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Birds of a Feather Fight Together: Status-Enhancing Violence, Social Distance and the Emergence of Homogenous Gangs

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Jason Gravel at Temple University
Jason Gravel
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Objectives This study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding two empirical findings from gang research: (1) gangs are generally racially homogenous, even in heterogeneous environments, and (2) gang violence tends to be intra-racial. We draw from the extensive literature on street gangs as well as from research on group formation and status-enhancing behavior to develop a theoretical model of gang formation. Methods Using game theory, we model the simultaneous decisions of individuals to commit status-enhancing acts of violence and to seek protection by joining a gang. We then conduct computer simulations to examine the resulting patterns of violence and gang composition. ResultsWe demonstrate that as long as some social distance exists between racial groups in a community, gang violence will be intra-racial and gangs will be homogenous. We find that our results are robust to a number of simple variations of the model and allow us to generate several hypotheses about the nature of gang formation and patterns of violence. Conclusions When violence is motivated by socially constructed rewards, socially closer targets are likely to yield greater rewards. In such a system, individuals must reduce their likelihood of victimization by entering a social contract of non-violence (i.e. gang membership) with individuals who might view them as status-enhancing targets (i.e. socially close individuals). The result is that gangs are made up of socially close individuals interested in attacking other socially close individuals. Therefore, gangs tend to be racially homogenous and violence is overwhelmingly intra-racial.
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Birds of a Feather Fight Together: Status-Enhancing
Violence, Social Distance and the Emergence
of Homogenous Gangs
Jason Gravel
1
•Blake Allison
2
•Jenny West-Fagan
1
•
Michael McBride
3
•George E. Tita
1
Published online: 10 November 2016
Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract
Objectives This study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding two empirical
findings from gang research: (1) gangs are generally racially homogenous, even in
heterogeneous environments, and (2) gang violence tends to be intra-racial. We draw from
the extensive literature on street gangs as well as from research on group formation and
status-enhancing behavior to develop a theoretical model of gang formation.
Methods Using game theory, we model the simultaneous decisions of individuals to
commit status-enhancing acts of violence and to seek protection by joining a gang. We
then conduct computer simulations to examine the resulting patterns of violence and gang
composition.
Results We demonstrate that as long as some social distance exists between racial groups
in a community, gang violence will be intra-racial and gangs will be homogenous. We find
that our results are robust to a number of simple variations of the model and allow us to
generate several hypotheses about the nature of gang formation and patterns of violence.
Conclusions When violence is motivated by socially constructed rewards, socially closer
targets are likely to yield greater rewards. In such a system, individuals must reduce their
likelihood of victimization by entering a social contract of non-violence (i.e. gang mem-
bership) with individuals who might view them as status-enhancing targets (i.e. socially
close individuals). The result is that gangs are made up of socially close individuals
interested in attacking other socially close individuals. Therefore, gangs tend to be racially
homogenous and violence is overwhelmingly intra-racial.
Keywords Gangs Violence Group formation Status Game theory
&George E. Tita
gtita@uci.edu
1
Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, 2340 Social Ecology II,
Irvine, CA 92697-7080, USA
2
Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
3
Department of Economics, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
123
J Quant Criminol (2018) 34:189–219
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-016-9331-8
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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