Street Gang Patterns and PoliciesIn the past two decades, many prevention and suppression programs have been initiated on a national and local level to combat street gangs--but what do we really know about them? Why do youths join them? Why do they proliferate? Street Gang Patterns and Policies is a crucial update and critical examination of our understanding of gangs and major gang-control programs across the nation. Often perceived solely as an urban issue, street gangs are also a suburban and rural dilemma. Klein and Maxson focus on gang proliferation, migration, and crime patterns, and highlight known risk factors that lead to youths form and join gangs within communities. Dispelling the long-standing assumptions that the public, the media, and law enforcement have about street gangs, they present a comprehensive overview of how gangs are organized and structured. The authors assess the major gang programs across the nation and argue that existing prevention, intervention, and suppression methods targeting individuals, groups, and communities, have been largely ineffective. Klein and Maxson close by offering valuable policy guidelines for practitioners on how to intervene and control gangs more successfully. Filling an important gap in the literature on street gangs and social control, this book is a must-read for criminologists, social workers, policy makers, and criminal justice practitioners. |
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Common terms and phrases
agencies Amer-I-Can analysis Angeles areas behavior chapter characteristics Chicago cliques community context conventional wisdom counties criminal Crips Curry Decker delinquency deterrence theory drug sales effects Egley emerge Esbensen ethnic evaluation female gang Freng gang activity gang cities gang control programs gang crime Gang Definition gang homicides gang involvement gang joining gang mem gang members gang membership gang migrants gang participation gang prevalence gang prevention gang problems gang programs gang proliferation gang research gang risk factors gang structures gang violence gangs and gang Gangster Disciples goals group processes Hispanic implementation individual informal social control intergang Jody Miller join gangs Klein L.A. Bridges law enforcement Lawndale males Maxson migration Miller neighborhood neotraditional nongang youth NYGS offending offending profiles OJJDP patterns of gang police population reduce respondents SafeFutures sample specialty gangs Spergel Model strategies street gangs studies subgroups suppression survey targeting Thornberry tion traditional gangs typology Winfree
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Page 7 - A self-formed association of peers, bound together by mutual interests, with identifiable leadership, well-developed lines of authority, and other organizational features, who act in concert to achieve a specific purpose or purposes, which generally include the conduct of illegal activity and control over a particular territory, facility, or type of enterprise.
Page 7 - All definitions of gangs include (or imply) common elements: gangs are groups whose members meet together with some regularity, over time, on the basis of group-defined criteria of membership and group-defined organizational characteristics.
Page 5 - For the purpose of this survey, a "youth gang" is defined as: a group of youths or young adults in your jurisdiction that you or other responsible persons in your agency or community are willing to identify or classify as a "gang.
Page 284 - Research," in Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions, ed.
Page 5 - Center works in cooperation with the US Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and has branch offices in California, Florida, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Page 6 - an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously, and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: Meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict and planning The result of this collective behavior is the development of...
Page 4 - A street gang is any durable street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of their group identity.