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Social Network Position of Gang Members in Schools: Implications for Recruitment and Gang Prevention

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Justice Quarterly
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Abstract

Schools are venues in which gang and non-gang involved youth converge. It is therefore a likely venue for gang recruitment. The extent to which this occurs depends upon the ability of gang members to connect with non-gang members. In this study, we compare the social network positions of high social status gang members who are well integrated into school networks with low status members who are not. Using network data from the Add Health study (n = 1,822), we find that not only are high status gang members strongly embedded within school networks, but that this status is driven by their ability to connect with non-gang members rather than other gang members (indicated by the high number of friendship nominations they receive from non-gang members). These gang members are potentially in optimal positions to influence others to join gangs. The implications of these results for school-based gang prevention programs are discussed.
Social network position of gang members in schools: Implications for recruitment and gang
prevention
Owen Gallupe*, PhD
Department of Sociology and Legal Studies
University of Waterloo
ogallupe@uwaterloo.ca
* Corresponding author
Jason Gravel, MA
Department of Criminology, Law and Society
University of California, Irvine
jgravel@uci.edu
The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Justice
Quarterly, [Published online May 19, 2017],
http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/07418825.2017.1323114
Biographical notes
Owen Gallupe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the
University of Waterloo. His research focuses on peer influence and offending, social networks,
and drug markets. His work has been published in venues such as Journal of Research in Crime
and Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Crime and Delinquency.
Jason Gravel is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the
University of California, Irvine. His current research interests include social network analysis,
street gangs, crime prevention and intervention and co-offending. His recent work has been
published in Criminology and Public Policy, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of
Criminal Justice, and Criminal Justice and Behavior.
Funding acknowledgement
This research was supported by a University of Waterloo Faculty of Arts Starter Grant.
Acknowledgements
This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris
and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice
Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative
funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald
R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to
obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website
(http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921
for this analysis.
Abstract
Schools are venues in which gang and non-gang involved youth converge. It is therefore a likely
venue for gang recruitment. The extent to which this occurs depends upon the ability of gang
members to connect with non-gang members. In this study, we compare the social network
positions of high social status gang members who are well integrated into school networks with
low status members who are not. Using network data from the Add Health study (n=1822), we
find that not only are high status gang members strongly embedded within school networks, but
that this status is driven by their ability to connect with non-gang members rather than other gang
members (indicated by the high number of friendship nominations they receive from non-gang
members). These gang members are potentially in optimal positions to influence others to join
gangs. The implications of these results for school-based gang prevention programs are
discussed.
Keywords
Gang; social networks; schools; recruitment; treatment effects
Social network position of gang members in schools: Implications for recruitment and gang
prevention
The study of school peer networks has taught us much about peer influences on
delinquency. Social network data in particular has allowed researchers to examine how certain
structural positions in these networks moderate the peer-delinquency relationship. For instance,
Haynie (2001) found that peer delinquency has a greater influence on adolescents’ own
delinquency when the adolescent occupies a central position, in a dense network, and when they
are popular (i.e., nominated as friends by many others). Visibility and popularity in networks
grants people in these positions significant power over their peers (e.g., Adler & Adler, 1998).
Researchers have found that affiliation with adolescents perceived to be popular by their peers is
significantly associated with the adoption of aggressive and antisocial norms and behavior
(Cohen & Prinstein, 2006; Rose, Swenson, & Waller, 2004). Adolescents are more likely to
espouse deviant attitudes and engage in delinquent behavior when they believe that high-status
peers endorse such attitudes and behaviors (Cohen & Prinstein, 2006).
Extending this line of research on the importance of network position to the study of
gangs, the premise for the present study is that the social organization of school peer networks
makes schools an ideal setting for youths to become exposed to, and recruited1 into, youth gangs.
We base this assumption on two empirical observations. First, research has shown that youths
join gangs on average between 11 and 15 years old (e.g., Pyrooz, 2014a), a time when much of
their lives are spent in a classroom. Although schools are often thought of as environments where
1 We use the term recruitment throughout the manuscript for a lack of a better term. We
understand that recruitment often implies a certain directionality and intent (e.g., a gang member
actively looking for new members), however we see these characteristics as sufficient but not
necessary in the context of the present paper. Recruitment, here, is defined more broadly as the
influence of a current member on the decision of a new member to joining a gang, whether this
influence is actively exerted by the current member or not.
pupils learn to internalize prosocial attitudes, Garot (2010) points out that they are also important
settings where gang members can perform their gang identities. Second, although little research
has specifically examined gang recruitment strategies, Densley's (2012) work suggests that gang
recruitment occurs in a context where gang “recruiters” and prospective members share a similar
social environment. Pyrooz and Densley (2016) point out that recruitment is a negotiated process
by which prospective members are likely to approach the gang, and the gang ultimately evaluates
the suitability of the member by identifying signals of trustworthiness. The exchanges necessary
for the identification of these signals require at least some overlap between the gang's social
circle and the social circles of prospective members. Although Densley's (2012) research points
to the importance of neighborhoods as settings for such exchanges, we posit that school networks
can potentially play an important role in the recruitment process as well.
The current study seeks to examine whether gang members occupy positions of influence
in school peer networks that could potentially make them effective recruiters. We are not
specifically testing whether gang members recruit others through school networks, but rather we
are interested in examining whether gang members are at a disadvantage in prosocial peer
networks. As we explain below, on the one hand there are many reasons to believe that gang
members would be less likely to attain high social status in a school network. On the other hand,
gang members, like most youths, do attend school, and given the association between popularity
and other measures of delinquency, it is not inconceivable that some gang members could
occupy central and visible positions in school networks. To the extent that gang members enjoy
high social status and this status is not simply derived from their connections to fellow gang
members at the school, we may hypothesize that these gang members could be in unique
positions of influence, and thus, potentially effective recruiters.
