engaged in drug
trafficking or not. Gang involvement in violent
activity is neither cause nor consequence of drug
use or drug dealing: "while some incidents no
doubt are precipitated by disputes over drug sales
or selling territories, the majority of violent
incidents do not appear to involve drug sales.
Rather they continue to be part of the status,
territorial, and other gang conflicts that
historically have fueled gang violence" (Fagan
1988, p. 20).

Klein, Maxson, and Cunningham (1988) recently
explored the relationship between gangs, drug
dealing, and violence in Los Angeles. Basing their
study on analysis of police records for 1984 and
1985, they found that rock cocaine dealing and its
increase were principally a product of normal
neighborhood drug-selling activity, often
unattributable to gang activity. The occurrence of
violence during cocaine sale arrest incidents was
quite low; the explosion of drug homicide
incidents was more characteristic of nongang than
gang involvement (pp. 6, 10-11).

The diversity of views about the relation between
gang membership, drug dealing, and violence at the
street level can be partly explained by such
factors as city size and drug supplies,
organizational development phase of the gang and
its involvement in drugs, and the stability of the
drug market. The traditional gang structure seems
to dissolve under the impact of drug use and
selling. This is particularly evident in the large
northeastern cities and increasingly in midwestern
large and small cities. Traditional turf-related
gang violence and gang crisis inspired cohesion
are not directly functional to drug use, selling,
and associated criminal enterprise, which requires
more rational kinds of organization,
communication, and distribution.

However, the broadness or narrowness of the
definition of "gang incident" and whether the unit
of analysis is the gang or gang member also
accounts for much of the sharp variation. A broad
definition of "gang incident" is likely to find
strong and frequent connection among gangs, drugs,
and violence. Bobrowski (1988) states that of 62
street gangs or major factions responsible for
street gang crime in Chicago between January 1987
and July 1988, 90 percent, or all but 6, showed
some involvement by its membership in vice
activity. Of vice offenses reported, 91 percent
were drug-related.

However, the relationship between arrests for drug
dealing, possession, use, and violence by gang
members is quite tenuous in Chicago. Bobrowski
(1988, p. 25) also reports, based on Chicago
Police Department statistics, that vice activity
was discovered at the gang-incident level in "only
2 of 82 homicides, 3 of 362 robberies, and 18 of
the 4,052 street gang-related batteries and
assaults" in the year-and-a-half study period. He
concludes that the suggestion that "street gangs
have been enmeshed in some web of violence and
contentious criminality pursuant to, or in
consequence of, their interests in vice [mainly
drug trafficking or use], appears to be
unsupported by the available data" (1988, pp. 44-
47). However, the Chicago Police Department
definition of a gang-related incident is much
narrower than that of the Los Angeles Police
Department. Still, McBride (1988) of the Los
Angeles County Sheriff's Department states that
only 10 percent of gang homicides have been
related to drugs.

Evidence exists in several cities at the present
time of a pattern in which Hispanic gangs may be
relatively more involved in traditional turf gang-
related activities, and black gangs or their
members may be more relatively involved in drug
trafficking. In Chicago, where the total
population is approximately 41 percent black and
16 percent Hispanic, there were 77 Hispanic male
offender suspects and 66 black male suspects
identified by police case reports in 82 gang-
related homicides between January 1987 and July
1988. The vast majority of black and Hispanic gang
homicides, 78.7 percent, were within racial or
ethnic offender-victim groups. Although 45.2
percent of all serious gang-related assaults (N =
2,890) city-wide involved black suspects, 43.8
percent involved Hispanic suspects. However, 65.7
percent of vice (mainly drug) gang-related
suspects (N = 4,115) were blacks, but only 27.6
percent were Hispanics. Hispanic gang members may
be less entrepreneurial (or less obvious at the
street level) than black gangs, at least in
Chicago, when it comes to drug trafficking
(Bobrowski 1988, table 18A).

Reports suggest that members of different ethnic
or racial gangs may be differentially involved in
the trafficking of different types of drugs. For
example, in Los Angeles, "crack cocaine seems to
be associated primarily with black youth. There
seems little disagreement about the lack of
involvement by Chicano youth in the crack cocaine
trade" (Skolnick et al. 1988, p. 17). White
motorcycle gangs "continue to produce and traffic
in methamphetamine" (Philibosian 1989, p. 6),
Hispanic gangs seem to be a significant problem in
their use and sale of PCP and marijuana
(Philibosian 1989), and Chinese youth gang leaders
in New York City are reported to be active in the
heroin trade (Chin 1989). However, increasing
participation of gang members in drug trafficking
does not mean that the relationship between drugs
and gangs is interdependent and that a causal
relationship necessarily exists between the
development of gangs and drug dealing. Skolnick
observes that the traditional turf-based Mexican-
American gang in Southern California has not
formed for the purpose of selling drugs, but some
gangs in various parts of the State have organized
primarily for the purpose of distributing drugs,
and the "gang" or "mob" represents a "strict
`business' operation" (1988, pp. 2-3). It is
likely that black, white, and Chinese gangs are
less tied to traditional gang or neighborhood
norms.

