gang research paper

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• J Child Adolesc Trauma
• v.12(3); 2019 Sep

Gangs and Adolescent Mental Health: a Narrative Review

Alastair macfarlane.

1 Present Address: Virology Department, Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust, Pond Street, Hampstead, London, NW3 2QC UK

2 Barnet Hospital, London, UK

This study presents a narrative review of the literature on gang culture and its association with mental health, including an in-depth overview of the topic area and reference to key systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This review will define gang culture, discuss the multiple interacting reasons (biological, psychological and social) why some young people may be attracted to gangs; and the psychiatric morbidities associated with being part of a gang. Gang culture and some adolescent mental health problems are intricately linked. This paper highlights ways in which research, practice and policy could be extended to minimise the injurious effects of gang culture on adolescent mental health.

On 23rd June 2018, police officers were called to a community centre in East London after a fight broke out. Initial reports stated that a birthday party in North Romford Community Centre had been gate-crashed, individuals were prevented from entering, and violence soon ensued (Sheppard and Dunne 2018 ). The first officers on the scene were confronted with up to 100 youths, many of whom were members of local gangs. Officers soon had to perform CPR on a 15-year-old boy who had sustained multiple stab wounds. Paramedics arrived but were unable to resuscitate the boy.

Gang culture is a topical issue. In 2017, the UK Office for National Statistics stated that in the past year, knife and gun crime – both associated with gang involvement – had increased by 22 and 11% respectively (“Office for National Statistics: Crime in England and Wales” 2017 ). Youth involvement in gangs is a complex topic, as is its link with social antecedents and criminal behaviour. In preparing this review, I have drawn upon a methodological paper which recommends the narrative review, defined as ‘a scholarly summary along with interpretation and critique ’ for illuminating the multiple interacting influences in a complex topic area (Greenhalgh et al. 2018 ). These authors distinguish between

… puzzles or problems that require data (for which a conventional systematic review, with meta-analysis where appropriate, may be the preferred methodology) and those that require clarification and insight (for which a more interpretive and discursive synthesis of existing literature is needed). (Greenhalgh et al. 2018 )

This study began with a search of the literature using key words (‘gangs’, ‘youth’, ‘psychiatric morbidity’, ‘mental health’, ‘recreational drugs’, ‘violence’) which thereby identified some key empirical studies and highly-cited commentaries on the topic of gang culture. From that initial sample, references of references were searched and citation-tracking (forward searching of key papers using Google Scholar) was used. The resulting review thus provides an overview of multiple aspects of a wide topic area and includes reference to a number of key systematic reviews and meta-analyses on narrower aspects of the topic (Fisher et al. 2008 ; Fowler et al. 2009 ; Harris and Barraclough 1997 ; Townsend et al. 2010 ).

Antisocial behaviour linked to gang culture is common in many countries today, with violence and other criminal activity commonly appearing in the media. Although the proportion of young people involved in gangs has not increased overall in recent years (Medina et al. 2013 ), we are becoming much more aware of the mental health complications that both arise from, and predispose to, such involvement (Coid et al. 2013 ). Until recently, research on gangs has been focused on sociological and criminological preconditions for gang culture, with a relative scarcity of data about the individual psychopathology surrounding it (J. Wood and Alleyne 2010 ). More recent studies have begun to address more comprehensively why young people may be prone to joining gangs (McDaniel 2012 ), and what the psychological implications of doing so are (Madden et al. 2013 ).

What Is a Gang?

Definitions of a gang vary, and findings from empirical studies on gangs seem to depend heavily on how restrictive the definition is (F. A. Esbensen et al. 2001 ). However, a leading group of American and European researchers forming a network known as Eurogang have proposed a definition that many contemporary authors are now citing , “A street gang is any durable, street-orientated youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity” (Weerman et al. 2009 ).

There are similarities between gangs and other social groups (such as cults). For example, both cults and gangs restrict members’ freedom of thought, have self-appointed authoritarian leaders and effect a situational dependence on group identity (Knox 1999 ). The main difference is that the former invokes a spiritual or ideological principle of organisation to espouse a particular belief system, whereas the latter typically lacks this, and instead exhibits features of delinquent behaviour, aggression and criminality.

It is estimated that 6% of young people aged 10–19 are affiliated to a gang in the UK (Madden et al. 2013 ). Young people are vulnerable to the effects of gangs on mental health, and females are particularly at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation (“Ending gang and youth violence: annual report” 2014 ). Gangs tend to be located in inner-city areas and are associated with high rates of violence (Fowler et al. 2009 ). A government report on gang violence in 2011 showed that in London, 50% of shootings and 22% of acts of serious violence were committed by gang members (“Ending gang and youth violence: cross-government report” 2011 ).

Males are around 12 times more prevalent in gangs, but there are growing numbers of female members (Alleyne and Wood 2010 ). In the US, law enforcement agencies reported a greater number of Hispanic/Latino (46%) and African American (35%) ethnicities as a percentage of gang demographics (“National Youth Gang Survey Analysis” 2011 ). Some authors have claimed that the ethnic composition of some gangs are homogeneous (F. Esbensen and Weerman 2005 ) while some found heterogeneity (Gatti et al. 2005 ). Other research has shown that gangs tend to represent, broadly, the ethnic makeup of the underlying neighbourhood (Bullock and Tilley 2008 ).

‘Pushes’ and ‘Pulls’ Towards Gang Culture

Joining a gang carries predictable dangers: increased risk of violence, isolation from family life and a predisposition for other long-term problems such as homelessness (Petering 2016 ). Given these dangers, what are the reasons for young people to join gangs? One theory is that gang participation is a result of ‘pushes’ from society and culture, and ‘pulls’ from within the gang itself (Decker and van-Winkle 1996 ). Push factors tend to drive young people away from their family life and into gangs (Decker and van-Winkle 1996 ). Risk factors can be divided into individual, peer group, school, family and community; these are likely to be interrelated. Individual risk factors for gang participation include male sex, certain ethnicities, prior delinquency and underlying mental health problems (Ang et al 2015 )(McDaniel 2012 ). Prior delinquency is a strong predictor of gang involvement, and participation in gangs is highly likely to perpetuate delinquent behaviour (Dhungana 2009 ).

A wide variety of mental health problems are associated with gang culture. Young people who socialise with delinquent peers, have gang members in their class or friend group, or spend more time on the street are at increased risk of being ‘pushed’ into gang culture (The National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) of the Public Safety Canada 2016 ). Research has shown that aggressive children form friendships with congenial peers by the age of ten (Cairns and Cairns 1991 ). Even in individuals with no peer exposure to delinquency or gang life, feeling marginalised by friends can trigger young people to join gangs (Decker and van-Winkle 1996 ). These factors are compounded by problems at school: poor school performance, negative labelling by teachers, and few teacher role models, all of which are predictors of gang involvement (The National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) of the Public Safety Canada 2016 ), as well as educational frustration stemming from learning difficulties (defined as IQ below 70) (Madden et al. 2013 ).

Familial factors are amongst the strongest predictors or delinquency and gang involvement (McDaniel 2012 ). These include parental drug and alcohol abuse, violence at home, and parental criminality or gang membership (The National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) of the Public Safety Canada 2016 ), all of which are associated with a low socioeconomic status (Heimer 1997 ). Moderate levels of parental monitoring significantly decrease the risk of gang affiliation (McDaniel 2012 ), and one study indicates that there are three parental variables which negatively correlate with problem behaviour in gang-associated youth: behavioural control, psychological control, and warmth (Walker-Barnes and Mason 2004 ). Interestingly, parents who knew their children’s peers were less likely to have children who joined a gang (Medina et al. 2013 ), perhaps because this was a proxy for parental engagement. These psychosocial influences could be mediated via neurobiological changes as a result of childhood maltreatment and adverse experiences (Anda et al. 2006 ).

Community ‘push’ factors linked to joining gangs include: social disorganisation, availability of firearms, access to drugs and cultural norms supporting gang behaviour (The National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) of the Public Safety Canada 2016 ). Youth may be pushed towards gang culture to resist structural violence they experience in their own community (Giliberti 2016 ). Furthermore, the presence of pre-existing gangs correlates strongly with further gang involvement, as neighbourhood gangs can trigger fear in young people and either stimulate young people to join existing gangs or drive groups of youths to form new gangs (Decker 1996 ).

