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Familiar Gangsters: Gang Violence, Brotherhood, and the Media’s Fascination With a Crime Family
Abstract
Media reports can have a significant and lasting impact on public perceptions about crime and criminals. Jonathan, Jarrod, and Jamie Bacon gained notoriety in Vancouver through substantial media coverage for their involvement in gang-related shootings and criminal activity. The present study examines how the media have portrayed the Bacon brothers and their importance in the region's gang scene. We examine all articles published in the area's largest newspaper, the Vancouver Sun, mentioning the Bacon family between 2008 and 2015 (N = 401). Specifically, we explore the media's depiction of the Bacons through developing a thematic content analysis, with themes tested in a keyword analysis using a corpora comparison with a set of reference articles. We argue that the Bacon brothers' family relationship, tumultuous gang alliances, and alleged involvement in Vancouver's worst gang-related shooting led to the media overreporting and sensationalizing their criminal activity and prominence in the local gang landscape. In addition, we contend that the popular theme of crime families provided the media with a narrative that proved useful in a context where the police and the
... Some of the language and rhetoric associated with gang membership is not unique to being a gang member. For example, mainstream media have helped spread the basics of gang culture such that it is possible to feign gang membership to the uninitiated (Dunbar & Kubrin 2018;Esbensen & Tusinski 2007;Gravel, Wong & Simpson 2018;Gushue, Lee, Gravel & Wong 2018;Hallsworth & Young 2008;Howell 2007;Howell & Griffiths 2018). Parents, for example, may have concerns that their children are gang members because they listen to "gangsta" rap and wear a particular color or brand of clothing, despite no other indicators of gang involvement being present. ...
Alt-Right Gangs provides a timely and necessary discussion of youth-oriented groups within the white power movement. Focusing on how these groups fit into the current research on street gangs, Shannon E. Reid and Matthew Valasik catalog the myths and realities around alt-right gangs and their members; illustrate how they use music, social media, space, and violence; and document the risk factors for joining an alt-right gang, as well as the mechanisms for leaving. By presenting a way to understand the growth, influence, and everyday operations of these groups, Alt-Right Gangs informs students, researchers, law enforcement members, and policy makers on this complex subject. Most significantly, the authors offer an extensively evaluated set of prevention and intervention strategies that can be incorporated into existing anti-gang initiatives. With a clear, coherent point of view, this book offers a contemporary synthesis that will appeal to students and scholars alike.
This study explores how characteristics of a homicide affect prominence of the story in a newspaper (including front-page placement, photographs, article length, and a composite measure of these items). Using a sample of 3,998 newspaper articles from the Vancouver Sun (2004–2015), we examine how homicides that (a) may be deemed “sensational crimes” or (b) may incite fear of personal victimization are related to greater prominence. Findings suggest the presence of sensational characteristics have a greater impact on article prominence than the presence of fear-inciting characteristics. Implications for public perception of homicide events and policy are discussed.
This research, based on a content analysis of 4,445 newspaper arti- cles, examines the images that emerge from stories of criminal gangs and society's responses to them. Eight recurrent themes were identiüed. It was discovered that articles devoted to the coverage of gang crimes were outnumbered by stories dealing with various community responses. Articles reporting the results of scientiüc research on gangs constituted the smallest category. The results are discussed in light of their importance in the construction of social problems discourse and the maintenance of symbolic power and social control.
Public knowledge of crime and justice is largely derived from the media. This paper examines the influence of media consumption on fear of crime, punitive attitudes and perceived police effectiveness. This research contributes to the literature by expanding knowledge on the relationship between fear of crime and media consumption. This study also contributes to limited research on the media's influence on punitive attitudes, while providing a much-needed analysis of the relationship between media consumption and satisfaction with the police. Employing OLS regression, the results indicate that respondents who are regular viewers of crime drama are more likely to fear crime. However, the relationship is weak. Furthermore, the results indicate that gender, education, income, age, perceived neighborhood problems and police effectiveness are statistically related to fear of crime. In addition, fear of crime, income, marital status, race, and education are statistically related to punitive attitudes. Finally, age, fear of crime, race, and perceived neighborhood problems are statistically related to perceived police effectiveness.
Gang membership has long been understood to have a disruptive influence on adolescent development and to contribute disproportionately to the rate of delinquent crime. The nature of the impact, and the long-term effects on individuals, have not been well understood. This book uses longitudinal data to examine the developmental consequences of gang membership, and its longer term influence on the life course. This longitudinal approach is made possible by data from a study of antisocial behavior, The Rochester Youth Development Study, which followed one thousand adolescents through their early adult years. The subjects include delinquents who were gang members and others who were not, allowing the authors to compare motives, patterns of behavior, and recurring problems with caregivers and the law, education, peer relations, and career paths. The findings indicate that multiple developmental deficits lead to gang membership and that membership leads to an increase in delinquency.
