Gangs, Street

Street gangs are neighborhood-based cliques of young men who band together ostensibly for protection but more cogently to meet emotional needs. As such, they have tended to be loosely organized near-groups with roles changing to meet members' desires. Gangs have long been of concern to innercity residents and law enforcement because of their proclivity to predatory crimes. In the past 30 years, they have spread from inner cities to smaller jurisdictions and even rural areas and are often emulated by some aspects of popular culture. Drug profits have encouraged a more stable hierarchy and role structure as well as fueled gang expansion. After reviewing some legal issues, this entry examines the traits of gang members, the nature of emergent gangs, gang crime, and linkages with other groups as well as police responses to gangs.

Legal definitions of gangs emerged in an effort to suppress these groups in the 1980s and 1990s. Most U.S. jurisdictions require three or more people engaged in ongoing criminal activity for prosecution under gang control statutes. As defined by many statutes, gangs also use some identifying symbol, make territorial claims, have rules for defining membership, and have some sort of internal structure or hierarchy. Gang members are usually between 12 and 30 years of age but may be considerably older; the percentage of juveniles among gang members has dropped from 50% in 1996 to 35% in 2011, as these groups grow more savage and profit oriented. Most gang members are male, but female and mixed-gender groups also exist. Gangs tend to develop in the most deteriorated urban areas, but since the 1990s, these have also been noted in small cities and towns. Whites, mixed-race groups, and female members are more common in rural and small-city gangs than in large urban centers. Inner-city Hispanics are more often involved than blacks, but this relationship reverses itself in rural areas, especially in the southern United States. It would seem that gangs feed on poverty, disenfranchisement, and disorder; they have even become a concern on Native American reservations. Some assert that they are surrogate families for the youths, most of whom lack a sense of security and belonging at home. Others use anomie and social-learning theories to explain their formation. Most street gangs are composed of youths from the same ethnic group, but hybrid gangs, consisting of multiple races and both genders, are increasingly common.

Sets or crews are local groups dedicated to a gang lifestyle. Their membership can be divided into core, fringe, and wannabe members. Most sets identify themselves with the community via a group moniker (e.g., 33rd Street Rollers) and may assign members nicknames that celebrate their salient qualities or history with the group (e.g., Shorty, Diablo, Roach), which increases their bonds to the group. Many gangs display symbols of their ethnicity with great pride. In most cases, gang members are minorities and recent immigrants. Gangs perceive themselves as mutual protection societies but are so aggressive in establishing group and personal reputations for toughness that they provoke far more violence than they solve. Many, if not most, sets have affiliated with at least one major confederation of gangs such as the Crips, Bloods, or Latin Kings in the past few decades. Some confederations refer to sets as chapters and require use of a symbol or color to denote membership. Confederations often have links to prison gangs that can be used by member-entrepreneurs. Sharing allegiance to a confederation does not ensure peace between sets. Most violence takes place over territory and occurs along the boundaries of gang territories, but gangs also use violence to discipline members and exert control over local citizens. Internal violence took a dramatic upswing in the 1980s with the advent of entrepreneurial drug gangs within street sets and confederations, reflecting the movement toward instrumental criminality that follows drug trade profits.

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