Background
Recently, criminal activities that are gang related have been on the rise. The upsurge has caught many by surprise, with the majority unprepared or afraid to speak out due to likely retaliations. The proliferation of gang criminal activities has prompted many in the criminal justice system to re-evaluate the trend and come up with an appropriate definition of what is a gang. Many in the criminal justice system consent that there is no definite definition of a gang, however, Esbensen, Winfree, Thomas, Taylor and Terrance, (2001), describes a gang as “an interstitial group of people that is formed spontaneously and has characteristics of having a face to face meeting, milling around, causing conflict through planning” (p. 161). The gang also has a characteristic of forming behaviors that develop into a tradition; it has unreflective internal structure, togetherness, group awareness and has an attachment to a designated local territory, (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, and Dewar, 2010). However, the behaviors and actions of gangs are dynamic, having the trends to change over the years.
In any society, youthful gangs pose a significant threat to its prosperous and well-being. This has prompted the government of the United States to invest over $5 million in 2011-2013 in an attempt to restrict its effects. Many researchers have endeavored to study why young people from gangs with little substantive results. Therefore, more research is needed in order to uncover the real issues that prompt young people to form or join criminal gangs. Available studies indicate that poverty is a major factor driving young people to join gangs. Being poor, these youth do not have a good education background and there is little hope of making it in life. Gang membership provides a livelihood through crime and violence for them. Living in the poor neighborhoods where there is insecurity can lead youth to join gangs for security purposes. They feel safer and better protected when they operate in a gang than when alone. In some cases, criminal gangs forcefully recruit members in the neighborhoods that they dominate. The youths are threatened to join the gang and run errands or else they will be attacked. Gang membership can also be a result of peer pressure. If one’s peers and friends join a gang, they will put pressure on their friend to join them. Refusing to do so may be seen as an act of cowardice or betrayal. More research into this issue will enable criminal psychologists, the government and all stakeholders to deter young people into joining criminal gangs.
Methodology:
All the data used in this study was collected and pre-tested before being used. The study concentrated on determining the reasons for the high level of violence associated with gang membership, as well as analyzing the factors that lead to spread and escalation of gang violence. It focused on ‘contagion as an aspect of collective behavior that leads to expressive gang violence (Pope, Lovell, Brandl, 2001, p. 161)’. The research applied various ways of measuring crime such as; Uniform Crime Report (UCR), BIBR, NCVS, and Self Reported surveys. Of particular import is UCR, which collect all reports at the police center.
Concept studied:
This was a three-year field study done by contacting active gang members. A highly reputable, street-wise gang member facilitated field contacts. The concept studied was; threats of violence and how they lead to more gang violence. According to Bryman, (2001) there are various reasons why young people engage in criminal activities under gang membership. Key among social elements that facilitate gang membership are; need for friendship, low self-esteem, and money. According to (Esbensen, Aage and Deschenes, 1998) young people whose families have suffered from death incidences are likely to join gangs because they feel they are not loved. These categories are likely to join gang membership in order to gain social acceptability. On the other hand, it is important to study many ways of measuring crime in order to know types of crimes that are problematic within a particular region. Such reasoning will also enable law enforcement agents to know what category of young people prone to joining criminal gangs.
Research questions:
The study used a semi-structured questionnaire to conduct interviews. The questions included:
• How they joined the gang
• How the gang is organized
• Illegal activities of the gang
• Links to other gangs
Validity of the Research
The research made use of various validity measures including content, face validity and criterion validity. Content validity is important because it is a measure of all aspects in a given social construct. In this case, content validity studied how criminal gangs affect the social stability of Americans. Further, content validity in this research measured all inclusive social aspects such as behavior and affective dimension of depression because of criminal gang activities. Content validity is important because it includes some elements of subjectivity, which determine the level of agreement of a specific personality such as extraversion. On the other hand, face validity is a measure of social elements such aggression, love, or loneliness at face value. Face value makes use of such inferences as “it looks like”. For instance, if face validity measured the extent to which criminal gangs have affected Americans, and the concerned people agree that it looks like a measure of criminal gangs, the research would have shown the face validity. Further, the research used criterion validity to show the legitimacy of how a particular variable foresees the outcome based on data from other variables. For instance, a variable such as brutality measured the outcome based other variables such as violent behavior, a behavioral category that most psychologists agree. Criterion validity is an important measure as it reveals the extent to which a particular score that relates to a specific behavior can predict the future, for instance how gang violence affects the future lives of Americans.