Gang members' presence in school networks
Past research on gangs suggests that many factors would make it difficult for members to
attain positions of influence in school networks. For one, gang members are more likely to be
dropouts, diminishing their possible influence in schools (e.g., Pyrooz, 2014b). Moreover, in
recent years, schools have adopted increasingly punitive zero-tolerance policies to respond to
perceived threats of violence (e.g., Gerlinger & Wo, 2016), many specifically targeting gang
behaviors (Arciaga, Sakamoto, & Jones, 2010). Such policies often lead to suspensions and
expulsions, which would further reduce gang members’ presence in schools.
Even if they are present in schools, most theoretical frameworks suggest that gang
members would be only peripheral members to the school's social life. Subcultural theories (e.g.,
Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Cohen, 1955; Miller, 1958), life-course theories (e.g., Pyrooz &
Sweeten, 2015), control theories (e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Hirschi, 1969), and
interactional theories (e.g., Thornberry, 1987) all suggest that the behaviors, attitudes, and values
of gang members would lead them to become outsiders in prosocial networks. Furthermore,
researchers have often found gang members to exhibit traits and behavior that characterize a
general pattern of social disability (Short & Strodtbeck, 1965). Sanchez Jankowski (1991) argued
that gang members tended to exhibit “defiant individualism” (p. 23) which is associated with a
general sense of mistrust in others and social isolation. More recently, Vasquez, Osman, and
Wood (2012) found that gang members were more likely to ruminate about adverse situations
and redirect aggression towards innocent others. These findings are consistent with Hirschi's
(1969) and Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general argument that delinquents are likely to
alienate others and therefore possess low levels of social status.
However, empirical research has presented evidence showing that delinquents tend to
possess reasonable levels of social skills (Baerveldt, Van Rossem, Vermande, & Weerman, 2004;
Giordano, Cernkovich, & Pugh, 1986; Houtzager & Baerveldt, 1999; Smångs, 2010).
Furthermore, although gang members may be drawn to the delinquent, anti-social network that is
their gang, it does not preclude them from participating in other networks. Decker and Van
Winkle (1996) found that although gang members' association with most legal social institutions
(e.g., recreation, church, job market, neighborhood clubs) dramatically decreased after joining, a
substantial proportion of their sample remained in school often far beyond the time when youth
were legally obligated to attend. Given that most ties to social circles outside the gang are
severed upon joining, school, for many gang involved youth, is one of the only settings where
they interact with non-gang youth (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996). Furthermore, Decker and Van
Winkle (1996, p. 204) observed that the structure and schedule of school life “restrict gang
members' tendency exclusively to relate to fellow gang members.”
Participation in networks that are not saturated with gang members is likely crucial to
ensuring the resiliency of gangs. Researchers have consistently found that most gang members
remain affiliated with the gang between 1 and 3 years (Esbensen & Huizinga, 1993; Gordon et
al., 2004; Hill, Howell, Hawkins, & Battin-Pearson, 1999; Melde, Diem, & Drake, 2012; Pyrooz,
2014a; Pyrooz, Sweeten, & Piquero, 2013; Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, Smith, & Tobin, 2003).
Yet, gangs often survive for decades despite high membership turnover. Such resiliency is in part
possible because of a constant influx of new members. Gang members who are embedded in
school networks may play a key role in connecting potential recruits to the gang. Yet, very little
research has provided any in-depth examination of gang members in school settings. This is
somewhat surprising given that schools are an important area for gang prevention and
intervention (Esbensen & Osgood, 1999; Wong, Gravel, Bouchard, Descormiers, & Morselli,
2016).
Even if recruitment does not occur on school grounds or even when prospective gang
members become members after they have left school, the relationships individuals maintain
during this time are likely to be an important factor in facilitating gang joining. As Thrasher
(1927) pointed out almost a century ago, gangs emerge from “spontaneous play-groups” (p. 25)
and sometimes arise when individuals “are brought together by some interested agency” where a
“conventional form of organization is imposed, and activities are directed and supervised” (p.
28). Although Thrasher (1927) spoke specifically about “clubs” such as dance clubs and sports
teams, schools play the same basic role as these conventional organizations in bringing together
youths who otherwise may have never known one another.
Network position, influence, and gang joining
The structure of ties among network members has implications for the influence that
individuals hold relative to others. Powerful network members tend to be those who are highly
connected (Freeman, 1978), have ties with others who are well connected (Bonacich, 1987)2, and
who act as a link between otherwise disconnected groups (Burt, 1992). These people hold
desirable positions within the network as they receive more attention than others (Vaughn &
Waters, 1981) and play a key role in determining the actions and attitudes that are considered to
be acceptable and unacceptable (Brown, 2004). Others seeking to enhance their own social status
are likely to emulate those possessing social power. This dynamic is present in Sutherland’s
differential association theory (Sutherland & Cressey, 1978, p. 81) in which he notes the
importance of “the prestige of the source of a criminal or anticriminal pattern” in determining the
2 Bonacich (1987) also discussed the reverse dynamic in which being connected to people who
are poorly connected makes them dependent on you. This form is less relevant for the current
study.
criminogenic impact of associations. Criminological (or related) studies have highlighted the fact
that people with high social status exert a greater influence than others on the deviant behavior of
peers (Cohen & Prinstein, 2006; Haynie, 2001).