Predictably, young people with more risk factors are more likely to be involved in gangs (K. G. Hill et al. 1999 ). Statistical analyses show that the presence of risk factors in multiple categories carries more influence than multiple factors in one category (J. Howell 2004 ; Merrin et al. 2015 ). Furthermore, these risk factors are evident from an early age, long before youth join gangs (The National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) of the Public Safety Canada 2016 ).

When assessing the relative effect of risk factors, it is important to consider the interactions between them and appreciate that some may act synergistically. Elijah Anderson, a leading ethnographer from Yale University, gives an account of inner-city violence amongst black Americans in his book ‘Code of the Street’, and posits that rather than resulting from random unconnected events, gang violence represents a complex web of interrelated factors. The author argues that street culture governs ‘interpersonal public behaviour, particularly violence…[providing] a rationale allowing those who are inclined to aggression to precipitate violent encounters in an approved way’ (Anderson 1999 , p.33). Thus, on a background of low socioeconomic status, familial criminality and poor educational opportunities, young people may develop a sense of cynicism and hopelessness towards society, perpetuating a street culture conducive to violence and gang involvement. Some authors claim that the street code is as important to youths as family values and can significantly shape individual beliefs, values and behaviours (Oliver 2006 ). Interpersonal violence in this setting is used to gain respect, especially in the context of gang culture (Stewart and Simons 2006 ).

Overall, against a backdrop of adverse individual, familial, educational and societal factors, at-risk youth are predisposed to undergo predictable psychological changes. Poor self-esteem (Alleyne and Wood 2010 ; Dmitrieva et al. 2014 ) and impulsivity (Egan and Beadman 2011 ) are coupled with feelings of hostility towards society and affected individuals seek out ways to escape this. This can manifest as externalising behaviours such as aggression, antisocial behaviour and delinquency, paving the way for gang involvement (Donnellan et al. 2005 ).

As well as the ‘pushes’ that drive young people away from family and society, Decker and van-Winkle ( 1996 ) also propose that gangs provide opportunities that draw vulnerable individuals in. Given a background of individual, familial and societal risk factors, certain adolescents may be particularly suggestible and thereby manipulated into participating in gang culture.

One way in which gangs do this is to provide youths with status, identity and companionship. A cross-sectional study of 797 London schoolchildren aged 12–18 reported that gang members valued social status significantly more than non-gang youth, with members often feeling a need to prove themselves to figures of authority (Alleyne and Wood 2010 ). Gangs also attract young people with ‘coercive power’ (Knox 1999 ). Violent threats and acts can trigger young people to join gangs through fear, and bullying within gangs has been well established (James Wood et al. 2009 ).

Extending the work of Decker and van Winkel, it seems that gangs do not just ‘pull’ vulnerable members of society in, but also foster continuing participation amongst current members by discouraging them from leaving. Members of a gang face a sense of moral dissonance between (on the one hand) the benefits of social identity, companionship and respect amongst peers and (on the other hand) the negative social impacts of gang-related activities. Sykes and Matza ( 1957 ) argue that this moral dissonance is dealt with through ‘cognitive neutralisation techniques’ (Table ​ (Table1 1 ).

Cognitive neutralisation techniques

*Cognitive neutralisation techniques used by delinquents to justify illegitimate actions, with examples of arguments used (adapted from Sykes and Matza 1957 )

Albert Bandura, a psychologist at Stanford University, extended the idea of cognitive neutralisation in his theory of ‘moral disengagement’ (Bandura 1999 ), which delineates the ways by which inhumane conduct is actively justified . Gang members readily employ moral disengagement methods (Table ​ (Table2) 2 ) to exonerate perpetrators, rationalise reprehensible conduct, and provide a means by which members can justify their continued participation in the gang (Alleyne and Wood 2010 ).

Moral disengagement strategies

*Moral disengagement strategies used to justify inhumane behaviour (adapted from Bandura 1999 )

Empirical research suggests that youth involvement in gangs is the result of a complex combination of factors that both pressures individuals to detach themselves from society and lures them in through elaborate psychological tactics. A generic narrative offered by Craig et al. for gang membership is as follows: [1] from an early age, individuals exhibit behavioural problems and anxiety; [2] these individuals fail to learn ‘conventional prosocial alternatives to antisocial behaviour’ by associating with delinquent peers; and [3] once on a trajectory into gang life, there is a reciprocal influence between congenial individuals which perpetuates antisocial problems (Craig et al. 2002 ). As noted above, one of the key associations with the cynicism for society that is linked to gang culture is mental health problems – but are such problems a cause or consequence of gang culture?

How Do We Explain the High Prevalence of Mental Health Issues in Gang Members?

In 1987, Terence Thornberry, a professor in criminology and criminal justice, proposed his ‘Interactional Theory’ to explain why gang members exhibit significantly higher rates of violence compared to those not in gangs (Thornberry 1987 ). The theory states that three factors underlie this trend: [1] selection, whereby gangs recruit members who are already delinquent; [2] facilitation, whereby gangs provide opportunities for criminal behaviour, and [3] enhancement, whereby gangs recruit youth already at a high risk of crime, stimulating them to become more delinquent. These same processes may be at play with regard to gangs and mental health in young people: [1] gangs preferentially select those with underlying mental health issues; [2] gang membership facilitates the development of mental health issues; and [3] gangs enhance covert psychiatric morbidity to become apparent. Furthermore, as the name Interactional Theory implies, these influences are both inter-related and mutually reinforcing.

In general terms, it is likely that all three processes – selection, facilitation and enhancement – are responsible for the high prevalence of mental health issues in gangs. However, to get a better picture of the underlying reasons, it is worth looking in more detail at the specific psychiatric conditions that have been described in members of gangs.

Prevalence of Mental Health Conditions in Gang Members

Coid et al. ( 2013 ) carried out a cross-sectional survey of 4664 men in Great Britain, purposefully oversampling areas with high levels of violence and gang membership. The study was focused on men aged 18–34 years, and hence gathered information on adult psychiatric conditions.

This was the first study to investigate the link between gang participation, violence and psychiatric morbidity. Participants were invited to complete questionnaires regarding their use of mental health services, gang membership and views on violence. Table ​ Table3 3 compares the prevalence of different mental health issues in non-violent men, violent men who were not part of a gang, and gang members.

Prevalence of mental health issues in non-violent men, violent men and gang members

*Table adapted from Coid et al. ( 2013 ) showing the prevalence of mental health issues in non-violent men, violent men and gang members

The study found that rates of psychiatric morbidity were higher in gang members and violent men compared to non-violent men, with the notable exception of depression, which seemed to have a strong protective effect against joining a gang. Although the data only demonstrate trends (and not causality), the link between various mental health conditions and gang membership/violence is now well established.

Overall, rates of psychiatric morbidity were significantly higher in gang members compared to violent individuals who were not part of a gang (Coid et al. 2013 ). Therefore, whilst gang membership seems to allow violent traits to escalate (Farrington and Loeber 2000 ) – which could explain the higher levels of reported mental health issues – it is clearly not the full picture. What is it in particular about gangs that allow mental health problems to thrive?

Aside from depression, the rates of psychosis, anxiety, alcohol and drug dependence, antisocial personality disorder and a history of attempted suicide in this study were all significantly higher in gang members (Coid et al. 2013 ). The reason for these figures may be explained through the Interaction Theory (selection, facilitation and enhancement) hypothesis previously discussed (Gatti et al. 2005 ), though the proportional contribution of each of these may differ in different conditions. However, in order to get a better picture of the psychological influence of gang culture, we may need to explore its effect on specific conditions in detail, as the underlying processes may differ.

Correlation of Psychological Factors and Gang Involvement

Psychosis, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd).

One consistent indirect link between gang membership and certain psychiatric morbidities is the use of recreational drugs. Cannabis – and ‘skunk’ in particular – seems to predispose to a plethora of mental health issues, including anxiety (Crippa et al. 2009 ) and psychosis (Arseneault et al. 2002 ). Rates of use are significantly higher in gang members (Coid et al. 2013 ), which may be because of ties with the local drugs economy (Bennett and Holloway 2004 ). Furthermore, cannabis seems to have a synergistic effect with childhood trauma on the development of psychotic symptoms (Harley et al. 2010 ), meaning that having both risk factors increases the probability of developing psychosis beyond the additive interaction of the two factors together.

