10 things you didn’t know about gangs

A new paper takes a holistic view to illuminate why vulnerable, high-risk youth may find refuge in gangs.

What is a gang member? The question sounds simple enough, yet comes with no easy answer. In fact, the difficulty of answering this question is one reason why our understanding of gangs and the youth who join them is still so limited, according to a new study published in The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education.

Titled “Socio‐Ecological Risk and Protective Factors for Youth Gang Involvement,” this study examines gang involvement by looking not just at the individual gang members but the communities that surround them, from the schools they attend to the communities they live in.

“We need to demystify perceptions of gangs and gang members, taking a more complex view,” explained Adrian Huerta, Pullias Center Provost Postdoctoral Scholar and a co-author of the study, along with Joey Nuñez Estrada, Jr. (Associate Professor, Department of Counseling and School Psychology at San Diego State University), Edwin Hernandez (Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Los Angeles), Robert A. Hernandez (Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of Social Work at USC), and Steve W. Kim (co-founder, Project Kinship).

Here are 10 lesser-known facts about gangs, gang members, and gang-related research revealed in the study.

1. There is no universally accepted definition of a gang or gang member. There are, however, widely-used definitions that focus almost exclusively on illegal and criminal gang activity that have been used “to target, over‐police, and prosecute communities of color,” according to the researchers.

2. At-risk youth may seek out gangs to find basic support and security. “Through the process of gang involvement, the influence of peers is powerful as they fulfill the sense of belonging youth may not receive from their family, community, and school.”

3. Challenging home environments can make youth more vulnerable to gangs. The researchers explain that “some studies have found youth who are at greater risk of gang involvement come from single-parent households, homes struggling with issues of marital discord, homes where there is a prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse, homes with issues of physical and/or sexual abuse, and/or homes that have family members who are gang involved.”

4. Racism and racial discrimination in schools can influence students of color to seek acceptance and validation through gang membership when other familial or community resources are unavailable.

5. Poverty can make gang membership appear more attractive. “Being lower class in an economic and social system that disregards the needs of youth in the community produces emotional frustration, forcing youth to satisfy their unmet basic human needs outside of conventional institutions,” explain the researchers.

6. It’s unclear if gangs increase school violence. Gangs are often blamed for violence on school grounds, but “empirical studies examining the nexus between gangs and school violence on school grounds is scarce,” according to the researchers.

7. Students associated with gangs are given fewer opportunities in schools. Schools have been known to “restrict high quality academic curricula, electives, and instructors” — and even access to college and career information — from gang members, leading them to disengage from academic aspirations and drop out of school at a higher rate.

8. Gang-involved youth are often punished instead of cared for. “Most often, schools depend on the efforts of local police departments or school resource officers who focus on punitive outcomes and the overuse of zero tolerance policies.”

9. A more supportive school environment can make gangs less attractive for students. “Schools can either take a punitive approach that criminalizes gang involved youth, or they can work to improve safety, enhance student connectedness, and increase support from teachers and school personnel so that fewer students will feel the need to resort to gangs and violence.”

10. Much more research about students and gang involvement remains to be conducted. Areas of needed study range from evaluations of intervention programs to studies of the effects of trauma and marginalization. “Educational researchers need to take a holistic socioecological approach when investigating the complex phenomena of youth street gangs,” according to the study’s authors.
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Read the full study:

Estrada, J. N., Huerta, A. H., Hernandez, E. , Hernandez, R. A. & Kim, S. W. (2018). Socio-Ecological Risk and Protective Factors for Youth Gang Involvement. In The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education, H. Shapiro (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118966709.ch9