Finally, the relation between drugs and gangs, as
well as with violence, particularly as it bears on
the socialization process, appears to be variable.
There is evidence of an indirect and sequential
relationship between gangs and violence and drug
trafficking. Johnson et al. (1989, pp. 63, 78)
report, using New York City evidence, that drug-
selling organizations frequently recruit persons
who have previous histories of violence. Such
persons, in turn, may seek out drug-selling
groups. Gangs provide members with a sense of
group identification and solidarity that may prove
a useful qualification and readily transferred to
a drug organization. This may be the case in Los
Angeles as well.

A closer interrelationship of fighting and drug-
selling patterns may be developing with Hispanic
gangs. The introduction of younger males to the
drug business often serves to meet membership
criteria and respect in the traditional but
changing Mexican-American gang in Southern
California. "An individual may prove that he is
worthy of respect and trust if he can show that he
can sell for one of the `homeboys' and be trusted
with the merchandise" (Skolnick et al. 1988, p.
4).

----------------

CHAPTER III: GANGS AS ORGANIZATIONS

Gangs have been viewed as both loosely knit and
well organized. It is possible that the loosely
knit characterization refers to process, while the
well-organized characterization refers to gang
structure, form, or longevity. Thrasher (1936, p.
35) originally conceived of the ganging process
"as a continuous flux and flow, and there is
little permanence in most of the groups. New
nuclei are constantly appearing, and the business
of coalescing and recoalescing is going on
everywhere in the congested area." Yablonsky
(1962, p. 286) called the gang a "near-group"
characterized by (1) diffuse role definition, (2)
limited cohesion, (3) impermanence, (4) minimal
consensus of norms, (5) shifting membership, (6)
disturbed leadership, and (7) limited definitions
of membership expectations. The traditional gang,
according to Klein (1968), is an amorphous mass;
group goals are usually minimal, membership
unstable; group norms not distinguishable from
those of the surrounding neighborhood. Short and
Strodtbeck noted the difficulty, if not
impossibility, of drawing up lists of gangs from
which probability samples could be drawn in their
research, "so shifting in membership and identity
are these groups" (1965, p. 10). Gold and Mattick
concluded that gangs in Chicago are "loosely
structured sets of companions" (1974, p. 335),
less stable than other groups of adolescents (p.
37). Torres observed that Hispanic gangs in the
barrios of East Los Angeles are "always in a state
of flux" (1980, p. 1). By contrast, however, some
of these same analysts have viewed gangs as
complex organizational structures, referring to
them in bureaucratic terms or even as "supergangs"
(Sherman 1970; Short 1976).

The New York City Youth Board (1960) proposed a
scheme for describing the varied, purposeful
structures of gangs that includes such
categorization as vertical, horizontal, and
autonomous or self-contained. The vertical gang is
structured along age lines and comprises
youngsters living on the same block or in the same
immediate neighborhood. There may be a younger
"tots" group 11 to 13 years old . . . a "junior"
division 13 to 15 years old . . . a group of
"tims" 15 to 17 years old . . . and the "seniors"
17 to 20 years old and older. The age lines are
not hard and fast. This type of structure occurs
where there is a long history of group existence
and activity dating back 10 or more years. Group
morale and fighting traditions are informally
handed down. This kind of group tends to be
ingrown, with cousins and brothers belonging to
the respective divisions (New York City Youth
Board 1960, p. 22).

A later description of the vertical gang structure
in New York City in the 1970's suggested a wider
spread of these age-based subunits with "Baby
Spades," 9 to 12 years old; "Young Spades," 12 to
15 years old; and "Black Spades," 16 to 30 years
old (Collins 1979). More recently, in
Philadelphia, the police department describes
three general age-related gang divisions: bottom-
level "midgets," 12 to 14 years old; middle-level
young boys, 14 to 17 years old; and upper-level
"old-heads," 18 to 23 years old (Philadelphia
Police Department 1987). On the West Coast and
elsewhere the very young aspirants to gang
membership, usually 8 to 12 years old, are labeled
as "wannabes."

The New York City Youth Board (1960) described
horizontal gangs as follows: "The horizontally
organized group is more likely to include
divisions or groupings from different blocks or
neighborhoods comprising youngsters of middle or
late teens with little differentiation as to age.
The horizontal group may, and usually does,
develop out of the vertical or self-contained
group structure" (pp. 23-24). The horizontal youth
gang structure has become the most common type of
structure when gangs with the same name spread
across neighborhoods, cities, States, and
countries. These structures have evolved into
coalitions, confederations, "supergangs," and
nations--often originating in, or developing more
sophisticated structures on, the basis of prison
experience. They are particularly prevalent among
black and Hispanic youth in California and
Illinois. Variations of these structures,
especially by ethnicity or race, are discussed
below.

