Street Gang Development, Research, and Prevention Strategies

Introduction

Klein and Maxson's Street Gang Patterns and Policies (2006) offers a sharp critique of existing paradigms for dealing with the problem of street gangs, and in its place offers informed suggestions based on over three decades of research and observation for revising the overall approach to this persistent problem. The problem of street gangs is, of course, very old: one of the first sociological studies written as the discipline was itself in its infancy is Frederic Thrasher's The Gang, published in 1927, dealing with gang membership in Chicago — a study that Klein and Maxson pay homage to as the foundation of a discipline. But even that far back, gang violence was hardly a new problem. Historians like Herbert Asbury have detailed gangs that existed in the nineteenth century and earlier, in patterns recognizable to sociology and criminology in the twenty-first century.

Yet for such a long history, it is worth noting that Klein and Maxson begin with the most basic observation: that gangs are often poorly defined by those who would seek to reduce their activity. As a result, Klein and Maxson begin their study with the most basic and accurate scientific definition they can muster for what constitutes a gang: "any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity" (2006, p. 4). They then proceed to clarify these terms by noting that durable indicates the persistence of the group despite turnover in membership, that street-oriented implies the group meets and spends time together outside the home or school, and that youth can extend into the twenties and thirties. This paper begins with an overview of gang development, proceeds to a discussion of the effectiveness of research, and concludes with gang prevention strategies, basing the analysis primarily on Klein and Maxson's comprehensive 2006 study.

Gang Development

Klein and Maxson are keen at the outset to establish that, while gangs are surely an old phenomenon, there has been a recent explosion in gang-related activity in the United States. They offer the striking statistic of the "growth in gang-involved cities from fewer than 50 prior to 1960 to an estimated high of 3,850 in 1996, which declined to 2,300 in 2002" (2006, p. 19). The social costs of this proliferation — not only in terms of lives and property, but also in terms of additional police expenditure and funding for prevention programs and state and local responses — are astronomical.

Klein and Maxson begin with an overview of some basics of gang membership. They note that "males join gangs at higher rates than females" but that "females clearly do participate in gangs and should be prominent in any discussion of gang programs and policies" (2006, p. 34). They also observe "wider ethnic and racial differentials in gang joining," where "the rate of white youth participation in gangs is far lower than among Black youths, at least one-half and often one-third lower" (2006, p. 34). They further determine "that the peak age for gang participation is at 14 or 15 is remarkably consistent across self-report studies, regardless of the risk level of the sample, the restrictiveness of gang definition, and the location of the study" (2006, p. 41).

This statistical observation becomes critically important for policy: as Klein and Maxson counsel, "gang programs and policies should pay close attention to this pattern: vulnerability to joining gangs is highest among youths from 13 to 15 years and decreases thereafter" (2006, p. 41). This finding is additionally confirmed by Vigil, who links this vulnerable age group to "the most aggressive and violent behavior among gang members," occurring "during that adolescent status crisis, between childhood and adulthood" (2003, p. 236). However, problems enter the discussion when, as Klein and Maxson note, the "primary data source" must be derived from "law enforcement, rather than youths" themselves (2006, p. 41). In this case, Klein and Maxson report that "law enforcement figures underestimate young, white, and female gang members," which reflects a problem in the source of the data, deriving from existing patterns of policing and monitoring of gang activity. Even with a focus on prosecutable criminal misconduct, the police data is to a certain extent skewed.

One crucial fact in analyzing even police strategy regarding street gangs is that there are "lower offending patterns among former gang members evident in most studies" (Klein and Maxson, 2006, p. 78). In other words, anyone who has been part of a gang but then abandons membership is statistically observable to commit crime at a slightly higher rate than peers in the general population, but at a vastly lower rate than if gang membership had been maintained. This is important because it describes what Klein and Maxson term the "mixed enhancement model" of the interrelation between gang membership and criminality — that is, the combination of gangs selecting youth who are predisposed to criminality and then facilitating their involvement in criminal activity, leading to an overall model which emphasizes the "enhancement" of that youth's capacity for criminal activity provided by gang membership (Klein and Maxson, 2006, p. 77). The fuller definition of models for the interrelation between gang membership and criminality is worth quoting in full:

"The selection model argues that gangs do not cause delinquency; members bring high offending profiles with them and are in fact recruited for this reason. Offending by gang members would be consistently high before, during, and after active periods of gang participation and higher than among youth who don't join gangs. Alternatively, the social facilitation model posits that gang members' offending profiles are similar to other youth before they join the gang, and it is the gangs' group processes… that elevate criminal activity. When gang members are no longer active, their delinquency patterns should return to nongang rates. The enhancement model predicts that both selection and facilitation are at work: gang members will display higher criminality prior to gang participation, but during the active period, offending patterns will increase substantially. When no longer active, this model suggests that offending would decrease but still remain higher than nongang rates." (Klein and Maxson, 2006, pp. 75–76)

Given the clear statistical result in which Klein and Maxson find that the mixed enhancement model is most accurate in terms of actual gang behavior — and that removal from group activity vastly lowers rates of criminal offending among individuals — it becomes obvious that this should be the foundation for understanding and addressing the problem. To assume that only hardened criminals join gangs is already an unwise assumption, given the earlier statistics demonstrating the astonishingly young age at which gang members are ordinarily recruited. Yet this assumption underlies a large number of largely failed policing and prevention strategies, which fail to recognize that removal from a gang will actually change the criminal profile of an individual.

Conclusion

Klein and Maxson's comprehensive study ultimately demonstrates that a social problem of this scale requires a social response. Effective gang prevention must be grounded in rigorous research, target community-level risk factors, and employ a comprehensive continuum of programs rather than any single intervention. The repeated failure of high-profile programs like D.A.R.E. and G.R.E.A.T. illustrates the cost of designing policy around conventional wisdom rather than empirical evidence. By understanding the mixed enhancement model — and recognizing that gang membership itself drives criminal behavior, and that leaving a gang meaningfully reduces it — practitioners and policymakers can design more targeted, effective, and humane responses to one of society's most enduring challenges.