Gangs

Definition of the Problem

For many decades, communities in the United States have been troubled by criminal activities, including serious violent crimes, committed by youth gangs. The prevalence and seriousness of gang problems have fluctuated over time, with gang activity escalating during some periods and diminishing during others. The last three decades of the 20th century were characterized by a major escalation of youth gang problems throughout the Nation. Gangs have been adversely affecting the quality of life within our communities through their violence, drug dealing and other criminal activities. The lack of quality information and the misinformation that is available to the public greatly increases the gangs ability to succeed in their criminal endeavors and to recruit our children into the gangster lifestyle.

Gang involvement begins as early as elementary school. Children 7 and 8 years of age are being recruited to work for the gangs because gangs are aware of the difference in the punishment for youths in the criminal justice system. Todays youth are drawn into the gang culture for a variety of reasons, a need to be accepted, to be popular, to interact with other peers, protection, family, etc.

The definition problem is not trivial. How to define a youth gang is one of the most contentious issues in the field of youth crime. Policymakers, law enforcement personnel, social service agencies, researchers, and other groups have not been able to reach consensus on this issue during the past 25 years, and current efforts to reach this goal have thus far met with only limited success. (Miller, 2001). There is little disagreement among those who study or deal with gangs that the availability and widespread use of a uniform definition would be extremely useful for a variety of important purposes, but few are willing to relinquish and replace the definitions that

have become established within their agencies.

Prevalence of the Problem

In the 1970's, 19 States reported gang problems; by the late 1990's, all 50 States and the District of Columbia had reported gang problems. In the 1970's, the combined population of all cities reporting gang problems was about 25 percent of the population of all cities, and the population of all counties reporting gang problems was about 40 percent of the all-county population. By the late 1990's, the population of gang cities

had risen to about 60 percent of all cities, and the gang-county population had risen to about 90 percent of

the all-county population. (Miller, 2001)

The States with the largest number of gang-problem cities in 1998 were California (363), Illinois (261), Texas (156), Florida (125), and Ohio (86). Of these, only two, California and Illinois, reported large numbers of cities with gang problems in the 1970's. The States with the largest number of gang counties in 1998 were Texas (82), Georgia (61), California (50), Illinois (42), and Florida (40), in that order; the South replaced

the Northeast as the region with the most top-ranking States. (Miller, 2001)

A major objective was to maintain a distinction between youth gangs (ages 12 to 24) and exclusively adult gangs. The kind of unit sought and counted is the traditional area-based adolescent and young adult street gang whose violent activities include assaultive and predatory crimes. Excluding the many hate gangs, prison gangs, and other adult gangs simplifies the task of associating gangs with localities (Miller, 2001).

The popular image of youth gangs is that they are becoming more formally organized and more threatening to society, and therefore should be feared. Supergangs with thousands or tens of thousands of members, including adults, have existed at least since the 1960's (Spergel, 1995). Like other gangs, they grow in times of conflict or crisis and decrease in size at other times (Spergel, 1990). Some gangs with a high proportion of adult members have very sophisticated organizational networks, much like large corporations (see McCormick, 1996). The Black Gangster Disciples Nation (BGDN) exemplifies such an evolution from a relatively disorganized criminal street gang to a formal criminal organization (Spergel, 1995). Its corporate hierarchy (see McCormick, 1996) comprises a chairman of the board, two boards of directors (one for prisons, another for the streets), governors (who control drug trafficking within geographical areas), regents (who supply the drugs and oversee several drug-selling locations within the governors' realms), area coordinators (who collect revenues from drug-selling spots), enforcers (who beat or kill members who cheat the gang or disobey other rules), and "shorties" (youth who staff drug-selling spots and execute drug deals). From 1987 to 1994, BGDN was responsible for more than 200 homicides (Block et al., 1996). One-half of their arrests were for drug offenses and only one-third were for nonlethal violence.

Klein (1995:36) observed that "the old, traditional gang structure of past decades seems to be declining." In an earlier era, youth gangs might have comprised several hundred members and were generally age graded, consisting of several discrete subgroups based on age (Klein and Crawford, 1967; Moore, 1991; Miller, 1974). Both youth and adult gangs had these characteristics. Recently, however, age-graded and geographically based youth and adult gangs have become less common (see Klein and Maxson, 1996). These have given way "to relatively autonomous, smaller, independent groups, poorly organized and less territorial than used to be the case" (Klein, 1995:36). Leadership "is complex, fluid and responsive, more diffuse than concentrated, and depends in large part on the particular activity being conducted" (Miller, 1974:217). Even large youth gangs composed of allied "sets" may not be well organized and may be in a constant state of flux because of the various subgroups, changing leadership, and limited number of hardcore members (Sanders, 1994).

Although they are very much in the minority, youth and adult drug gangs are more predominant now than in the 1970's and 1980's. Klein (1995) identifies a number of common differences between youth gangs and drug gangs, recognizing that there is some overlap in these dimensions. The racial/ethnic composition of gangs also appears to be changing. African-American and Hispanic gangs still predominate, but law enforcement agencies in a number of cities are now reporting Asian and South Pacific groups, more white gangs,