The terms "clique" or "Klika" have also been used
for black or Mexican-American gangs, respectively,
to refer to a specific age group "jumped" into the
gang or forming a separately identified cohort of
the gang in Los Angeles (Klein 1971; Moore 1978).
The term "set," however, seems to have a slightly
different meaning and is used currently to refer
to a specific black gang unit of a larger gang
confederation of the same name in California, but
not restricted to an age grouping. In the Mexican-
American community, an age cohort is given a name-
-usually a variation of the general gang name----
that remains identified with that cohort
throughout its life history. Whether the clique or
Klika is large or small, it represents a larger
group than a small clique or subgroup of a
particular gang or group. These youth may be
"jumped" into a gang that is the only active gang
in the community (see Vigil 1988; Harris 1988).

Gang Alliances

Thrasher (1936, p. 323) noted the possibility of
complex affiliated gang structures decades ago:
"In some cases federations of friendly gangs are
formed for the promotion of common interests or
protection against common enemies. These may be
nothing more than loose alliances." In several
cities, gangs or sets of gangs have been paired as
enemies with "enmity brief, sometimes lasting"
(Miller 1975). The terms "nation" and later
"supergang" were coined in Chicago in the late
1960's to describe a particular large gang
reportedly numbering in the thousands with units
spread throughout the city. The term "nation" is
still commonly used, particularly by gang members
rather than by police or youth agency personnel.
Some of these gangs have hierarchies, board
structures, elders, and elites (Sherman 1970). Two
major multiethnic gang coalitions (somewhat
distinct from a gang nation or supergang), "the
People" and "the Folk," developed in Chicago and
Illinois prisons in the middle 1970's. These
"nations," supergangs" or gang alliances contain
older members, are more criminalized, and are
probably more sophisticated and somewhat better
organized than the gangs of the 1950's and early
1960's (Short 1976).

The origins of the People and the Folk as super-
alliances of other named gangs took place in
prison, according to Chicago Police Department
information, when the predominantly white Simon
City Royals agreed to provide narcotics in
exchange for protection by inmates belonging to
the Black Disciples, a loose constellation of
street gangs (Folks). Shortly thereafter and in
response to the super-alliance, members of the
Latin Kings, a constellation of gangs of mainly
Hispanic ethnic origin (Mexican-American and
Puerto Rican), aligned with the Vice Lords, a
"nation" of black gangs or factions (People).
These super-alliances spread to the streets of
Chicago and other Midwestern and Southern cities.

According to a recent report, there are currently
about 31 street gangs in Chicago that identify
with the Folks and about 27 that identify with the
People. A few particular gangs in certain
neighborhoods are known only as Folks or People
with no other identifiers. About 19 street gangs
remain independent. In addition, there are
factions of gangs and gangs with unknown
affiliations. Membership is about evenly divided
between Folk and People. Seventy (70) percent of
the gangs identifying with the Folks are Hispanic,
19 percent are black, and 10 percent are white; 56
percent of the gangs identifying with the People
are Hispanic, 22 percent are black, and 19 percent
are white (Bobrowski 1988). It is not clear how
many gangs or gang members outside of prison are
related to these larger gang entities. Most are
more closely identified with particular gangs or
gang factions. There is "no centralized
organization and chain of command . . . and no
clear leadership has emerged . . . In fact, local
disputes, power struggles, or ignorance often
result in conflict among . . . affiliates"
(Bobrowski 1988, pp. 30-31).

Gang coalitions are also common in the Los Angeles
area, throughout California and adjoining States,
and in correctional institutions in several
States. Black gangs are reported to be divided
into two main aggregations in California: "CRIPS"
and "Bloods," with the CRIPS containing more units
or sets and members. There is some recent evidence
of a few white, Asian, Pacific Island, and
Hispanic members in these gangs and of multiethnic
or racial aggregations of these black gangs with
Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Island, and white gangs.
Crips tend to be more aggressive; members of Blood
sets rarely fight each other. Fights between CRIP
gangs are reported to have accounted for one-third
to one-half of all gang-versus-gang incidents in
various Los Angeles jurisdictions (Baker 1988b).

The competition between the Bloods and the CRIPS
has assumed almost legendary status. Members of
the CRIPS--which may consist of a whole series of
organizations, not necessarily with close
relations with each other--have been arrested for
a variety of crimes, mainly drug trafficking, in
most States of the United States. The California
Department of Corrections reportedly has
acknowledged the "existence of an emerging
umbrella CRIP organization known as the
Consolidated CRIP Organization (CCO) and a similar
Blood gang organization known as the United Blood
Nation (UBN) . . . The California Youth Authority
(CYA) has an estimated black street gang member
population [comprising mainly these two gang
constellations] of 5,000 inside CYA facilities and
7,000 on active parole" (Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department 1985, p. 8).

Gang typologies and organizational classifications
suggest a bewildering array, complexity, and
variability of structures.1 Gangs may not be
simply cohesive, loosely knit, or bureaucratic but
at times variable small networks or parts of
larger networks across neighborhoods, cities,
States, and even countries (Collins 1979). These
networks may be more or less cohesive or clearly
structured at various periods in their
development. Gang tradition and these networks
develop independent of particular youths, leaders,
cliques, and gang organizational forms (see also
Sarnecki 1986; Reiss 1987).