Fowler et al. ( 2009 ) carried out a meta-analysis on the psychological effects of violent exposure on young people, and found that those who had witnessed community violence – which is much more likely in gangs – were significantly more at risk of developing PTSD, which is linked with psychotic symptoms (Berry et al. 2013 ). Furthermore, recent evidence has shown that PTSD does not just effect victims of traumatic events, but also the perpetrators, who suffer adverse psychological consequences as a result of inflicting harm (Kerig et al. 2016 ).

It seems that whilst adolescents react to an exposure of community violence through externalising behaviours (e.g. aggressiveness), children tend to internalise their experience of similar stimuli and develop anxiety disorders (Fowler et al. 2009 ). Coid et al. ( 2013 ) posit that both of these behaviours are a result of their ongoing attitudes to violence, including ‘ruminative thinking, violent victimisation and fear of further victimisation’.

Although data suggest that depression levels are actually lower in gangs (Coid et al. 2013 ), other research, especially from the USA, challenges this view (Petering 2016 ; Watkins and Melde 2016 ). In studies where depressive symptoms are lower in gangs, there may be various explanations. Firstly, violence – especially in the context of gangs – may be seen as a ‘displacement activity’ that disperses the injurious effects of a traumatic childhood (Madden et al. 2013 ). The data obtained by Coid et al. corroborate this: levels of depression are lower in violent men compared with non-violent men, so violence would act as a confounding variable when assessing depression rates in gang members (Coid et al. 2013 ). Secondly, depressed individuals may be less likely to join a gang through a diminished effect of the ‘pushing’ and ‘pulling’ factors previously discussed. These factors are hard to assess though, as the major studies in the UK so far have been cross-sectional rather than longitudinal so were not designed to follow changes over time.

Rates of depression in gangs on the other side of the Atlantic are significantly higher compared to the general population (Watkins and Melde 2016 ). The reasons are yet to be elucidated, but could be due to shared risk factors for both (early physical abuse and neglect (Chaffin et al. 1996 ), lower socioeconomic status (Link et al. 1993 ) and substance abuse (Armstrong and Costello 2002 )) or because gang membership causes and exacerbates symptoms of depression. For example, exposure to violence may trigger internalising behaviours, as is shown to be a factor linking gang membership to anxiety (Fowler et al. 2009 ). Another explanation is that gang culture may harbour high levels of stigma for mental health issues, which are commonly viewed with negative attitudes amongst young people, preventing others from seeking help (Corrigan et al. 2005 ; Pinfold et al. 2003 ).

Two conclusions are supported by these conflicting international findings: [1] further epidemiological research on the prevalence of depression in gangs needs to be carried out, specifically comparing contrasting cultures and neighbourhoods; and [2] the relationship between gang culture and affective disorders like depression may be more complex than in other psychiatric morbidities. New research could use longitudinal designs and productively focus on how different risk factors influence the rates of depression in gang members (whilst taking account of other variables), and also how membership in a gang can affect depressive symptoms. Focus should be aimed at why gangs from different cultures seem to exhibit different psychiatric landscapes.

Conduct Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)

These two psychiatric conditions are related, with individuals exhibiting aggressive or deceitful behaviour and a propensity to violate rules. About 40% of children with conduct disorder go on to develop ASPD (Zoccolillo et al. 1992 ), and the high rates of both conditions in gangs can be largely explained through shared risk factors (Madden et al. 2013 ). For example, one of the DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing ASPD is that from the age of 15, the individual exhibits ‘aggressiveness as indicated by physical fights or assaults’ (American Psychiatric Association 2013 ). Violence is much more prevalent amongst gang members than those who are not part of a gang (Coid et al. 2013 ), hence the elevated rate of individuals with ASPD in gangs. As well as violence, other shared risk factors include being male (Alegria et al. 2013 ) and having a history of early behavioural problems (American Psychiatric Association 2013 ; G. Hill et al. 2001 ).

Individuals with antisocial personality traits may be more inclined to join gangs because their peers are more likely to reaffirm their values and attitudes about the wider world. In a study by Egan and Beadman, adult male prisoners were given psychometric personality tests which demonstrated that antisocial personality traits such as impulsive and aggressive behaviour were a strong predictor of gang membership (Egan and Beadman 2011 ). The authors hypothesised that those with such traits felt little attachment to peers who were supposedly a good influence, and instead found their social niche in gangs with peers who respected and praised antisocial behaviour.

Suicide and Attempted Suicide

Those in gangs were eight times more likely to have attempted suicide than non-violent individuals who were not in gangs (Coid et al. 2013 ). Although not a mental health condition per se, suicidal tendencies tend to reflect underlying psychiatric morbidities such as depression, anxiety and psychosis (Harris and Barraclough 1997 ). Indeed, a meta-analysis of ‘suicide as an outcome for mental health disorders’ found that – with the exception of dementia and mental retardation – all mental health disorders increased the risk of suicide (Harris and Barraclough 1997 ). This is particularly true of functional disorders and substance misuse disorders. The increased rates of suicide among gang members may reflect underlying psychiatric morbidity, but could also illustrate an externalisation of violent ruminations and fear of victimisation (Madden et al. 2013 ).

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Whilst research on the characteristics of younger people in gangs is limited, one cross-sectional study used parents to complete questionnaires about their children and found that levels of hyperactivity and inattention (key symptoms in ADHD), as well as oppositional behaviour (which can precede conduct disorder) were significantly higher in gang members aged 10–14 than non-gang members (Craig et al. 2002 ). However, one problem with this study is that parents are often unable to provide reliable reports of peer activities to which adults are not privy. Nonetheless, is seems that behavioural issues from a young age, particularly traits found in ADHD, are a key risk factor for gang participation.

The reasons for high levels of hyperactivity and inattention in gangs could be because gangs actively select for these traits, or that they become more apparent in gang culture (Craig et al. 2002 ). Given the known association between ADHD and learning difficulties (Mayes et al. 2000 ), there could be a link with educational impairment and frustration at school. Another link could be substance abuse – children with ADHD are more likely to misuse recreational drugs like cannabis (Upadhyaya et al. 2005 ), which is a risk factor for gang participation as discussed earlier.

Future Direction for Prevention and Harm Reduction

Reducing the involvement and impact of young people in gangs.

Broadly speaking in medicine, there are two possible methods to target public health problems: prevention and treatment. With relation to gangs, prevention generally refers to reducing the number of young people joining gangs by focusing on the ‘pushes’ described by Decker and van-Winkel ( 1996 ). Treatment refers to targeting youth already in gangs and aiming to reduce the impact of an adverse social environment on their mental health.

Preventing People from Joining Gangs

Although there is no evidence that the total number of young people joining gangs has increased in recent years (Medina et al. 2013 ), we are nevertheless becoming more aware of the psychological problems that these individuals face. This dictates a need to reduce youth involvement in gangs, which can be done by targeting adverse individual, familial, educational and community factors.

Individual factors in gang membership are often hard to change, but there are still interventions that can be implemented. Identifying children with pre-existing mental health conditions and learning difficulties (K. G. Hill et al. 1999 ; The National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) of the Public Safety Canada 2016 ) and providing early therapy may theoretically delay the journey towards gang participation, although there is limited evidence on the efficacy of behavioural interventions in preventing youth gang involvement (Fisher et al. 2008 ). Substance abuse may be targeted by a variety of methods (Gray et al. 2005 ; Kaminer et al. 2002 ), although a multi-systemic approach is most effective for tackling this issue in young people (Henggeler et al. 2002 ).

One key factor that predicts the risk of gang involvement amongst young people is high neighbourhood crime rates with pre-existing gangs, and the local community has a large role to play in youth gang desistance (Gormally 2015 ). Di Placido, Simon, Witte, Gu & Wong ( 2006 ) carried out a retrospective study of gang members who had committed crimes and investigated the role of correctional treatment in the incidence of recidivism and institutional misconduct. They found that when gang members were at a high risk of offending, and the ‘responsivity principle’ was adopted (treatment effectiveness is maximised by ‘accommodating…idiosyncratic tendencies’), then correctional treatment was highly effective at reducing the risk of reoffending. The study also showed that ‘criminogenic needs’ – factors that contribute to an individual’s delinquency such as criminal attitudes and criminal associates – must be targeted for correctional treatment to be effective. If gang members in a community are given tailored correctional treatment, which involves multi-disciplinary teams providing cognitive behavioural therapy, relapse prevention skills and psychoeducational groups on substance addiction, then neighbourhood criminality can be lowered, and the likelihood that other young people in the community joining gangs will diminish (Henggeler et al. 2002 ).

