Social Learning,Social Disorganization,and Psychological Risk Factors for Criminal Gangs in a British Youth Context

ABSTRACT

Using longitudinal data from a British longitudinal cohort study (ALSPAC), the current study examines “developmental domains” from individual, peer, and community risk factors. Using four logistic regression models, we looked at 10 correlations between children’s experience with risk factors outlined by the literature and criminal gang association. Gang membership was associated with drug use, delinquent peers, and disorganized neighborhoods. Further, early diagnoses of childhood aggression, ADHD, depression, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, were not associated with later, adolescent youth gang membership. Our results suggest community based programs that stem from social learning policies and collective efficacy militate against gang growth.     

Adolescent Social Structure and Drinking Behavior

The study examines adolescent drinking customs in the context of the informal social structure of the high school. Teenage drinking behavior was also examined in relationship to demographic variables and parental use of alcoholic beverages. The study identified a mosaic adolescent society consisting of eight informal social status subgroups with contrasting and often hostile values, attitudes, and leisure-time patterns. A highly significant (p < .001) relationship was found between the students' subgroup membership and drinking category. Parental alcohol use also was related to teenagers' use (p < .001), and interesting variations were identified when teenage drinking behavior was studied in relationship to demographic factors.     

A Cross-Cultural Test of Social Structure and Social Learning: Alcohol Use among South Korean Adolescents

The main purpose of this study is to test the validity and cross-cultural generalizability of Akers’ Social Structure and Social Learning (SSSL) model of crime and deviance. The test is done with data on substance use behavior among adolescents in South Korea utilizing a sample of 1,021 high school students. The data are taken from (1) a self-report survey of 1,021 high school students in Busan, South Korea and (2) district (Gu) level census reports of Busan. We consider this a test of the full SSSL model because we have at least one measure of all of the four main explanatory concepts found in social learning theory (differential association, definition, differential reinforcement, and imitation) and of all four of the social structural components of SSSL (differential social organization, differential location in the social structure, theoretically defined structural causes of crime, and differential social location in groups). The principal hypothesis is that the effects of the measures of social structure on adolescent deviance (substance use) will be substantially mediated by the measures of the social learning variables. To test this hypothesis multi-level data are analyzed in several Hierarchal Linear Models. The social learning variables are found to substantially mediate the effects of social structural components on adolescents’ alcohol use. Therefore, the study provides additional evidence supportive of SSSL and evidence that it applies not only in the United States but also is generalizable to a non-Western society. The contributions, limitations, and implications of the study for future research are presented.     

The developmental ecology of urban males' youth violence

Data from a longitudinal study of 294 African American and Latino adolescent boys and their caregivers living in poor urban communities were used to test a developmental-ecological model of violence. Six annual waves of data were applied to evaluate the relations between microsystem influences of parenting and peer deviance (peer violence and gang membership), macrosystem influences of community structural characteristics and neighborhood social organization, and individual involvement in violence (level and growth). Structural equation modeling analyses showed that community structural characteristics significantly predicted neighborhood social processes. Parenting practices partially mediated the relation between neighborhood social processes and gang membership. Parenting practices was fully mediated in its relation to peer violence by gang membership. Gang membership was partially mediated by peer violence level in its relation to individual violence level. Although the overall set of relations does not satisfy mediation requirements fully in all instances, the model was validated for the most part, supporting a focus on a multilevel ecological model of influences on risk development.     

Pathways to Risk Among Inner-City African-American Adolescent Females: The Influence of Gang Membership

Differential rates of participation in three categories of risk behaviors (i.e., sexual activity, substance use, violence) were explored, comparing gang members to nonmembers, within a sample of 1,143 inner-city African American adolescent females. The relationship between gang membership and risk behavior also was examined, by exploring the association between a variety of microsystemic influences (e.g., gang, family, school) and participation in risk behaviors. MANOVA analyses indicated that gang members, relative to nonmembers, reported higher rates of participation in each of the three categories of risk behaviors. Stepwise linear regression analyses indicated that gang membership was the variable with the most consistent predictive ability, across all categories of risk, as it entered early in all equations and remained in all three final models after controlling for other statistically significant contextual variables. Findings suggest that intervention efforts aimed at reducing adolescent females' participation in sexual activity, substance use, and violence should consider the influence of gang membership on the participation in these behaviors.     

