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In 18, sociologists Hedy Bookin-Weiner and Ruth Horowitz asked
whether the end of the youth gang was “fad or fact.” Although their concern
was largely with the influence of politics and ideology on both the funding
Cheap Custom Essays on Youth Gangs
and the nature of research about gangs, the fundamental question regarding
the “end” of youth gangs seemed a reasonable one. After all, the major gang
“epidemic” of the 160s had appeared to subside in most cities except,
most notably, in Chicago and Los Angeles. Gangs had certainly faded from
the research agendas of most criminologists, as shown by the lack of empirical
and theoretical work using gangs as a focal point. But like many cyclical behaviors,
including crime (Klein 15b), gangs returned. And with their return
came increased attention from the research community.
This volume represents one segment of the increased attention that gangs
received during the past decade. That decade saw a dramatic increase in the
level of funding for gang research. Federal agencies, led by the U.S. Department
of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services’ (HHS’s) Administration for Children and Families and National
Institute on Drug Abuse, and the U.S. Department of Education, have made
substantial contributions to the expansion of knowledge about gangs, gang
interventions, and the characteristics of individual gang members. The selections
in this volume were funded primarily by NIJ. Although these are not the
only federally funded projects in this topic area, they represent some of the
more prominent and visible ones.
Bookin-Weiner and Horowitz suggested (18 5) that gang research,
particularly work funded by Federal agencies, will be influenced profoundly
by the dominant ideology of the time regarding crime, and that suppression
has been the dominant ideology. It is important in this context to distinguish
between the ideology underlying gang research and the ideology underlying
gang intervention. Clearly, their suggestion was that suppression and deterrence
strategies will be reflected in research and practice funded by the
Federal Government.
One of the most influential federally funded research projects (Spergel
and Curry 1) documented that although suppression was the dominant
response to gangs, it was perceived to be the least effective. Even among law
enforcement respondents in that study, it was perceived as less effective than
providing social opportunities through job training and education. In addition,
as Malcolm Klein (15a) noted, little serious evaluation research has
focused on antigang suppression efforts, which suggests that the relationship
Chapter 1
among Federal funding, political ideology, and research findings is much more
complicated than might be expected. Indeed, much of the gang research presented
in this volume suggests that simple predictions from researchers or law
enforcement are likely to be wrong. Research is not motivated by political
ideology or a commitment to a particular outcome, but is conducted because
there is a pressing need for information to guide decisionmaking.
The works collected in this volume reflect a diverse set of methodologies
and substantive interests and range from field studies to surveys of classroom
students to analyses of official records. Basic research issues as well as applied
policy issues are examined. The volume includes field research, survey research,
program evaluation, and records research. In addition, these chapters reflect
an interest in gender, in minorities, and in improving criminal justice system
interventions. Several researchers whose work is presented here have also used
the platform of Federal funding to examine issues well beyond the scope of
their initial grant, enhancing our knowledge of gangs as well as leveraging
scarce Federal research dollars in important ways. In all, this is a broad-based
collection of studies that will be useful to policymakers, practitioners, and
researchers. The impressive basic and applied work that appears here adds to
what we know about gangs and may affect what we do about gangs. This
research should help lay the foundation for the research and intervention
agenda for the next decade.
This introduction summarizes the chapters that follow and offers a substantive,
methodological, and policy response to each. The summaries attempt
to place the research in the broader context of research on gangs, delinquency,
and juvenile justice. The introduction then turns to an examination of areas of
research that need more attention and concludes by identifying potential future
directions and offering some methodological suggestions for gang research.
Summaries of the Research Projects
The best of the research projects in this volume combine a strong conceptual
focus with a sound methodology. Because NIJ funded most of these
projects, it follows that they have a singular focus on policy or program evaluation.
What sets the best of these projects apart, however, is their breadth of
focus, strong commitment to sound methodologies, and ability to identify
both basic and applied research questions.
4 ϯϯϯ
ϯϯϯ 5
A Decade of Gang Research Findings of the National Institute of Justice Gang Portfolio
The dominant paradigm in research is that a basic or scientific research
question must be identified. This leads to the choice of appropriate methodologies
that attempt to rule out rival hypotheses, controlling for threats to internal
and external validity. Data are collected, controls applied, and analyses conducted.
This is the prototypical scientific model, in which theoretical questions
guide research about basic scientific questions, which, in turn, produces findings
that lead to policies, programs, or interventions. In the pure form of this
model, a researcher would begin with a question about gang behavior derived
from the literature, formulate hypotheses about how gangs and their members
behave, and then test those hypotheses in various ways. Following several successful
tests of the hypotheses, a second researcher or research team may decide
to determine whether the basic research findings can change the behavior of
individual gang members or gangs. This process, which may last several years
or decades, may result in suggestions for program or policy intervention.
Unfortunately, however, such an approach is not feasible in practice.
Policymakers simply do not have the luxury of waiting 10 or 0 years for an
answer to the “gang problem.” In many American cities, gang violence has so
disrupted the social fabric of some neighborhoods that socialization, employment,
and education can no longer work successfully. Without overdramatizing
the extent to which this is true, one need only look at such cities as Chicago,
Los Angeles, and St. Louis, where gangs are responsible for more than 5 percent
of all homicides and assaults. The reality of gang violence has placed a
significant amount of pressure on those who fund Federal intervention and
research programs to “do something.” The question, of course, is what to
do. This volume documents many of the responses to gangs as well as some
of the research about the impact of such responses (see exhibit 1).