Therapy aimed at restoring family communication and supportiveness (Dhungana 2009 ) may be a viable option for preventing children with adverse family environment from descending into gang culture. Identifying families with gang affiliated youth may be hard as parents are often not privy to their children’s social life (Craig et al. 2002 ), but one author has called for medical professionals to more readily identify gang-involved youth in hospitals following violent crime so as to provide timely familial therapy (Akiyama 2015 ). These include interventions like Functional Family Therapy (FFT), which is significantly more effective than probation services in reducing recidivism in young offenders (Sexton and Turner 2010 ). However, there is limited evidence on the impact on reoffending if both therapies are used concomitantly.

Finally, we need to also offer strategies for secondary prevention, by identifying youths who are highly likely to rejoin a gang based on previous gang membership (Hennigan et al. 2015 ).

Reducing the Incidence and Impact of Mental Health Problems of those in Gangs

Conventional forms of treatment for mental health conditions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, are effective in young offenders, especially in affective disorders such as depression and anxiety (Townsend et al. 2010 ). However, one study has shown that young people may respond very differently to these forms of treatment, and formal therapy at a predefined setting is often ineffective (Lemma 2010 ). Children may respond better to informal and indirect psychosocial therapy, e.g. though shared physical activities, especially those who are too ashamed and/or threatened to seek help for emotional problems (Lemma 2010 ). Treatment should be in an environment that children feel comfortable in, and any health professionals working with children need to establish strong emotional connections to ensure maximal benefit.

The most difficult-to-reach young people typically have multiple psychiatric comorbidities, with a variety of social vulnerabilities, poor treatment compliance and very poor prognoses (Kessler et al. 2010 ). An underlying problem in these individuals could be in mentalisation, a concept espoused by psychologist Peter Fonagy, which refers to the ability to differentiate self from others, specifically with regard to intentional mental states (e.g. needs, desires and feelings) (Fonagy and Luyten 2009 ). Fonagy argued that certain mental health conditions, especially in children, were due to impairments in mentalisation as a result of neurodevelopmental changes (Fonagy and Luyten 2009 ).

A novel treatment approach, termed ‘Adolescent Mentalisation-Based Integrative Therapy (AMBIT)’ has been developed to target three aspects of these individuals’ mentalisation: [1] towards the child and their family, [2] towards peers, and [3] towards the wider team looking after the child (Bevington et al. 2013 ). This multifactorial approach is relatively new and hence there is little data on its efficacy but represents a promising new method to reaching high-risk individuals, particularly those who have suffered adversely as consequence of gang culture.

We should be aware that gang involvement significantly reduces the effect of mental health interventions in youth (Boxer et al. 2015 ), and that primary prevention of gang affiliation is likely to be a much more effective approach to tackling the associated psychosocial problems. This is because once young people become involved with gangs, they become ‘embedded’ in cycles of ‘incarceration, destitution, addiction, and mental health crises’, which shield them from protective factors such as employment or access to mental health services (Fast et al. 2017 ). Resultantly, research is now focusing on identifying young people who are at risk of gang involvement so that interventions can be more appropriately targeted. For example, Howell et al. ( 2017 ) have developed a predictive tool (‘the life course model of gang involvement’) based on longitudinal data from Hautala et al. ( 2016 ), which identify risk factors for gang involvement in different domains as discussed previously (family, school, peer and individual) (Hautala et al. 2016 ; J. C. Howell et al. 2017 ). This model showed that the presence of more risk factors at a younger age correctly predicted the increased likelihood of gang involvement and could identify young people who would most benefit from primary prevention.

These approaches for tackling the myriad psychological problems of young people in gang culture are far from comprehensive, but hopefully offer an insight into what methods could be used to confront this widespread problem.

There is a long tradition of research into gang culture, but only recently have we started to appreciate the degree to which gang membership correlates with individual psychiatric morbidity. This is especially true in young people, who are much more vulnerable to an adverse familial environment, antisocial peers and dysfunctional neighbourhoods. Various studies have quantified the extent of mental health issues in gang members compared to the community as a whole and offered insights into why mental health conditions are so high.

Given the complexity of the problem, it is not surprising that there are no simple solutions to the psychosocial ramifications of gang culture, or how to use these to change current practice. Given what we now know, research should now aim to focus on how to minimise the number of young people who join gangs, through individual, familial and societal intervention; as well as targeting those already involved in gangs to curtail the onset and/or deterioration of psychiatric sequelae.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Alastair Macfarlane declares that he has no conflicts of interest to report.

As a narrative review, this article did not require any specific informed consent.

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• A-Z Publications

Annual Review of Criminology

Volume 5, 2022, review article, gang research in the twenty-first century.

• Caylin Louis Moore 1 , and Forrest Stuart 1
• View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: Department of Sociology, Stanford University , Stanford, California 94305; email: [email protected] [email protected]
• Vol. 5:299-320 (Volume publication date January 2022) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-030920-094656
• First published as a Review in Advance on September 16, 2021
• Copyright © 2022 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

For nearly a century, gang scholarship has remained foundational to criminological theory and method. Twenty-first-century scholarship continues to refine and, in some cases, supplant long-held axioms about gang formation, organization, and behavior. Recent advances can be traced to shifts in the empirical social reality and conditions within which gangs exist and act. We draw out this relationship—between the ontological and epistemological—by identifying key macrostructural shifts that have transformed gang composition and behavior and, in turn, forced scholars to revise dominant theoretical frameworks and analytical approaches. These shifts include large-scale economic transformations, the expansion of punitive state interventions, the proliferation of the Internet and social media, intensified globalization, and the increasing presence of women and LGBTQ individuals in gangs and gang research. By introducing historically unprecedented conditions and actors, these developments provide novel opportunities to reconsider previous analyses of gang structure, violence, and other related objects of inquiry.

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Conflict, including the threat or fear of potential violence, or being witness to or a victim of physical, violence, constantly surrounds gangs and their communities and is the principal driver sustaining gang life. Much of the conventional gang-related research remains focused on this violence as a neighborhood-based phenomenon that directly impacts local community residents; however, the ubiquity of digital technology, particularly social media platforms, has disrupted this traditional dynamic. Online violence, including threats, taunts, or posting of violent acts that have taken place, is much less understood. This knowledge gap includes the link between the online activities of gang members and how it can manifest into real-world action. This Special Issue will examine the diverse nature of gang-related violence with the goal of better understanding the growing complexities of gang violence over the last two decades to better inform public policy solutions. Given the dynamic nature of gang-related violence today, we aim to include empirical and theoretical research (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods) with multi/interdisciplinary perspectives from around the world that highlights cutting-edge approaches to examining gang-related violence. All submissions will be considered; however primary consideration will be given to manuscripts that

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Six Lines: A Methodological Agenda for Critical Gang Studies

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In the twenty-first century, the established methodological props for gang research have worn increasingly thin. Place-based definitions involving territorial groups confined to neighbourhood fiefdoms have become increasingly fractured, as shifts in social life increasingly overwhelm and undercut such approaches. This paper seeks to offer a new methodological agenda for transnational gang studies that is premised on the significance of mobility and flow . The paper first sets out a review of existing approaches, drawing on three established lines in critical gang studies—vertical, horizontal and parallel—which are rooted in place. Next, we suggest three emergent lines—circular, radial and transversal—which are designed to interrogate dynamics of mobility and technology in global gang studies. We suggest, in conclusion, that methods based on ‘flow’ should not replace those rooted in ‘place’ but must operate in a dialogue between online and terrestrial space, paying close attention to the role technology plays in shaping social interaction.

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Introduction

In the twentieth century, the criminological imaginary of gangs was rooted in place. In the foundational work of Frederic Thrasher ( 1927 ), for example, gangs emerged as an informal community structure within strictly defined urban territories; a “mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpellate” (p. 6). They were approached as a localised feature of the urban landscape that emerged in the shadow of industrialisation, hemmed in by geography and circumstance (Thrasher 1927 , 1963 ). As later critics have pointed out, however, this localized approach failed to fully recognize the ways in which broader “political, economic and historical forces” (Snodgrass, 1976 , p. 10) were at work in the patterning of city life. By the turn of the twenty-first century, critical gang scholars had started to develop sophisticated accounts in which urban space and gang identity were increasingly shaped by transnational forces. As Hagedorn summarised, ‘[j]ust as gangs in Frederic Thrasher’s time were closely related to urbanization, immigration, and industrialization, gangs today cannot be understood apart from an analysis of globalization’ (Hagedorn 2007 , p. 13). These turn-of-the-millennium studies stressed the globalised nature of urban disadvantage, and the comparability in dynamics of exclusion and identity across time and space, as well as presaging the rise of technology. As Hagedorn noted, at the dawn of the digital era, ‘stereotypes of gangs are no more than a mouse click away ( 1999 , p. 610).