Gang involvement: psychological and behavioral characteristics of gang members,peripheral youth,and nongang Youth

Research has noted the existence of a loose and dynamic gang structure. However, the psychological processes that underpin gang membership have only begun to be addressed. This study examined gang members, peripheral youth, and nongang youth across measures of criminal activity, the importance they attach to status, their levels of moral disengagement, their perceptions of out‐group threat, and their attitudes toward authority. Of the 798 high school students who participated in this study, 59 were identified as gang members, 75 as peripheral youth, and 664 as nongang youth. Gang members and peripheral youth were more delinquent than nongang youth overall; however, gang members committed more minor offenses than nongang youth and peripheral youth committed more violent offenses than nongang youth. Gang members were more anti‐authority than nongang youth, and both gang and peripheral youth valued social status more than nongang youth. Gang members were also more likely to blame their victims for their actions and use euphemisms to sanitize their behavior than nongang youth, whereas peripheral youth were more likely than nongang youth to displace responsibility onto their superiors. These findings are discussed as they highlight the importance of examining individual differences in the cognitive processes that relate to gang involvement. Aggr. Behav. 36:423–436, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Inter-partner violence in the context of gangs: A review

Gang youth are a concern to society because they are often associated with crime and acts of violence and are particularly at-risk for involvement in sexual victimization, relationship abuse, and inter-partner violence (IPV). The current study reviews the nature of the association between gang involvement and IPV. The study summarizes what is currently known about IPV and gangs, reviews risk factors that are connected to both gang membership and relationship violence, the manifestation of relationship abuse and violence among those affiliated or associate with gangs, and how factors such as gender roles and the social structure of gangs play a role in IPV risk. Eighteen articles met the criteria for the current study and are described in this review. Implications for the additive risk associated with gang involvement are discussed.     

Parenting Styles and Gang Membership: Mediating Factors

While literature suggests that parenting has direct and indirect effects on gang membership, mediating effects have been established for the relationship between unidimensional parenting variables and gang involvement. This study fills the gap in the literature by examining how multidimensional parenting styles affect gang membership, and which factors mediate this relationship. The logistic regression models indicate a negative relationship between authoritative parenting and gang involvement, and a positive relationship between authoritarian, neglectful, and permissive parenting and gang membership. The analyses show that delinquent peers, self-control, rationalizations, and guilt are complete or partial mediators of parenting styles and gang membership.     

A Qualitative Investigation of Gang Presence and Sexual Harassment in a Middle School

Our goal with this qualitative case study was to explore the relationship between gang membership/presence of gangs in a middle school on the experiences of sexual harassment from the perspectives of both bullies and victims. This study sought to explore the characteristics of sexual harassment taking place in one middle school with a gang presence, the relationship of gang membership/presence to the types of sexual harassment experienced or witnessed, and student perceptions of the influence of gangs on sexual harassment. Thompson Middle School enrolls approximately 440 students. The surrounding community has more than 20 gangs with 2000 known gang members. Data were collected from 10 student interviews and unstructured observations from researcher field notes to capture experiences from one middle school. Analysis was performed using a modified van Kaam approach. Resulting themes centered on what students knew about sexual harassment, the types of sexual harassment they witnessed at their school, and reasons why they thought sexual harassment was occurring with such frequency. Sexual harassment appears to be heightened when there is a gang presence and visible gang activity. Incidents appear to happen more in the ‘open’ rather than hidden. The pressure to give into sexual advances by gang members appears to be especially heightened for girls. The types of sexual harassment acts described by the students as highly invasive with many classified as same-sex acts as initiated by the gang members. Sexual harassment prevention programs in schools with a gang presence need to incorporate discussions related to gang influence.     

