Overview of: “Improving Civil Gang Injunctions: How Implementation Can Affect Gang Dynamics, Crime, and Violence”

Abstract

Research Summary The civil gang injunction (CGI) is an increasingly popular suppression strategy. Interviews with 416 youth in areas with and without a CGI suggest that suppression‐oriented injunctions may have little useful impact on gang social dynamics. CGIs may have promise as part of a comprehensive strategy that uses enhanced sanctions both to suppress crime and to move individual gang offenders toward alternatives (such as education, personal development, and jobs), allowing them to imagine alternative social identities. Policy Implications Whether CGIs play a positive role in curtailing the activities of street gang members or whether they fuel it instead may depend on policy makers and criminal justice officials ensuring that (a) gang members are approached as individuals, (b) the safety zone is appropriately sized, and (c) police suppression activities are accompanied by gang‐focused social services and a clear, transparent escape clause. Successful implementation depends on multiple city agencies being integrated into the CGI strategy early on.

Banishment

“…Banishment is not alone in its failings. Like banishment, spatial control mechanisms such as sex offender residency restrictions (Huebner et al., ; Socia, Dum, and Rydberg, ) and civil gang injunctions (Hennigan and Sloane, ; Valasik and Tita, ) have persisted without robust empirical support for their effectiveness and evidence of collateral consequences. Thus, it is important to understand banishment as part of a collective body of spatial social control apparatuses.…”

The Practicalities of Targeted Gang Interventions

“…Again, this is where Hennigan and Sloane () have served their readers well in focusing on processes related to efficient outcomes with respect to CGIs. If individuation seems like a promising avenue for thinking about gang interventions, and the process of using a civil gang injunction is one way to achieve this goal of creating a wedge between gang members and the social forces at work in gangs, we might then look for alternative ways to produce individuation that do not entail the lengthy and controversial process of enjoining gang areas or gang members.…”

“…Civil gang injunctions (CGIs) represent one of many such responses that have received some support in the scientific literature for their ability to reduce crime (Grogger, ) and its associated problems (Maxson, Hennigan, and Sloane, ) in the short term. As Karen M. Hennigan and David Sloane (, this issue) highlight, however, implementation processes are not well understood, and perhaps, they are too variable to subsume under any one “programmatic” model. Variation in the implementation of CGIs exists not just from city to city or even neighborhood to neighborhood, but within the same injunction zone across time.…”

“…Based on their data, Hennigan and Sloane () suggested that CGIs are most likely to provide desired outcomes when they (a) target individuals, not gangs, consistent with the process of individuation; (b) focus on a small target area; and (c) are part of a more comprehensive gang intervention strategy that provides prosocial alternatives to gang life.…”

The Importance of Cohesion for Gang Research, Policy, and Practice

“…Hennigan and Sloane (, this issue) describe how an increasingly popular suppression strategy, civil gang injunctions (CGIs), affect individual gang participation and aggregate gang crime in Los Angeles. Through civil litigation, CGIs set up a geographic “safety zone” in which members of the targeted gang confront a long list of legal stipulations that address where they are allowed to hang out and with whom, what they are allowed to wear, how long they can stay out on the streets after dark, and more.…”