Gangs

Do Gangs Really Exist?

Network analysis has been used to address one of the central questions in research on gangs: to what extent can they be said to exist? Do gangs exhibit sufficient organizational structure and boundaries, and stability over time in structure and membership, to justify asserting their existence as recognizable entities? Or are they merely loose-knit, shifting, temporary alliances of unorganized delinquent youth? Is the group of teenage boys who appear so alarming to adults as they approach them on the street really a gang? Or is it merely a group of boisterous teenagers hanging out harmlessly together? Frederic Thrasher's classic study of street gangs in Chicago, published in 1927, depicted them as highly organized and cohesive, with well-defined organizational roles, such as president, war counselor, treasurer, and armorer. However, network analysis of gangs, using data on the relationships among sets of identified and self-identified gang members, have found little evidence of hierarchical social structure or of formal organization. Rather, they have found social structures very similar to those of ordinary adolescent friendship networks: small, densely connected groups, or cliques, with two to a dozen or so members, loosely connected to other such cliques within the larger network. Role differentiation tends to be minimal; although positions such as president, and so forth, may be reported by members, [Page 313]the content of such positions and the actual influence of their occupants are nebulous. Gang members often disagree when asked who occupies what position or role in the gang and what their responsibilities are. Members' prestige rankings are reported more reliably than organizational roles. Some research has found that the personal networks of gang members cross gang boundaries: members of a gang are friendly with members of other gangs, and such ties are in some cases stronger than ties to fellow gang members. These cross-gang connections create social flexibility and further attenuate intragang cohesion and identity. Network analyses have also found little evidence of temporal stability of organizational structure or of membership. Some network researchers have concluded that gangs are so unstable in structure and membership that the terms gang and delinquent group are misnomers.

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