David C. Pyrooz

Continuity and Change in Gang Membership and Gang Embeddedness

Objectives. Drawing from social network and life-course frameworks, the authors extend Hagan’s concept of criminal embeddedness to embeddedness within gangs. This study explores the relationship between embeddedness in a gang, a type of deviant network, and desistance from gang membership. Method. Data were gathered over a five-year period from 226 adjudicated youth reporting gang membership at the baseline interview. An item response theory model is used to construct gang embeddedness. The authors estimate a logistic hierarchical linear model to identify whether baseline levels of gang embeddedness alter the longitudinal contours of gang membership. Results. Gang embeddedness is associated with slowing the rate of desistance from gang membership over the full five-year study period. Gang members with low levels of embeddedness leave the gang quickly, crossing a 50 percent threshold in six months after the baseline interview, whereas high levels of embeddedness delays similar reductions until about two years. Males, Hispanics, and Blacks were associated with greater continuity in gang membership as well as those with low self-control. Conclusions. The concept of gang embeddedness broadens understanding of heterogeneity in deviant network immersion and is applicable to a wide range of criminal and delinquent networks. Gang embeddedness has implications for studying the parameters of gang careers and for a range of criminological outcomes.

What Do We Know About Gangs and Gang Members and Where Do We Go From Here

This review provides an opportunity to assess the current state of gang research and suggest directions for its future. There has been a dramatic increase in research on gangs, gang members, and gang behavior since the early 1990s, making this review especially timely. We use Short’s three-level framework of explanation to organize the findings of prior research, focusing on individual-, micro-, and macro-level research. Attention is focused on the findings of such research, but we also examine theoretical and methodological developments as well. Drawing from Short and life-course research, we introduce a cross-level temporal framework to guide future directions in gang research.

The Ties That Bind: Desistance From Gangs

The present study conceptualizes gang membership in a life-course framework. The authors focus specifically on an understudied aspect of gang membership—desistance. This study’s goal is to further develop our understanding of the process of desisting from gangs. This is done by examining the social and emotional ties that former gang members maintain with their previous gang network. Using a detention sample of juvenile arrestees, the authors first compare differences between 156 current and 83 former gang members at a bivariate level. This is followed by a multivariate analysis of former gang members that (a) examines factors that predict increases of ties to the former gang network and (b) illustrates the importance of gang ties by exploring their effects on victimization. The findings shed light on the correlates and consequences of persisting gang ties. In particular, it is found that ties have direct positive effects on recent victimizations. More important, it is found that longer lengths of desistance matter to the extent that ties are diminished; that is, length of desistance operates indirectly through gang ties to reduce victimization. The study concludes with a discussion of the conceptual and policy implications surrounding gang desistance and how lingering ties to the former gang network are crucial to understanding the desistance process.

Disengaging From Gangs and Desistance From Crime

We study the relationship between disengagement from gangs and desistance from crime within a life-course criminological framework. Gang disengagement is conceptualized as the event of gang membership de-identification and the process of declining gang embeddedness. We examine the effects of both the event and the process of disengaging from gangs on (1) criminal desistance mechanisms and (2) criminal offending using longitudinal data and multilevel modeling. We find that disengaging from gangs is indirectly related to offending through less exposure to antisocial peers, less unstructured routine activities, less victimization, and more temperance. Gang disengagement is associated with decreased contemporaneous offending but does not predict future offending after controlling for desistance mechanisms. Evidence also suggests that those who leave gangs more quickly are less exposed to antisocial peers, and possess better work histories and psychosocial characteristics even while in the gang. We discuss implications for research on gangs and criminal desistance.

Criminal and Routine Activities in Online Settings: Gangs, Offenders, and the Internet

Crime and deviance reflect the dynamic nature of social life. The Internet has changed opportunities for crime and deviance, much as it has changed other aspects of social life. Accompanying the movement of offending and victimization to the Internet has been the expansion of deviant groups—including gangs—into online settings. Drawing from web-facilitated and web-enhanced classifications of online deviant behavior and identity, we extend the study of offending, gangs, and gang membership to online settings. Using data gathered in five cities from 585 respondents, including 418 current and former gang members, we study general online routine activities, online criminal and deviant behaviors, and gang-related online behaviors and processes. Based on our results, we arrive at three main conclusions: (1) gang members use the Internet and social networking sites as much, if not more, than their nongang counterparts, (2) gang members have a greater overall propensity for online crime and deviance than former and nongang respondents, based on our multivariate multi-level item response theory models, (3) the Internet is rarely used to further the instrumental goals of gangs, instead appealing to the symbolic needs of gangs and gang members. We conclude by discussing the conceptual and policy implications of these findings in relation to online activities of offenders and deviant groups.