In the context of school-based gang recruitment, then, we would expect that gang
members who occupy positions of high social status3 in the school are likely to make gang
membership seem more appealing to people outside the gang who see high status gang members
enjoying social benefits. This is likely to operate even in the absence of any active recruiting
efforts. That is, the mere sight of gang members receiving social attention may be enough to
make gang membership a more appealing option than it otherwise would be. Similar dynamics
have been investigated in other contexts. For example, Gallupe (2016) found that schools with a
greater proportion of students who were both highly delinquent and highly popular tended to
have higher levels of offending regardless of whether a direct connection existed between
network members. He attributed this to a modeling effect whereby the delinquency of high status
others was conflated with their popularity making delinquency more attractive to others due to its
perceived link to popularity. Other research has supported the behavioral importance of this type
of indirect network connection on delinquency (Payne & Cornwell, 2007), drinking (Kreager &
Haynie, 2011), and sexual activity (Warner, Giordano, Manning, & Longmore, 2011).
In this paper, then, our goal is to investigate two research questions: 1) Can gang
members achieve high levels of social status in a school-based network?, and 2) If so, is this
3 A note on terminology is in order here. “Status” has a different meaning in the general social
network literature than it does in the gang literature. In the network literature, a person with high
social status is one who is optimally positioned in terms of having lots of connections (often to
others who are well connected), being centrally located, and/or bridging gaps in the network. In
the gang literature, status, or “status problems” (e.g., Cohen, 1955) are related to macro-level
mechanisms that divert youths towards the gang subculture when they are blocked from attaining
it in the mainstream culture. Status is also often associated with the symbolic benefits associated
with the violence and aggressive behavior that gang members engage in (e.g., Anderson, 1999;
Cohen, 1955). In this study, our use of the word “status” is aligned with the network literature.
status driven by their connections to other gang members? The social disability hypothesis
suggests that gang members would be peripheral in prosocial networks and have a tendency to
gravitate towards other gang members. Under these circumstances, gang members are unlikely to
have significant enough influence to persuade others to join gangs. Conversely, research
examining the relationship between status in peer networks and delinquency suggests that some
delinquents are indeed able to garner popularity and therefore can be found in positions where
they can exert significant influence on the behavior of their peers. If gang members do indeed
occupy such positions in school networks and this status is driven by connecting to people
outside the gang, it would be reasonable to believe that these members could influence peers to
join a gang or at the very least possess favorable views of the gang simply by making the gang
more attractive by virtue of their high social status.
Methods
Sample
The data used in this study were from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to
Adult Health (Add Health) (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design). Add Health is a
large, representative school-based sample of American youth in the seventh through twelfth
grades at the first wave of collection (1994-5). There have been four waves of data collection
with a fifth wave being collected in 2016-2018. We focused on the second wave (1996) and
limited our analysis to the two large high schools in the “saturation sample.” There are a number
of reasons for this. The first reason is that there was no gang membership item collected at wave
1. The second reason is that our interests in social network position necessitated the use of full
network sociometric data, something that was only collected for 16 schools (the saturation
sample) at wave 2. The saturation sample consisted of 14 small schools (mean=67 students per
school at wave 2) and two large schools
(http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design/wave1) in which an effort was made to
sample the whole network longitudinally. One of the large schools (n=635; gang n=22) was from
a mid-sized, predominantly white city; the other (n=1187; gang n=101) was from an ethnically
heterogeneous metropolitan area (total n=1834).4 Four of the small saturation schools had no
gang members and the small saturation school with the largest number of gang members had
only six. The average small saturation school had 2.4 gang members in it. Given such low
prevalence rates, we decided against including students from these schools in the analysis. The
implication of using schools from the saturation sample is that this study is not representative of
all adolescents who were in American schools in the mid-1990s.
Variables
Gang membership was defined by a question asking if the participant had “been initiated
into a named gang” (yes/no). Although a measure of current membership would likely be more
precise than a measure that captures whether a youth was ever a gang member, past research has
found such measures to be robust and reliable indicators of gang membership (Esbensen,
Winfree, He, & Taylor, 2001). Prior research using Add Health found the same measure to be
associated with a greater involvement in group fights, “an activity typical to gang members”
(Suh, Brashears, & Genkin, 2016, p. 284). In the subset of the data we used, we examined the
relationship between the gang membership item and group fighting in the past 12 months and
found them to be strongly related. Among those not reporting having been initiated into a gang,
17% indicated that they participated in a group fight in the last year compared to 64% of those
4 There were 2553 participant students from these schools at wave 1 and 1834 at wave 2. The
attrition rate in these schools was therefore 28%. Of these, 1822 had valid scores on the measure
of gang membership and were included in the current study. Missing values on the other
variables were imputed via chained equations. The variable with the greatest amount of missing
data was ‘grades’ at 12% (220 out of 1822 cases missing).
reporting gang membership (p<.05). This lends support to the idea that the majority of people
reporting gang membership were current (or at least recent) gang members. It is possible,
however, that some of the people reporting that they had been initiated into a gang had left the
gang by the time they participated in the survey. Potential implications of this are discussed in
the Limitations section.
Sociometric data were collected by asking participants to nominate up to five male and
five female friends in the school (“tell me the name of your 5 best male/female friends”). The
following variables measure network position within the school. In-degree is a count of the
number of friendship nominations received from others. This is also divided into the number of
friendship nominations received from other gang members (# gang friends – in-network) and
people from outside of the gang (# non-gang friends – in-network). We also created a measure of
the proportion of gang alters by dividing the number of nominations received from gang
members by the total number of nominations received. Bonacich centrality combines elements of
connectivity with the connectivity of peers with the idea that a person who scores highly on this
measure has many friends who are highly connected themselves (beta=0.1) (Bonacich, 1987).
Reach in three steps is the number of others a person can connect to within three ties. The
measures listed above were created using the receive-network (incoming ties only). Effective size
(Burt, 1992) is a measure of the redundancy in the network. Those whose networks exhibit
greater effective size are connected to a greater number of unconnected groups. Large effective
network size is thought to bring informational benefits (since people within the same group are
subject to the same set of knowledge) while facilitating the spread of influence to those various
groups.
We also accounted for the tendency of individuals to send friendship nominations to
others. Activity (out-degree) is a count of the number of friendship nominations sent to others.
