Title: Responding to Gangs: Evaluation and Research
Series: NIJ Research Report
Author: Winifred L. Reed and Scott H. Decker, editors
Published: July 2002
Subject: Gangs and juvenile delinquency prevention
252 pages
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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

Responding to Gangs: Evaluation and Research

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

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

John Ashcroft
Attorney General

Deborah J. Daniels
Assistant Attorney General

Sarah V. Hart
Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

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

Responding to Gangs: Evaluation and Research

Editors

Winifred L. Reed
Social Science Analyst
National Institute of Justice

Scott H. Decker, Ph.D.
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
University of Missouri-St. Louis

NCJ 190351
July 2002

------------------------------
National Institute of Justice
Sarah V. Hart Director

Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and
the Office for Victims of Crime.

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

Preface

This collection of papers presents a representative selection of NIJ's portfolio
of gang-related research. The genesis was the upsurge in gang crime beginning
in the mid-1980s, which prompted NIJ to expand research in this area.

NIJ's major focus is to generate research-based knowledge that can inform
policy and be useful for practitioners. For that reason, the emphasis in this
volume is on evaluations. An evaluation may indicate a program works or
doesn't, but in either case the information can be applied by those seeking
solutions to similar problems. The evaluation of Boston's initiative to halt youth
gang violence offers hope that focused law enforcement deterrence works. The
assessment of the G.R.E.A.T. program demonstrates that school-based
prevention can have favorable results.

Police chiefs and local policymakers can use evaluation findings to help develop
strategy and deploy resources or move in new directions. Not only were the
studies in this volume launched with an eye to practice, but some are themselves
the product of researcher-practitioner collaboration. Again, the Boston project
is an example, with its partnership of local law enforcement and academics
tackling youth homicide. Practitioners and researchers working together in
Orange County, California, developed a system for tracking gang crime.

In NIJ research, collaboration plays a major role. Through the National Youth
Gang Consortium, a coalition of Federal agencies, NIJ works to reduce youth
involvement in gang crime. The Consortium is administered by the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), an agency with which
NIJ has had a long and productive relationship in addressing juvenile offending.
In addition to OJJDP, several other Consortium members supported studies in
this volume, sponsored the programs evaluated, or otherwise contributed. This
pooled expertise in different fields adds to the strength of the volume.

We are fortunate in having as editors Winifred L. Reed and Scott H. Decker.
Dr. Decker is with the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the
University of Missouri and has been conducting research on gangs and related
issues for more than two decades. His extensive experience is no doubt the
source of his perceptive and forthright introductory comments. Winifred Reed,
a Social Science Analyst with NIJ, has similar depth of experience, having
managed the agency's portfolio of gang research for the past 10 years.

What's presented between these covers is not the final word on gang research.
If we have learned a great deal, a great deal is still unknown. Working with
practitioners and researchers, NIJ continues to identify knowledge gaps. The
risk factors for gang membership are known, but are there protective factors?
Are prison gangs related to street gangs? What can be done to encourage gang
members to leave the gang? What is the role of the media and popular culture in
the genesis and spread of gangs? These are only a few questions in a long list,
and as Scott Decker makes clear in his elaboration on research gaps, the list in
no way exhausts the possibilities.

This volume helps fill the knowledge gap with information that can be applied to
operations. It suggests that through research we may achieve a degree of
understanding that enables those in the field to maximize prevention,
intervention, and suppression.

Sarah V. Hart 
Director 
National Institute of Justice

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. A Decade of Gang Research: Findings of the National Institute of
Justice Gang Portfolio

Chapter 2. The Evolution of Street Gangs: An Examination of Form and
Variation

Chapter 3. Young Women in Street Gangs: Risk Factors, Delinquency, and
Victimization Risk

Chapter 4. Youth Gang Homicides in the United States in the 1990s

Chapter 5. National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training
(G.R.E.A.T.) Program

Chapter 6. Evaluating Nevada's Antigang Legislation and Gang Prosecution
Units

Chapter 7. Evaluation of a Task Force Approach to Gangs

Chapter 8. Gang Prevention Programs for Female Adolescents: An Evaluation

Chapter 9. Reducing Gang Violence in Boston

Chapter 10. Developing a GIS-Based Regional Gang Incident Tracking System

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Chapter 1

A Decade of Gang Research: Findings of the National Institute of Justice Gang
Portfolio

Scott H. Decker, Ph.D.
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
University of Missouri-St. Louis

In 1983, 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 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
1960s 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
1995b), 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 (1983: 599) 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 1993) 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 (1995a) noted, little serious evaluation research has focused on
antigang suppression efforts, which suggests that the relationship 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.

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 20 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 25 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 2000). Anthony A. Braga and David M. Kennedy's "Reducing
Gang Violence in Boston" (chapter 9) 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 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
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.

The description of the research process is a textbook example of what can go
wrong in program evaluation. The proposed randomization could not be fully
implemented, the control groups of matched individuals could not be
successfully constructed, the dropout rates in the control and program groups
were large and unequal, the number of subjects in the program group was often
too small for meaningful analysis, and the nature of the intervention changed
from the initial plan. None of these shortcomings was directly the fault of the
research team; indeed, the team had negotiated access to the programs and had
fostered agreement among the agencies on a process of assigning individuals to
control and treatment groups. In addition, the agencies were receiving Federal
funding to support their programs, often a predicate for participation in an
evaluation.

The research reported here is the result of both process and outcome
evaluations. In the Boston and Seattle sites, few goals of the initial research
design could be implemented because of low participation rates, high dropout
rates among those who did participate, and the changing nature of the program.
Despite these obstacles, the research team produced a process evaluation of
those two sites that should be required reading both for those involved in
program evaluation and for those who would fund such evaluations. It identifies
the myriad factors in program design and delivery that can frustrate an outcome
evaluation. The research produced an outcome evaluation of the program in
Pueblo, and the results of that intervention were mixed with regard to the
program's success.

This chapter leaves many unanswered questions about the state of programming
for young women in gangs. Among the key questions that cannot yet be
assessed are the following:

o What is the extent of programming for young women in gangs?

o Do female gang members need programming different from that for their male
counterparts?

o Do female gang members need programming different from that for young
women who are not gang members but are involved in other forms of serious
misconduct and delinquency?

o Can programming for female gang members operate independently of other
interventions for gang members?

o Can programming for female gang members operate independently of other
interventions for young women who engage in other forms of serious
misconduct and delinquency?

o Which types of programming are most successful in reducing the involvement
of female gang members in serious misconduct and delinquency?

The chapter begins to fill in some of the gaps that must be addressed in
developing, implementing, and evaluating programs targeted to young women in
gangs. Unfortunately, such programs often have mirrored programming for
youth in general, thereby preventing the research team from answering these
questions and from providing firmer guidance to others interested in the
answers.

Trends in Youth Gang Homicides

Few topics in the area of gang research have attracted as much attention as
gang homicide. Past research has focused on the correlates of gang homicides,
the definitions of gang homicide, trends in gang homicides, and the differences
between gang and nongang homicide. Cheryl L. Maxson, G. David Curry, and
James C. Howell have all made important contributions to the past literature on
this topic, so their current work (chapter 4 in this volume) is a welcome addition
to an already large body of literature. Given the already impressive body of
knowledge on gang homicide--much of it produced by these three
coauthors--can anything new be said on the subject? The answer is a
resounding
yes.

"Youth Gang Homicides in the United States in the 1990s" carefully examines
three issues of critical importance to the understanding of gang homicide:
measurement, trends, and correlates. The measurement issue, as Maxson and
her colleagues demonstrate, is central to understanding gang homicide and gang
crime in general. Depending on whether one applies a "gang membership"
definition (as the Los Angeles Police Department does) or a "gang motivated"
definition (as the Chicago Police Department does), one ends up with estimates
of the volume of gang crime that are "twice as great" or "half as great" (Maxson
and Klein 1990; Maxson, Gordon, and Klein 1985). Since respondents to the
National Youth Gang Center's (NYGC's) annual survey (which the authors
used as a data source) are given guidance on which crimes are to be classified
as gang crimes, there is reason to believe that the data have at least some
validity.

Yet this chapter also stresses that even such guidance does not always result in
valid estimates of the number of gang homicides. The authors compare NYGC
estimates with estimates found by other researchers and find modest levels of
convergence for Chicago and Los Angeles data. Although this convergence is
encouraging, it probably represents the best-case scenario, as Chicago and Los
Angeles have been using a formal definition to classify gang-related crimes for a
longer time than most cities have. The findings suggest that for smaller
jurisdictions or cities where the gang problem emerged in the past decade, the
validity of even homicide data may leave much to be desired.

An important finding of this research is the decline in gang homicides observed
at the end of the 1990s. The decline in homicide has been chronicled in various
sources (Blumstein and Wallman 2000). It is encouraging to see documentation
that gang homicides followed this decline, albeit later in the decade and at a
somewhat slower pace. If the trend continues, it will have major implications for
policymakers and practitioners. A decline in gang homicides may signal a
decline in the level of gang activity, gang membership, gang violence, or all
three. Researchers are advised to track such trends in their jurisdictions and use
the data to help map policy and problem-solving responses.

The section on correlates of gang homicide is the most intriguing, but least
developed, part of the paper. Owing to the limited number of years of data
available, it is not possible to examine a time-series analysis of the correlates of
the decline in gang homicides. Yet Maxson and her colleagues report that the
size of a jurisdiction and the magnitude of the reported gang problem (as
measured by the number of gangs and gang members) are likely correlates of
gang homicide. Although this finding is based on a small number of years, it is
likely to persist through time-series analyses. This likelihood suggests a pattern
of gang homicides that will invite closer scrutiny from researchers over the next
decade, as more data become available. In addition, gang homicide may be a
sentinel for other problems in a community and bears watching for other
reasons. The utility of NYGC data has been validated by this paper.

Evaluating G.R.E.A.T.

The American response to youth problems has seldom been based on a clear
conceptual model that has strong empirical support. As Gottfredson (1997)
notes, a host of "feel good" programs attempt to prevent problems before they
emerge or worsen. Much of what passes as school-based prevention falls into
this category of well-meaning but low-impact programs. Since 1998, the U.S.
Department of Education has worked to promote the use of effective programs.
"National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training
(G.R.E.A.T.) Program," by Finn-Aage Esbensen and his colleagues (presented
in chapter 5), reflects a large-scale research effort to evaluate the success of the
Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program. Oversight for
G.R.E.A.T. is currently provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms (ATF), the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and
representatives from five local law enforcement agencies (Phoenix; Portland,
Oregon; Philadelphia; La Crosse, Wisconsin; and Orange County, Florida). It
is offered in more than 2,100 schools to more than 340,000 students
nationwide. G.R.E.A.T. is a classroom-based program of instruction that
consists of eight lessons delivered in nine sessions designed to teach (primarily)
middle school students life skills that will enable them to resist the pressures of
gangs, drugs, and delinquency. It is essentially a cognitive program that depends
on teaching students facts and offering suggestions about how to respond to
situations they may encounter. As such, it resembles the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education (D.A.R.E. (registered trademark)) program.