From Colors and Guns to Caps and Gowns? The Effects of Gang Membership on Educational Attainment

Objectives: This study examined the effects of adolescent gang membership on educational attainment over a 12-year period. A broader conceptualization of gang membership—as a snare in the life course—is used to study its noncriminal consequences. Method: Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and propensity score matching were used to assess the cumulative and longitudinal effects of gang membership on seven educational outcomes, including educational attainment in years and six educational milestones. After adjusting for nonrandom selection into gangs, youths who joined a gang were compared annually to their matched counterparts from 1998 to 2009. Results: Selection-adjusted estimates revealed disparities between gang and nongang youth in education attainment. Youth who joined gangs were 30 percent less likely to graduate from high school and 58 percent less likely to earn a four-year degree than their matched counterparts. The effects of gang membership on educational attainment were statistically observable within one year of joining, and accumulated in magnitude over time to reach −0.62 years (ES=0.25) by the final point of observation. Conclusion: The snare-like forces linked to the onset of gang membership have consequences that spill into a range of life domains, including education. These findings take on added significance because of a historical context where education has a prominent role in social stratification.

The Contribution of Gang Membership to the Victim–Offender Overlap

Objective: Although a vast literature has investigated the consequences of gang membership for offending and victimization, little is known about the contribution of gang membership to the victim–offender overlap. We advance a group process theoretical model and provide an empirical extension of the victim–offender overlap to gang membership. Method: Using data gathered from 621 respondents in five cities, the contribution of gang membership to the victim–offender overlap is determined by examining (1) a typology of four victim–offender arrangements using multinomial logistic regression modeling and (2) the latent propensity for violent offending and victimization using multilevel item response theory modeling. Results: Gang members were over twice as likely as nongang members to be both victims and offenders, even after adjusting for low self-control, adherence to street codes, and routine activities. Neither contemporary theoretical perspectives on the overlap nor the reciprocal relationship between violent outcomes eliminated the association of gang membership with violent victimization and violent offending. Conclusion: By theoretically and empirically integrating gang membership into current knowledge on the victim–offender overlap, the results suggest that there is much to be gained for research and practice by unpacking the features of criminal and deviant networks.

On the Validity and Reliability of Gang Homicide: A Comparison of Disparate Sources

One of the vexing problems of criminology is the search for valid and reliable measures of offending and victimization. Gang research has been plagued by similar concerns. This article provides an assessment of the reliability and validity of measures of gang homicide using police and survey reports collected from different sources over five annual points in time (2002-2006). Given public and political claims about the role of gangs in crime, assessing the validity of such measures is of critical importance to research and policy. Using data gathered from Uniform Crime Reports, Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and National Gang Center (NGC), the results indicated that gang homicide data were found to meet tests of reliability and validity. Supplementary analyses, however, revealed that the specialized measurement system (NGC) outperformed the generalized measurement system (SHR). The results provide strong support for the use of NGC measures of gang homicide, but not SHR measures of gang homicide, in cross-sectional and time-series research. We conclude by offering suggestions for future research.

Taking Stock of the Relationship Between Gang Membership and Offending: A Meta-Analysis

This study takes stock of empirical research examining the relationship between gang membership and offending by subjecting this large body of work to a meta-analysis. Multilevel modeling is used to determine the overall mean effect size of this relationship based on 1,649 effect size estimates drawn from 179 empirical studies and 107 independent data sets. The findings indicate that there is a fairly strong relationship between gang membership and offending (Mz = .227, confidence interval [CI] = [.198, .253]). Bivariate and multivariate moderator analyses not only reveal that this relationship is robust across the vast majority of methodological variations but also show that the gang membership–offending link is stronger when studying active gang members, and weaker in prospective research designs, non-U.S. samples, and when controlling for theoretical confounders and mediators. These results affirm the efforts of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to understand and respond to gang behaviors, and are used to identify aspects of this literature that are most worthy of continued attention.

Racial and Ethnic Heterogeneity, Economic Disadvantage, and Gangs: A Macro‐Level Study of Gang Membership in Urban America

There is a lack of macro‐level gang research. The present study addresses this shortcoming by providing a theoretically informed analysis of gang membership in large US cities. More specifically, our goal is to determine whether racial and ethnic heterogeneity conditions the relationship between economic disadvantage and gang membership. Three separate sources of data are used in this study: U.S. Census 2000, Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Services 2000, and National Youth Gang Survey 2002–2006. A series of weighted least‐squares regression models are estimated, finding that both economic disadvantage and racial and ethnic heterogeneity exhibit independent and additive effects on gang membership. In addition, the results show that racial and ethnic heterogeneity has a conditioning relationship with economic disadvantage. Furthermore, our expanded operationalization of the Blau heterogeneity measure indicates that prior research may have underestimated the effects of heterogeneity. The authors discuss these findings in the context of existing gang research and offer directions for future research.