Personality and gang embeddedness

Gang membership can be transient or persistent, and most persons who participate in such groups at one point in their lives grow out of the lifestyle. The personality dynamics driving gang membership are poorly understood, although the five-factor model of personality has proved an effective way to understanding many types of antisocial behaviour. Using dichotomous self-nomination 152 remand and sentenced participants incarcerated within a general prison in London, UK indicated their gang embeddedness as youths, prior to custody, within prison, and as an intent following release. This enabled behavioural intention to be incorporated into the model as well as historical factors. Constructs derived from a variety of personality measures and constructs were used to predict overall reported gang embeddedness. These predictors reduced to two underlying dimensions: personal resilience and antisocial personality. Path analysis showed the antisocial personality dimension predicted previous convictions and degree of gang embeddedness, whereas resilience did not. The direct and indirect effects of the composite antisocial personality dimension explained 50% of the overall observed variance in gang embeddedness. We suggest that gang membership may reflect normal assortative processes within the members of such groups.     

Social cliques as mental models

The present research investigates how a mental model derived from patterns of sentiment relations (mental clique model) interacts with social background information (membership in social categories). Testing memory for a set of sentiment relations, the data support the assumption that a strongly polarizing categorization interferes with a mental clique model derived from the learning of these sentiment relations. Such interference was claimed to occur whenever sentiment implications from the social categorization would contradict information contained in the mental clique model. In line with this reasoning, balanced triads were selectively impaired in memory as opposed to relations from unbalanced triads which did not allow construction of any clique model and which were not influenced by category interference.     

The Structure of Social Exchange in Self-help Support Groups: Development of a Measure

Self-help support groups are indigenous community resources designed to help people manage a variety of personal challenges, from alcohol abuse to xeroderma pigmentosum. The social exchanges that occur during group meetings are central to understanding how people benefit from participation. This paper examines the different types of social exchange behaviors that occur during meetings, using two studies to develop empirically distinct scales that reliably measure theoretically important types of exchange. Resource theory informed the initial measurement development efforts. Exploratory factor analyses from the first study led to revisions in the factor structure of the social exchange scales. The revised measure captured the exchange of emotional support, experiential information, humor, unwanted behaviors, and exchanges outside meetings. Confirmatory factor analyses from a follow-up study with a different sample of self-help support groups provided good model fit, suggesting the revised structure accurately represented the data. Further, the scales demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity with related constructs. Future research can use the scales to identify aspects of social exchange that are most important in improving health outcomes among self-help support group participants. Groups can use the scales in practice to celebrate strengths and address weaknesses in their social exchange dynamics.     

Cognitive and social influences on gang involvement among delinquents in three Chinese cities

Inasmuch as research has held the increase in youth gang activities responsi ble for the escalating level of crime and delinquency in Chinese societies, ascertaining risk or protective factors of gang involvement among Chinese youths is crucial. The factors include those associated with social control, social learning, and cognitive development. To investigate these factors across different sociocultural contexts, we surveyed delinquents in three diverse Chinese cities-Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. Because of the sociocultural differences among the three cities, social control by parents and cognitive development are likely to be greater protective factors in terms of youths' gang involvement in Hong Kong, while social control by teachers is likely to be a greater protective factor in mainland cities. Results bear out these hypotheses.     

Social sensitivity in adolescents and adults with learning disabilities.

This study investigated social sensitivity and self-concept in students with learning disabilities (LD) and their non-learning-disabled (non-LD) peers. Thirty students each from public junior and senior high schools and a community college participated in the study; at each grade level, half were identified as learning disabled and half experienced no learning problem. Students were individually assessed in 30-minute interviews for their accuracy in interpreting the thoughts and feelings of actors in tape-recorded stories depicting two adults in happy angry, anxious, and sad interactions. A questionnaire assessing four dimensions of self-concept in learning situations (motivation, task orientation, problem-solving ability, and class membership) was also administered. LD students at all grade levels were significantly less accurate at interpreting social situations than were their non-LD peers, and had significantly lower self-concepts. These results support the need for remediation efforts specifically aimed at social skills for overcoming social deficits in adulthood.     