The evaluation team chose the opportunity to evaluate G.R.E.A.T. to enhance
knowledge of gangs, delinquency, and the risk and resiliency factors related to
involvement (or noninvolvement) in gangs or delinquency. The team proposed a
theory-driven evaluation, that is, a research process in which key theoretical
questions about the nature of gangs and gang behavior are assessed. In addition
to providing information on the impact of the G.R.E.A.T. program, this study
generated an extensive and impressive body of research during the
evaluation.[1] The careful attention to data collection, concern for measurement
issues, and large and diverse sample should furnish information about gangs and
delinquency for the next decade. The theory-driven nature of the evaluation
suggests that the research team was also attentive to the conceptual issues
involved in the intervention, a strength also noted in Boston's Operation
Ceasefire research. Gang programs are evaluated too infrequently, and
evaluated well even less frequently. When evaluations of large-scale programs
are conducted as well as this one was, they will offer hope for the future of
evaluation research. The broad perspective on evaluation research held by
Esbensen and his colleagues argues that such a view should be required by
funding agencies in the future.

The results of the evaluation are interesting in themselves. The initial
cross-sectional results suggested that G.R.E.A.T. had an impact on increasing
students' knowledge of how to stay out of trouble and on reducing
self-reported delinquency and adolescent misbehavior. These findings exceeded
appropriate levels of statistical significance and caused a stir among the
research team and many gang researchers. How could a nine-session program
delivered by a noneducator pay such dividends? The answer came shortly
thereafter, when more powerful and appropriate longitudinal results were made
available. As expected, few differences were found between the control and
program groups over time, and program effects diminished. The longitudinal
evaluation did produce favorable results, however. In this phase of the study,
the researchers used a quasi-experimental design and a sophisticated
multivariate statistical analysis strategy--hierarchical linear modeling. The result
was a number of small but important differences between students who
participated in the G.R.E.A.T. program and those who did not. All these
favorable outcomes, which could not have occurred by chance, emerged 3 or 4
years after program completion. They constitute important evidence of the utility
of such programs.

When the initial cross-sectional results were reported, the program did not
appear to have favorable effects. Then a surprising thing happened. Evaluation
researchers do not look forward to telling program officials that the program
simply did not produce the desired results despite the commitment of program
staff to the welfare of participants. When ATF received the results of the
evaluation, it contracted with the researchers to convene a process that would
bring gang researchers, G.R.E.A.T. trainers, curriculum experts, and educators
together to redesign the curriculum. That process is currently underway, and
ATF remains committed to conducting a full-scale process and impact
evaluation of the newly designed curriculum.

Mapping Gang Activity

James W. Meeker and Bryan J. Vila are one of the most productive gang
research teams.[2] The significance of their work in Orange County, California,
which was initially funded by NIJ in 1996, is highlighted by the demographic
characteristics of that county, a diverse and rapidly changing environment for
youth gangs. As in many communities in the early 1990s, it was unclear whether
the public hysteria in Orange County over youth gangs reflected the reality of
the gang problem. Such circumstances are rife with the potential to create what
Huff (1990) identifies as overreaction and misidentification. Under such
circumstances, the public pressures law enforcement to "do something" about
gangs. Law enforcement rarely requires much motivation to identify and
suppress gangs; it casts a net so wide that many believe it overcriminalizes
youths (particularly minority youths) and defines the problem so broadly that it
cannot deal with it successfully. This research was undertaken in partnership
with law enforcement in an attempt to circumvent these problems.

Like the best of the research in this volume, the study by Meeker, Vila, and
Katie J.B. Parsons combines a focus on applied policy issues with a larger
concern with basic research issues about gangs. "Developing a GIS-Based
Regional Gang Incident Tracking System" (chapter 10 in this volume) describes
the evolution of a collaborative process between the University of
California-Irvine research team and local law enforcement. The paper is
virtually a textbook description of the dilemmas encountered when working
with multiple law enforcement agencies to arrive at common definitions of
gangs, gang members, and gang incidents. The process by which these
definitions were negotiated, implemented, and tested is described in
considerable detail and serves as a useful blueprint for other
researcher-practitioner teams planning to engage in a similar process.

At first reading, it would appear that the research team's primary contribution
was to develop a management information system that combined sophisticated
mapping and analytic capabilities. Such a reading, however, would miss the key
ingredients of the collaborative process that led researchers to help law
enforcement frame both strategic and tactical questions. This was possible only
through the use of multiple methods of data collection and analysis. Like the
process employed in Operation Ceasefire in Boston, data analysis here was
continually fed back to the law enforcement partners in Orange County, whose
input into measurement, data collection, and analysis was a key component of
the project. Because of the essential nature of the collaboration, it is important
to track the longevity of this working group. Whether such collaboration lasts is
a key question raised about many such groups. The extent to which the
researcher-practitioner partnership outlives the grant is an important measure of
institutionalization.

Evaluating Nevada's Antigang Legislation

A common refrain in this review of NIJ-funded gang research is that a particular
topic has received too little scrutiny. The same can be said of the legislative and
prosecutorial responses to gangs. Both the Orange County study and the work
of Terance D. Miethe and Richard C. McCorkle in Nevada were motivated by
interest in, and concern with, overreaction to, and misidentification of gangs.
"Evaluating Nevada's Antigang Legislation and Gang Prosecution Units" (found
in chapter 6) examines the evolution of Nevada's specialized gang legislation
and how it is being implemented in that State's two largest counties (Clark and
Washoe, which contain Las Vegas and Reno, respectively). Miethe and
McCorkle employed multiple methods, including content analyses of public
hearings and records, statistical analyses of court cases, and field observations
and interviews with criminal justice officials. Their research gets to the heart of
the issue of responding to gangs and gang crime, as legislative responses can
help frame the overall criminal justice response.

When a legislature responds in an overly punitive manner, extending the reach
of the criminal justice system beyond what a "rational" analysis of the gang
problem would dictate, the system will adapt appropriately. Miethe and
McCorkle document this process quite effectively. Ironically, Nevada's gang
legislation was used by prosecutors most often for minor firearms offenses
(such as "aiming" a firearm) and less commonly against more serious and
common instances of gang crime such as driveby shootings. Equally important,
they find that after controlling for case and offender characteristics, conviction
and incarceration rates of specialized units are remarkably similar to those of
nonspecialized units. The researchers do note, however, that the threat of such
prosecutions may have played a role in defendants' deciding to plead guilty to
other charges.

One key question that law enforcement must face is whether special laws, law
enforcement units, prosecution units, or sentencing enhancements are a
necessary response to gang crime. Miethe and McCorkle conclude that
specialized units may not be necessary, as they produce little more than the
"typical" approaches to crime with regard to sentence length and probability of
incarceration. When combined with work by Klein (1995a), which suggests
that specialized gang enforcement units add little to enforcement beyond
traditional approaches, the strong implication is that specialized approaches
have little to recommend them. Although this implication raises obvious and
important questions for the criminal justice system, it must also cause
researchers to assess whether gang crime is different from other crime. If it is
not, it may be appropriate to reassess whether using "gang" as a category is a
meaningful approach.

Young Women in Gangs

Despite the veritable explosion of gang research in the past decade, insufficient
attention has been paid to female gangs and gang members. Jody Miller's
paper, "Young Women in Street Gangs: Risk Factors, Delinquency, and
Victimization Risk" (chapter 3), helps to correct that deficiency. Using field
interviewing techniques, Miller interviewed 94 young women from Columbus,
Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri. The approach called for interviews of both gang
members and nonmembers to assess the reasons for joining gangs, the meaning
and nature of gang life, and the impact of gender on these issues. Miller cites the
role of neighborhoods, serious family problems, and gang-involved family
members as three critical factors that influenced the decisions of young women
she studied to join gangs. Indeed, these three factors were critical in
differentiating gang members from nonmembers on a variety of measures.
Interestingly, Miller reports considerable variation among female gang members
with regard to such factors as participation in delinquency and violence and
victimization experiences.

It is one thing to conduct research on young women and quite another to
consider the role of gender in their lives. Miller does a masterful job of
explaining the role of gender in gang life, particularly as regards victimization
experiences.[3] The findings presented here clearly support the argument that
gang membership increases young women's risk of victimization. This was less
true for risk of sexual assault victimization, which gang members and
nonmembers experienced at roughly similar rates, but important differences
were found between gang members and nonmembers for other forms of
victimization, particularly assaults. Although it increased their exposure to
violence and victimization, the gang was also viewed by its members as a
source of strength, owing to the protection it provided for members. Ironically,
they saw the association with male gang members as providing such protection,
particularly against sexual violence, because such exploitation occurred
primarily in the content of the family.

Although this research addresses more basic research issues, the implications
for policy are clear and significant. Gang membership shows as much variation
for young women as it does for men, suggesting that a monolithic intervention is
unlikely to be successful. In addition, gang membership creates substantial
crime victimization risks for young women, which, in turn, solidify their ties to
the gang. Designing interventions that address these factors is a major challenge
for the next decade of gang research.

A Task Force Approach

The use of task forces to respond to drug, gang, and gun problems is not new
in law enforcement. In "Evaluation of a Task Force Approach to Gangs"
(chapter 7 of this volume), Susan Pennell and Roni Melton document such an
approach, initiated in San Diego County, California, in 1988. This task force,
known as JUDGE (Jurisdictions Unified for Drug Gang Enforcement), included
representatives from law enforcement, probation, parole, the State's narcotics
enforcement agency, the district attorney, and the local department of social
services, in an effort coordinated through the State Office of Criminal Justice
Planning. Funded by the Edward Byrne State and Local Law Enforcement
Assistance Program through the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department
of Justice, JUDGE targeted offenders under supervision by State probation or
parole. The research presented in this chapter tracks the evolution of this group
as it dealt with the ebb and flow of drug, gang, and violent offending.

