Youth Gangs

Youth gangs constitute a different subculture in American society. They have existed for years among virtually all ethnic groups, and they continue to expand, recruit, and commit a variety of illegal offenses in diverse neighborhoods across the country. While there has been a problem in social science research with defining gangs, a list of general characteristics for youth gangs has survived from the onset of the 20th century to the present day. Those characteristics include age, clothing, symbols, and deviant behavior. Youth gangs differ from adult gangs not only with respect to characteristics such as age, symbols, and clothing but also in terms of the relationships between members.

Youth associate with each other for legitimate and non-gang-related relations, including social, educational, and sports-related activities. Some youth associate with each other because they share the same religious or ethnic interests, which may increase their comfort level in certain settings or in certain neighborhoods. Youth have a natural tendency to want to associate with each other as part of the growing-up process. Alternatively, youth who are loners are often characterized as maladjusted and therefore warrant suspicion as to potential future violent behavior, as evidenced by recent school shootings. Some youth form groups to promote legitimate activities and have no interest in participating in deviant behavior; therefore, it is important not to generalize all youth who belong to social groups as gang members.

Generalizations and stereotypes about gang members can increase at times and in neighborhoods when crime rates spiral upward. Such stereotyping is further fueled by media hype of impending crime, like coverage of the superpredator myths during the 1980s and 1990s that caused the public to exhibit greater fear of its youth with the age. The media were assisted in the creation of hysteria and fear of gang crime by police who responded to the much touted “War on Drugs,” which concentrated its efforts in the inner cities and urban areas where a majority of low-income minority youth resided. If more than two youths congregated on a street corner, they were considered gang members, interrogated, and on many occasions detained for further police processing. Concern about youth gangs, that is, moral panic, is precipitated by concern for important issues in decaying urban and city areas. The preoccupation with youth gangs has in the 21st century been almost exclusively focused on African Americans and Hispanic youth.

Today youth gang refers to a youth or adolescent group concerned with status, prestige, and turf protection. Typically, the gang has a name, has a location, is relatively well organized, and persists over time. Youth gangs often have a leadership structure that is either explicit or implicit, codes of conduct, colors, special dress, signs, and symbols. Youth gangs can vary across time in terms of age, gender, community, race, and ethnicity, in addition to scope of delinquent or criminal activities. Variations of youth gangs exist. A posse or a crew is characterized by commitment to criminal activity [Page 916]for economic gain, which oftentimes involves drug trafficking. Historically, youth gangs were mostly males who engaged in deviant behavior, particularly turf battles and gang fights. The gender roles of gang members have changed in recent years. While female gang activity has not reached the level of that of their male counterparts, female violent gang activity is not significantly different, nor are their reasons for joining gangs significantly different, from those of males. For males and females gang membership entails belonging, self-esteem, protection, and fulfillment of a need to belong to a family. It appears that some female gang members face the additional stigma of being poor, minority, and female.

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