Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

Item

Title

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

Author

Short Jr., James F.

Hughes, Lorine A.

Research Area

The Individual and Society

Topic

Small Groups

Abstract

Criminology's evolution, from early roots in sociology through claims of autonomy and specialization within the field, has become more global in its reach. Study of street gangs, once imbedded in sociology, has become a specialized field within criminology and more closely identified with law enforcement and control. The immediacy of control concerns had the effect of virtually removing gangs as a focus of the basic social and behavioral sciences, an effect exacerbated by law enforcement's primary focus on individual gang members, thus obscuring the importance of historical, organizational, and group contexts and processes that are associated with gangs and their behavior. Historical research, network and group process analyses, and studies of genocide and human rights violations suggest that the study of gangs by mainstream social and behavioral sciences is important to these sciences as well as for better understanding of gangs. Examples from recent studies, including our research agenda, are provided as a basis for optimism in this regard.

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Identifier

etrds0028

extracted text

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs
Back into the Mainstream
JAMES F. SHORT, Jr. and LORINE A. HUGHES

Abstract
Criminology’s evolution, from early roots in sociology through claims of autonomy
and specialization within the field, has become more global in its reach. Study of
street gangs, once imbedded in sociology, has become a specialized field within criminology and more closely identified with law enforcement and control. The immediacy of control concerns had the effect of virtually removing gangs as a focus of
the basic social and behavioral sciences, an effect exacerbated by law enforcement’s
primary focus on individual gang members, thus obscuring the importance of historical, organizational, and group contexts and processes that are associated with
gangs and their behavior. Historical research, network and group process analyses,
and studies of genocide and human rights violations suggest that the study of gangs
by mainstream social and behavioral sciences is important to these sciences as well
as for better understanding of gangs. Examples from recent studies, including our
research agenda, are provided as a basis for optimism in this regard.

INTRODUCTION
Street gangs attracted little scholarly attention before Frederic Thrasher’s
classic book, The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Editor Robert E.
Park’s Preface placed the work solidly in sociology’s mainstream by emphasizing the generic nature of gangs as “a specific type or variety of society,”
spontaneous in origin, formed by and responsive to their environments
(Thrasher, 1927, no page; abridged edition, 1963, p. vii). As criminology
became a special field in its own right, it also became more interdisciplinary
and more closely associated with crime control (Short & Hughes, 2007).
Within criminology, studies of gangs became more specialized, more focused
on control, and more peripheral to the basic social and behavioral sciences.

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Even as Thrasher was surveying Chicago gangs, Clifford Shaw and colleagues were studying delinquency rates in the city’s communities and
conducting case studies that were fundamental to the “Chicago School’s”
theory of urban life and development (Shaw & McKay, 1931; Short, 1971).
Empirically, “delinquency areas” were characterized by poverty, rapid
population turnover, and ethnic heterogeneity. Within such areas, foreignand native-born boys, whites and blacks, and recent and newer immigrants
had similar patterns of delinquency. In addition, case studies demonstrated
the influence of companions on youthful behavior.
Tying these phenomena together, the theory of social disorganization
argued that delinquency rates were high in inner-city communities because
delinquency areas lacked effective social control capabilities. Mechanisms
by which disorganization hindered social control were missing in the theory,
however, and William Foote Whyte’s (1937) documentation of elaborate
organization among “corner” and “college” boys in inner-city Boston
exposed further problems.
As research concerning the nature of organization in neighborhoods accumulated, modification of social disorganization theory emerged in recognition of variations among and between local networks, and between local
networks and outside institutions and organizations that control resources
related to social control and the quality of life in neighborhoods (Bursik,
2000; Bursik & Grasmick, 1993). This “systemic model” subsequently was
challenged and extended by research based on the Project for Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) that adds a cultural component with strong elements of process, that is, collective efficacy, which involves
social capital based on active involvement of community adults with one
another in the control of child behavior (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls,
1997). Collective efficacy is associated with lower rates of violent behavior
in Chicago neighborhoods, holding constant factors such as race/ethnicity
and socioeconomic status. Subsequent research based on these and other data
finds that collective efficacy increases effective parenting and reduces homicide and delinquency rates and association with deviant peers (Sampson,
2012; Simons, Simons, Burt, & Brody, 2005).
The basic principle of the PHDCN is a relentless “focus on context” and
study of “dynamic processes of neighborhood structural change,” including
the “social mechanisms of city life” that “link cause and effect,” for example,
collective efficacy (Sampson, 2012). Recognizing that neighborhoods have
legacies that carry over and influence each other, emphasis also is on the
significance of place for social life and for study of spatial mechanisms that
cross neighborhood boundaries. The PHDCN is at once a compendium of what