As was the case in some of the other research discussed above, the research
plan could not be fully implemented despite almost ideal circumstances. Pennell
is a veteran of applied research who has strong ties to the agencies
implementing JUDGE. Despite this, the design fell through for reasons beyond
the control of the researchers. Pennell and Melton suggest that different
definitions of gangs and gang members lie at the heart of the research team's
inability to find a suitable comparison group. The initial proposal was for a
pre-post quasi-experimental design that would compare probation violations
and offense rates for juvenile probationers targeted by the JUDGE intervention
with a comparable group of juveniles who were on probation before the
program was implemented. Although this design could not adequately control
for such design threats as history, selection bias, and maturation, it still had the
potential to control several threats to the external validity of an evaluation. The
inability to conduct the evaluation as planned was a considerable loss, as we
know too little about the impact of task force approaches.

Despite the fact that the task force approach is widely accepted as an effective
means of combating drug sales and gang problems, there is scant evidence to
support this contention. As a consequence, this research represents a lost
opportunity to learn more about several important topics. First, too little is
known about the effectiveness of task forces, from either a process or an
outcome standpoint. Consequently, the full impact of Byrne-funded task forces
on drug crime, gangs, or other offenses is not yet understood. Second, the
impact of drug-focused enforcement on gangs remains unknown. One
remaining dilemma in gang research is the extent to which gangs and drugs
overlap. Assessing the extent to which drug task forces "capture" gang
members in their enforcement efforts could lead to a better understanding of this
question. It is still unclear whether specific gang enforcement yields better--or
different--results than do traditional forms of law enforcement. Finally, a major
responsibility of researchers is to document specifically where their proposed
research design went wrong and how to avoid these problems in future
research.

The Evolution of Street Gangs

The research reported by Deborah Lamm Weisel in "The Evolution of Street
Gangs: An Examination of Form and Variation" (chapter 2) attempts to assess
the degree to which street gangs are evolving into organized crime groups. This
is an important issue that bears on both basic and applied questions about the
nature of gangs. If gangs are indeed becoming organized crime groups, the
implications for law enforcement and social services are quite clear. Such
groups will require more intensive intelligence, infiltration, and targeted
prosecution--tactics that have proven effective in addressing organized crime
groups. If street gangs are not evolving toward organized crime, however, such
suppression techniques are likely to exacerbate the gang problem by
strengthening gang leadership structures and making gangs more attractive
(Klein 1995a). In addition, understanding the nature of change in gangs and the
evolution of social groups would be an important addition to the basic
understanding of gangs.

Weisel adopts a two-pronged research design to address this issue. The first
part of the research used a nationwide mail survey of police agencies to identify
law enforcement views of the nature and degree of gang organization in their
jurisdictions. The response rate (74 percent) was high, although more detail on
selecting the respondents in individual police departments would be desirable.
The second part of the research used field study techniques to interview gang
members in San Diego and Chicago. These cities were chosen because they
represent both a "weak" and a "strong" test of the hypothesis that gangs are
evolving into organized crime groups. San Diego was a strong test because it is
not a chronic gang city, and Chicago, a chronic gang city, represented a weak
test because its gangs had been in operation longer and were more established.

Not surprisingly, the two approaches yielded different results. Although Weisel
asserts that delinquent gangs were the most typical group identified by the
police, little in the definitions offered by law enforcement differentiates
delinquent groups from groups of juveniles on the one hand or friendship groups
of offending juveniles on the other. The use of accepted typologies of gangs,
such as the empirical typology offered by Klein and Maxson (1996), would
make this research more useful for practitioners and researchers. The effort to
reconcile police survey results with gang member interviews is an important step
in this process. Because of the sample size of gang members interviewed and
the lack of compatibility between the instruments used for the two groups, it is
difficult to know what the differences between the two groups mean. Weisel
faced a difficult task trying to reconcile these differences; indeed, law
enforcement expressed concern about some of her conclusions.[4] These
disparities point to a critical issue: As Weisel correctly notes, the disparity has
important consequences for the ability of law enforcement to deal effectively
with gangs. After all, if law enforcement defines gangs in ways that are
considerably different from the reality in the community, they can hardly be
successful in responding to such groups.

Gaps in Our Knowledge

Each research project, each hypothesis, spawns a dozen more. The agenda of
gang research is large and NIJ's role in addressing this research agenda is an
important one. Many important topics demand the attention of the research and
practitioner communities.[5]

Too little is understood about ethnicity and gangs, particularly for new
immigrant groups. This focus has been a historic component of gang research,
from Thrasher (1927) through Whyte (1943) to the present day and is
especially important in light of increasing levels and complexities of immigration.
Research also needs to explain more precisely the role of the media and
popular culture in the genesis and spread of gangs. Too much information about
these topics is anecdotal or generated by the media. Ongoing study of the
diffusion of gangs, gang forms, and gang symbols is necessary to better
understand this topic.

A major gap in our knowledge of gangs is the link (if any exists) between prison
gangs and street gangs. It is known that a large number of gang members go to
prison and then return to the streets, but the links that gang members maintain
between prisons and the street; the nature of relationships between imprisoned
gang members and their counterparts on the streets; and the nature, structure,
and activities of prison gangs remain largely unknown.

Despite the growing emphasis on understanding the role of women in gangs, this
area, too, needs to be expanded. And as the chapter by Miller in this volume
underscores, the role of gender remains an important topic in gang research,
whether the subjects include males, females, or both.

Many aspects of American culture, both positive and negative, are exported
around the world. This is true of gangs as well. A better understanding of the
importation and exportation of gang symbols, structure, culture, and behavior
should be an important part of future gang research.

The use of the gang as the unit of analysis is also an important topic often
ignored in gang research. After all, what makes gangs different from individuals
or institutions is the group context and group impact on behavior. This leads
naturally to the development and testing of typologies of gang structure and
behavior. Too little contemporary gang research focuses on the group context
of gang behavior.

Finally, and perhaps most important, we need to know "what works." The lack
of even basic knowledge about the impact of interventions on gangs should be a
clarion call to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. This conclusion
applies to a variety of agencies and a variety of forms of interventions. In the
area of suppression, for example, too little is understood about the role of
specialized police units that focus on gangs, the impact of community policing
on gangs, and the long-term consequences of policies that emphasize
suppression over other aspects of intervention.[6] Very little is known about
factors that inhibit or enhance gang membership among young children below
the age at which they typically join and belong to a gang. Programs that might
affect such decisions must be built on solid research, and it is safe to conclude
that current programs have little on which to base their intervention strategies.
Too little is known about the relative merits of comprehensive, broad-based
interventions involving several agencies and targeted, single-agency
interventions. In short, there has not been enough high-quality evaluation
research on gang programs. The need for such evaluations is critical. Funding
agencies have a key role in achieving the goal of high-quality evaluation designs.
These agencies must insure that when programs are funded, the assignment of
cases to control and experimental status is a condition of funding. This must be
a high priority for the next decade of federally funded gang research.

Future Directions

Where does the future of gang research lie? The contributions to this report
suggest seven important recommendations. Klein (1995a: 138) notes that there
is a "paucity of respectable evaluations of gang intervention programs."
Unfortunately, this observation remains true and continues to serve as the
catalyst for future gang research. Thus, the first recommendation is that
meaningful gang interventions must be evaluated. The level of funding for gang
intervention programs demands evaluation and is--in Klein's words (1995a:
138)--"an inexcusable exercise in public irresponsibility." Both process and
outcome must be evaluated, as our understanding of how programs are
implemented is probably as important as the impact of such programs.

The second recommendation to emerge from these collected chapters is the
importance of documenting failure. This refers to failures both of research
design and in program implementation and impact. These, of course, are often
linked. The research community has much to learn from the results of
evaluations, but it cannot do so without full disclosure of the problems and
prospects of such evaluations. This suggests that researchers will make the
study design--as proposed and as implemented--available in full detail.

The third recommendation is that all gang research should be driven by a
conceptual understanding of the problem. The research in this report by
Esbensen, Freng, Taylor, Peterson, and Osgood is perhaps the best and
strongest argument for this position. The research team began with a
commitment to a theory-driven evaluation, which made possible an assessment
of a broader range of questions that resulted in greater utility of the findings.
This highlights the importance of addressing basic and applied questions, as
they are inexorably linked. The use of logic models in this context is appropriate
and necessary. Logic models display the underlying relationships and
assumptions behind a program or policy by linking goals and objectives to
outcomes.

The fourth, and related, recommendation is that future gang research should
incorporate some of the insights of research literature outside the gang field.
Too often, gang research is described in terms that seem to identify it as new
and unique, when a larger body of related research already exists. One
suggestion to emerge from this recommendation is that funded research must
have a commitment beyond submitting a final report and should be expected to
contribute to the broader scientific body of knowledge regarding gangs.

The fifth recommendation is that funded research should be required to adopt
sound methodologies. This means that projects should submit letters of
commitment regarding the evaluation in conjunction with the research proposal.
This procedure would allow funding agencies to ensure that programs provide
access to data and follow assignment protocols and that official data are
available to evaluators.

The sixth recommendation is that future gang research should look to
occasionally fund collaborative efforts; that is, groups of researchers who have
identified substantively or methodologically linked issues. By employing such a
tactic, it is possible to expand our knowledge of gang processes and gang
programs, particularly in multicity contexts. The use of collaborative efforts
does not stop with the research team. Strong peer review to select high-quality
products and the involvement of research and practitioner peers to provide
technical assistance, review progress of the research, and assist in overcoming
hurdles is a responsibility that NIJ should shoulder.

The final recommendation is that government-funded gang research projects
should consider the use of a dynamic problem-solving approach. The work
reported in this volume by Braga and Kennedy and by Meeker, Vila, and
Parsons reflects the importance of using research to help define problems,
structure responses, and determine the success of responses. Program
intervention seldom remains focused on the initial target. As a consequence, it is
important to document the manner in which a program differs from its blueprint.
In doing so, we can better understand how programs interact with their
environments and adapt to the needs of those environments and the individuals
such programs are designed to serve. A collaborative problem-solving
approach can best accomplish these important goals.

This introduction began by noting the questions raised by Bookin-Weiner and
Horowitz in 1983 about the end of gangs and the influence of politics in framing
gang research agendas. As for the former, there is considerable evidence that
gangs will be around for a while. The spread of gangs from urban to suburban
and rural areas has been well documented, as has their impact on popular
culture. Unlike the earlier emergence of gangs in this country, gangs in their
current form seem to be gaining both cultural and institutional foundations that
may signal their presence for some time to come.