Cliques and Gang Size

The small clique is the basic building block of
the gang. The violent character of the gang is
often determined by the membership interests of
the key clique, but the size of the delinquent
gang or clique has been a source of controversy
among researchers over the years.

Thrasher (1936, pp. 320-321) defined the gang
clique as a "spontaneous interest group usually of
the conflict type which forms itself within some
larger social structure such as a gang . . . In a
certain sense a well-developed clique is an
embryonic gang." The idea of "delinquent group" is
often congruent with that of gang clique. Shaw and
McKay (1931) noted that the most frequent type of
delinquent group, in which juvenile offenses are
committed, is the small companionship group
consisting of two or three boys. Downes (1966), a
British researcher, observed that small cliques
were responsible for the bulk of delinquency,
however, be made a distinction between them and
more "organized" gang behavior. Klein (1971)
refers to a "specialty clique" that may be part of
the larger gang structure but sometimes exists as
an independent unit. It consists of three to a
dozen boys. It can maintain or stimulate
distinctive patterned behavior, criminal behavior,
conflict, and drug use. 

The clique and the gang may be viewed as parts of
a network. Cliques may operate outside of gang
structures and even across other opposing gang
structures. Theft or robbery subgroups or cliques-
-and more recently, drug-trafficking cliques--may
identify with the gang for socialization and
conflict purposes but may recruit members from
outside the gang for particular "jobs," or ally
themselves with similar interest cliques in so-
called opposition gangs. The pattern of activity
of the gang may be determined by the leader or the
influential clique. The particular activity--
intergang tension or hostility, for example--may
cause the membership of the gang to expand rapidly
(Gold and Mattick 1974).

Competition between cliques may be a central
dynamic leading to the gang splitting into
factions or into separate gangs. The gang is
seldom cohesive and at maximum strength and may be
viewed as a series of loosely knit cliques, except
during times of conflict (Thrasher 1936; New York
City Youth Board 1960). Even this statement needs
to be qualified since actual combat between gangs
is usually carried out by a small group of two or
three youths, although a great deal of milling
about and a higher rate of interaction between
members of rival gangs may be observed on these
occasions--more for purposes of communication,
gesturing, and mutual excitement than directed
hostility.

The relation and significance of clique or gang
size to clique or gang influence may be difficult
to establish. It is possible to assess clique size
in terms of the number of arrests or participants
per gang incident. However, the use of official
data undoubtedly underestimates the number of
offenders or suspects (although it overestimates
the number of crimes committed by juveniles; see
Zimring 1981). The co-offenders or participants
may be viewed as roughly equivalent to a clique in
a specific gang-related offensive event. In one
Chicago study of reported violent gang incidents,
Spergel (1986) found that approximately three
offenders were arrested per gang incident. An
earlier Chicago study had revealed that slightly
less than two offenders were arrested per gang
homicide incident (Spergel 1983). In a more
inclusive Los Angeles gang and nongang homicide
study, Klein, Maxson, and Gordon (1987) found
approximately four suspects--as opposed to
arrested offenders--per gang homicide incident.
They also found that gang homicide incidents
produced about twice as many suspects as nongang
homicide incidents (1987).

The average size of the gang or clique has been a
source of disagreement among researchers and
observers. Some have emphasized that gangs are
generally small--hardly larger than a clique--
ranging from 4 or 5 to 25, with 8 to 12 members
most common (Gold and Mattick 1974). Others have
viewed the size of the gang as generally ranging
from 25 to 75 members (Collins 1979), 25 to 200
(Philadelphia Police Department 1987), and from
about 30 to 500 (Torres 1980). Since the late
1960's and to this day, some analysts believe the
size of some gangs--whether "supergangs" or
coalitions--may range into the thousands (Spergel
1972; Miller 1975, 1982; Short 1976). These
numbers may include peripheral and associate
members as well as core members, both active and
inactive members, and "wannabe" members and are
usually based upon sightings of large groups of
youth at a particular event--such as a dance; mass
meeting; or during "declarations" by gang members
that a particular school, housing project, or
prison is "theirs"--or upon estimates by law
enforcement or prison officials, based on
interviews, arrests, or informant observations. 

There is some evidence that gang size grows during
periods of crisis--especially with threats of
strikes or retaliations or competition for drug
markets----and decreases in the absence of
conflict and in the presence of "peace." Gang size
may also vary for students during different school
seasons or transitional periods--larger in the
fall when school starts, again during school
holidays, and especially at the start of the
spring or summer break. Recruitment efforts in the
fall of the first year of high school also may
produce an increase in gang ranks (see Klein
1971).

Many questions remain regarding the relation
between numbers of gang members, gang problems,
and gang size. Is the number of gangs in an area
or setting related to the number of gang members?
Are there more gangs in newly settled communities
but not necessarily more gang members compared to
the settled area? We know, for example, there are
more Hispanic than black gangs in Chicago but not
necessarily more Hispanic gang members (Bobrowski
1988). There may be more gangs represented in a
magnet or citywide high school than in a
neighborhood high school, but does this mean there
are more gang members or gang problems present
(Spergel 1985)? Similarly, gang membership and
problems may or may not vary with the numbers of
gangs in a particular prison (G. Camp and C. Camp
1985).