The family relations,peer relations,and criminal activities of Caucasian and Hispanic-American gang members

Juvenile gang members present serious problems to society, yet few empirical studies have examined their criminal activity, family relations, and peer relations in comparison with other highly antisocial youths. In a 2 (Gang Membership) × 2 (Ethnicity: Hispanic-American vs. Caucasian) design, 131 incarcerated male juvenile offenders were administered a battery assessing criminal activity, family relations, and peer relations. Results demonstrated (a) higher rates of criminal behavior (i.e., general delinquency, index offenses, school delinquency) among gang members than among offenders who did not belong to gangs, (b) higher rates of general delinquency and home delinquency among Caucasian offenders than among Hispanic-American offenders, and (c) greater aggression and less social maturity in the peer relations of gang members than in the peer relations of offenders who did not belong to gangs. In addition, gang membership mediated sociocultural differences in hard drug use. Findings are integrated with the extant literature.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance and advice of Dr. Michael Schumacher, the Honorable C. Robert Jameson, Gwen Kurz, Don Hallstrom, Jane Carmichael, and Drs. Malcolm Klein, Rae Newton, and James Madero.     

Early Adolescents' Achievement Goals,Social Status,and Attitudes Towards Cooperation with Peers

This qualitative study used a semi-structured interview with 50 fifth grade Israeli students to investigate the relations among achievement goals and social identity processes that concern orientation towards social structure and status in the classroom, and preference and willingness to cooperate with peers from different social groups. Mastery-oriented students were found to evaluate cooperation with respect to its contribution to learning, friendship, and class cohesion, and to be willing to cooperate with peers regardless of their social group membership. Performance-approach and performance-avoidance oriented students were found to evaluate cooperation with regard to its implications for social status, and to prefer to cooperate with peers of the in-group and with high status peers. Performance-avoidance oriented students with low social status were found to also adopt a defensive avoidant orientation in the social domain.     

gang membership,race, and social class: a test of the group hazard and master status hypotheses

This article examines the extent to which gang membership, race, and social class affect a youth's chances of being arrested, independent of their self-reported delinquent behavior. We couple the concepts of group hazard and master status to frame our theoretical predictions. Using data from the Seattle Youth Study (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis 1981), we find that the odds of being arrested are roughly similar for gang and nongang members, controlling for the nature and level of self-reported delinquency. While being a gang member does not pose a group hazard to being arrested, a youth's master status based on race and social class is associated with arrest risk. Both being black and lower class increases a youth's odds of being arrested, independent of delinquency. Neither race nor class effects can be accounted for by the frequency with which youth hang out with their best friends. We propose several recommendations for reducing race and class profiling.     

Collective Behavior and the Generality of Integrated Theory: A National Study of Gang Fighting

This paper uses integrated theory to explain gang fighting. Integrated theory combines elements of social control, social learning, and strain theories. We focus on gang fighting to assess the generality of integrated theory because it constitutes serious violent collective behavior which is linked to other problem behaviors. Few explanations for such behavior are offered. We examine the relationship between integrated theory and gang fighting using multi-level modeling and data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey Family Study for the period 1976–1980. Support for direct effects of some components of integrated theory was found, including normlessness, delinquent peer-group bonding, and grades in school.     

Estimating the effect of gang membership on nonviolent and violent delinquency: a counterfactual analysis

This study reconsiders the well‐known link between gang membership and criminal involvement. Recently developed analytical techniques enabled the approximation of an experimental design to determine whether gang members, after being matched with similarly situated nongang members, exhibited greater involvement in nonviolent and violent delinquency. Findings indicated that while gang membership is a function of self‐selection, selection effects alone do not account for the greater involvement in delinquency exhibited by gang members. After propensity score matching was employed, gang members maintained a greater involvement in both nonviolent and violent delinquency when measured cross‐sectionally, but only violent delinquency when measured longitudinally. Additional analyses using inverse probability of treatment weights reaffirmed these conclusions. Aggr. Behav. 36:437–451, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The (Anti)Social Network: Egocentric Friendship Networks of Incarcerated Youth

The present study uses egocentric networks collected from youth (aged 14–24) incarcerated with California’s Division of Juvenile Justice to examine the composition and structure of youth’s friendship networks during periods of incarceration and to test the relationship between friendship and institutional misconduct. Tests of network homophily reveal that youth networks report more diversity across both racial/ethnic categories and gang membership than expected from non-network research about inmate organization. Regression results indicate that youth who stated they had no close friendships within the facility had a lower rate of institutional misconduct post-interview compared to those who nominated peer friendships. The current study demonstrates that incarcerated youth are capable of building close friendships and highlights the potential of these friendships to affect a youth’s level of institutional misconduct.