The more interesting question raised by Bookin-Weiner and Horowitz concerns
the role of politics and research, particularly in the context of
government-funded research. It is often contended that government-funded
research necessarily supports the status quo, is repressive in nature, and
reinforces dominant political ideologies. The chapters in this report have a clear
focus on the criminal and juvenile justice systems and, especially, on the impact
of programs and policies. Yet it would be shortsighted to conclude that this is
their sole focus. Clearly the work of Miller, Esbensen et al., and Braga and
Kennedy has a strong theoretical focus that extends well beyond whether a
policy or program simply works. These chapters also have a critical tone,
expressed in Miller's conclusions about the role of gender, Esbensen's
conclusions about the impact of G.R.E.A.T., and Weisel's concern about law
enforcement views of the level of organization within gangs. But Miethe and
McCorkle capture the critical edge best, noting the failure of gang legislation
and prosecution to add much value beyond traditional efforts in these areas.
Their work illustrates that it is possible to be critical of criminal justice policies
while linking that criticism to a theoretical perspective. Indeed, researchers and
practitioners alike probably learn more from such efforts than from more
narrowly focused evaluations. In addition, these chapters illustrate the value of a
diverse set of methods and the combination of multiple methods within a
specific study.

Notes

1. The data from the evaluation are being submitted to NIJ and will be available
to researchers through NIJ's Data Resources Program (See
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.)

2. It is ironic that an issue like gangs seems to lend itself to a team approach.

3. These issues are discussed in greater detail in Miller (2001).

4. Of course, gang members did not have the opportunity to express their
reservations about law enforcement's definitions and conclusions.

5. These comments are more a reflection on the state of gang research than a
direct reflection on the chapters in this volume.

6. There is, however, emerging research on these issues. See Katz (2001).

References

Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman. 2000. The Crime Drop in America. New
York: Cambridge University Press.

Bookin-Weiner, Hedy, and Ruth Horowitz. 1983. "The End of the Youth
Gang: Fad or Fact?" Criminology 21(4): 585-602.

Gottfredson, Denise. 1997. "School-Based: Crime Prevention" in Preventing
Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising: A Report to the United
States Congress. Washington, D.C.: Office of Justice Programs. Prepared for
the National Institute of Justice by Laurence W. Sherman, Denise Gottfredson,
Doris MacKenzie, John Eck, Peter Reuter, and Shawn Bushway. Chapter 5.
NCJ 165366.

Huff, C. Ronald. 1990. "Denial, Overreaction, and Misidentification: A
Postscript on Public Policy," in Gangs in America, ed. C. Ronald Huff.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage: 310-317.

Katz, Charles M. 2001. "The Establishment of a Police Gang Unit: An
Examination of Organizational and Environmental Factors." Criminology 39(1):
37-73.

Klein, Malcolm. 1995a. The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence,
and Control. New York: Oxford University Press.

-------. 1995b. "Gang Cycles." In Crime, ed. James Q. Wilson and Joan
Petersilia. San Francisco: ICS Press: 217-236.

Maxson, Cheryl, and Malcolm Klein. 1990. "Street Gang Violence: Twice as
Great, or Half as Great." In Gangs in America, ed. C. Ronald Huff. Newbury
Park, CA.: Sage Publications: 71-100.

Maxson, Cheryl, M.A. Gordon, and Malcolm Klein. 1985. "Differences
between Gang and Nongang Homicides." Criminology 23(2): 209-222.

Miller, Jody. 2001. One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Spergel, Irving, and G. David Curry. 1993. "The National Youth Gang Survey:
A Research and Development Process." In The Gang Intervention Handbook,
ed. C. Ronald Huff and Arnold Goldstein. Champaign, IL: Research Press:
359-400.

Thrasher, Frederic. 1927. The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Travis, Jeremy, and Alfred Blumstein. 2000. "Departing Thoughts from an NIJ
Director." NIJ Journal 243(April): 22-29.

Whyte, William F. 1943. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an
Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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

Chapter 2

The Evolution of Street Gangs: An Examination of Form and Variation

Deborah Lamm Weisel, Ph.D.
Department of Political Science and Public Administration
North Carolina State University

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this chapter was supported under award
92-IJ-CX-K036 from the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of
Justice.

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

Abstract

If street gangs are metamorphosing into organized criminal enterprises and
large, highly organized structures, that would suggest they are becoming an even
more serious threat. To determine whether this is happening, researchers
examined the prevalence of different types of gangs and identified changes over
time in their forms and functions. They obtained information from surveys
conducted among almost 300 large police agencies and from interviews with
members of four Chicago and San Diego gangs. The police and gang members'
perceptions were surprisingly similar. Little specialization of roles and
organization in the gangs was identified; instead there was a wide range of gang
types with various structures and a great variety of criminal activities. Even
though some gangs were large and had existed for many years, and even though
some gangs exhibited some features of highly structured organizations, overall
there was little evidence of evolution into formal organizations resembling
traditional organized crime. Instead, the gangs appeared to represent an
adaptive or organic form of organization, featuring diffuse leadership and
continuity despite the absence of hierarchy. Gangs in both cities experienced
considerable organizational change over time--consolidating, merging, acquiring
smaller gangs, reorganizing, and splintering. Their "generalist" orientation may
have contributed to their ability to adapt to these changes and survive in a
volatile environment. The criminal versatility of gangs suggests that law
enforcement directed at particular criminal behavior will work primarily for
gangs that are specialized, but most are not; and enforcement and prosecution
directed at targeting gang leadership may be suitable only to the few gangs that
have distinctive leadership patterns.

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

Street gangs continue to be a pervasive problem in America's cities. They
contribute to high rates of violent crime, instill fear in citizens, and engage in a
range of troublesome behavior, from vandalism and graffiti to drug dealing and
property crime. Problems related to gangs--especially those that are more
organized, engage in serious criminal activity, or are violent--are a major
concern. Although gangs have been around since at least the beginning of the
20th century, it is plausible that at least some of these organizations are
changing, developing into criminal enterprises that may be similar in structure
and criminal activity to traditional organized crime.

Much of the evidence that gangs may be metamorphosing into
organized-crime-like enterprises is anecdotal, suggested by high-profile
prosecutions, media coverage, or the actions of law enforcement agencies.
Cases such as the 1987 conviction of members of Chicago's El Rukns on
terrorism charges, which linked that gang with Libya's Moammar Gadhafi,
raised concerns about the seriousness and possible transformation of
contemporary gangs. Other high-profile cases, in which Federal RICO
(Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges were used to
convict gang members, reinforced these concerns. Indeed, the Federal
response to gangs bolstered the perception that gangs were becoming highly
organized criminal enterprises. In 1991, the FBI created Operation Safe
Streets, a program in which the bureau's 52 field offices participate in a series
of multiagency task forces targeting gangs and violent crime (Freeh 1999), in
which 300 agents were reassigned from counterintelligence to violent crime
investigations. The media coverage of and political reaction to gang violence
contributed to perceptions that the gang problem was becoming increasingly
serious (Jackson and Rudman 1993; Zatz 1987; McCorkle and Miethe 1998).

As a result of widespread evidence of rising gang violence and the incursion of
gangs into middle America, numerous questions have been raised about gangs.
In the 1990s, many gangs were widely described as rather disorganized groups
(Klein 1995a; Spergel 1995). As Thrasher (1963) pointed out, however,
"under favorable conditions," gangs can undergo a "natural evolution" from a
loosely organized group into a mature form.[1] How does this occur? As gangs
become more prevalent, do they become more highly organized, taking on the
features of formal organizations? Do gangs naturally become larger and develop
greater labor and criminal specialization? While a large body of literature on
organizational evolution suggests that successful organizations become larger
and more formally organized over time (see, for example, Simmel 1902-3;
Starbuck 1965; Greiner 1972; Kimberly, Miles, and Associates 1980; Staw
and Cummings 1990), scant attention has been paid to the ways in which gangs
change over time. These and other questions shaped this inquiry into the form
and evolution of contemporary gangs.

This study was conducted to generate information about the different types of
gangs and to document the changes occurring in them over time. The first part
of the study was designed to identify and describe the different types of gangs
through police sources, focusing on distinctions between the typical gang and
the more serious gangs in a jurisdiction--violent gangs, drug-dealing gangs, and
entrepreneurial or money-making gangs. The second part of this study was
designed to examine highly organized gangs to determine how they are
organized and shed light on their evolution over time.

Approach to Research

Two methods of research were used--a nationwide mail survey of police
agencies, conducted in 1995, and structured, in-person interviews with gang
members in four gangs in two cities, conducted in 1996 and 1997.

The aim of the survey, administered to 385 large municipal police agencies, was
to identify the various types of gangs and highlight distinctions among them by
organizational characteristics, demographic composition, criminal activities, and
other factors. The survey drew from Fagan's (1989) typology of gangs: violent,
drug-dealing, entrepreneurial, delinquent, or social--a typology based
predominantly on the behavior of gang members.[2] Also examined were the
evolution of gangs over time, including changing patterns of leadership,
organizational characteristics, and gang duration.

In the field portion of the study, four highly organized criminal gangs in Chicago
and San Diego were examined. "Organized" gangs are the exception, not the
rule, among the universe of gangs in the United States. In the fieldwork, the
organizational structure of these gangs was investigated and documented and
changes in these gangs over time were identified, including their transformation
or transition into groups or organizations resembling traditional organized crime
groups. Differences and similarities between gangs within and across the two
cities were highlighted.

By focusing on the most serious or organized gangs within jurisdictions, this
study, in effect, ignores the most common or typical gangs. These more typical
or prevalent gangs are no less important than the more organized gangs, and
may be more troublesome for communities on a day-to-day basis. Yet this
research sought to understand how serious gangs operated and the extent to
which typical gangs develop or evolve into more serious or mature gangs over
time. Concentrating on a particular type of gang made it possible to gather
specific information about individual gangs rather than being limited to collecting
general information about a broader range of gangs. By focusing on the "most
organized" gangs, the research team was able to home in on characteristics of
specific gangs and examine how they have evolved in recent years. As Blau and
Scott (1962: 224) note, large organizations did "not spring into existence
full-blown but develop[ed] out of simpler ones." An examination of these
mature gangs may therefore provide unique insight into the effect of
organizational processes on an important subset of contemporary gangs. Thus,
although an examination of four gangs limits the generalizability of findings to all
gangs, the greater depth of the investigation makes it possible to arrive at
reasoned judgments about the extent of organization likely among other, less
organized gangs. In addition, by examining the dynamics of highly organized
gangs, the study lays the groundwork for a reexamination of how law
enforcement monitors and responds to criminal gangs and other criminal
groups.

The mail survey was distributed to all law enforcement agencies serving
populations of 100,000 or more and to a randomly selected third of all agencies
serving populations between 50,000 and 100,000.[3] Responses were
obtained from 82 percent of agencies serving large populations and 57 percent
of agencies serving small populations--a total of 286 agencies.[4] This number
represented 74 percent of all agencies surveyed.