Today, however, mouse clicks have been replaced by phone-swipes and increasingly, urban space is being conceived not as discrete, static entities but rather as splintered, fragmented and interconnected, ‘complex spaces of flows’ (Streule 2019 ). Against this backdrop, the ground beneath the feet of gang researchers has shifted once more. What were once discrete neighbourhood groups have been recognized as collective responses to social conditions that are intimately connected (Brotherton and Flynn 2008 ; Hagedorn 2007 ), with researchers starting to develop new gang conceptualisations beyond place while re-imagining between offline and online contexts. While some effort has been made to develop gang research that attends to these shifts, studies seldom tend to remain rooted in the ‘space of place’ (Castells 2000 ) which fails to recognise the intimate connectivity of gangs across cultural, virtual, and geographical domains. As a result, conventional methodological approaches to gang studies still tend to fall foul of the ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2009 ) that has persistently hampered global social science.

In this paper, we set out a methodological agenda for global gang studies that seek out new tools to study gangs in the context of accelerating technological change. This attends not only to hallmark conceptual work conducted in the early part of the new millennium but also emerging empirical work that is sensitised to questions of glocalisation (Roudemetof 2016 ), liquidity (Bauman 2000 ), and mobility (Sheller and Urry 2006 ). This effort at systematisation is intended to recentre the study of gangs at the intersection between the so-called ‘space of place’ and ‘space of flow’ (Castells 2000 ). In so doing we seek to resituate the imaginary of gangs from the hyper-localism of Thrasher’s Chicago to the telescoping ‘hall of mirrors’ in which social relations, mediated interaction and technological connectivity fuse in the emergence of violent street cultures. As Ferrell et al. note, in this world ‘the street scripts the screen and the screen scripts the street: there is no clear linear sequence, but rather a shifting interplay between the real and the virtual, the factual and the fictional’ (Ferrell et al. 2008 , p. 124). We aim to demonstrate not only the growing significance of cultural, technological and digital flows in gangs’ social life, or the ongoing salience of place but of hybrid, ‘glocalised’ social forms (Roudometof 2016 ) forged between online and offline interactions. This alternative conceptualisation, we believe, encourages innovative ways to enhance the transnational scope of critical gang studies.

The paper first offers a theoretical reflection of what we see as the two most significant changes in the ‘space of flow’ since Castells’ seminal work ( 2000 ). In the last decades, global migration has accelerated and intensified, giving way to a substantial change in the patterned movement of populations and migration policies. Next, the paper discusses how the rapid acceleration of digital infrastructure, swipe technologies, social media and algorithmic intelligence has created a series of dynamic entanglements between global online and local offline worlds. Both have radically reconfigured the nature of social life in researchers’ field sites and affect gang dynamics at the global and local level. Building on this analysis, we then set out three established ‘lines’ in global gang studies that aim to transcend the boundaries of place through comparison. Subsequently, we draw on three emergent ‘lines’ of comparison that capture the mobile, contingent and non-linear nature of contemporary gang identities.

Gangs, Glocalisation and Flow

During the early forays of Thrasher and the Chicago School, gangs were approached as a relatively benign, localised and inevitable feature of the urban landscape (Thrasher 1927 , 1963 ). Street gangs were one form of institution—alongside families, social clubs, restaurants, and associations—that emerged from the pattern of settlement and community-building. Writing at the turn of the millennium, Hagedorn and colleagues noted significant shifts in the nature and form of urban life since Thrasher’s era, with consequences for gang research. For Hagedorn ( 2008 ), globalisation had accelerated and amplified the preconditions of gang formation, creating forms of ‘advanced marginality’ and socio-spatial exclusion that were transnational in reach and global in cause. Footnote 1 Nonetheless, as the title of the collection ‘Gangs in the Global City’ suggests, the unit of analysis was primarily place-based.

In the 20 years since the conference that propelled that collection, the rise of mobile technologies has been audacious. Distinctions between ‘offline’ and ‘online’ selves have become increasingly nullified by a world of constant connectivity and spillover between virtual and real-world domains, demanding conceptual attentiveness to the interaction between local, global and virtual domains. In what follows, we outline two primary ‘global flows’ that have started to overwhelm and undercut the global city as primary unit of analysis and which require researchers to rethink their methodological tools. The first, a human and workforce flow, captures important social dynamics that were already present in the early part of the millennium, but which have intensified. Today, the movement and securitisation of migrant populations, overlaid onto an increasingly precarious and fluid economic and educational climate, have substantially altered the contextual environment in which gangs originate. The second, a technology and media flow takes the global connectedness and social interaction between humans to a new level, creating a space that is seen as ‘anti-spatial’ (Mitchell 1995 , p. 8), or without spatio-temporal restrictions. The latter problematises the ecological approach to gangs as ‘the spatial (and temporal) localization of persons, objects and activities is a core presupposition of its explanatory schema’ (Yar 2005 , p. 414). Gang members today gain respect and “street capital” (Bucerius 2014 ; Sandberg and Pederson 2011 ) not from the interstitial urban places (Thrasher 1929 ) but in the hinterland between online and offline contexts (Lane 2018 ).

Mobility, Flow and the ‘Migrant Other’

Large-scale population shifts from rural to urban environments and from Old to New World have been replaced by a cycle of international flow and more complex forms of stratification and control. Economic polarization, global conflict, population growth (now over 6 billion, rising at a rate of approximately 86 million per year), and ease of transportation have accelerated global migration to an unprecedented extent. Migration has not only globalized and proliferated; it has also become increasingly feminized, politicized, and differentiated (Castles and Miller 2009 , pp. 11–12). At the same time, national responses to migration have changed considerably. Developed nations have increasingly sought to enforce strict border policies, criminalizing immigration for those seen as unproductive to economic development, with deportation or imprisonment the ultimate consequence. These shifts in migration flows and responses to human mobility have had important implications for the study of gangs. As Rodgers and Hazen ( 2014 ) note, in an era of global migration, it would be surprising “if gang members never migrated” (p. 2). Multiple gang studies have shown that the crimmigration policies of Western nation-states also affect gang issues in the countries of origin. Brotherton and Barrios ( 2011 ), for instance, have detailed the process through which deportation policies of the United States have had ripple effects for gangs not only in the United States but also in Latin America, with comparable processes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Dominican Republic (Levenson-Estrada 2013 ; Zilberg 2011 ).

Moreover, the movement of populations has increased the connectedness of gang identity across borders. While traditionally identity work was mainly confined to neighbourhoods, it now increasingly occurs within transnational communities. In the context of a “highly mobile, stratified and globalizing society” in which marginalized groups must maintain identity and community, some groups traditionally conceived as local gangs, such as the New York-based Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (ALKQN), have developed into a transnational street organizations (Brotherton 2007 , p. 378). They are processes which reside at the heart of globalisation dynamics and because of that, globalisation has impacted local gang realities, not only in connectedness to global economic markets but also the way it impacted traditional working-class identities (Feixa et al 2008 ). Overall this means that the borders of gang field sites in which these processes, are studied, which has been traditionally within the borders of the city, have become increasingly permeable and porous.

A further point of attention is how local gang realities interact with global human mobility as a workforce flow in a globalised economy. For White ( 2011 ), commonalities amongst gangs in a global context interact with processes of social exclusion, marginalization, criminalization, and racialization. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the banlieues of Paris, the communities, in which gangs reside, house so-called urban outcasts composed of poor migrant populations, ethnic minority groups, and socially marginalized youth (Wacquant 2008 ). Here, the underside of the global city is still the experience of “advanced marginality” in which large populations are contained within the urban or peri-urban periphery (Wacquant 2008 ). However, a globalised human workforce altered the experience and outlook of urban marginality with precaritized work in the gig economy interweaving with informal labour in the illicit economy. As Aas ( 2010 ) notes, “globalization, far from being a progress of global mobility and de-territorialisation, also represents immobility, re-territorialisation, and localization” (p. 427). For those locked in the margins of the global city, subsisting in the urban periphery, constructed as the “racialised outsider” (Virdee 2014 ), the gang can represent a place of identity and safety, as well as cultural repertoire (Bakkali 2021 ).