This review provides an opportunity to assess the current state of gang research and suggest directions for its future. There has been a dramatic increase in research on gangs, gang members, and gang behavior since the early 1990s, making this review especially timely. We use Short’s three-level framework of explanation to organize the findings of prior research, focusing on individual-, micro-, and macro-level research. Attention is focused on the findings of such research, but we also examine theoretical and methodological developments as well. Drawing from Short and life-course research, we introduce a cross-level temporal framework to guide future directions in gang research.
Objectives
To determine whether membership in youth gangs provides a unique social forum for violence amplification. This study examines whether gang membership increases the odds of violent offending over and above involvement in general delinquent and criminal behavior.
Methods
Five waves of data from a multi-site (seven cities) panel study of over 3,700 youth originally nested within 31 schools are analyzed. We estimate four level repeated measures item response theory models, which include a parameter to differentiate the difference in the log of the expected event-rate for violent offense items to the log of the expected event-rate for nonviolent offense items.
Results
Depending on the comparison group (gang youth, overall sample), periods of active gang membership were associated with a 10 or 21% increase in the odds of involvement in violent incidents. When the sample is restricted to youth who report gang membership during the study, the proportionate increase in the odds of violence associated with gangs is statistically similar for males and females. After youth reported leaving the gang their propensity for violence was not significantly different than comparison group observations, although levels of general offending remain elevated.
Conclusions
While results are limited by the school-based sampling strategy, the importance of gang prevention and intervention programming for violence reduction is highlighted. Preventing youth from gang membership or shortening the length of gang careers through interventions may reduce absolute levels of violence.
Some social scientists contend that the nature, frequency, and severity of a particular condition or issue are often grossly exaggerated in order to justify further economic or political action or to enhance the legitimacy of various affected organizations. The result can be a “moral panic,” a situation in which public fears and state interventions greatly exceed the objective threat. Using legislative records, media accounts, and official crime data, we examine whether the response to gangs in Las Vegas constituted a moral panic. After reviewing past research, we analyze data to examine the possible discrepancy between the perceived and the actual severity of the gang problem. We also describe factors that lead to the onset and decline of the moral panic in this particular jurisdiction. We conclude with a discussion of the results as they relate to the “threat” hypothesis and to the political and organizational response to youth gangs in other jurisdictions.
Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that search for themes or patterns, and in relation to different epistemological and ontological positions. We then provide clear guidelines to those wanting to start thematic analysis, or conduct it in a more deliberate and rigorous way, and consider potential pitfalls in conducting thematic analysis. Finally, we outline the disadvantages and advantages of thematic analysis. We conclude by advocating thematic analysis as a useful and flexible method for qualitative research in and beyond psychology.
This study is based on three years of field work with 99 active gang members and 24 family members. The book describes the attractiveness of gangs, the process of joining, their chaotic and loose organisation, and their members' predominant activities - mostly hanging out, drinking, and using drugs. The authors also discuss gang members' rather slapdash involvement in major property crime and their disorganised participation in drug traffic, as well as the often fatal consequences of their violent life-style. Although the book focuses on the individual, organisational, and institutional aspects of gang membership, it also explores gang members' involvement with other school and neighborhood structures. Extensive interviews with family members provide groundbreaking insights into the gang members' lives. As much as possible, however, the story is told in the gang members' own words.
The current study explores the relationships among high-profile homicide incidents, media representations of gang homicides, and the establishment of specialized police task forces in British Columbia, Canada. The sample includes all articles on homicide published between 2004 and 2010 in a major daily newspaper (N = 2,873). We examine the attention given to gang-related homicides compared to other homicides, explore the impact of high-profile shootings on trends in reporting, and discuss the timing of media reports in relation to the creation of specialized police forces. Results are discussed with respect to the symbiotic relationship between police organizations and the media.
Research addressing the effects of mass media on individuals is limited because it does not account for how mass communications involve human agency, various technologies, and social institutions. Recent studies show the mass media to be more open, diverse, pervasive, and influential than most researchers have argued. The mass media do not merely report on events but rather participate directly in processes by which events are constituted and exist in the world. The mass media do not stand apart from people and the various arenas in which they seek justice but are integral to their everyday processes for seeking justice. However, in the very process of participating in these various arenas of justice the mass media expose their own injustices which become subject to regulation and reform. © 1991 The Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency.