Two cities--Chicago and San Diego--were selected for the field portion of the
study. On their face, these two cities and their gang problems were quite
different. Chicago, with a population of nearly 3 million, reported an estimated
130 gangs and 60,000 gang members in 1997.[5] Gangs have existed in
Chicago since at least the beginning of the last century. In stark contrast, street
gangs are a much more recent phenomenon in San Diego, although the roots of
the city's gangs in its Latino car clubs date to the 1950s (see, for example,
Pennell et al. 1994). San Diego had an estimated 65 gangs and nearly 5,000
gang members in 1997. The two cities also vary in demographics, economic
conditions, urban geography, and in other important ways. In Klein's (1995a)
terms, Chicago can be characterized as a "chronic" gang city, while San Diego
is considered an "emerging" gang city. Gang crime has been estimated as linked
to more than 50 percent of crime in Chicago, while reported gang involvement
in crime is much lower in San Diego (National Drug Intelligence Center 1998).
Indeed, the two cities were selected precisely because of these differences as
well as the presumed differences in the nature and characteristics of their gangs.

Two gangs in each city were selected for study--a Hispanic and a black gang in
each. The Black Gangster Disciples (BGDs) and the Latin Kings were selected
in Chicago, and the Logan Calle Treinta/Red Steps and Lincoln Park
Piru/Syndo Mob gangs in San Diego.[6] Like their home cities, the gangs also
varied. The BGDs are one of the largest and most well-established gangs in the
country. With an estimated membership of 10,000 to 30,000, this gang has
been heavily involved in drug trafficking. It was established about 1974,
although its roots are in the 1960s. The BGDs have been remarkably tenacious
despite the conviction and death of key leaders. In the 1990s, they formed a
prosocial group called Growth and Development, which shares the same initials
as the gang, to further educational and economic objectives. The Latin Kings,
with 3,000 to 15,000 members, are also an extremely large gang. This gang
was established in the 1960s or 1970s, but its roots go back to the 1940s.

In San Diego, the gang known as Syndo Mob was a set of Lincoln Park Piru, a
predominantly black gang formed in the early 1980s with an initial membership
of 12 people. The organization was heavily involved in drug trafficking, but
some 26 members were indicted on Federal charges, and by the late 1980s its
ranks had been decimated. In the mid-1990s, the gang had approximately 165
members. In contrast to Syndo, the Logan gang factions of Calle Treinta and
Red Steps are Hispanic. The roots of the Logan gang go back to the 1940s,
while Calle Treinta and Red Steps were both established in the mid-1970s.
Each set has approximately 200 members.

The gang members interviewed for this study were identified through probation
and prison sources in each city. Researchers sought to identify gang members
who were more intensively involved with the gang and hence presumably more
knowledgeable about its organization and activities. Gang members were asked
to participate in a semistructured interview, assured of confidentiality, and paid
$20 for participating. A total of 85 gang members were interviewed--26 Black
Gangster Disciples, 18 Latin Kings, 20 from the Logan factions, and 21 from
the Syndo Mob. Of the gang members interviewed, 61 percent (52) were
contacted through the local probation department and the remainder were
identified through prison records. The sample was opportunistic and is in no
way random or representative.

Among the research issues this study examined were the nature of the
organizational structure and criminal activity of the specific gangs and gang
types. The study sought to determine the ways in which criminal gangs may be
organizationally similar to traditional crime groups. The types of criminal activity
in which these gangs engage and some of the organizational characteristics of
these gangs were also examined.

Examining gangs both from the police perspective and from within the gang
itself made it possible to compare and contrast these two (presumably quite
divergent) points of view. Because police are concerned primarily with criminal
activity, in many jurisdictions they tend to concentrate their attention on the
most serious gangs and the most serious offenders in those gangs. Nonetheless,
because local police deal with a wide range of behavior, from disorder,
vandalism, and loitering to driveby shootings and drug dealing, they have a
broad perspective on gang behavior.[7] In contrast, gang members tend to
view their gang from a different perspective, focusing more on their gang's
friendship networks than on its criminal activity.

The Police Perspective

Police agencies surveyed in this study were able to identify the various types of
gangs that coexist in their communities and how these gangs differed in some
important ways. When asked to categorize the most typical gang in their
jurisdiction, police responded that the delinquent gang is most common.
Forty-six percent of police respondents said that the typical gang in their
jurisdiction is a delinquent gang consisting primarily of juveniles who engage in
vandalism and other delinquent behavior, or a more socially oriented or "party"
gang. Twenty-six percent of respondents reported drug-dealing gangs (or other
entrepreneurial gangs) as the most typical in their jurisdiction, whereas 28
percent reported violent gangs as most typical.[8]

Overall, more police respondents described the typical gang in their jurisdiction
as a loose-knit organization (45 percent) with no formal structure (47 percent),
territorial (50 percent), and primarily oriented toward criminal purposes (60
percent). Respondents were divided in their view of the leadership structure of
the typical gang: 30 percent said that their typical gang had no formal
leadership, whereas 37 percent reported formal leadership as a component of
the typical gang.

Police see important regional differences in gang structure and activities. As
expected, the larger cities typically have more gangs, larger gangs, and gangs
that have been in existence for longer periods of time. Consistent with that
observation, these cities also tend to have gangs that are more involved in
serious criminal activity, are more highly organized, and have a more identifiable
leadership structure. Delinquent gangs, more common in smaller cities, tend to
be more loosely organized, with ephemeral leadership; these gangs are newer
and lack the historic roots of gangs established generations ago. Delinquent
gangs were reported as most typical among Southeast and Midwest
respondents (by 56 and 54 percent, respectively). In the Western States,
violent gangs were most common, whereas income-generating gangs (including
drug-dealing gangs) were reported most commonly in the Northeast (see
exhibit 1). Despite the predominance of gang type by region, large numbers of
respondents reported other types of gangs in the region. For example, 35
percent of respondents in the Northeast and 42 percent of respondents in the
West reported delinquent gangs as most typical.

The distribution of number of gangs within jurisdictions was consistent with the
findings for types of typical gang by size of jurisdiction; violent gangs were
identified less frequently in small cities, and delinquent gangs were identified
most frequently. In cities with populations of 100,000 or less, 13 percent of
respondents classified their typical gang as violent while 66 percent of
respondents in these cities classified their typical gang as delinquent. In large
cities (with populations of 200,000 or more), 44 percent of respondents
classified their typical gang as violent. Yet even a large proportion of
respondents from large cities--nearly one-third (31 percent)--reported
delinquent
gangs as their most typical gang.

Police were asked a series of questions about the structure of more serious
gangs in each jurisdiction--the violent, drug-dealing, and entrepreneurial gangs.
Police respondents most often described serious gangs as lacking a clear or
hierarchical organizational structure: More than half of respondents reported
that their violent gangs and drug-dealing gangs (51 and 56 percent,
respectively) had no clear organizational structure. A similar number reported
that violent and drug-dealing gangs had no clear leadership. Entrepreneurial
gangs were the type of gang the police viewed as most likely to feature a
hierarchy: 36 percent said that entrepreneurial gangs in their jurisdictions had an
organizational structure, and 41 percent said that these gangs had a clearly
identifiable leadership.

Criminal Activity of Gangs

Klein's observations (1995a) about street gangs and the Youth Gang Survey's
findings about youth gangs (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention 1999) were confirmed by police, who reported a great deal of
criminal versatility among their serious gangs.[9] Assaults, crack cocaine sales,
graffiti, intimidation, vandalism, violence as a means of discipline, and violence
as a means of retaliation were the most common criminal activities of gangs as
reported by police respondents.[10] Each gang type tended to favor certain
sorts of crimes. For example, entrepreneurial gangs were reported to have the
highest involvement in motor vehicle theft and theft in general, whereas violent
gangs had the highest involvement in assault, intimidation, graffiti, and vandalism.
As expected, drug-dealing gangs were the most involved in selling crack,
powder cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs, according to the police.

Yet police reported that most gangs, regardless of type, participated in many
different types of crime (see exhibit 2). For example, entrepreneurial gangs
frequently also sell crack cocaine, with 39 percent of police respondents
reporting that these gangs often or very often engage in such activity. Similarly,
violent gangs frequently commit burglary, with 36 percent of police respondents
reporting high levels of participation. Police reported that all gang types mark
their territories with graffiti, although the highest level of participation was
associated with violent gangs (67 percent of respondents). Although
drug-dealing is featured prominently in police estimates of gang activity, only
one type of gang--drug-dealing gangs--engages predominantly in this activity.

The breadth of criminal activity identified within the various gang types suggests
that while police may characterize gangs as concentrating on a specific type of
crime (such as drug dealing), gangs as criminal organizations (and their
members) have great criminal versatility, participating in a range of crimes rather
than specializing in a few crime types. Police responses in this study indicated a
clear recognition of this criminal versatility.

From the police perspective, serious gangs are changing over time in ways that
create more problems for police and the community: 78 percent of police
respondents said serious gangs had grown larger in the past 3 years, while 72
percent said serious gangs had become more violent during that period. (The
term "serious gang" combines gangs identified by respondents as violent,
drug-dealing, and entrepreneurial gangs.) Police respondents said that serious
gangs had grown larger in the past 3 years, both in size and in geographic
coverage. Some of the growth had occurred through retention of older
members who failed to leave the gang, effectively increasing the gang's size.
Fifty-four percent of police respondents reported that the average age of
members of serious gangs had increased.

Gangs had also expanded geographically over the past 3 years: 53 percent of
police respondents said serious gangs had migrated into their community, and
43 percent reported that gangs in their city had expanded to other jurisdictions,
including suburban communities. Serious gangs are also causing more problems
for police, evolving into organizations that have some features of traditional
organized crime. Seventy-two percent of police respondents reported that in
the past 3 years serious gangs were using more sophisticated weapons, and 46
percent reported that gangs had developed links with other crime groups. A
total of 19 percent of police respondents in the past 3 years said that gangs
were committing more sophisticated crime, 17 percent reported that they were
using more sophisticated technology, and 16 percent said they had acquired
legitimate businesses.

Summary of Survey Findings

Police respondents portrayed a picture of gangs that reflected recognition of a
wide array of sizes, organizational structures, and activities. Rather than
characterizing all gangs in much the same way, police drew clear distinctions
among different gangs and among different types of gangs in their jurisdictions.
Notably, most police respondents did not appear to stereotype serious gangs
as highly organized or highly specialized.

