6 - Gangs as a Facilitating Context for Delinquent Behavior

Summary

Up to this point the analysis has focused on the antecedents of gang membership, examining risk factors for and causal processes associated with joining a gang. Now we examine whether membership in a juvenile street gang alters the short-term behavior patterns and the long-term life-course development of gang members. The first set of issues we address concerns the extent to which the gang actually facilitates various forms of deviant behavior.

In Chapter 3 we demonstrated that gang members in Rochester have significantly higher rates of delinquency than nonmembers. This finding confirms results from earlier observational studies (Hagedorn, 1998; Klein, 1971; Miller, 1966; Moore, 1978; Taylor, 1990), from studies using official data (Cohen, 1969; Klein et al., 1986; Maxson and Klein, 1990), and from those using survey techniques (Fagan, 1989, 1990; Fagan et al., 1986; Short and Strodtbeck, 1965; Tracy, 1979). We also demonstrated that gang members account for a disproportionate share of the crime problem relative to their representation in the general population. Because gangs clearly connote groups that have a deviant or criminal orientation, a strong relationship between gang membership and high rates of involvement in delinquency and drug use is hardly surprising. What these studies do not identify, however, are the social processes that bring about the association between gang membership and higher rates of delinquency. As Fagan has noted, “it is uncertain whether the differences reflect the positive correlation between group crime and violence, features of the gang itself, or the state of social controls in the inner cities where gangs are most evident” (1990: 186).