The research also drew its validity from the data and statistical sources used. Gang members aged between 13 and 29 years provided information for the research. All participants had criminal backgrounds, which would cause some doubt about the information they gave. Most of them also withheld some information out of fear that revealing too much would get them into trouble. More than 90% of gang members interviewed admitted participating in some gang-related violence during their time in the gang.
Conceptual and Operational Measures
The essence of the study was to analyze the “collective process of gangs” and to gather sufficient justification for the increased collective violence in the community. Collective behavior refers to the actions carried out by a group of persons with one common goal. For gang members, collective behavior gives them the strength of numbers. They are able to harass, terrorize or mete violence on targets much easily when they are in a group. When it comes to fighting other gangs, having a larger group provides advantage. Studies have demonstrated that gang members tend to engage in violence as a group, but when alone, they try and avoid violence. This is because they find security in the gang. There is also pressure to conform and prove that they are committed to the gang and its undertakings. They do not feel this pressure when alone so they are unlikely to start any violence then. The operationalization process of the study involved contacting gang members directly and using prearranged questionnaires. The operationalization phase took three years, and internal validity was maintained.
Reliability of Research
The reliability of research depends on the source of information. “Although the data was collected over a three-year period, they were not longitudinal in the sense that they followed a single individual or group of individuals over time (Decker, 2011 p. 250)”. Studies that rely on findings to be valid usually use reliability estimators. To begin with, there is “test and re-test reliability” which involves repeated testing over time. For this study, researchers compared answers and reactions of gang members for consistency over the three years of the study. Secondly, the researchers used a “street ethnographer” to provide assistance on the participants’ reputations and memberships. This was to guard against any unreliability from participants during the survey. The participants were asked the same questions, so their responses were expected to be similar. A third method used to confirm reliability was the “split-half method”. This involved splitting the data and comparing each independently.
In conclusion, the study is reliable because apart from using the above techniques, it also involves various reliability tests such as test-retest reliability, parallel forms reliability and internal test reliability. Test retest reliability will indicate if the first sample that was used gives the same results as the second sample. In case the test results remains the same, then the research results are reliable. Parallel forms reliability uses same questions on different variables to give same results, while internal consistency reliability refers to the extent to which respondents are able to answer same questions in a single survey consistently, with the aim of generating similar responses. However, it is pertinent to point out that this study failed to answer the initial question posed by the judge; why is there an increased number of gang-violence cases brought before her? It can only be assumed that this increase in violence is due to gang embers engaging in retaliatory attacks against rival gangs. This study mentions retaliation as one of the major causes of gang violence, but it was not designed to answer the specific question of court cases.
References
Bryman, Alan (2001). Social Research Methods. New York, Oxford University Press
Inc.
Esbensen, Finn-Aage and Deschenes, Elizabeth (1998). A Multisite Examination of Youth Gang Membership: Does Gender Matter? Criminology, 36 (4), 799-828.
Esbensen, Finn-Aage L. Winfree, Thomas JR. HE, Ni. Taylor, Terrance J. (2001). Youth Gangs and Definitional Issues: When is a Gang a Gang, and Why Does it Matter? Crime & Delinquency, 47 (1), 105-130.
Kubisch, Anne C., Patricia Auspos, Prudence Brown, and Tom Dewar, (2010). Voices from the Field III: Lessons and Challenges from Two Decades of Community Change Efforts. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute.