Technology, Media and the ‘Digital Street’

Technology has increased the rapidity, access and scale of communication. Worldwide access to information fostered by technological innovation marks the transition from the post-industrial society to the contemporary information society (Castells 2000 ). The information society is also referred to as “the network society,” which has a sense of “placeless connectivity”—anywhere, anytime, and always the user is “in touch” with the network (Angell 1995 , p. 10). That connectivity increased still more with the arrival of mobile technology and smartphones. As such social lives are increasingly coordinated in a simultaneously online and offline manner, maintaining physical interaction while chatting or messaging with friends online. Online and offline worlds are no longer seen as ontologically distinct orders or experiential universes, but rather dimensions that converge. Beyond global migration, technology and media have opened up corridors of global dialogue and interaction between disparate cultures and communities in ways that are both emergent and inchoate, with social interactions increasingly defined by simultaneously “virtual-real” engagements.

The digital revolution has given rise to the development of network perspectives, in which scholars have noted the eagerness of gang members to adopt the newest “communication technologies” (Conquergood 1994 ). The “pager-beeper” of the 1990s has given way to an “online gangland” (Van Hellemont 2012 ) and the rise of the “digital street” (Lane 2018 ) composed of mobile devices and social media. From “Twitter Beefs” (Ilan 2012 ), to gangs’ YouTube performances (Mendoza-Denton 2015 ), the online environment has had a profound impact on gang communication and thus its constitutive meaning-making process (Stuart 2019 ). In meditating and facilitating their creations on a global scale (Hagedorn 2008 ), the “digital streets” now make gang representations but “a swipe away” for multiple audiences. Added to this, cultural and critical criminologists have noted how a global fashion industry relies on gang symbolism ‘to add ‘street coolness’ to affluent consumer identities (Ilan 2015 ) or how a corporate entertainment industry’ relies on gang connotations to sell seductive commodities (Brotherton 2015 , pp. 124, 125) such as music, video game, and films (Metcalf 2009 ). In a global mediascape, ‘gangster’ style has become a fashion brand, at times indistinguishable from other urban youth cultures (Ilan 2015 ).

The shifts set out in this section have significant and far-reaching implications for the study of gangs in a global context. In what follows we document a range of existing and emerging methodological approaches to the recentring of gang research towards the ‘space of flow’ (Castells 2000 ).

Six Lines: A Methodological Agenda

Since the time of the Chicago School, observational methods have come to be seen as the quintessential methodology for studying urban issues, particularly as framed through the lens of gangs. Though statistical comparisons can establish broad-based similarity and difference, intuiting gang dynamics requires the time, proximity and depth of understanding that ethnography allows (Wacquant 2008 ). However, in recent years, place-based ethnographies have been thrown into crisis as populations, cultures, and identities are forged on the move between real and virtual environments. What were once discrete, street-based youth groups have reconfigured in the global era to actors in a globalised economy, transnational diasporas formed through deportation, or digital networks with hybrid identities.

In what follows we develop a comparative approach to critical gang studies that coheres a range of recent studies into a methodological framework. Understanding the contemporary gang phenomenon as rooted in a combination of digital networks, social relations, and cultural flow, we argue, demands a methodological reorientation that moves gang scholarship away from isolated local studies and towards a collaborative, networked, and comparative theoretical and methodological agenda. In making this argument we delineate six ‘lines’ of existing and emergent approaches. The first three approaches, which we refer to as ‘established’, are rooted in an imaginary of gangs rooted in place. As gang identities have become more mobile, contingent and non-linear, we argue, researchers must become increasingly attentive to factors that increase the flow nature of gangs. As such, in the second section, we draw together a range of emergent ‘lines’ of research that operate at the intersection of place and flow, and that better capture the mobile, contingent and non-linear nature of contemporary gang identities. Figure  1 . summarises the mode, form of fieldwork, and time–space position for each. The following section elaborates the lines in more depth.

Six lines of methodological approach

Established Lines

The first three approaches are based fundamentally on the notion of stability of populations, identities and urban subcultures—in which gangs are fixed points on the urban landscape that can be approximated through linear comparisons. Whether applying a consensus definition, extending back through time, or outward through space, fieldwork tends to be confined to a single neighbourhood. The implicit assumption is that gangs are static, hyper-local, territorial groups with whom long-term, close-up, localised observation is most appropriate.

Vertical studies are based on a single study, in a single site, in a single time–space that connects with a larger set of hypotheses or questions, and that seeks to contribute to a body of global or comparative work. The quintessential instance of this approach is that of the Eurogang programme of research, which sets out agreed universal formalised definitional criteria to comparative study, ‘any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity’ (van Gemert 2005 , p. 148). This definition is operationalised through standardised research instruments which are then applied in a top-down manner. According to this definition, there are identifiable gangs in a range of European cities, exhibiting similar characteristics to their American counterparts. Critics of the Eurogang approach note that the term ‘gang’ does not easily map onto diverse contexts, and local differences are missed by a single definition (Aldridge et al. 2008 ). As Rodriguez et al. note of Venezuela, for example, adaptations of the definition—notably those relating to reputation for violence—are required to make sense of the local context. A vertical definitional shines a bright spotlight on specific areas but leaves everything else in shade.

To a certain extent, approaches to gangs premised on the concept of the ‘global city’ also invoke vertical reasoning, insofar as they are reliant on a theoretical conception of gangs that remains rooted in place. In brief, the global city thesis traces the relationship between economic globalisation and urban spatiality, with concentrations of wealth and poverty emerging in the wake of transnational financial markets (Sassen 2001 , 2007 ). One impact of these global processes has been the growth of urban zones, or ‘ghettos’ that are cut off from the rest of the city. These perfidious zones of urban exclusion, resulting from what Wacquant terms ‘advanced marginality’, can result in a form of localised identity and territorialism ‘that reflect the closure of one’s lived universe’ (Wacquant 2007 , p. 271) offering fertile ground for marginalised and disillusioned youth to seek community and identity in gangs, As Davis ( 2008 , p. xi) notes, for ‘poor youth lacking other resources, these informal spatial monopolies, if successfully defended and consolidated, provide some measure of entrepreneurial opportunity as well as local prestige.’

While such accounts represent a critical optic through which to compare similar processes of urban exclusion and group formation, their concentration in a single place, and single time–space, create blind spots in terms of history, culture, and virtual communications and overlook the ‘friction’ that exists between local, global and virtual scales of analysis (Tsing 2005 ).

Horizontal studies are based on a single site but seek to analyse gangs across time in the same location. This may include the bringing together of contemporary fieldwork with archival research, or oral testimony, or it may take the form of a ‘punctuated revisit’, an anthropological approach in which 'the same ethnographer conducts separated stints of fieldwork in the same site over a number of years’ (Burawoy 2003 , p. 670). These studies tend to stick relatively close to ground level, telescoping back through time and seeking to understand social change through the lens of an individual gang, or city (Thrasher 1927 ; Hagedorn 2015 ). Hagedorn has termed this a genealogical approach to gangs, seeking ‘lines of connection or parameters which make for a global relevance allowing “place-bound”, necessarily always local, ethnographic writing to carry across the world’ (Willis and Trondman 2000 , p. 7). Such studies tend to operate on inductive analytical basis, and though not formalised into a comparative framework are capable of generating theoretical or conceptual developments that can be adapted for comparative analysis.

This form of historical literacy is an important counterpoint to studies of globalisation and new technology. Adamson ( 1998 ), for example, situates gangs in the context of medieval and feudal notions of tribute, turf and honour, arguing that capitalism has always co-existed alongside a system of ‘tributary surplus extraction’, and that ‘territorially-based feuding has co-existed with the demilitarized, legalized competition of the free market’ (Adamson 1998 , p. 78). The forms of defensive localism embodied by gangs, therefore, represents a localised, urbanised form of these fundamental processes. Importantly this approach recognises that gangs not only exist in history but also that they themselves have history that exists apart from official discourse. As Brotherton suggests, ‘to think about the gang in history requires us to consciously place the phenomenon we are describing in a set of intersecting, overlapping, unequal power relations’ (Brotherton 2015 , p. 11). For Brotherton, following E.P Thompson, there is a need to tell a ‘history from below’ in relation to gangs in different parts of the world—recognising that gangs themselves have histories and narratives that are often untold in the official narrative.