This is divided into the number of gang members that a person nominates as a friend (# gang
friends – out-network) and the number of nominations of non-gang members (# non-gang
friends – out-network).
The distinction between high and low status gang members was determined using in-
degree, a common measure of popularity. Gang members who scored greater than one standard
deviation above the gang member mean on in-degree were considered to possess high social
status (106 low status gang members; 17 high status gang members).5
Analysis
We used treatment effects analysis (e.g., Loughran & Mulvey, 2010; Morgan & Harding,
2006; Morgan & Winship, 2007) to estimate group differences between a) gang and non-gang
members and b) high status and low status gang members. More specifically, we used inverse-
probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) to generate the potential outcome means,
average treatment effects (ATE), and significance tests as IPWRA is doubly robust (i.e., even if
only one of the treatment model or outcome model is properly specified, the estimates will be
accurate) (Wooldridge, 2007, 2010).
5 Using this definition, there were 10 high status gang members from the school in the mid-sized
city and 7 from the school in the metropolitan area. We also tested models using an alternative
indicator in which high status gang members were those who were one standard deviation above
the within-school gang member mean (4 high status gang members from the school in the mid-
sized city; 11 from the school in the metropolitan area). These supplementary models were less
conservative. While three of the social status variables [reach in three steps (average treatment
effect (ATE)=12.36); # gang friends – in-network (ATE=0.30); # gang friends – out-network
(ATE=1.24)] now reached traditional levels of statistical significance in these analyses, the main
messages were unaltered. Our decision is therefore to present the more conservative analyses.
The supplementary results are available on request.
The treatment and outcomes were modeled using a variety of sociodemographic
characteristics as well as variables that previous research has found to be theoretically or
empirically related to gang membership and delinquency more broadly. These include age (in
years), delinquency, peer delinquency, gender (0=female, 1=male), race6 (0=not white, 1=white),
socioeconomic status (SES), alcohol use (past 12 months; 0=never to 6=every day/almost every
day), cannabis use (“Since [previous wave - ~1 year], have you tried or used marijuana?”; 0=no,
1=yes), attachment to school, friends, and parents, and grades. Following the work of Haynie
(2001, 2002), the delinquency measure was a summation of 14 dichotomous indicators of
offending behavior in the past year (0=no involvement, 1=at least once). Peer delinquency was
the average score on the delinquency measure of the people who nominated each individual as a
friend (in-network). The SES variable was created by combining items measuring parents’
occupation and education (see Bearman, Moody, & Stovel, 2004; Young, 2011).7 Attachment to
school was measured by taking the average of three items asking participants to rate their
agreement with the following statements: “You feel close to people at your school”; “You feel
like you are a part of your school”; and “You are happy to be at your school” (all coded
1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree). Attachment to friends was measured by the following
question: “How much do you feel that your friends care about you?” (1=not at all to 5=very
much). Attachment to parents was the average of four items: “How close do you feel to your
[mom/dad]?” (1=not close at all to 5=extremely close) and “How much do you think she/he cares
about you?” (1=not at all to 5=very much) (separate items for mothers and fathers). For those
6 There was a high degree of collinearity between race and school attended (one school was 98%
white; the other was 6% white). By controlling for race, we effectively controlled for school as
well.
7 SES and race were both drawn from the wave 1 in-home data set as the required variables were
not collected at wave 2. This is unlikely to be problematic given the general temporal stability in
these measures.
with a single parent, the two-item average was taken. Grades was the average of their most
recent grades across mathematics, English, science, and history/social sciences (for the courses
that they took) (1=D or lower to 4=A). Descriptive statistics for all variables are displayed in
table 1.
[INSERT TABLE 1 HERE]
Results
Figure 1 shows the full network for one of the schools. The important thing to notice is
that gang members were not separated into cliques in any obvious way. Instead they were linked
to both gang and non-gang affiliated adolescents. Like those not in gangs, some gang members
were central while others were peripheral.
[INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE]
Figure 2 provides an example of the connectivity between gang and non-gang members.
It includes alters within two ties of the focal gang member (ego). It shows that this gang member
had ties to other gang members but was also highly connected and central in a network that
consisted predominantly of adolescents not in a gang.
[INSERT FIGURE 2 HERE]
In table 2, we can see that, for the most part, social status was statistically equivalent for
gang and non-gang members (p>.05). Gang members received the same number of friendship
nominations from others (mean in-degree=1.76) as non-gang members (mean=2.02). There were
also no differences in terms of possessing connections to more highly connected alters between
gang members (mean Bonacich centrality=3.18) and non-gang members (mean=3.08). Similarly,
there were no differences in the size of the broader network surrounding gang members (mean
reach in three steps=14.85) compared to non-gang members (mean=13.20). However, gang
members were slightly less adept at bridging between groups (mean effective size=2.35)
compared to non-gang members (mean=2.76). For the most part, these results suggest that gang
members are neither privileged nor disadvantaged in their standing in networks comprised
predominantly of non-gang members. Further, there appears to be little evidence for age
differences between gang (mean=17.38) and non-gang members (mean=17.24).
[INSERT TABLE 2 HERE]
When shifting our focus to the group of high status gang members, we start to see how
they occupy positions that could be advantageous for purposes of recruiting. Unsurprisingly
given that status is defined using in-degree centrality, high status gang members received more
friendship nominations (mean in-degree=2.87) than low status gang members (mean=0.76). The
results reported in Table 3 highlight the fact that with high status comes the increased ability to
navigate social networks. Compared to those with low status, high status gang members were
also tied to more highly connected others (Bonacich p<.05), occupied stronger brokerage
positions between groups (effective size p<.05), and could reach a greater number of alters
within three ties (reach in three steps; though despite the substantial difference in potential
outcome means, at p=.107 it did not reach statistical significance).
