Youth Gangs

The proliferation of youth gangs since 1980 has fueled the public's fear and magnified possible misconceptions about youth gangs. To address the mounting concern about youth gangs, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP's) Youth Gang Series delves into many of the key issues related to youth gangs. The series considers issues such as gang migration, gang growth, female involvement with gangs, homicide, drugs and violence, and the needs of communities and youth who live in the presence of youth gangs.


The expansion of the American youth gang problem during the past decade has been widely documented. National survey findings that have noted the spread of gangs throughout the United States indicate that law enforcement agencies across the country are acknowledging the presence of youth gangs in their communities. In particular, recent survey results have documented the presence of youth gangs in rural areas. Most of these rural gangs appear to be primarily homegrown problems and not the result of the social migration of urban gang youth.


The emergence of youth gangs in rural areas and in cities previously without gangs coincided with the juvenile violent crime wave of the 1980's and early 1990's. The issue of whether youth gangs were responsible for the juvenile violent crime wave in the United States is beyond the scope of this Bulletin. However, given the relationship between gang membership and violent offending, it makes sense to examine the youth gang problem within the larger context of youth violence.


American society demonstrated a heightened concern about juvenile violence during the past 30 years. Demographic consequences of the baby boom were, in large part, responsible for this concern. During the 1960's, the number of individuals ages 13-17 rose to 10 percent of the total population, leading to a corresponding increase in the number of crimes occurring within this cohort. By the mid-1980's, youth in this age range had fallen to 7 percent of the total population. However, the number of juvenile crimes did not see a similar decrease, resulting in an increase in the juvenile crime rate (Zimring, 1998). Public concern continued to focus on juvenile violence, drug use, and delinquent behavior. Following an apparent hiatus of youth gangs during the 1970's (Bookin-Weiner and Horowitz, 1983), American society witnessed a reemergence of youth gang activity and media interest in this phenomenon in the 1980's and 1990's. "Colors," "Boyz in the Hood," other Hollywood productions, and MTV brought Los Angeles gang life to suburban and rural America. Recent research also suggests that youth gangs now exist in Europe and other foreign localities (Covey, Menard, and Franzese, 1997; Klein, 1995).


Concurrent with the reemergence of gangs, the juvenile homicide rate doubled (Covey, Menard, and Franzese, 1997) and crack cocaine became an affordable drug of choice for urban youth. In spite of the decline in juvenile violence during the 1990's, concern about this issue continued as a dominant topic in public discourse. Fox (1996) and DiIulio (1995) were among the more widely cited authors who warned of an impending blood bath as a new cohort of superpredators (young, ruthless, violent offenders with casual attitudes about violence) would cause an increase in homicides in the 21st century. The media quickly spread this gloomy scenario. Zimring (1998), however, disputed these doomsday predictions by highlighting the erroneous assumptions underlying them. For example, the predictions were based on the belief that 6 percent of the population would become serious delinquents. DiIulio (1995) argued that by 2010, the population of boys under age 18 in the United States would grow from 32 million to 36.5 million, and that this increase would result in an additional 270,000 serious delinquents. However, this estimate suggested that 1.9 million superpredators already existed in the United States (6 percent of 32 million). Zimring (1998:62) noted, "That happens to be more young people than were accused of any form of delinquency last year in the United States" (emphasis added).


How is this discussion relevant to a Bulletin on gang prevention programs? Just as the superpredator notion took on a life of its own in the media, so too has the image of the drug-crazed, drug-dealing, gang-banging gang member. In fact, the tendency is to consider gang members and superpredators as one and the same. This depiction of youth gang members as marauding, drug-dealing murderers has underlying errors similar to those inherent in the superpredator concept. For the majority of the time, gang youth engage in the same activities as other youth—sleeping, attending school, hanging out, working odd jobs. Only a fraction of their time is dedicated to gang activity. Klein (1995:11) summarized gang life as being "a very dull life. For the most part, gang members do very little—sleep, get up late, hang around, brag a lot, eat again, drink, hang around some more. It's a boring life." In his book about Kansas City, MO, gang members, Fleisher (1998) provided numerous descriptive accounts of this lifestyle. Although gang life may not be as exciting or as violent as media portrayals might suggest, one consistent finding across all research methodologies is that gang youth are in fact more criminally involved than other youth. Illegal behavior attributed to youth gangs is a serious problem for which hype and sensationalism are neither required nor warranted. Regardless of study design or research methodology, considerable consensus exists regarding the high rate of criminal offending among gang members. With the increase in gang membership and in the violent juvenile crime rate during the past decade (Cook and Laub, 1998) and with the availability of increasingly lethal weapons, criminal activity by gang members has taken on new importance for law enforcement and prevention efforts.