For this study, information from the police provided a context for examining the
organizational evolution of serious gangs from a different perspective--through
the eyes of gang members. Because of their institutional objectives, police tend
to look at gangs from the perspective of their criminal behavior; examining gang
structure, leadership, and noncriminal gang activities are of secondary
importance. Yet understanding how gangs emerge, grow, and evolve over time
has substantial implications for police in developing effective strategies in
response to the gang problem.

The Perspective of Gang Members

In the second part of this study, the nature of four gangs and their changes over
time were examined from the perspective of gang members. The gangs were
the Syndo Mob/Lincoln Park Piru and Calle Treinta/Red Steps in San Diego
and the Black Gangster Disciples and Latin Kings in Chicago. Members of two
of the gangs described their gang and its operations as disorganized. By
measures of formal organization, two of the four gangs were found to be highly
organized, but only one could be characterized as exhibiting features of
traditional organized crime.

The gangs were examined with a view to determining whether they exhibited
the characteristics of formal organizations or bureaucratic structures, including
leadership, role differentiation, participation in formal meetings, compliance with
formal rules and discipline, specialization, and goal orientation.[11] The two
Chicago gangs were higher on every measure of organization than those in San
Diego. Both Chicago gangs featured more formal and distinctive roles of
leadership, more explicit (and even written) rules and clearer consequences for
breaking them, more routinely held and purposeful meetings, and the collection
of dues. Only in the Black Gangster Disciples were there high levels of
relationships with neighborhood businesses (including ownership and control of
these businesses), relationships with gangs in other cities across the country,
formal contacts with prison gangs, and involvement in political activities. These
features are also characteristic of organized crime.

Although some law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, would characterize
San Diego's Latin Kings as highly organized (see the sidebar on the FBI's
Enterprise Theory of Investigation), the gang members interviewed did not
uniformly support that view. Some Latin Kings described some features of
formal organizations, but most did not. This inconsistency between the study
findings and the perspective of Federal law enforcement agencies is not
unexpected. The FBI's focus is on economic enterprise where there is gang
leadership; this view may exaggerate the role of older or more crime-involved
gang members. Although leaders, adult members, and heavy crime involvement
may be present within the gang, these features are unlikely to characterize the
gang as a whole.

Unlike the Chicago gangs, the gangs examined in San Diego featured little
formal leadership, and were described by the gang members interviewed as
primarily friendship and kinship networks rather than criminal enterprises.
Gangs in Chicago also included these traits of friendship and brotherhood, but
they were subordinate to the objectives of economic opportunity and
protection.

Many of the organizational differences between Chicago and San Diego gangs
may be attributable to the vastly different size of the gangs and the respective
gang population. Although Chicago is about twice as large as San Diego in
population, it has nearly 12 times more gang members. Of the gangs studied,
the largest Chicago gang is approximately 25 times larger than either San Diego
gang. Even by the most conservative estimates of the number of BGD
members, this exponential difference in size likely contributes to much of the
organizational characteristics.

Criminal Activity of Gangs

Like the police respondents, gang members in both cities reported that their
gang is extensively involved in a wide range of criminal activity. Indeed, gang
members reported much greater participation of their gang in specific criminal
activities than police attributed to specific serious gangs. In the interviews, gang
members reported about two to three times as much criminal activity as did
police.

The wide variety of criminal activity reported by gang members indicates little
specialization of the gang as a criminal enterprise (see exhibit 3). Again, this
finding is consistent with Klein's (1995a) depiction of gangs as criminally
versatile. Assaults and drug sales were the activity most often reported, but
most gang members said that their gangs were involved in almost every criminal
activity. In fact, the only exception was the Latin Kings' involvement in
shootings: Only for this crime did less than a majority indicate their gang was
involved.

Although the San Diego gangs were less formally organized, the members
interviewed reported levels of criminal behavior as high as those reported by
the Chicago gang members. In fact, for all but three crimes, gang members from
San Diego reported even higher gang participation than Chicago gangs. Gang
members from the two cities reported similar gang participation rates in
assaults, driveby shootings, and crack sales.

The high levels of participation in a wide range of criminal behavior by all four
gangs suggests that these gangs can be considered criminal generalists. Indeed,
according to organizational theory, organizations operating in highly volatile
environments are much more likely to be generalists than specialists (Katz and
Kahn 1966; Meyer 1978). Generalist organizations can adapt more quickly to
changing conditions and are more likely to survive than specialists because the
latter must learn a new set of complex skills to create a new specialty (or
"niche") under changing conditions. While organizational specialization may be
sustained under conditions of short-term volatility, it will not be useful in the
continuously volatile gang environment (Katz and Kahn 1966), in which there is
ongoing competition with other gangs and a presumed high level of attention
from police and other criminal justice organizations.[12] Such environmental
volatility would likely discourage specialization both within and among gangs.

Organizations can also be classified by the extent of specialization of their
individual members. Like the gangs they belonged to, the members of all four
gangs studied reported participating in a wide range of criminal activities, from
vandalism to drug sales (see exhibit 4). When group criminal activities were
compared with individual criminal activities (exhibits 3 and 4), it was found that
gang members participated substantially less in some of the gang's criminal
activities than did the gang itself. This finding could reflect a respondent's
reluctance to identify all of his individual criminal behavior,[13] but it also
suggests that there are criminal activities in which some gang members
participate but others do not.

All gang members reported participating in a wide range of criminal activities. A
majority of all gang members reported that they had engaged in assaults (74
percent) and sold marijuana (68 percent). Nearly half had engaged in motor
vehicle theft, theft, burglary, and vandalism.

The differences between the two cities in gang member participation in criminal
activity were consistent with the differences in gang participation. Gang
members in San Diego reported greater individual participation in almost all 11
crime types than did Chicago gang members. A large majority (90 percent) of
San Diego gang members reported individual involvement in assault. San Diego
gang members also reported greater involvement in assault and marijuana sales
than gang members in Chicago. When members' responses from each city were
combined, it was found that gang members in Chicago were more involved in
cocaine sales and shootings than were gang members from San Diego. Gangs in
the two cities reported similar rates of involvement in motor vehicle theft.

The breadth of criminal activities reported by individuals helps confirm the
notion that most gang members are criminal generalists much like the gangs to
which they belong. Just as generalist organizations adapt more quickly to
changing environmental conditions, generalist gang members are inherently
easier to replace than specialists. Because they report involvement in fewer
types of crime, the Chicago gangs and their members appear to be slightly more
specialized than the San Diego gangs and gang members.

Goal Orientation

Centrality of goals is a key and defining feature of formal organization (Parsons
1987; Weber 1947; Blau and Scott 1962; Katz and Kahn 1966; Stinchcombe
1965; Lippitt 1982). Organizations are established to attain certain goals and
are structured to maximize their attainment. It is widely recognized, however,
that organizational goals may be vague, changing, numerous, contradictory, and
not always closely linked with the organization's day-to-day activities. In some
forms of organization, the goals of individuals and those of the organization are
consistent, and the former may be thoroughly integrated into the latter
(Popielarz and McPherson 1995; Scott 1993).

Among the features of formal organization in the gangs Thrasher (1963)
studied, he recognized that they were directed toward goals. According to
Klein (1995a), their members, on the contrary, typically have a "rather low
focus on group goals" because these goals may come into conflict with the
individual needs of gang members. "Gangs," says Klein, "are not committees,
ball teams, task forces, production teams, or research teams. The members are
drawn to one another to fulfill individual needs, many shared and some
conflicting: they do not gather to achieve a common, agreed-upon end" (1995a:
80). Yet group rewards, Klein contends, are an important individual motivation
for joining a gang. These include status, companionship, excitement, and
protection. Among individual motivations, gang members routinely join for a
sense of "belonging" or of "family." Material rewards associated with group
crime are also a factor in promoting gang membership.

Among gang members studied here there was strong evidence of organizational
goals and purposefulness focused on making money.[14] These economic
objectives were often described in quite varied terms, and organizational goals
were often embedded in broader descriptions of the purpose of the gang. Many
gang members showed evidence of integrating or blending the larger
organizational objectives with their own individual needs. Among San Diego
gang members, moneymaking appeared incidental to the friendship and social
networks. As San Diego gang members put it--

We kick it together, smoke marijuana, maybe jack something. If we think we
can make some money selling it, we will take it.

Throughout the whole time [I've been in the gang] I was a party cat. . . . The
one thing I did throughout the whole time was party. I always liked to party.
Liked to have fun. If you are going to have fun you got to make your money.
So you sell drugs or you do violent crimes to get money.

We get together and have little picnics and things with the community.
Sometimes we get together and set up moves to make on other gangs. When
you go to other neighborhoods and they selling certain things we go and take
theirs, we make moves. . . . We do more transactions, money transactions. We
mainly making money. That is a main part of the gang, making the money. The
riding on other neighborhoods and shooting and all that, that's part of the gang
too but the main thing is getting our money.

[We] smoke weed, sell dope, I would say that's about it that I know of. [We]
have parties and stuff. . . . [We p]robably hang out, that's about it, make
money.

In contrast, gang members from Chicago tended to describe their gangs as
primarily focused on making money:

Well, in my words, a gang ain't nothing but people come together to do crime
and make money and be a family to each other. That's the original idea.

A gang, nowadays, would be money making, make money.

[A gang is] a bunch of brothers hooked up, trying to make money.

[The gang is] really [about] making money, it's holding your own neighborhood
so nobody can come into your neighborhood and try to take the bread out of
your mouth.

But Chicago gang members also articulated the objectives of the gang in a
broader way that emphasized the social and familial rewards of gang
membership:

A gang is a group of individuals bound together for a common purpose. [They
are bound together] a lot of ways, socially, economically, emotionally
sometimes.

Basically [a gang is] a group of people with the same objectives, trying to reach
for the same goals.

Gang members in Chicago and San Diego viewed their gangs as an opportunity
for social interaction (including partying, "hanging out," getting women) and as a
family, brotherhood, or support system. Gang members in both cities described
the role of the gang as a means of protection from rivals, a means of survival,
and a source of respect. Many gang members appear to seamlessly combine
social interaction with making money: For San Diego gangs, social interaction,
friendship, and self-protection appeared to be the primary purpose, and
moneymaking was incidental or opportunistic. Although the concept of gang as
brotherhood or family was also extremely important to the Chicago gangs,
making money was their central organizational objective or defining feature.

Organizational Transformation: Consolidation and Splintering

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the formal organizational character of the
gangs studied was the organizational transformation each had experienced over
time.[15] Like other organizations, gangs are seldom static entities. Although
the temporary gangs described by Thrasher (1963) typically disintegrated, the
gangs in this study reflected patterns of consolidation (primarily through merger
with, or acquisition of, smaller gangs), reorganization, and the splintering of
larger gangs into spinoff gangs. Such findings are consistent with those of
Thrasher, who noted that groups form and re-form over time.