[INSERT TABLE 3 HERE]
However, in-degree, Bonacich centrality, reach in three steps, and effective size reflect
patterns of ties to anyone in the network regardless of gang membership status. When focusing
on network characteristics relevant to recruiting, it is informative to specifically examine gang
versus non-gang ties. There was no difference between low status (mean=0.22) and high status
gang involved youths (mean=0.34) in the raw number of friendship nominations received from
other gang members. Similarly, there was no difference in the proportion of friends who were in
gangs for low status (mean=0.11) and high status gang members (mean=0.07). Where we see
significant differences between high and low status gang members is in the level of connectivity
to alters who were not involved with gangs. On average, low status gang members received less
than one friendship nomination from someone who was not a gang member (mean=0.53)
compared to high status gang members who received over two friendship nominations from non-
gang alters (mean=2.52). Since these measures were derived from nominations of the individual
by others, the popularity of these gang members among non-gang youths was not driven by their
nominating of others as friends. Not surprisingly, however, high status gang members were more
active in nominating others as friends (activity p<.05), particularly non-gang members (out-
network: non-gang p<.05). There was no difference between high and low status gang members
in their tendency to nominate other gang members as friends (out-network: gang p>.05). These
results present a picture of high status gang members as both appealing to non-gang members as
friends and who find non-gang members appealing as friends. There were no age differences
between high status (mean=17.30) and low status gang members (mean=17.23).
We argue that the position of high status gang members in the school network places
them in optimal positions for recruiting others into the gang. However, we must acknowledge the
alternative hypothesis that gang members who hold peripheral positions in the school network
(i.e., low status members) may actually be more effective at recruiting others to join the gang,
even if their pool of potential recruits is more limited. Since individuals have finite resources of
time and energy to devote to each of the social circles they frequent, spending substantial effort
to maintain relationships in one network, as high status gang members appear to be doing in
school, may in fact weaken one's embeddedness in another network (e.g., Granovetter, 1985). In
other words, central gang members in the school network may be peripheral members of their
gang. If that were the case, their peripheral position in the gang would likely restrict their ability
to vouch for new members. In fact, one could argue that peripheral members of the school
network are individuals who are withdrawn from the prosocial network and more likely to spend
more time with delinquent gang members outside of school. As Pyrooz et al. (2013, p. 257) point
out, “[e]fforts devoted to maintaining a social connection to the gang will preclude growth in
social and human capital in other important social realms, such as education and employment.”
Since we have no information about connections outside of the school, it is difficult to
assess whether high or low status gang members are more embedded in their gang’s network.
However, when we compared the delinquency of high (mean= 3.14) and low status gang
members (mean=5.30) we found that low status members were significantly more delinquent
which may reflect a greater embeddedness in the gang since embeddedness in criminal networks
is associated with increased offending (e.g., Hagan, 1993). The implication is that gang members
who have high status in school networks may have less influence within the gang. It may be best,
then, to think of these high status gang members as points of contact (weak ties) with the gang
through which the recruitment process operates.
Discussion
Our results suggest that some gang members may actually be important players in the
school social world. We have shown that some gang members receive many friendship
nominations, mostly from non-gang members. These high status gang members tended to have
many friends (high in-degree), were socially prominent (high Bonacich centrality), and had the
ability to bridge different social groups (high effective size). Importantly, gang members
regardless of their status were not found in cliques of gang members. This finding might suggest
that gang members can act as bridges between the gang and the broader school network.
Given that the network data we used does not include relationships outside of the school,
we do not know how well these individuals are connected to their respective gangs. What our
analyses suggest, though, is that when in school, gang members were no more likely to befriend
other gang members than non-gang members were. It is likely that gang members have many
more friends who are also gang members, but these people do not appear in the school network.
Gang members in school networks could potentially act as “weak ties” between non-gang
members and their gang. Weak ties are crucial to diffusion processes in social networks as they
allow information and behaviors to spread to otherwise disconnected regions of the network
(e.g., Centola, 2010; Granovetter, 1973). In other words, schools appear to be an important
context where gang members and non-gang members interact and therefore a potentially
important social conduit to street gangs.
The ability of gang members to act as bridges between the school and the gang would be
greatly reduced if gang members limited their school friendships to other gang members, but also
if they were isolated actors within the school social world. Gang members are often described as
antisocial and violent individuals with weak bonds to prosocial institutions (e.g., Thornberry,
1987). Prior research has also shown that once youths join a gang, most of their activities occur
with other gang members and relationships outside the gang tend to fall apart (Decker & Van
Winkle, 1996; Pyrooz et al., 2013; Thornberry et al., 2003). Although we find a group of gang
members that are not particularly well integrated into school friendship networks, others are
actually rather popular students at school. These high-status gang members occupy positions that
allow them to potentially influence many others. Their positions certainly would make them
effective recruiters for the gang. Even if they do not engage explicitly in recruitment, high status
gang members are visible actors at the school and others may be seduced by the prospect of
joining a gang given the social standing these members enjoy.
These findings have important implications for gang membership prevention and
intervention. Many researchers have argued that better targeting of at-risk youths is necessary to
increase the effectiveness of current prevention and intervention strategies (Gravel, Bouchard,
Descormiers, Wong, & Morselli, 2013; Klein & Maxson, 2006; Wong et al., 2016). Social
network analysis has been used as a targeting tool in other types of gang control strategies (e.g.,
McGloin, 2005; Papachristos & Kirk, 2015), and our study suggests that it could provide an
important tool for school-based programs as well. It is apparent that schools act as “double-
edged swords” (to quote an anonymous reviewer). They are a location in which students can
connect to prosocial peers, teachers, and programs which tend to exert protective influences
against offending (Hirschi, 1969). They are also a setting where students can access antisocial
influences. Therefore, the effect of schools on individual outcomes depends upon how
individuals navigate the various countervailing influences. For those not strongly committed to
or against gang membership, maximizing prosocial influences by increasing exposure to gang
prevention programs (e.g., Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, & Osgood, 2012) may be enough to
dissuade a portion of students from joining. Prior studies have shown the structure of, and
position in, school peer networks can influence involvement in delinquency (Burt & Rees, 2015;
Gallupe, 2016; Haynie, 2001; McGloin & Shermer, 2009; McGloin, Sullivan, & Thomas, 2014).
