Beth Bjerregaard

Gender differences in gang participation, delinquency, and substance use

The purpose of this paper is to respond to gaps in our knowledge about patterns of female gang participation and its causes and consequences. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a panel study that overrepresents adolescents at high risk for delinquency, are used to compare gang participation and delinquent involvement of female and male adolescents. We then examine the role of theoretical variables associated with both female and male gang membership. The results lead us to conclude that, for females as well as males, involvement in gangs is associated with substantially increased levels of delinquency and substance use. There is also some similarity in the factors associated with gang membership for both sexes, although lack of school success emerges as a factor of particular salience for female adolescents. The results suggest that theory and intervention need to address the phenomenon of female gang membership as an important component of urban youth problems.

Gun Ownership and Gang Membership

The problem of gang-related violence is not a new phenomenon, yet public concern over the rising violence perpetrated by juveniles has led to a renewed interest in the study of juvenile gangs. Whereas gangs used to be predominantly confined to large urban centers such as Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York City, todays gangs appear to be increasingly present in medium and small-sized cities previously believed to be immune to gang activity.1 The increased visibility of gangs, coupled with the growing fear of juvenile crime, has led researchers and others to conclude that there is an association between

An empirical study of stalking victimization

This article empirically studies the phenomenon of stalking and its victims by utilizing a random sample of college students at a large public University. The study found that 25% of the women and 11% of the men had been stalked at some point in their lives and that six percent were currently being stalked. Additionally, the study found that the majority of stalking victims are women who are stalked by male offenders. The sample reported being stalked for an average of 347 days and having engaged in a variety of actions in response. A substantial number of victims reported being threatened by their stalkers. This threat was associated with higher levels of fear among the victims and a greater chance of physical attack by the stalkers, particularly for the female victims.

Self-definitions of Gang Membership and Involvement in Delinquent Activities

There is significant disagreement among researchers as to the appropriate conceptual and operational definitions of gang membership. One of the key issues involves the validity of allowing respondents to identify themselves as gang members. This research examines the construct validity of gang membership by examining the relationship between various methods of operationalizing gang membership and delinquent involvement. The results demonstrate that there are important consequences to the method utilized to measure gang membership. Individuals reporting membership in organized gangs were far more likely to report that their gangs possess the characteristics typically associated with traditional street gangs. Likewise, the respondents self-identification had a strong impact on both the groups and the individuals criminal behavior. Overwhelmingly, persons who considered themselves to be members of an organized gang were more apt to engage in all types of delinquent activities.

The Consequences of Respondent Attrition in Panel Studies: A Simulation Based on the Rochester Youth Development Study

Subject attrition is a potentially serious threat to the validity of inferences drawn from panel studies of delinquency and drug use. Prior assessments of this issue produce somewhat conflicting results, with some finding that respondents who leave the panel have higher rates of delinquency and drug use than those who remain, while other studies report little or no differential attrition. Despite these findings, there has been virtually no examination of the extent to which respondent attrition can bias substantive findings in panel studies of delinquency and drug use. The present article addresses this issue by simulating higher levels of attrition in an ongoing panel study that has a low rate of attrition and little differential attrition. It finds that failure to include more elusive respondents (those who are more mobile) would bias estimates of prevalence and frequency of delinquency and drug use as well as results from basic regression analyses. Failure to include less cooperative respondents (those who require more contacts) produces similar, but somewhat smaller, differences. The methodological implications of the results are discussed.

Gang Membership and Drug Involvement Untangling the Complex Relationship

Previous research has consistently demonstrated a relationship between gang membership and involvement in illegal substances. In addition, researchers have noted that gang members are frequently more heavily involved in drug sales, which often lead to increases in violent behaviors. Most of this research, however, is either cross-sectional or ethnographic in nature, and therefore does not reveal the causal nature of these relationships. This research attempts to establish the temporal ordering of these relationships while controlling for a variety of relevant variables and to determine whether the relationships between drug involvement and violence differ for gang members versus nongang members. The findings indicate that gang membership is weakly associated with drug involvement, including both usage and sales. This involvement, however, does not appear to be related to assaults. Results suggest that gang membership is not determinative of drug involvement among a national random sample of youth.

The Interaction Between Victim Race and Gender on Sentencing Outcomes in Capital Murder Trials A Further Exploration

This study extends previous research on the interactive effects of victim race and gender on death sentence outcomes reported by Williams and Holcomb (2004). They report an interactive effect between victim race and victim gender on Ohio death sentencing outcomes, such that killers of White women are especially at risk of receiving death sentences. The study here seeks to determine if the Williams and Holcomb finding holds for a sample of murder cases in North Carolina for which the state sought the death penalty. Initial results of a descriptive analysis suggest a White female victim effect, but the introduction of control variables via logistic regression equations yields no gender or race interactions as predictors of sentencing outcomes. Reasons for the different outcomes are explored, and topics requiring further exploration are discussed.

Antigang Legislation and its Potential Impact: The Promises and the Pitfalls:

A number of state legislatures have developed new strategies for addressing the problems of gang-related criminal behavior. Legislatures have both enhanced traditional criminal laws and drafted new legislation aimed specifically at alleviating the gang problem. One of the most comprehensive approaches originated in California where the first statute aimed exclusively at prohibiting the activities of criminal street gangs was enacted. The California Street Terrorism and Enforcement Prevention Acts primary focus was to make it a criminal offense to engage in criminal gang activity. A multitude of other states quickly followed suit and passed similar legislation. The purpose of the article is to examine the approach taken by state legislatures to make participating in gang activities a substantive crime. This approach will be analyzed in terms of its potential effectiveness as well as its potential for abuse and discriminatory application. Last, suggestions for improving existing statutes will be offered.

An Examination of the Ethical and Value Orientation of Criminal Justice Students

The purpose of this research was to compare the values, likelihood of engaging in ethical violations, and perceptions of the seriousness of a variety of ethical violations of criminal justice students with students in other disciplines while controlling for their gender and interest in law enforcement. Few differences were found between criminal justice students and other students in terms of their value orientations. Although criminal justice students were found to be less likely to believe they would engage in ethical violations and more likely to view such violations as serious, these relationships were found to be insignificant. The variable found to have the most effect in all models was the gender of the student. Women were less likely to commit ethical violations and more likely to view them as more serious. Overall, the research lends more credence to the socialization or occupational opportunity theories for explaining the existence of the police subculture.

The Role of Mitigating Factors in Capital Sentencing Before and After McKoy v. North Carolina

In 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled that capital jurors do not have to be unanimous in deciding whether or not to accept any particular mitigating circumstance presented to them by the defense during the penalty phase of a capital murder trial. This study examines whether this shift in procedure may have altered the role of mitigation in predicting capital sentencing outcomes by comparing death sentencing predictors before and after the McKoy decision with data from an extensive sample of capital cases in North Carolina tried between 1977 and 2002. The results indicate that (1) both the number of aggravating and mitigating circumstances accepted by capital jurors had statistically significant and substantial effects on capital sentencing outcomes both before and after the McKoy decision; (2) the number of mitigating circumstances presented to and accepted by capital juries in North Carolina doubled during the post‐McKoy period; and (3) the influence of mitigating circumstance on capital sentencing outcomes was attenuated in the post‐McKoy period. Implications of these findings are discussed.