Types of Gang Members

The structure of the gang is based on needs for
group maintenance or development. It requires that
certain roles be performed and includes a variety
of membership types--core members, including
leaders and regulars; peripheral or fringe
members; and "wannabes," or recruits. The core may
be regarded as an inner clique that is actively
engaged in the everyday functioning of the gang.
Core members interact frequently and relate easily
to each other. They have been described as "those
few who need and thrive on the totality of the
gang's activity. The gang's level of violence is
determined by the hardcore" (Pitchess 1979, p. 2).
Core members may make key decisions, set
standards, and provide support and sanction for
the action of leaders. They are also the key
recruiters (Sarnecki 1986; Reiss 1987). 

Peripheral members and those who associate with
the gang but who do not recognize or are not
recognized by others as members of the gang may be
regular or irregular in their attendance at
particular gang events or gatherings. Their
relationships may also be primarily to particular
core members. They may not be seen as part of the
gang by all core members or the entire group. Some
associates may have higher status and respect than
peripheral members.

"Floaters" may exist in and across gangs. They are
special kinds of associates with high status, yet
are not clearly identified as gang members. They
are often brokers across gangs with access to
special resources, or they may exhibit special
talents needed by the gang. For example, they may
possess information about the activities of other
gangs and serve as communication links and
negotiators in times of tension or intergang
conflict. They may arrange deals for weapons,
drugs, or stolen property between gangs and with
others outside the gang. They tend to be
entrepreneurial, well respected, and articulate,
with many community connections.

Wannabes or recruits are the younger, aspiring or
potential members. They are the targets of efforts
by core or regular members to increase the size of
the gang.

Law-enforcement agencies have special strategic
and tactical reasons for identifying different
types of gang members. Most police departments
want to arrest or neutralize gang leadership. But
also they usually must be concerned with not
exaggerating the numbers of gang members. Law-
enforcement agencies distinguish among gang
members, for example, as "verified" or "alleged"
(New York State Assembly 1974b, p. 3), "known,"
"suspected," or "associated" (Baca 1988). The
verified hardcore or known members are viewed as
making up 10 to 15 percent of the gang and are the
target for most law-enforcement interventions
(Collins 1979).

Whether and under what circumstances gang members
develop particular types of, or maintain, career
roles is unclear. At one extreme, membership and
gang roles are vague and shifting. Some members
join for a short time--days or weeks. Gang members
may "graduate" from a lower- to a higher-status
gang role or even gang, particularly as they grow
older. However, they may also shift from core to
peripheral roles and back again. A youth may
switch membership from one friendly gang to
another and even to a formerly hostile gang--
particularly when gang membership requires little
in the way of formal identification or investment
of time or energy or, more often, when the gang
member's family moves or the youth must adopt
membership in a dominant gang at a new school or
in a correctional agency. It is not always clear
to gang members who is a recognized gang member
and who is not, although the status, rank, or
respect of a core gang member may be more readily
established. Relationships among gang members may
be weak and tenuous (Yablonsky 1962; Klein 1971),
although not always or necessarily so (Horowitz
1983). Leadership and core-member roles,
particularly in established gangs, may be viewed
as long-term. Such roles assume greater stability
and articulation in certain stable low-income
ghetto communities and in prison (Jacobs 1977).

There appears to be general agreement, however,
that core members are more involved in delinquent
or criminal activities than peripheral or fringe
members. Klein (1968, p. 74) reports that during
the 4 years of the Los Angeles Group Guidance
Project, "core members were charged with 70
percent more offenses than fringe members." Core
members committed their first offenses at an
earlier age, committed subsequent offenses at a
more rapid rate, and committed their last juvenile
offenses at a later age than fringe members (1968,
p. 274). Sarnecki's (1986) findings in Sweden are
similar. Juveniles affiliated with the network
were considerably more actively delinquent while
they belonged to it and faced a greater risk of
persisting in their delinquent activity, which
often led to drug addiction or imprisonment. The
more central the roles played by the juveniles,
the greater their likelihood of continuing in a
delinquent career. Those who were accomplices of
the central characters in the network also ran
greater risks than the average participant
(Sarnecki 1986, p. 128). Conversely, Fagan (1988,
p. 22) reports no significant differences between
leaders and other kinds of members in self-
reported involvement in drug and delinquent
activities. His findings, however, are not clearly
developed and are opposed to all other research
findings on this question.

Debate has also raged over whether core or fringe
members are more or less socially adjusted or
psychologically troubled. Yablonsky (1962) claimed
that core members are often psychologically
disturbed or sociopathic, and fringe members are
more likely to be "normal." Short and Strodtbeck
(1965), Klein (1971), and Gold and Mattick (1974)
take an opposing position; they say that
leadership and core members are likely to be more
socially capable, perhaps more intelligent. Fringe
members or "crazies" are likely to have low status
or to be ostracized by the group--except when used
for certain aggressive purposes (Horowitz 1983).
The extensive set of case vignettes in the
descriptive and program report of the New York
City Youth Board (1960) suggests that core and
fringe members come with all sorts of personality
makeups, capabilities, and disabilities and that
it is extremely difficult to relate gang role to
personality type.