Gang members' richly detailed descriptions of the organizational transformations
that occurred in each of the gangs were evidence of both the tenacity and
enduring nature of the gang and offered insights into its organizational growth or
decline. One gang member described the merger that created the BGDs:

[Black Gangster Disciple Nation, Black Gangsters, Disciples, and High
Supreme Gangsters] actually was all brought together in 1981. Although you
had the same members that came together, all these different gangs all came
together under one name. It's like we'll take some of your doctrines, we'll take
some of your doctrines to satiate everybody's upbringing, what they originally
were, and bring them all together under one thing. . . . There was many different
smaller organizations just in the process of being brought together. And then a
couple of years later everybody was brought together under one law, under a
one-people concept, all of us being the same thing.

Two other gang members told a similar story of merger and acquisition:

Before I became a Black Disciple, I was a Rod; it was an extremely small
organization and we converted over to GD's, to Black Gangster Disciples. . . .
Disciples been around for ages. Like I said, in the beginning there was Devil
Disciples. But the GD organization has been in existence since 1971.

They were attempting to form a conglomerate. . . . [I]t was three organizations
that come together and formed one big organization.

Unlike the Chicago gangs, which showed evidence of mergers, gangs in San
Diego appeared to exhibit a pattern of splintering through the division of larger
gangs and the creation of new, spinoff gangs. Logan gang members described
the evolution of their gang this way:

Thirtieth Street was originally all of Logan. Then along came another 'hood
called Logan Trece--another little gang. So they had to get permission from
30th
to start their little gang. Give them a little part of Logan. So Red Steps came
along and asked them too. So Red Steps and Logan Trece to gain some
respect from other gangs, they had to start fighting and all that. So that's where
it all started.

There is two more [gangs] in Logan Heights. There is Red Steps and Trece
Logan Heights. But back in the old days, it used to just be Logan. But as time
went by, they started separating because of freeways getting built and
boundaries started separating them apart. But they are still united though.
Except there is always family disputes between the different family cliques.

Spergel (1990: 204) believes that the reason for splintering is "competition
between cliques [within the gang]." Such competition, he wrote, "may be a
central dynamic leading to the gang splitting into factions or separate gangs." It
seems reasonable that external pressures--law enforcement, neighborhood
dynamics, competition with other gangs--and other "pull" factors could also
splinter the gang. These same dynamics could also lead small gangs to join
forces to provide protection or to form economic alliances.

The notion of gang mergers is occasionally mentioned in the gang literature but
has not been fully discussed. During the 2-year period in which Huff (1989)
studied gangs in two Ohio cities, the number of gangs in Cleveland declined
from 50 separately named gangs to 15 or 20; in Columbus, the number of
gangs dropped from 20 to 15 during the course of the study. Mergers
accounted for the reduction in the number of gangs, according to Huff, although
some gangs dissolved and some groups originally identified as gangs may have
actually been splinter groups rather than gangs. While mergers may result in
larger gangs (that is, more gang members in a gang), such an increase in size
does not necessarily take place. Mergers may serve only to offset attrition of
gang members, resulting in no net increase in gang size.

As Monti (1993) noted, gang cliques and sets can combine and reassemble in
different ways over time; a portion of the gangs he studied in St. Louis were
"absorbed" into other gangs during a 2-year period. The growth of the
Blackstone Rangers in Chicago was described by Sale (1971) as occurring
through takeovers of existing gangs and "renovation" of cliques. The gang's
original street clique clashed with rival gangs and then later combined with
them. The result, after 10 years, was a much larger version of the Blackstone
Rangers. The observation that the merger is an organizational feature of
contemporary gangs and occurs over time is an accepted but poorly
understood dimension of the organizational growth of gangs.

Similarly, there has been little discussion in the field of gang research of
splintering, although there is recognition that cliques or subsets of gangs have a
life of their own. Spergel et al. (1991) reported that internal competition within
the gang may cause it to split into factions or form a separate gang. He also
suggested that gangs might splinter and dissolve if more criminal opportunities
become available to members through drug trafficking gangs or other criminal
groups. According to Goldstein and Huff (1993), there is serious intragang
rivalry between sets within the Bloods or the Crips in Los Angeles, especially
when the profits of drug dealing are at issue. They note that there can be as
much violence between different sets of the same gang as between rival gangs,
a fact that may contribute to further splintering of the gang. Decker (1996)
described how the rise of violence in larger gangs can result in the emergence of
splinter gangs. Monti (1993) suggested that when gangs reach a certain size,
they would split when friction occurred among members and remained
unsettled. This splintering occurs because, when the gang is small, the gang can
exercise cohesion and control through face-to-face personal interactions
(Kornhauser 1978), but large increases in the size of individual gangs appear to
lead to breaches within gangs, resulting in more gangs in a jurisdiction.

The concepts of gang merger and splintering can be framed within
organizational theory. Organizational theory holds that populations of
organizations of a similar form and function tend to reach an equilibrium. Over
time, some organizations die out and others form--some through schism, which
occurs when subgroups break away to create a new organization. The process
continues until the number of organizations is stable (Tucker et al. 1988;
Hannan and Freeman 1987; Hannan and Carroll 1992). Historically, this
phenomenon is driven by organizational creation and failure--two processes
that
are much more common than adaptation.

Summary of Gang Member Interviews

The gang members interviewed in this study provided richly textured
descriptions of the character of their gangs. Framed in an organizational
context, their narratives illuminate and clarify police observations about gang
size, gang activities, and changes in gangs over time. The evidence from these
interviews demonstrates that the four gangs studied have been in existence for
many years and have experienced major organizational changes. Changes in
gang name and size are the most observable indications of these organizational
shifts. The generalist orientation of the gangs and their members may have
contributed to their survival through periods of organizational upheaval and
environmental uncertainty.

Unexpected Agreement

It might be expected that the views of police and gang members would be quite
divergent on issues such as the nature of gang leadership and activities. This
study, however, did not identify any major differences. In large part, police
descriptions of gangs were not inconsistent with those of gang members.
Indeed, the interviews with gang members tended to elaborate on police
observations of the variation within and among gangs. For the most part, the
police did not tend to stereotype gangs; they did not, for example, describe
them as showing evidence of formal organization and hierarchy where this was
not well established. Nor did the police tend to see role and organizational
specialization within gangs. Instead, they recognized a wide range of gang
types, identified different structures within different gangs, and described a wide
range of behaviors of gangs and gang members. In the interviews, gang
members confirmed and elaborated on these observations.

It is worth noting that both police and gang members indicated that the large
and enduring gangs examined in this study exhibited some distinctive features of
formal organizations. There was little evidence, however, that their structure is
highly bureaucratic--an anomaly, according to organizational theory. Despite
their large size and organizational longevity, of the four gangs examined, in only
two was there evidence of the bureaucratic structure of large organizations
(leadership, membership levels, regular meetings, specialization, and written
rules). Only one gang exhibited the more elaborate features of traditional
organized crime groups--relationships with other gangs nationwide (including
prison gangs), incursion into legitimate businesses, and involvement in political
activities (Decker, Bynum, and Weisel 1998). In all four gangs, however, there
was some evidence of formal organization, such as organizational continuity and
an orientation toward goals.

The gangs studied here appear to represent a fundamentally different form of
organization, one that can be described as adaptive or organic rather than
bureaucratic. These forms of organization have also been called "federations,
networks, clusters, cross-functional teams, lattices, modules, matrices, almost
anything but pyramids" (Bennis 1993).[16]

In stark contrast to the myriad literature on bureaucratic organizations, there
have been few studies of organic organizations--and thus there is a dearth of
descriptions of this form even among organizations such as legitimate
businesses. An examination of the recognized features of the organic-adaptive
model, however, suggests that the gangs studied here feature the attributes
associated predominantly with this form of organization. These include an
emphasis on individual goals concurrent with organizational goals, diffuse
leadership, the active role of subgroups, a generalist orientation, persistence in a
volatile environment, and continuity despite the absence of hierarchy. Adaptive
or organic organizations thrive in a volatile or changing environment, and
organizations that survive under such conditions are more likely to maintain
multipurpose and flexible structures, with flexible leadership and little
differentiation among member roles (Meyer 1978; Burns and Stalker 1961).

Despite some evidence of bureaucratic features in the gangs studied, the results
of the interviews with gang members make it difficult to support the hypothesis
that these gangs have evolved into formal organizations mirroring traditional
organized crime.[17] Although the Chicago gangs have some explicit features of
formal organizations, on other dimensions, the evidence is less clear: Group and
role specialization, for example, appear minimal.

Their organizational continuity and their expansion and membership growth
suggest that these four groups can be considered successful organizations. They
have endured and thrived at times when environmental exigencies might have
logically selected against them. Their survival and growth have been punctuated
by organizational changes--mergers, splintering, consolidation, and other
organizational dynamics. These changes have been responsible for the gangs'
growth to their current, large size.

The substantial organizational change these gangs experienced is consistent with
organizational theories that see social organizations as not static but changing in
important ways, adapting to changing environmental conditions. According to
one widely held notion, organizations proceed through temporal and sequential
stages of development, a process commonly known as the organizational life
cycle. The gangs in this study--with their patterns of consolidation and
fragmentation--showed clear evidence of such a process. According to Klein
(1995a), the proliferation of gangs in the 1980s resulted from the establishment
of many small, autonomous organizations. The result was that gangs were large
in number but small in size. As Klein points out, however, "there are a lot of
acorns out there that could become stable, traditional oaks" (p. 104). In other
words, small, autonomous gangs can grow into stable, traditional, and much
larger gangs, the latter, of course, being of far greater concern to the public and
to police.

Life cycles of gangs suggest that smaller, socially oriented gangs can evolve into
more serious gangs, often merging or aligning with larger or more organized
gangs for protection. While transformation into large, networked gangs such as
the BGDs is clearly an exception, for that gang, the merger and acquisition
process was a major contribution to its growth. Of course, gangs are also
growing larger for a number of reasons, among them that the age range is
expanding, with members remaining in the gang longer and the gang retaining
members who move outside the neighborhood.

