Street gang theory and research: Where are we now and where do we go from here?

Abstract

Recent years have seen an upsurge of attention paid to street gangs as scholars and criminal justice officials strive to understand and counteract the effects of gang membership. Yet, despite a wealth of theoretical frameworks and empirical findings, even fundamental issues such as an agreed definition continue to elude us. We consider some of the most influential theoretical frameworks and associated empirical findings and find that as it stands, our knowledge on gangs is still limited and rather muddy. We suggest that future directions should adopt a more multidisciplinary approach to the study of gangs. To this end, we argue that there is a role for psychology in this important body of work, and that its involvement will provide us with a deeper and more meaningful understanding of gangs and the youth who join them. 3 Running head: Street gangs theory research

Micro-Place Disorder, Subjective Powerlessness and Violent Youth Group Involvement: Testing an Integrative Control Theory

“…The new implication of our finding for theories of VYG is that we have demonstrated that the relationship between observed micro-place disorder and VYG is not just a matter of social controls, self-control and lifestyle risk but also a matter of subjective powerlessness. Subjective powerlessness fits in as a concept in Wood and Alleyne's (2010) unified framework of gang membership but it may also fit in Thornberry's interactional theory. The study of subjective powerlessness is important for practitioners and individuals that are high in subjective powerlessness are harder to motivate than individuals that are low in subjective powerlessness.…”

“…The bottom line is that subjective powerlessness / external locus of control is a concept that keeps popping up in criminological theories. It has recently been argued by Wood and Alleyne (2010) that the study of VYG needs to bring in more elements of psychology such as internal processes (cognitions, learned beliefs, …) that interact with the environment. By reintroducing the learned cognitive belief of subjective powerlessness we attempt to do so in both a theoretical and empirical way.…”

“…Fourthly, In the 1990s developmental and life course theories hit criminology and stimulated scholars' interest to develop newer theories such as Thornberry's interactional theory (see Thornberry 1987;Thornberry, Hawkins and Krohn 1998) and Laub and Sampson's(2003) age-graded informal control theory and recently Wood and Alleyne's (2010) unified framework, a promising overarching framework for the study of causes and consequences of gang membership.…”

Negative organizational dynamics as enabler of white-collar crime

“…The organization gradually loses the ability to control the behavior of its members. There is no functional authority over potential white-collar criminals in the organization (Wood and Alleyne, 2010). As a consequence of social disorganization, organizational opportunity to commit white-collar crime increases (Hoffmann, 2002;Swart and Kinnie, 2003).…”

“…The individual will go on to commit crime if the person is exposed more to attitudes that favor law violation than attitudes that favor abiding by the law (Hoffmann, 2002;Wood and Alleyne, 2010).…”