Leadership

The notion of leadership is not usually clearly
defined by gang members or by researchers. Some
gangs have formal leadership positions such as a
president and vice president. More recently, gangs
in ghettoes, barrios, and prisons have referred to
their leaders as king, prince, prime minister,
general, ambassador, don, or chief. Some highly
violent gang leaders or influentials may have no
formal designation or flamboyant title and are
simply called "shot callers" or "shooters" by gang
members or police. There is a tendency for leaders
to be more clearly or "officially" identified in
black than in Hispanic gangs.

Gang researchers' disagreements center around
whether leadership is a position or a function and
may be only partially related to the issue of
whether the gang leader is a psychopath and
sociopath or relatively normal and socially
capable. Klein has taken two views. He has stated
that gang leadership is best defined as a
"collection of functions that may be undertaken at
various times by a number of members" (1971, p.
92). He has also stated that leadership may reside
within "relatively stable, `cool' youngsters who
have earned their fighting status through a
variety of abilities, fighting prowess, cool-
headedness, verbal facility, athletic abilities,
or inheritance from older brothers" (1969, p.
1432). Short (1963, p. 38) suggests that the
"ability to get along with people is one of the
basic skills associated with gang leadership."

These researchers and others have generally agreed
that leaders are usually capable people and have
special traits that others look up to (Thrasher
1936, pp. 345-349). Yablonsky's (1962, p. 156)
view of gang leadership is at the other extreme:
"Leaders are characterized by megalomania"; they
are profoundly disturbed and were very insecure
and unhappy as children and try to compensate
through their "contemporary `power' role of gang
leader."

Territoriality

The gang is often defined and organized in terms
of the territory in which it is located or claims
to be its own. The notion of territoriality or
turf is integral to the defensive character of the
traditional gang. Degree of commitment to turf may
vary by particular cultural tradition, age of the
gang's members, and by the changing interests or
purposes of the gang. "Gang warfare is usually
organized on a territorial basis. Each group
becomes attached to a local area which it regards
as peculiarly its own and through which it is
dangerous for members from another group to pass"
(Thrasher 1936, p. 175). The identification of
gang with territory is nowhere better illustrated
than in many Hispanic areas of Los Angeles where
the terms "gang" and "barrio" are traditionally
synonymous with the concept of neighborhood and
the two terms are used interchangeably (Moore
1978) or in many Puerto Rican and Mexican-American
communities of Chicago (Horowitz 1983; Spergel
1986).

Proximity emerges as a critical factor in
motivations for gang conflict. Of 188 gang
incidents among 32 gangs in Philadelphia between
1966 and 1970 (homicides, stabbings, shootings,
and gang fights), 60 percent occurred between
gangs who shared a common boundary, and another 23
percent between gangs whose territories were 2
blocks or less apart. Only two incidents occurred
between groups whose turfs were separated by more
than 10 blocks (Ley 1975, pp. 262-63). Certain
inner-city groups experience not only an economic
but also a social and cultural marginality. Their
marginalization may provide the mandate for a
"territorial imperative . . . for the
establishment of a small secure area where group
control can be maximized against the flux and
uncertainty of . . . the city" (Ley 1975, pp. 252-
53). Graffiti becomes the visible manifestation of
a gang's control of social space. Gang graffiti
becomes denser with increasing proximity to the
core of a territory. Graffiti is a clue to both
the extent and intensity of "ownership" of a
territory by a gang, which often varies inversely
with the strength of adult community organization
in the exercise of control over the particular
area.

Gang territoriality may expand when gang members
and their families move from one neighborhood to
another, to the suburbs, or even to other cities;
gangs with the same names suddenly seem to appear.
Gang names and symbols of territoriality may
develop through the influence of the media. A
copy-cat phenomenon directly or indirectly is
encouraged. Gangs most often seek to expand the
perimeter of their territory into adjoining
streets. A battle of gang markings and
countermarkings occurs when the perimeters of two
gangs' territories are unstable. Sometimes gangs
expand by absorbing smaller, lower-status gangs
nearby (Moore, Vigil, and Garcia 1983). Conflict
over gang turf may result from tensions and
competition over who "owns" or controls schools,
parks, jails, prison areas, illegitimate
enterprises or rackets, and even political
institutions of neighborhoods (Thrasher 1936;
Asbury 1971; Spergel 1972; Kornblum 1974).

At the heart of the concept of territoriality or
turf are two component ideas: control and
identification. Control is the stronger imperative
or driving force for gangs. Collins (1979, pp. 68-
69) observes that "street gangs have been known to
actually control the activity and events of
certain streets and blocks. They attempt to
control playgrounds, parks, and recreation centers
. . . to the exclusion of all other gangsters . .
. Other gangs have been known to march in front of
a witness' residence, exhibiting guns and weapons,
inferring `keep your mouth shut.'"