Reducing Gang Violence in Boston
In a review of his tenure at the National Institute of Justice, a former
director said that funding the research on Boston’s Operation Ceasefire was
one of the most substantive investments that the Institute had made during
that time (Travis and Blumstein 000). Anthony A. Braga and David M.
Kennedy’s “Reducing Gang Violence in Boston” (chapter ) provides ample
evidence to support that claim. As noted above, the strongest research combines
a basic and applied focus with a strong methodology. The body of
research on Operation Ceasefire has all of these attributes. Its strongest feature
is its commitment to the problem-solving process. Braga and Kennedy
6 ϯϯϯ
Chapter 1
Exhibit 1 The Studies in This Volume
Site(s) Year of Year(s) Data Whose Definition
Researcher(s) Studied Award Collected Data Sources Topic of “Gang”?
Braga and Boston 14 • Problem descrip- Official records, Problem-solving to Law enforcement
Kennedy tion 15�6 interviews, focus reduce gun violence�
• Evaluation 1 group sessions evaluation
Williams, Boston, Seattle, 1 1�5 • Process evaluation project Girl gang prevention Youths’ self-reports
Curry, and Pueblo, CO reports, interviews with program�evaluation
and Cohen staff, observations
• Outcome evaluation
interview-based surveys
of study participants
Esbensen et al. Philadelphia; 14 • Pretest 15 Surveys of students G.R.E.A.T. prevention Youths’ self-reports
Omaha and; • Posttests 15 program�national
Lincoln, NE; • Annual followups evaluation
Portland, OR; 16�
Las Cruces, NM
Phoenix
Meeker, Vila, Orange 16 14�8 Official records, interviews Gang MIS Legislature and
and Parsons County, CA with MIS developers development law enforcement
Miethe Clark and 14 • Official records Criminal justice records, Impact of gang Legislature
and McCorkle Washoe 18�5 observations, interviews legislation and gang
Counties, NV • Interviews 14 with criminal justice officials prosecution unit�
evaluation
Miller Columbus, OH; 16 15�7 Interview-based surveys Gender and gangs Youths’ self-reports
and St. Louis of youths
Maxson, Curry, Nationwide 15 1, 17� Police survey data Gang homicide, 10s Law enforcement
and Howell
Pennell and San Diego 11 186� Criminal justice records, Multiagency gang task Law enforcement
Melton interviews with task force staff force�evaluation
Weisel San Diego 1 • Police 15 • Police�surveys Gangs as organized Offenders’
and Chicago • Gang members • Gang members� interviews crime groups self-reports and
16�7 law enforcement
Some interviews were conducted before the NIJ grant was awarded.
ϯϯϯ 7
A Decade of Gang Research Findings of the National Institute of Justice Gang Portfolio
engaged a broad array of local, State, and Federal justice officials, as well as
community and neighborhood leaders, in a data-driven effort to craft a more
effective and efficient response to youth violence. This intense effort ultimately
led to a focus on gang violence. Braga and Kennedy’s dogged commitment
to focus on data and analysis may be the longest lasting contribution of this
research.
The early stages of this research had a stronger qualitative and descriptive
focus, as would be appropriate in the early stages of a problem-solving model.
As rates of gun homicide in Boston decreased, however, a new research question
emerged how to explain the precipitous and unprecedented decline in
gun homicides. The research process addressed this key issue later in the project,
providing time-series evidence that the intervention and the decline were
indeed linked statistically. This illustrates another strength of the research that
it was flexible and farsighted enough to adapt to the project’s emerging needs.
The growth of the project over time, from its initial problem-solving focus on
guns and youth, and its integration of divergent constituent groups are examples
of how research can influence policy.
Braga and Kennedy’s youth gang and youth violence research has also
contributed to our conceptual understanding of deterrence. The search for
the appropriate “levers” to pull to ensure compliance with criminal justice
mandates remains a long-lasting addition to our knowledge about this process.
Braga and Kennedy stress that the threat of criminal sanctions will not be an
effective deterrent unless it reaches those individuals least likely to be reached
by public messages. It is ironic that a project initially funded to understand
and respond to youth violence and lead to a focus on gang violence has as yet
provided less direct knowledge about gangs than about the process of addressing
the broader issue of youth violence.
Gang Programs for Young Women
Among the many gaps in our knowledge of gangs, perhaps none looms
larger than the paucity of research on young women and gangs. Two of the
chapters in this volume address this crucial issue directly. Although we know
too little about young women and gangs, we know even less about programming
for gang girls. Katherine Williams, G. David Curry, and Marcia I. Cohen’s
“Gang Prevention Programs for Female Adolescents An Evaluation” (chapter
8) attempts to address the second of these issues. The research presented here
summarizes an evaluation of gang programming targeted to young women in
Chapter 1
Boston, Pueblo (Colorado), and Seattle and supported by HHS’s Family and
Youth Services Bureau. The choice of these diverse cities served to maximize
the variation in ethnicity among the young female gang members studied. For
this reason, the results of this study should have been able to shed light on
both process and impact issues.
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