Related to the fact that schools provide a venue for students to connect with prosocial influences,
an important focus for future research would be to examine social network influences on gang
desistance.
More research is needed in order to understand how status, brokerage, and network reach
may influence gang joining. However, we know from research in other settings that individuals
with strong network positions have a greater ability than others to influence behavior (e.g., Burt,
1992; 2004; Lin, 2001). High status gang members in our study occupy such positions, and it
could be argued that non-gang members nominating these individuals are at a greater risk to join
a gang then those connected with low-status gang members. In other words, the ability of gang
members to influence others in the school network may be dependent on their position within the
network. Much like community-based gang intervention programs that target highly connected
gang members to deliver their deterrent message (e.g., Braga, Hureau, & Papachristos, 2014;
Papachristos & Kirk, 2015), school-based programs could potentially increase their effectiveness
by targeting high status gang members.
Our study also supports calls for more research about gang members in school settings.
Prior work on gang recruitment processes has highlighted the fact that gang joining is more
accurately viewed as a two-way process where both parties (i.e., the prospective member and the
gang) exchange signals (e.g., Densley, 2012; Pyrooz & Densley, 2016). Although Densley's work
focused on the neighborhood as the locale for these exchanges, we argue that the school offers an
important setting as well. Garot (2010) provided a rare in-depth investigation of gang life in the
school context, which highlighted the many ways in which youths could perform gang identity in
this setting by, for example, challenging the dress code and other policies and through resistance
in the classroom.
Limitations
The purpose of this study was to examine the social network characteristics of gang
members who are thought to play a key role in recruiting. However, the link to recruitment is
entirely implicit. The social network position of gang members with high status puts them in
what would appear to be an optimal position to recruit others by virtue of their visibility and
connectedness both to the gang and to people outside of the gang. But we have no data on actual
attempts to get others to join or in some way contribute to gang activities. It would be very useful
for studies to combine the sort of network focus employed here with information on the actual
recruiting behavior of gang members to see if high status gang members actively attempt to get
others involved in the gang or whether gang members who achieve high levels of social status
are allowed to do so because they do not push gang involvement on others. Given work on the
social benefits of offending (Gallupe & Bouchard, 2015), this opposing interpretation seems
unlikely but it must remain an empirical question until research addresses it.
Furthermore, it is likely that there are substantial numbers of ex-gang members in the
sample given that: (a) the average age of the sample (~17) was older than the average age at
which people first join a gang (11-15; Pyrooz, 2014a); (b) the measure of gang membership
indicated ever having been a member; and (c) gang membership is often not an extended affair. It
is unclear what the network position of these ex-members would be or what influence they might
have on recruitment. Speculatively, it seems likely that former gang members would tend to have
lower levels of social status than current gang members. Where we have shown in this study that
gang members commonly connect with both gang and non-gang members (see Figure 1), it is
possible that current gang members would be less likely to nominate former members as friends
since they have essentially turned their back on the gang. If this is the case, former gang
members will be limited to connections predominantly outside of the gang while current gang
members draw friends from both within and outside the gang. In the aggregate, this would lead
to lower levels of social status for former as compared to current gang members. The implication
for the present study is that our estimates of gang member social status are conservative and yet
we still identified a group of high status gang members who appear to be ideally located to act as
recruiters. Given the speculative nature of this explanation, it is in need of further examination in
future research.
The final limitation that we will discuss is the fact that the analysis was cross-sectional.
While Add Health is longitudinal, it is not well suited to longitudinal studies of school network
influences on gang membership because the gang item was not collected at wave 1 and wave 3
data were collected ~5 years later, when most participants were between 18 and 26 years old and
were no longer in school as participants generally would have left school between waves 2 and 3
(the time points when gang membership was measured). Longitudinal sociometric data covering
the middle and high school years that includes measures of gang membership would allow for an
examination of school network position on both gang joining and desistance processes that was
not possible here.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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Figure 1. Full network for one school.
Isolates removed.
Circles=non-gang members
Triangles=gang members
Figure 2. Example network subsection – alters within two ties of ego.
Square=Ego (gang member)
Circles=non-gang members
Triangles=gang members
Table 1. Descriptive statistics.
Mean SD Min Max
Gang member (=1) 0.07 0.25 0 1
In-degree 1.98 2.28 0 25
Bonacich (in-network) 3.03 4.10 0 36.34
Reach in 3 steps (in-network) 13.08 20.58 0 139
Effective size 2.73 2.54 0 26.93
# gang friends (in-network) 0.10 0.34 0 3
# non-gang friends (in-network) 1.87 2.20 0 22
Proportion gang alters (in-network) 0.04 0.15 0 1
Activity (out-degree) 1.98 2.05 0 10
# gang friends (out-network) 0.11 0.38 0 3
# non-gang friends (out-network) 1.88 1.98 0 9
Age 17.22 1.11 12 23
Delinquency 1.50 2.30 0 14
Peer delinquency 1.02 1.67 0 14
Male (=1) 0.50 0.50 0 1
White (=1) 0.38 0.49 0 1
SES 5.90 2.22 2 10
Alcohol use 1.28 1.60 0 6
Cannabis use (=1) 0.34 0.47 0 1
Attachment to school 10.64 2.45 3 15
Attachment to friends 4.26 0.84 1 5
Attachment to parents 4.55 0.65 1 5
Grades 2.70 0.77 1 4
Table 2. Network characteristics of non-gang members versus gang members (IPWRA models).