Youth gangs are a major part of the urban landscape. Gang members always have been involved in collective and individual violence and, in recent years, in drug use and drug dealing. Involvement in drug dealing recently has been associated with increased violence among gangs. However, variation in organizational and social processes within gangs suggests that there also will be variation in drug-crime relationships among gang members. Analyses of the drug-crime relationships were conducted from interviews with 151 gang members in three cities. Four types of gangs were identified, and similar gang types were observed in the three cities. All gang types had high involvement in drug use, but drug dealing varied. The severity of collective gang crime was associated with the prevalence of drug use within a gang. Drug dealing occurred among gangs with both high and low involvement in violence and other crimes. Involvement in cocaine, opiates, and PCP occurred among both violent and nonviolent gangs, as well as among gangs with different involvement in drug dealing. The results suggest that the drug-crime relationship is skewed and spurious for gang members, similar to relationships among nongang inner-city adolescents. Members of violent gangs more often reported the existence of several features of social organization and cohesion in their gangs, independent of gang involvement in drug use and dealing. Similar to other urban adolescents, for gang members violence is not an inevitable consequence of involvement in drug use or dealing.
In Contemporary Social Constructionism, Darin Weinberg provides a detailed, critical overview of the key themes of this school of thought, which explains how phenomena and ways of thinking develop in their social contexts. Weinberg traces the multiple roots of social constructionism, and shows how it has been used, critiqued, and refined within the social and human sciences. Contemporary Social Constructionism illuminates how constructionist social science developed in relation to positivism, critical and hermeneutic philosophy, and feminism and then goes on to distinguish the concept from postmodernism and deconstructionism. In addition, Weinberg shows how social constructionists have contributed to our understanding of biology, the body, self-knowledge, and social problems. The result is a contemporary statement of social constructionism that shores up its scientific veracity and demonstrates its analytic power, promise, and influence. The book concludes with a look toward the future of the concept and its use.
In the past two decades, many prevention and suppression programs have been initiated on a national and local level to combat street gangs-but what do we really know about them? Why do youths join them? Why do they proliferate? This book is a crucial update and critical examination of our understanding of gangs and major gang-control programs across the nation. Often perceived solely as an urban issue, street gangs are also a suburban and rural dilemma. The chapters focus on gang proliferation, migration, and crime patterns, and highlight known risk factors that lead youths to form and join gangs within communities. Dispelling the long-standing assumptions that the public, the media, and law enforcement have about street gangs, they present a comprehensive overview of how gangs are organized and structured. They assess the major gang programs across the nation and argue that existing prevention, intervention, and suppression methods targeting individuals, groups, and communities, have been largely ineffective. They then close by offering valuable policy guidelines for practitioners on how to intervene and control gangs more successfully. The book fills an important gap in the literature on street gangs and social control.
The emergence of “prosumers” and “produsers” suggests that production and reception are more conflated now than ever before. But is their mediation through the performance of hybrid roles new? And were the two ever separate? This article criticizes social theories of the media and “production studies” for overstating the distinction between producers and audiences and the instrumental means whereby the former engage the latter. It rejects this postulate of a “structured break” between production and reception by discussing the producers’ tacit knowledge of the audience, their reflexivity and socialization, and their use of “audience images.” The article then draws on Goffman (1959) and Meyrowitz (1985) to propose a new model for understanding production: as a social situation sustained by participants but explicitly oriented to an absent third party: the audience. It concludes by discussing the implications of the model for the study of production and producers.
Over the past two decades police media units have played an ever-increasing role in managing the dissemination of information between the police and media organisations. Using the example of the New South Wales Police Media Unit in Australia (hereafter NSW PMU) this article assesses the journalistic deployment of PMU information and develops a broader sociopolitical argument explaining the growth of PMUs more generally. We analyse qualitative research data, in the form of interviews with journalists and NSW PMU staff (n = 29), and quantitative data from an analysis of two Sydney-based daily newspapers. We suggest that the growth of PMUs can be explained with reference to new programs of governing crime that developed throughout the last quarter of the 20th century as well as significant changes to the global media landscape.
The popular image of youth gangs is largely dependent on law enforcement data and subsequent media reinforcement of these data in the popular press. Recent research on youth gangs, however, calls into question the accuracy of these portrayals. In spite of an ever-increasing body of research that contradicts the popular stereotype of gangs, the media perpetuates this inaccuracy. In a review of all gang-related articles appearing in the nation's "big three" newsweeklies (Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report) between 1980 and May 2006, we conclude that there was a strong tendency to provide stereotypical depiction of gangs and gang members that promote misperceptions about youth gangs, their members, and their group characteristics. Youth gangs are problematic enough in reality without the media contributing to exaggerations of their attributes that are associated with violence and organizational capacity.