Miller (1977, pp. 23-25) suggests that three
categories of turf rights: (1) ownership rights,
where gangs "own" the entire area or property and
control all access, departure, and activities
within it; (2) occupancy rights, where gangs share
or tolerate each other's use and control of a site
under certain conditions (for example, deference,
time, and the nature and the amount of usage of
the space); and (3) enterprise monopoly, where
gangs claim exclusive right to commit certain
kinds of crimes. Miller gives examples of
"enterprise monopoly rights." A Boston gang
claimed the exclusive rights to steal from stores
in a claimed territory and forcefully thwarted
others who attempted a store robbery in the area.
Chinese gangs in a few cities, especially in San
Francisco, have a history of violence resulting
from challenges to exclusive extortion rights of
certain businesses.

Much of the violence among black gangs or
subgroups in recent years apparently results from
competition over drug markets. Gang entrepreneurs
or former gang members may seek to develop or
expand their business operations by recruiting or
converting existing street groups--often in
different neighborhoods or cities--to sell,
deliver, store, protect, or aid in the marketing
of drugs. Conflicts develop when these new
entrepreneurs enter an area controlled by another
gang or criminal organization engaged in drug
trafficking.

The traditional concept of physical turf or
territory has probably assumed less significance
in recent years. Physical, social, and economic
concepts of turf have become increasingly complex
over time. A particular gang may hang out,
socialize, or do business in different parts of
the neighborhood, city, or county. It may no
longer need a specific or the same center or
building as a point of identification or control
for each of these purposes. It may engage in
criminal activities or socialize in different
parts of towns, cities, or States as opportunities
presents themselves--more often fortuitous than
planned.

Miller (1977) also notes that certain cities have
a less developed tradition of locality-based
gangs. In the older cities or those with
established gangs----such as in New York,
Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Chicago----they are
more sophisticated and criminalized and are often
less identified with physical locations.
Increasingly important are the availability of
criminal opportunities or markets as gangs have
become highly mobile. A law-enforcement officer in
New York City observes that criminal youth no
longer hang out and now commonly move from corner
to corner and neighborhood to neighborhood to join
with others for a burglary, robbery, drug deal, or
whatever criminal opportunity arises that day
(Galea 1988). Under such circumstances, the notion
of gang changes or becomes more closely associated
with that of delinquent or crime group; in the
process, gang turf, colors, symbols, jackets,
caps, signs, names, and traditions may weaken
change, or come to serve either traditional
territorial or evolving criminal gang purposes,
and sometimes both in varying patterns and
sequences.


1 A great variety of gang dimensions, as a basis
for classifying or typing youth gangs by
academics, law-enforcement personnel, and others,
has emerged in recent years. They include (1) age;
(2) race/ethnicity; (3) gender composition [all
male, all female, or mixed]; (4) setting [street,
prison, or motorcycle (G. Camp and C. Camp 1985;
C. Camp and G. Camp 1988)]; type of activity
[social, delinquent, or violent (Yablonsky 1962;
Haskell and Yablonsky 1982; Jackson and McBride
1985)]; (6) purpose of gang activity [defensive or
aggressive (New York City Youth Board 1960;
Collins 1979), turf, retaliation, prestige, or
representation (Bobrowski 1988)]; (7) degree of
criminality [serious, minor, or mixed (Pleines
1987)]; (8) level of organization [simple or
corporate (Taylor 1988), vertical or horizontal,
spontaneous specialty clique, horizontal alliance,
or violent gang (Klein and Maxson 1989)]; (9)
stage of group formation or development [early,
marginal, or well-established (Collins 1979; New
York State Assembly 1974b)]; (10) degree of
activity [active, sporadic, or inactive
(Philadelphia Police Department 1987)]; (11)
nature or level of personality development or
disturbance of group members (Scott 1956; Klein
1971; Jackson and McBride 1985); (12) group
function [socioemotive or cultural and
instrumental (Berntsen 1979; Huff 1988; Skolnick
et al. 1988)]; (13) drug use/selling (Fagan 1988);
(14) cultural development [traditional,
nontraditional, or transitional (Vigil 1983,
McBride 1988)]; (15) new types, [heavy metal, punk
rock, satanic, or skinhead (Baca 1988; Coplon
1988)].

----------------

CHAPTER IV: MEMBERSHIP DEMOGRAPHICS

This chapter is concerned with ecological,
socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic
characteristics of gang members. Included are
class, culture, race or ethnicity, age, gender,
and female participation as components of youth
gang structure. Interaction between these
components and gang membership, group processes,
and individual personality are discussed in
chapter V.

Class, Culture, and Race/Ethnicity

Contemporary youth gangs are located primarily in
lower-class, slum, ghetto, barrio, or changing
communities; but it is not clear that class,
culture, race, or ethnicity per se primarily
account for gang problems. More likely, these
variables interact with other community
characteristics such as poverty, social
instability, racism, ethnic insecurities, social
isolation, and failures of social policy and
interagency coordination.