Parallel studies involve the concurrent study of two or more field sites, by one or more researchers, with the intention of generating comparable data. Unlike vertical or horizontal studies, parallel approaches are often explicitly comparative in their design. Rather than starting with positivist, deductive reasoning, Wacquant’s ‘comparative sociology of urban marginality’ ( 2008a , p. 9) between the ‘hyper-ghetto’ of Chicago and the banlieue of Paris, for example, seeks to compare geographically disparate sites inductively. As Wacquant argues, there is a pressing need to recognise the uneven, complex and variegated impact of global social forces at the level of lived experience, whilst recognising the impact of a divergent ‘historical matrix of class, state and space characteristic of each society at a given epoch’ (Wacquant 2008 , p. 2). Similarly, Burawoy’s collaborative ethnographic projects ( 2000 , 2009 ) are rooted in efforts to comprehend the interconnected, yet disparate, social realities of global connectedness in multiple sites in the same time–space. This approach has also been employed by colleagues working in the Eurogang tradition of ‘vertical’ comparison, bringing separate studies into dialogue. The problem, of course, is that parallel lines never meet.

In the field of gang studies, Fraser and Hagedorn’s ( 2018 ) recent study represents an exploratory example of a parallel methodology. In this study, the authors spent time in one another’s field sites, with the ‘home’ researcher operating as a gatekeeper, guide, and critical friend during the field visit. As they argue, ‘[t]he beauty of the exchange is its’ simplicity and efficiency: the hard-won access of the other researcher is shared and collectivised, allowing the visiting scholar a sharp insight into a social world that may diverge considerably from their own’ (Fraser and Hagedorn 2018 ). In addition to the generation of inductive theory pertaining to the divergent patterning of gangs across time and space, this methodology is also significant for its implications for reflexivity. Spending time in another fieldsite changes perceptions, upsets taken-for-granted assumptions, and exposes gaps in the ethnographic gaze, which can prompt ‘a reflexive return on the sociologist and on his/her universe of production’ (Wacquant 1989 , p. 33). Bourdieu and Wacquant ( 1992 , p. 36) summarise the value of this form of reflexivity as follows:

First, its primary target is not the individual analyst but the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in analytic tools and operations; second, it must be a collective enterprise rather than the burden of the lone academic; and, third, it seeks not to assault but to buttress the epistemological security of sociology.

Such efforts are, however, comparatively rare. As a result, current comparative knowledge pertaining to gangs in a global context presents a highly inconsistent and contradictory picture. As Heitmeyer et al. note, ‘even the more developed literature on gangs has been undermined by an absence of studies comparing data temporally and spatially, between young people from different sociocultural contexts’ (Heitmeyer et al. 2019 , p. 2).

Emergent Lines

The second set of ‘lines’ that we identify in the contemporary literature relate to mobility and technology. In today’s world of ‘thrown togetherness’ (Massey 2005 ), these approaches attend to the circulation of populations, identities, and affiliations in an age of digital connectivity, seeking out innovative new means of documenting the diverse realities of gangs in a global context. These emergent methodologies focus on how to study the interaction between the space of place and space of flow through movement of researchers between field sites, between online and offline environments, and in bringing ‘real virtuality’ (Castells 2000 ) to ground.

Circular methodologies are premised on the notion of mobility of populations and involve the circulation of researcher or researchers between multiple fieldsites, generating real-time observations. As Kenway and Fahey ( 2009 , p. 28) note, ‘the place and movement of the researcher’s body and thought’ represent a central strut in the construction of knowledge, and mobile populations require mobile scholarship. Significantly, too, much gang research has emanated from the global north leading to a tendency to ‘read from the centre’ (Connell 2007 , p. 45). Rather than seeking out like-for-like comparisons by ontologically separate researchers, therefore, this approach relies on the logic of constant comparison to generate insights that are premised on building a flexible and reflexive knowledge-base amongst a community of scholars. It builds on notions of ‘multi-sited ethnography’ (Marcus 1995 ) which sought to capture flow through 'tracking' ideas, objects, people as well as 'things, metaphors, stories, and conflicts as mobile objects of research’ (Marcus 1995 ), using mobile methods to trace the fluid interaction-chains across disparate geographies.

In recent years, mobility has emerged as a major motif in a number of gang studies. Gang formation in a global context has increasingly become understood through the optic of forced deportation policy and cultural connectivity, particularly pertaining to the United States and Latin America, using mobile methods to trace shifting identities across place and time (Zilberg 2011 ). Zilberg ( 2011 ), draws attention to the ‘boomerang effect’ of deportations from the US and subsequent criminalisation under US policies of zero tolerance. This twin-track process of transnational gang suppression results from an unequal tethering of the US and El Salvador ‘from above and below’—involving both transnational population flow and military/police training—and has ‘resulted in the deportation to El Salvador of thousands of Salvadoran immigrant gang youth’ (Zilberg 2011 , p. 65). Similarly, Brotherton and Barrios ( 2011 ) developed a transnational methodology that followed deportees across varying transnational fieldsites, emphasising both cultural fluidity alongside fixed sites in communities, immigration centres and prisons. In another study, Brotherton ethnographically traces the connections between the Latin Kings gang/collective in Spain, Italy the US and Ecuador ( 2007 , p. 378). Such approaches are premised, crucially, on the circulation of populations and the corresponding need for researchers to ‘follow’ identities and cultural connections as they stretch around the planet.

Most recently, the circular methodologies employed in the ERC project ‘Gangs, Gangsters and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography’, led by Dennis Rodgers, have broken new ethnographic ground in the field of global gang studies (Jensen and Rodgers, forthcoming). The study employs a methodological approach involving the rotation of embedded fieldworkers between two field sites in the global south (Cape Town, South Africa and Managua, Nicaragua) and one in the global North (Marseilles, France) to generate ‘abductive’ South-South comparisons, switching the polarity of theory building in gang research.

Transversal

Transversal lines of comparison are premised on efforts to analyse the fusion of global flows and local contexts. For Robertson ( 1995 ), ‘glocalization’ was a localizing process in which the global product remains local. Global cultural products are “received” by host communities, adapted and adopted according to local practises. More recent theorizations of the concept of glocalization, however, move beyond these global–local hybrids towards an analysis of the ‘mediascape’ (Appadurai 2004 ) that increasingly acts as a hinterland between online and offline identities. For Roudemetof ( 2016 ), the ‘glocal’ is defined not by hybridity and fusion but the ‘refraction’ of global processes through the lens of the local. In the process, a new set of cultural products emerge that are composed of a meeting between elements of the local and the global but that create something new that is neither local nor global. As such, Roudometof ( 2016 ) expands Tsing’s ( 2005 ) perspective that the relationships between global and local cultures are constituted through ‘friction’. Figure  2 , illustrates the transversal that bisects the parallel, representing the connections that cross-cut geographically distinct field sites.

Transversal line

In the field of gang studies, for example, van Hellemont ( 2015 ) found in her study of Belgian gangs that the messages of alienation and resistance embedded in U.S. gangsta rap formed a crucial resource for young African migrants experiencing similar forms of marginalization in Brussels. Others have drawn attention to the fluid and contingent way that the Bloods and “Crips in Orange” have adapted the styles and cultures of U.S. street culture (Roks, 2019 ; van Gemert et al. 2016 ). Similarly, Savage and Hickey-Moody ( 2010 ) have examined the cultural norms of a group of young Australian-Sudanese men seeking to navigate experiences of marginality in the urban context of Melbourne.

This methodology can also be employed for the purposes of comparison, in line with Burawoy’s ‘global ethnography’ of connection and imagination. A recent example can be found in a comparison of gang ‘glocalisation’ between Brussels and London (van Hellemont and Densley 2019 ), which interrogates the intersection between popular culture, music, and technology with gangs. In effect, this is a disruptive innovation on a parallel comparison, with the transversal cross-cutting in such a way that it can open up space for analytic synergy—or syzygy—in surprising contexts. This side-slice through conceptual axes responds to the media-culture-crime nexus of cultural criminology (Ferrell et al. 2008 ) combining the ‘space of place’ and ‘space of flow’ by bringing instances of gang glocalisation to ground.