The relationship between the police and the news media is an integral part of how police forces communicate into the public
sphere. Using, as a benchmark, Chibnall's influential account of English crime reporting, Law-and-Order News, and drawing
on Habermas's concept of the public sphere, this paper examines the contemporary police–media relationship. It analyses the
rise of police corporate communications against the apparent decline of specialist crime reporting drawing on interviews with
crime reporters, police communications managers and a survey of police forces in England, Wales and Scotland. The paper concludes
that ‘law-and-order news’ currently remains contested but the relationship is increasingly asymmetrical in favour of the police.
This paper compares police, newspaper, television, and public images of crime trends for the seven FBI index crimes over time, the relative frequency of occurrence of these offenses, and the characteristics of persons committing them. Media presentations of crime trends over time are found generally unrelated to trends in police statistics. Newspaper presentation of the relative distribution of crimes approximates police figures more closely than does the television presentation. Public views of the relative distribution of crimes but not of crime trends more closely approximate media presentations than police presentations. Television's impact on public views of crime is apparently minor. Reasons for these findings and their implications for crime news reporting are discussed.
This article examines how the news production process affects the presentation of crime in the news media. Content analysis and ethnographic methods were used to determine the types of crime presented. The media rely heavily on criminal justice sources for crime story information; this reliance influences the type of stories selected and how they are presented to the public. The news media and the sources are motivated to cooperate because cooperation allows each party to accomplish organizational objectives. The media presents a distorted picture of the types of crime known to the police because sources define what is important about crime in a way that furthers organizational needs. News media select and produce those stories which they think are of most interest to the public. This research finds that violent crime predominates in print and electronic media. The presentation of crime, however, varies somewhat, depending on the need for news media to satisfy format requirements and on their degree of access to serious crime.
Social problems may fruitfully be looked at as constructed phenomena, that is, what constitutes a problem is the concern that segments of the public feel about a given condition. From the constructionist perspective, that concern need not bear a close relationship with the concrete harm or damage that the condition poses or causes. At times, substantial numbers of the members of societies are subject to intense feelings of concern about a given threat which a sober assessment of the evidence suggests is either nonexistent or considerably less than would be expected from the concrete harm posed by the threat. Such over-heated periods of intense concern are typically short-lived. In such periods, which sociologists refer to as “moral panics,” the agents responsible for the threat—“folk devils”—are stereotyped and classified as deviants. What accounts for these outbreaks or episodes of moral panics? Three theories have been proposed: grassroots, elite-engineered, and interest group theories. Moral panics are...
Youth gangs are a major part of the urban landscape. Gang members always have been involved in collective and individual violence and, in recent years, in drug use and drug dealing. Involvement in drug dealing recently has been associated with increased violence among gangs. However, variation in organizational and social processes within gangs suggests that there also will be variation in drug-crime relationships among gang members. Analyses of the drug-crime relationships were conducted from interviews with 151 gang members in three cities. Four types of gangs were identified, and similar gang types were observed in the three cities. All gang types had high involvement in drug use, but drug dealing varied. The severity of collective gang crime was associated with the prevalence of drug use within a gang. Drug dealing occurred among gangs with both high and low involvement in violence and other crimes. Involvement in cocaine, opiates, and PCP occurred among both violent and nonviolent gangs, as well as among gangs with different involvement in drug dealing. The results suggest that the drug-crime relationship is skewed and spurious for gang members, similar to relationships among nongang inner-city adolescents. Members of violent gangs more often reported the existence of several features of social organization and cohesion in their gangs, independent of gang involvement in drug use and dealing. Similar to other urban adolescents, for gang members violence is not an inevitable consequence of involvement in drug use or dealing.
Police organizations must strategically control their external environment in order to maintain organizational legitimacy. Exploiting their relationship with the news media is one way to accomplish this goal effectively. Despite the documented importance of crime, justice, and social control as a news topic, there is a limited understanding of the variables driving how police and media evaluate this relationship. This study used data collected from a national sample of police media personnel to fill this gap, and concluded that the police and media valued their interdependent relationship, but for different reasons. Police public information officers recognize the power of the media and attempt to use this power to promote the organization. News personnel are satisfied because the police provide data so they can easily produce crime stories. The implications for understanding how police organizations control their external organization are discussed.
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Brothers in crime; Police investigators say Jonathan, Jarrod and Jamie Bacon of Abbotsford illustrate the extreme violence of gangster life in B.C. Their father says they are innocent. The Vancouver Sun
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