The gangs of the early part of the century in
urban areas like Chicago were mainly first
generation youths born of Irish and German, and
later Polish and Italian, parents who lived in
areas of transition or first settlement (Thrasher
1936). To what extent they represented lower-class
elements or the lowest-income sectors in their
communities or in the city as a whole is not
clear. We know that middle-class gangs--regardless
of race, ethnicity or location--are less prevalent
and certainly different in character than lower-
class gangs (Myerhoff and Myerhoff 1976; see also
Muehlbauer and Dodder 1983). But it is still not
clear that the gang problem, at least its violent
manifestations, is most severe in the poorest
urban neighborhoods (Spergel 1984) or that gang
members necessarily are the poorest youths or come
from the poorest families in low-income
communities. Delinquency and crime are generally
closely associated with poverty, but the poverty
relationship cannot be as strongly demonstrated
for gang-related crime as for nongang crime.

The assumption that poverty, low socioeconomic
status, or lower-class lifestyle is related to the
prevalence of delinquent or violent youth gangs
has been questioned. The communities in which
black gangs flourished in the early 1960's were
generally below city averages in housing standards
and employment rates but not below city average
unemployment rates (Cartwright and Howard 1966).
Gang members often come from low median family-
income census tracts in Philadelphia, but not from
the lowest (Cohen 1969a). The members of conflict
groups in New York City were not drawn necessarily
from the poorest families of the slum town areas
(Spergel 1964). Many of the street gangs of New
York City in the 1970's "emerged from a lower-
middle-class lifestyle" (Collins 1979). Hispanic
fighting gangs in East Los Angeles were not
limited to the lowest-income areas of the city
(Klein 1971). The spread of gangs in Los Angeles
County reportedly is due in part to the upwardly
mobile families with gang youth to middle-class
areas (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
1985). Violent and criminal motorcycle gangs are
reportedly composed of mainly lower-middle-class,
white, older youth, and young adults (Davis 1982a,
1982b). Recently identified white gangs in
suburban communities, "Punks," "Stoners," "White
Supremacists," "Satanics," and others, seem to
come from lower-middle-class and middle-class
communities (Deukmajian 1981; Dolan and Finney
1984). The class identity of the newly developing
Asian gangs is not clearly established, but gang
members often come from two working parent
families.

In some cities, authorities claim that media
attention has influenced the development of
ephemeral middle-class street gangs composed of
younger adolescents who have adopted some of the
attributes of traditional gangs (wearing colors),
as well as of instrumental gangs (making money).
They may function as roving bands engaged in
criminal activity, including narcotics use and
vandalism, for profit or for thrills. They have
been dubbed "mutant gangs" in Orange County and
"Stoner gangs" in Los Angeles County. The Mexican-
American Stoner gangs of East Los Angeles of the
early 1980's have been integrated into the
reemerging turf gangs, accompanied by a sharp rise
in intergang violence.

Youth gang problems in the United States continue
to involve mainly blacks and Hispanics, with
indications of increasing Asian gang participation
and a more differentiated white youth gang
problem. The largest variety of youth gang types
may occur on the West Coast, particularly in
Southern California, and increasingly in Texas,
New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Florida. Asian and
Pacific Island youth gangs are reported in many
States, particularly in the Western part of the
United States. American Indian gangs have been
active in Minneapolis. Mixed race and ethnic gang
membership patterns are not uncommon in many
States, although black gangs tend to be all black.
The relation of black American gangs to Jamaican
gangs ("Posses") is unclear; ethnicity may be a
stronger bond than race. Hispanic gangs tend to be
predominantly Mexican-American or Puerto Rican,
with increasing numbers of Central and South
Americans. Asian and Pacific Island youth gangs
tend to be Korean; Thai; Laotian; Cambodian;
Hmong; Japanese; Samoan; Tongan; Filipino; and
Chinese, with origins in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
Vietnam. White gangs, depending on location, can
be predominantly of second- and third-generation
mixed Italian, Irish, Polish, or Central-European
origin in inner-city "defensive" enclaves,
suburban areas, or small towns. Some of the more
entrepreneurial white gangs tend to have weak
territorial identifications. Motorcycle gangs roam
widely.

Race and ethnicity play a role in the development
of the gang problem, but in more complex ways than
is ordinarily conceived. Blacks and Hispanics
clearly constitute the largest numbers of youths
arrested for gang offenses at the present time. In
his first national survey, Miller (1975) estimated
that 47.6 percent of gang members in the six
largest cities were black, 36.1 percent Hispanic,
8.8 percent white, and 7.5 percent Asian. In a
more extensive survey of all gang members in 9 of
the largest cities, Miller (1982) found that 44.4
percent were Hispanic, 42.9 percent black, 9
percent white, and 4.0 percent Asian. Miller
(1982, chapter 9) speculates that illegal Hispanic
immigrants, especially from Mexico, may have
played a large role in the increasing numbers of
gangs in California and in their spread to smaller
cities and communities in that State.

Curry and Spergel (1988) report a distinctive
pattern for black and Hispanic gangs