Potential outcome means
Non-gang Gang ATEb|z|
In-degree 2.02 1.76 -0.25 1.05
Bonacich (in-network) 3.08 3.18 0.11 0.85
Reach in 3 steps (in-network) 13.20 14.85 1.65 0.53
Effective size 2.76 2.35 -0.41 1.98*
Agea17.24 17.38 0.04 0.45
n 1699 123
Weighted n 1074.5 747.5
* p<.05
n=1822
Test of covariate balance: Chi-square=14.23, p>.05
aAge not included as a control variable.
bAverage treatment effect: gang versus non-gang.
Table 3. Network characteristics of low status gang members versus high status gang members
(IPWRA models).
Potential outcome means
Low status High status ATEb|z|
In-degree 0.76 2.87 2.11 4.30**
Bonacich (in-network) 0.97 3.96 2.99 3.05**
Reach in 3 steps (in-network) 3.57 12.84 9.27 1.61
Effective size 1.57 4.95 3.38 4.93**
# gang friends (in-network) 0.22 0.34 0.12 1.24
# non-gang friends (in-network) 0.53 2.52 2.00 3.90**
Proportion gang alters (in-network) 0.11 0.07 -0.04 1.23
Activity (out-degree) 1.22 4.78 3.55 5.65**
# gang friends (out-network) 0.27 0.19 -0.07 0.39
# non-gang friends (out-network) 0.98 4.48 3.50 6.18**
Agea17.23 17.30 0.07 0.19
Delinquency 5.30 3.14 -2.16 2.11*
n 106 17
Weighted n 74.7 48.3
* p<.05, ** p<.01
n=123
Test of covariate balance: Chi-square=1.31, p>.05
aAge not included as a control variable.
bAverage treatment effect: high status gang members versus low status gang members.
... Another potentially more consequential layer to the gang influence argument pertains to recruitment. If social networks of gang members and non-gang members are truly intertwined, it becomes natural to expect schools to be potential grounds for gang recruitment (Gallupe and Gravel, 2018;Widdowson et al., 2020). This possibility served as one of Gallupe and Gravel's (2018) motivation to compare the social networks of gang members and non-members in high school settings. ...
... If social networks of gang members and non-gang members are truly intertwined, it becomes natural to expect schools to be potential grounds for gang recruitment (Gallupe and Gravel, 2018;Widdowson et al., 2020). This possibility served as one of Gallupe and Gravel's (2018) motivation to compare the social networks of gang members and non-members in high school settings. First, they found that gang members and non-gang members had just as many friends. ...
... Second, Gallupe and Gravel (2018) observed that some gang members received more friendship nominations than others. Gang respondents who received nominations at least one standard deviation or above were labeled these as "high status". ...
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During the last decade, health criminology-the study of health outcomes for justice-involved individuals and their families-has gained traction in the field. We extend health criminology to the study of street gangs by drawing on the stress process perspective. Gang membership is conceptualized as a primary stressor that leads to secondary stressors with direct and indirect adverse effects on mental health. Leaving a gang, we hypothesize, offers relief by shrinking the stress universe to improve mental health. We test the gang disengagement-mental health link using panel data from a sample of 510 active gang members in the Northwestern Juvenile Project, longitudinal entropy balancing models, and mental health outcomes related to both clinical diagnosis and functional impairment. The results indicate that gang disengagement leads to improvements in mental health and functioning. Compared with those who stayed in gangs, those who left experienced improvements in global functioning, overall mental health diagnosis, behavior toward others functioning, substance abuse functioning, and alcohol-related diagnoses. Secondary stressors partially, but not fully, mediated this association. Our findings extend This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
... SNA can also be a powerful tool for examining longitudinal data in order to better understand changes in individual behavior and beliefs across time. Past work has spanned a wide range of beliefs and behaviors including studies on language style, smoking, HIV risk perceptions, racial/ethnic identity development, and gang affiliation and prisoner reentry (Burgess-Hull et al., 2018;Gallupe & Gravel, 2018;Koku & Felsher, 2020;Kovacs & Kleinbaum, 2020;Santos et al., 2017). More recently, researchers in the psychological sciences have used SNA to document associations between individuals within social networks and their biological markers (e.g., hormones, brain connectivity), highlighting the neurobiological underpinnings of human social behaviors (Cheng & Kornienko, 2020;Hyon et al., 2020). ...
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Social network analysis (SNA) is a highly flexible research method that allows for novel exploration of a wide variety of research phenomena. Evidence from fields as disparate as public health, education, informatics, sociology, and medicine has demonstrated the importance of recognizing the complexity inherent in individuals' connections with others. In this article, we provide a brief conceptual overview of social network theory and methodology, and then demonstrate how to apply SNA to an applied psychological research context studying students embedded in classrooms. We also provide numerous supporting materials on our OSF page, including R code for all analyses, a dataset containing social network data, and a glossary of key terms in social network analysis. We conclude with a set of recommendations for researchers interested in applying SNA to their own contexts and content areas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Prior research has shown that gang members are often strongly embedded within school networks, thus are well placed to influence others to join gangs (Gallupe and Gravel, 2017). Our research confirmed this. ...
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This article explores young women and girls’ participation in gangs and ‘county lines’ drug sales. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with criminal justice and social service professionals found that women and girls in gangs often are judged according to androcentric, stereotypical norms that deny gender-specific risks of exploitation. Gangs capitalise on the relative ‘invisibility’ of young women to advance their economic interests in county lines and stay below police radar. The research shows gangs maintain control over women and girls in both physical and digital spaces via a combination of threatened and actual (sexual) violence and a form of economic abuse known as debt bondage – tactics readily documented in the field of domestic abuse. This article argues that coercive control offers a new way of understanding and responding to these gendered experiences of gang life, with important implications for policy and practice.
