Gang membership transitions and its consequences: Exploring changes related to joining and leaving gangs in two countries
| Author | Peter J Lovegrove,Terence Thornberry,Frank M Weerman |
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370814539070 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
2015, Vol. 12(1) 70 –91
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370814539070
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Gang membership transitions
and its consequences:
Exploring changes related
to joining and leaving gangs
in two countries
Frank M Weerman
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), The Netherlands
Peter J Lovegrove
JBS International, USA
Terence Thornberry
University of Maryland, USA
Abstract
This study explores how gang membership transitions among adolescents are related to changes
with regard to peers, conventional social bonds and problem behaviour. The data come from
two longitudinal studies, one conducted in the United States (the Rochester Youth Development
Study) and one in the Netherlands (the NSCR School Study). In both countries, gang membership
appears to be relatively short-lived, with one year as the modal length of gang membership.
Also, in both countries, the results show a consistent pattern in which joining a gang is related
to an increasing exposure to negative peer influences, a weakening of conventional bonds and
increasing levels of delinquency and substance use. Leaving a gang is associated with the opposite
pattern of change.
Keywords
Cross-national comparison, facilitation, gang desistance, gang joining, gangs, life-course
perspective
Corresponding author:
Frank M Weerman, NSCR, Amsterdam, 1008 BH, The Netherlands.
Email: fweerman@nscr.nl
539070EUC0010.1177/1477370814539070European Journal of CriminologyWeerman et al.
research-article2014
Article
Weerman et al. 71
Introduction
It is widely recognized that being in a gang or a troublesome youth group1 is related to
delinquent behaviour. In the United States the relationship between gang membership
and delinquency has been established repeatedly (for example, Battin et al., 1998;
Esbensen and Huizinga, 1993; Thornberry et al., 1993). In Europe, with its recent
increase in gang research, several studies have also reported that offending is higher
among people in a street gang or a troublesome youth group (for example, Decker and
Weerman, 2005; Gatti et al., 2011; Klein et al., 2006; Sharp et al., 2006). Moreover, on
both continents, studies following the same individuals over time have found that gang
membership enhances or facilitates delinquency: offending levels are elevated while
being in a gang compared with before and after this period (Bendixen et al., 2006; Gatti
et al., 2005; Gordon et al., 2004; Thornberry et al., 1993, 2003).
Although the gang facilitation effect is now well established (Krohn and Thornberry,
2008), relatively little attention has been given to the question of what exactly changes
when young people enter a gang or troublesome youth group to produce this effect. One
approach to examining this issue is to adopt a life-course framework and study gang
membership as it unfolds and changes over time. Major transitions are joining, leaving
and possibly re-joining a gang. Only recently have studies begun to investigate what hap-
pens in other life-course domains at the point of such gang membership transitions and
whether this can help explain the facilitating effect of gangs on delinquent behaviour
(Matsuda et al., 2012; Medina et al., 2014; Melde and Esbensen, 2011, 2014; Pyrooz,
2014; Sweeten et al., 2013). The main purpose of this study is to contribute to our knowl-
edge about the consequences of gang membership transitions (joining and leaving).
We use data from two longitudinal studies of adolescents, one in the Netherlands and
one in the United States. The combination of these two studies offers an opportunity to
explore how gang membership transitions are related to changes in peer relationships,
social bonds and problem behaviours with two different datasets. It also enables a cross-
cultural comparison of whether these changes are similar or different in countries with
diverging gang traditions and gang characteristics. Previous studies suggest that there are
remarkable similarities in the prevalence of and risk factors for gang membership, as
well as offending associated with gang membership. There are also important differences
in the structure and organization of gangs on the two continents (Decker and Weerman,
2005; Esbensen and Weerman, 2005; Huizinga and Schumann, 2001; Klein et al., 2006;
Van Gemert et al., 2008). For example, European gangs are less territorial than their US
counterparts, do not always have a name and are on average less organized and struc-
tured. Therefore, an additional purpose of this study is to investigate whether the conse-
quences of gang membership transitions are similar or different in both contexts.
Gang membership transitions and the life-course
perspective
A basic premise of life-course theories of development (Elder, 1994) is that behavioural
trajectories become interwoven over the course of human development. For example,
trajectories of family formation and work are likely to be intertwined. Success (or
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