The final emergent line is one that begins in the ‘space of flow’, through analysis of digital interactions via social media platforms. Castells ( 2000 , p. 203) coined the online realm as ‘not a ‘virtual reality’, but rather as a ‘real virtuality’, a socio-technically generated interactional environment rooted in the 'real world' of political, economic, social and cultural relations. Since then, however, technological change has accelerated at an unprecedented rate, resulting in a breakdown of the boundary between digital and social lives (Caselli and Gilardoni 2018 ). As recent studies have demonstrated, young people do not distinguish between ‘real’ and ‘online’ worlds, necessitating methods that attend the intersections between them: ‘youth-subcultural life is a continuous virtual-real experience’ (Wilson 2006, p. 308). This has important implications for the study of gangs and youth street cultures more broadly. Ilan ( 2015 ), for example, discusses the phenomenon of “online repin” in which YouTube and social media become sites for one-upmanship and rivalry that can spill over into the streets. Social media can act as a ‘force multiplier’ (Yar 2005 ) that transforms street violence (Stuart 2019 ), but also as the catalyst for mutual aid and identity-formation for young people experiencing social isolation and exclusion (Nilan and Feixa 2006). As illustrated in Fig.  3 , below, radial lines emanate from a central point, in this case from the virtual domain.

Radial lines

In recent years scholarship has started to emerge that are conversant in both neighbourhood-based and online modes of interaction. Lane’s work on the ‘digital street’, for example, combines traditional ethnography with ‘netnography’ of young people’s social media interactions to interrogate the fluidity between online identity and offline performance, and their implications for gang identities. Similarly, van Hellemont ( 2012 , 2015 ) and Roks ( 2019 ) draw on composite methodologies to trace the negotiation between real and virtual domains. An important recent example of such approaches is the ERC-funded TRANSGANG project, led by Carles Feixa, which centres the interaction between global flows and local identities in the transnational ‘gang’ phenomenon. The study traces the dynamic interactions between globalised gang symbols and punitive policies ‘from above’ as well as practises of mutual support, collectivism and virtual interaction ‘from below’, analysing the ‘gang’ as an agent of mediation. The study will draw on netnography amongst other methods to interrogate the mechanisms by which young people traverse virtual and neighbourhood contexts to build community and mediate conflict (Fernandez-Planells, Orduna-Malea and Feixa 2021 ).

Finally, it is notable that new methodological tools such as machine learning and ‘algorithmic sampling’ (van Hellemont, forthcoming) have started to emerge. For example, Patton has developed an innovative approach that uses social media to interrogate the aftermath of homicide (Patton et al 2017 , 2018 ). Compiling thousands of social media posts, coded for a range of emotions, this approach tracks expressions of grief and anger over time to establish an early warning system of retribution. Such approaches, however, have not yet been attempted beyond single sites. Though there are in-built issues with discrimination and causality that can render ‘big data’ problematic (Chan and Moses 2016 ), and there is a need for critical discussion of the role of ethics in the ‘digital street’, Footnote 2 there is also potential to render the social world as it exists today more intelligible by anchoring understandings of youth and gangs within a networked cultural and digital landscape. Cultural criminologists have suggested so-called ‘liquid’ or ‘instant’ ethnographies as ways of documenting these juxtapositions, but it may be that we need to think more expansively in terms of data science, social media scraping, and algorithmic intelligence.

Conclusion: Lines of Flight

A defining feature of the twenty-first century is the emergence of new landscapes of crime, harm and security that challenge existing theoretical and methodological paradigms. Increasing global interconnectedness, the audacious growth of mobile technologies, and the movement of populations have reoriented the nature of social life, forming a new constellation of global harms that stretch the criminological imagination into uncharted territories. Societies are increasingly governed by complex networks and digital infrastructures that cross divisions between the human and non-human, creating the potential for new forms of harm that challenge academics, policy-makers and civil society groups to rethink the structures and institutions of justice. Deleuze and Guattari designate the shifts in paradigmatic thought required by such tectonic shifts as ‘lines of flight’, elusive moments that emerge in the intersections between large-scale social change. In this paper, we have sought several such lines—circular, transversal and radial—in an effort to approximate and bring to ground this world in motion as it applies to gangs.

Thrasher’s classical approach associated gangs with urban areas with high levels of poverty, dense populations, high populations of young people, and limited space and resource but in the context of the modern global economy, it is no longer possible—if indeed it ever was—to analyse urban gangs in isolation. While twentieth-century studies were rooted in place, increasingly since the turn of the millennium researchers have become more theoretically sensitised to the consequences of time–space compression, virtual-social hybridity, and transmediation in the constitution of gang identities around the world. In this paper, we have sought to recentre the study of gangs from the ‘space of place’ to the ‘space of flow’. This is not to discount the significance of definitional clarity, historical change or cultural differentiation, but to recast these issues in a way that is attuned to the social, cultural and technological flows that constitute gang realities in the twenty-first century. This demands, of necessity, the prising open of definitional categories such as ‘gang’ to recognize their flexibility and contingency—constituting the ‘gang’ identity as one that is constituted in and through overlapping the domains of media, politics, technology and neighbourhood life.

Change history

21 april 2022.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09639-8

Hagedorn ( 2008 ) has drawn powerfully on the technosocial network theory of Manuel Castells to elaborate a globalised ‘resistance identity’, in the form of hip-hop, that allowed similarly oppressed street groups a shared vocabulary of dissent.

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The authors would like to thank Dennis Rodgers and other participants in the Geneva workshop ‘Gangs, Gangsters and Ganglands’ where this paper was originally developed, and to David Brotherton for his kind editorial advice and support with publication.

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Fraser, A., Van Hellemont, E. Six Lines: A Methodological Agenda for Critical Gang Studies. Crit Crim 30 , 13–28 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09617-0

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Title: "ebk" : leveraging crowd-sourced social media data to quantify how hyperlocal gang affiliations shape personal networks and violence in chicago's contemporary southside.

Abstract: Recent ethnographic research reveals that gang dynamics in Chicago's Southside have evolved with decentralized micro-gang "set" factions and cross-gang interpersonal networks marking the contemporary landscape. However, standard police datasets lack the depth to analyze gang violence with such granularity. To address this, we employed a natural language processing strategy to analyze text from a Chicago gangs message board. By identifying proper nouns, probabilistically linking them to gang sets, and assuming social connections among names mentioned together, we created a social network dataset of 271 individuals across 11 gang sets. Using Louvain community detection, we found that these individuals often connect with gang-affiliated peers from various gang sets that are physically proximal. Hierarchical logistic regression revealed that individuals with ties to homicide victims and central positions in the overall gang network were at increased risk of victimization, regardless of gang affiliation. This research demonstrates that utilizing crowd-sourced information online can enable the study of otherwise inaccessible topics and populations.

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A Literature Review on Gang Violence

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• 1 Upstate University Hospital, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York and Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York.
• PMID: 28692626
• DOI: 10.1097/JTN.0000000000000303

Gangs and gang violence are a concerning cause of preventable injuries and death in the trauma community. The number of gangs and gang members has been on an upward trend since 2003 with an estimated 30,000 gangs in the United States. This includes approximately 850,000 gang members. Trauma centers are in a unique position to participate in the prevention of gang violence. This review compiles current, relevant literature on gangs and gang violence covering the following topics: prevention/intervention, contributing influences, and experiential reflections. The purpose of the literature review is to deepen understanding of gangs and gang violence and potentiate further research in this area in order to help promote successful prevention efforts. Trauma nurses can use this information in developing culturally sensitive, compassionate care and trauma centers will find this useful in the development of injury prevention programs aimed at the reduction of gang and street violence.

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Miller served as a member of committees for the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice and as a research consultant on projects by the National Education Association and various U.S. cities. He was truly a scholar, working with such academics as John Q. Wilson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. While notable for his study of gangs, Miller was also involved in the areas of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), youth delinquency and poverty studies. He played a mean trumpet, and used his musical prowess as a way to break down barriers of income, race/ethnicity and culture between himself and many of the gang youth with whom he worked. He served as a lecturer and researcher at various institutions, including: Harvard,  Brandeis University, Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Beginning in the mid 1970s, Miller directed the National Youth Gang Survey. Later, with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, he worked closely with the National Youth Gang Center. This brought his work full circle, evolving from his days with the Special Youth Program in the early 1960s and “the generating milieu” in a single city to a national strategy in exploring gang membership. It should not come as any shock, given his education and the peers with whom he worked, Miller focused on relationships. Drawing on the rich tradition of social science at Harvard (Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, William Foote Whyte) and the history of Boston, Miller brought these relationships to life in a manner few have achieved.  

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