... Garot, 2010) and high-status gang members who remain strongly embedded within school networks are well-placed to influence others to engage in gangs (e.g. Gallupe & Gravel, 2018). ...
Chapter
In Glasgow, most violence is knife violence and this chapter presents an uncensored look at it, with graphic descriptions of bloody street fights, assault with a deadly weapon, torture, and incidents that result in severe injury. This chapter explores the cycle of gang violence and its consequences.
... Garot, 2010) and high-status gang members who remain strongly embedded within school networks are well-placed to influence others to engage in gangs (e.g. Gallupe & Gravel, 2018). ...
Chapter
This chapter introduces the four key participants in the case study—Leo, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie and their entry into the world of gangs, with an emphasis on their early (adverse) childhood experiences.
Chapter
Social relationships play an important role in the development of antisocial behavior. Youths may learn antisocial behaviors from their social environment often via peer influences related to social status. Also later in life, social relationships, including romantic relationships, play a pivotal role in offending, recidivism, and desistance. This chapter outlines how social relationships are linked to antisocial behavior by covering theories of social processes (e.g., social learning, deviancy training) in adolescence in relation to the development of antisocial behavior. Furthermore, empirical evidence is discussed that explains the role of social status, deviant peer affiliation, and gang membership. Finally, it is discussed how romantic relationships in adulthood may lead to desistance from offending, but in some cases, can also increase the risk of offending.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the utility of school-based research for studying gangs and gang members. Police–researcher collaborations have led to considerable advancements in the understanding of gang involvement and its consequences. But the current social environment should encourage scholars to take stock of alternative methodologies to examine gang-related questions. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors reflect on the advantages of school-based research designs for studying gang affiliated youth, primarily contrasting the data derived from school-based designs to official data from police. Findings xSpecifically, the authors discuss the key advantages of school-based survey research, identify concerns that can arise from such designs and offer recommendations as to how to mitigate such concerns. Originality/value This paper provides a discussion on the utility of gang-related research and guidance on addressing potential limitations.
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This chapter three looks at the aetiology of gangs and process of gang formation, with an emphasis on the secondary school as a crucible for gang activity.
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Objective: The mechanisms underlying selection into street gangs remain elusive in the current inventory of theory and research on gangs, raising continued questions about not who or why, but how youth enter gangs and the attendant criminological implications. This study provides a suggestive analysis of an alternative framing of the selection process, one that is rooted in signaling theory. Methods: A signaling scale was constructed using a mixed graded response model and national longitudinal data to explore the thesis that (1) gang prospects select into gangs using hard-to-fake signals of quality and gangs, in turn, receive and interpret these signals to select high-quality over low-quality prospects and (2) the selection process in a signaling framework conditions the well-established relationship between gang membership and criminal offending. Results: Respondents scoring higher on a signaling scale were more likely to select into gangs prospectively and see greater, although nonlinear, increases in criminal offending upon entering gangs, net of adjusting for alternative explanations for these relationships. Conclusions: By further extending and analyzing signaling theory within the study of gang selection and criminal offending, the results of this study reveal that signaling theory has much to offer the study of gangs particularly and criminology generally.
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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.
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The Handbook of Quantitative Criminology is designed to be the authoritative volume on methodological and statistical issues in criminology and criminal justice. At a time when this field is gaining in sophistication and dealing with ever more complex empirical problems, this volume seeks to provide readers with a clear and up to date guide to quantitative criminology. Authored by leading scholars in criminology/criminal justice, the Handbook contains 35 chapters on topics in the following key areas: (1) research design, (2) experimental methods, (3) methods for overcoming data limitations, (4) innovative descriptive methods, (5) estimation techniques for theory and policy, (6) topics in multiple regression, and (7) new directions in statistical analysis. The contributions are written to be accessible to readers with a basic background in statistics and research methods, but they also provide a cutting edge view of statistical and methodological problems and questions. This book will be the go-to book for new and advanced methods in the field that will provide overviews of the key issues, with examples and figures as warranted, for students, faculty, and researchers alike.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the effects of gang prevention programs on gang membership. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a systematic literature review across 19 bibliographic databases and a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of these strategies. Findings – The database search resulted in 3,850 hits. Of the 162 studies that were screened in full, six involved a prevention program with outcomes commensurate for meta-analysis. Pooled log odds ratios indicate a significant, positive effect of gang prevention programs at reducing gang membership; however, sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the results are driven by the effects of a single study. Originality/value – Despite the small sample size, the current study presents the best available evidence regarding the effectiveness of gang membership prevention programs. There is a critical need in the field of gang control for rigorous evaluation of prevention strategies.
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How does adolescent organizational membership in general, and simultaneous membership in distinct types of organizations in particular, impact drinking behavior? While past studies have focused either on the learning effect of involvement with gangs or on the constraining influence of conventional organizations on adolescent problem behavior, we explore the possibility that conventional school clubs can serve as socializing opportunities for existing gang members to engage in drinking behavior with non-gang club members. Using the Add Health data, we show that gang members drink more often, and engage in more binge drinking, than non-members. More importantly, individuals who are members of both gangs and school clubs drink alcohol at greater levels than those who are solely involved in gangs. In addition, non-gang adolescents who are co-members with gang members in the same school club are more likely to drink alcohol than non-members. This result has important implications for understanding the role of organizations in adolescent behavior and suggests that the study of delinquent behaviors would benefit from devoting more attention to individuals who bridge distinct types of organizations.
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"Path breaking and precedent-setting. Robert Garot has appreciated what no one has before, the essential shadow quality of urban gangs, which are not so much things one can be in as they are things danced around, avoided, played with, and very occasionally, practically invoked."