Size will continue to be a major factor in predicting the extent of organization in
a gang. The largest gang in this study showed the clearest evidence of
bureaucratic organizational features, suggesting the need for a systematic
process for counting gangs and their members and for close attention to
changes that affect the number and size of gangs in a specific area or
jurisdiction. Klein (1995b) describes the cyclical processes of the seasonal and
epochal variations in gang activity (crime) through which gangs proceed. Many
of these epochal cycles, Klein believes, are city-specific and may reflect upturns
and downturns in sub-areas and neighborhoods within cities. This view, of
course, suggests that cities or counties are the relevant population boundary for
monitoring gang crime and changes in the size and number of gangs. As Klein
(1995b) states, aggregate numbers of gangs, gang members, and gang crime
tend to mask important changes in gangs that occur at smaller geographic
levels.

Implications for Police Practice

For the police, monitoring the growth of individual gangs or of organizational
changes taking place among or within gangs in a jurisdiction provides insights
that can aid in developing effective responses to gang problems. Differences
among gang types and among specific gangs--especially organizational
differences such as patterns of leadership, membership age, size, duration,
criminal involvement, and so forth--have significant law enforcement
implications. Hierarchical or organized crime models that target gang leadership
by using vertical prosecution and applying Federal statutes[18] may be
appropriate for law enforcement agencies or prosecutors that focus on the few
gangs having particularly distinctive leadership patterns. This model is probably
not useful for addressing the vast majority of the country's street gangs. Spergel
(1990), for example, has warned against exaggerating the organized character
of gangs. Such exaggeration may be a byproduct of an organized crime model
that targets gang leadership, which tends to characterize most gangs by the
troublesome features of a few gangs. Indeed, the present study indicates that
street gangs do not necessarily progress into highly organized crime
organizations. Organizational processes, however, may contribute to marked
increases in gang size, influencing the structure, operations, and relationships of
some gangs.

The criminal versatility of the gangs and gang members observed in this study
suggests that law enforcement efforts that target particular criminal behavior will
work primarily for highly specialized gangs. Most gangs are not. Even the most
troublesome gangs in this study appeared to be highly adaptive generalists.
Most research suggests that rather than employing generic antigang strategies,
approaches to gang problems should be framed very narrowly to address
identified problems of concern to communities and police (e.g., Sherman et al.
1998; Bureau of Justice Assistance 1997).

Gangs and gang-related problems vary. Indeed, Spergel's model requires that
law enforcement agencies carefully assess local problems before implementing
any antigang strategy. Because there have been few useful evaluations of such
strategies, there is a need for rigorous evaluations, which could help move the
country to more quickly identify the most effective methods for solving the
various gang problems.

Police have tried a wide variety of measures to address the problem of gangs at
the local level. They have employed situational crime prevention, for example,
altering the flow of vehicular traffic to reduce gang-related violence[19];
enforcing antiloitering statutes to keep gangs from intimidating and menacing
community members (Regini 1998); using civil injunctions to keep gang
members out of areas where they cause trouble (Cameron and Skipper 1997;
Gibeaut 1998; Regini 1998); setting up traffic checkpoints (Crawford 1998);
carrying out aggressive curfew and truancy enforcement (Fritsch, Caeti, and
Taylor 1999); and cracking down on weapons violations, often using Federal
laws that impose stiffer penalties. Some jurisdictions have used a technique
known as "lever pulling," targeting specific chronic offenders with warrants,
close supervision of probation conditions, and other measures.[20]

Many of these law enforcement approaches have been integrated into
community or problem-oriented approaches to gangs. The approaches also
include mediation, situational crime prevention, working with families, and other
strategies (Sampson and Scott 2000; Bureau of Justice Assistance 1997).
Klein (1997) warns that policing that involves only enforcement will solidify
gangs by increasing cohesion among gang members. Policing strategies are
most effective when teamed with intervention programs such as providing
economic opportunities, job training, remedial education, and other services
and community involvement (see, for example, Spergel 1995; Spergel et al.
1991). These diverse strategies may be necessary to deal with highly versatile
and adaptive gangs.

At the turn of the 21st century, a wide variety of organizations fall under the
umbrella category of "gangs." One type or size of criminal organization may
differ from another only by a matter of degree. Howell and Decker (1999)
distinguish between drug gangs and street gangs, and between youth gangs and
adult criminal organizations. These distinctions (and others) will have the most
value when employed at the local level. As Starbuck, Howell, and Lindquist
(forthcoming) point out, their changing nature makes it increasingly difficult to
categorize and characterize them. These authors describe the new gang form as
a hybrid organization. Even 70 years ago, Thrasher (1963 [1927]) recognized
that the distinctions between gangs and other criminal organizations crime were
rather illusory. There is, according to Thrasher, "no hard and fast dividing line
between predatory gang boys and criminal groups of younger and older adults.
They merge into each other by imperceptible gradations." It is important to
identify and monitor the inherent distinctions and similarities among different
criminal organizations within jurisdictions, since these elements reflect local
conditions, criminal opportunity, and other explanatory variables. Such an
examination will aid in building an accurate perception of local problems and
will be useful in avoiding the stereotypes and overreaction that may lead to
well-intentioned but misguided policies and practices. Just such a continued
examination may aid in building a corpus of information that will offer greater
insight into the form and structure--and inherent variation--of contemporary
gangs.

Notes

1. Not all gangs "mature"; indeed, many disintegrate. Some gang researchers
have described this maturation process. Knox (1994) characterizes gangs by
their stage of development, from pre-gang to emergent gang, from crystallized
gang to formalized gangs, suggesting that gangs move from one category to
another as they grow larger and more like a formal organization. Thrasher
described the transformation of gangs to a solidified form as a function of
longevity, conflict, and the age of their members (1963: 47-62).

2. Fagan (1989) examined gang participation in criminal activity and drugs,
classifying gangs as party gangs, which engage in few nondrug criminal
behaviors except vandalism; social gangs, which engage in few delinquent
activities; delinquent gangs, which engage in violent and property crime but few
drug sales; and organized gangs, which are extensively involved in the sale and
use of drugs along with predatory crime. Other typologies of gangs based on
police information have taken different approaches. For example, Maxson and
Klein (1995) identified common structures for 59 gangs and looked at how
offending was related to these structures. As these authors note, however,
"police attend far more to gang crime than gang structure," leading the present
study to focus on gang behaviors as an organizing characteristic.

3. Surveys were addressed to police chiefs, who were asked to have it
completed by the person in the department most knowledgeable about gangs.
As a result, respondents varied from police chiefs to investigations commanders
to gang or youth unit supervisors. Since populations served by respondents
varied from 50,000 to more than 3 million, it seemed appropriate that
knowledgeable police respondents could be identified at different levels of
different organizations. The technique of surveying the police chief is also used
by the National Youth Gang Survey (see Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention 1999).

4. The higher response rate from larger police departments likely reflects the
greater prevalence of gangs in large jurisdictions; smaller jurisdictions with few
or no gangs were probably less likely to respond to the survey.

5. Estimates of numbers of gangs and gang members vary by source. City-level
estimates were provided by the National Youth Gang Center based on annual
surveys conducted in 1996-1999.

6. Federal and local law enforcement sources were used to identify the most
organized gangs in each city. General gang history was provided by local police
sources.

7. In contrast to local law enforcement, which focuses on the criminal behavior
of individual gang members, Federal responses to gangs, such as the FBI's Safe
Streets Task Force, appear to focus on the structure of gangs, especially
leadership, using tools such as Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO) statutes to dismantle gangs. Indeed, the stated policy of
the FBI is to address violent street gangs through long-term, proactive
investigations by concentrating on criminal enterprise and conspiracy. See
Freeh (1999) and the sidebar "The FBI's Enterprise Theory of Investigation"
for a more detailed description of the FBI's work on gangs and organized
crime.

8. Fagan (1989) notes that social gangs accounted for 28 percent of all gangs;
party gangs accounted for 7 percent; serious delinquents constituted 37
percent; and "organization"-type gangs represented 28 percent of all gangs.
These proportions varied, however, from one city to another. In Chicago,
gangs were predominantly serious delinquents and organized gangs; in Los
Angeles, gangs were social (38 percent) and serious delinquents (36 percent),
whereas San Diego gangs consisted of more serious delinquents (39 percent)
and organized gangs (31 percent).

9. Klein (1995) called this versatility "cafeteria style" crime, a type in which
gang members combine opportunistic crime with crime requiring more planning.
It should be noted that participation of the gang in crime is different from
participation of individual gang members in crime; the former term aggregates
activities of gang members, the latter reflects individual behavior. Both concepts
of criminal activity are examined in this study.

10. Although this study revealed higher levels of criminal versatility in serious
gangs, the findings of this study are parallel with findings about criminal activity
of youth gangs in the National Youth Gang Survey (Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention 1999). Police participants in the youth gang survey
reported criminal versatility among gang members, with high involvement by
youth gang members in aggravated assault, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft,
and burglary. Slightly more than one-fourth of all NYGS respondents reported
high involvement by gang members in those crimes. If youth gangs evolved into
the more serious criminal gangs examined in this study, one would anticipate
substantial increases in assaults, robbery, theft, and burglary and some increase
in motor vehicle theft.

11. An earlier report of the findings from this study described the extent to
which these organizational characteristics were present in these four gangs
(Decker, Bynum, and Weisel 1998).

12. One respondent described the volatile environment as follows: "Standing on
the street corner and talking and sitting there getting high all day, you make
plenty of money, I'm not gonna lie about that, but it gets tiresome always
looking for the police too or looking for somebody that is gonna try to kill you
for your money."

13. Taylor (1990a) and Joe (1993) reported that older gang respondents
minimized gang activity, and Goldstein (1991) noted that gang members may
exaggerate or hide information. Although the gang members interviewed for this
study appeared to have been mostly honest in their responses, it seems
reasonable to assume that many would be disinclined to own up to the range of
their own criminal activity.

14. Gang members were asked to define a gang, to describe the purpose of the
gang (including why they joined the gang), and to describe what is good about
being in a gang.

15. Gang members were asked to tell interviewers about the history of their
gang.

16. Similar terms include negotiated order, federation, loosely coupled system,
temporary system, organic-adaptive organization, coalition, external model,
post-bureaucracy, colleague model, interactive organization, network, and
blended or open organization.

17. As with contemporary gangs, there is a great deal of debate about the
definition and degree of organization of organized crime. See Maltz (1985) and
Kenney and Finckenauer (1995) for a discussion of this issue as it relates to
organized crime.

18. Limitations of these strategies are described by Johnson, Webster, and
Connors (1995) and Miethe and McCorkle (1997).

19. See Lasley (1998) for a discussion of Operation Cul de Sac, an example of
a situational crime prevention tactic.

20. "Lever pulling" and RICO statutes were employed in a widely publicized
reduction of violence program in Boston. See Kennedy (1997).

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