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

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is known concerning the dynamics of urban growth and development, and
consequences for individuals, groups, organizations, and neighborhoods. It
exemplifies what “big social science” can accomplish, drawing on the logic
and methods of inquiry, and the theoretical frames, of basic social and behavioral science disciplines.
“HARD PROBLEMS,” STUDIES OF GANGS, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO YOUTH STUDIES
PROJECT
It is axiomatic that science typically advances by steps that fill in gaps left
in the wake of large-scale projects and theoretical breakthroughs. Following
publication of Great American City, Sampson (2013) identified several “hard
problems” raised by the PHDCN, two of which are of special significance for
the theme of this paper:
Understanding how historical events and processes influence present circumstances at different levels of organizational and community life.
Challenges posed by the persistence of race/crime relationships and impacts
of ethnic changes.

Our research underscores an additional problem, viz., the nature and consequences of group processes associated with crime and delinquency, concerning
which knowledge remains in a primitive state. Data from the University of
Chicago’s Youth Studies Program (YSP) are useful for furthering this line of
inquiry, as well as for addressing Sampson’s “hard problems.”1
After Thrasher, gang research languished until the mid-twentieth century
when control programs were initiated in response to the eruption of gang
wars in several cities. New theoretical perspectives introduced at that time
included Albert K. Cohen’s invocation of reaction formation to explain “The
Culture of the Gang” (1955), Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin’s (1960)
explanation of alternative delinquent subcultures in terms of opportunity
structures, and Walter B. Miller’s argument that lower-class culture was “a
generating milieu of gang delinquency” (1958). Guided by these perspectives, the University of Chicago’s YSP began field operations in the summer
of 1959. With access provided by the Chicago YMCA’s Program for Detached
Workers (PDW), the YSP “kept a window open” on gangs located throughout many of Chicago’s Community Areas, all of which were undergoing, or
1. YSP data are relevant, as well, to another hard problem, relationships between police and street
gangs. While previously published work wrestles with this problem (Short & Hughes, 2010), more systematic analysis of ethnographic-type data remains to be done. YSP ethnographic data and contacts we have
had with gang workers and supervisors of the current version of the program with which the YSP was
associated also are of continued relevance to another hard problem identified by Sampson, for example,
how to bring “ex-offenders into the process of building collective efficacy” (2013, p. 22).

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in the path of, rapid and substantial demographic, ecological, and institutional change. Impacts on young people and their families were profound
but varied.
YSP research papers culminated in publication of Group Process and Gang
Delinquency (Short & Strodtbeck, 1965). A second edition (1974) listed
additional papers based on the project and briefly placed gang behavior in
the context of massive social changes under way in Chicago and elsewhere,
for example, the “war on poverty,” black militancy, and the emergence of
“super-gangs.” Short and Strodtbeck concluded that fundamental group
processes and characteristics of individual gang members remained much
like those in the early1960s, but they recognized that this conclusion was
speculative, absent further research.
Much as in the past, it appears today that most gangs begin in local
neighborhoods, most do not become institutionalized, and few, if any, have
succeeded in becoming legitimate organizations. Those that have attempted
to do so have experienced great difficulty establishing their legitimacy for
many reasons, including continued criminal behavior by gang members,
massive fraud in some instances, and active opposition and repression from
authorities. Much relevant YSP ethnographic data remain to be systematically analyzed, along with historical data concerning the interplay of major
institutions and gangs in which PDW personnel were involved.
The remainder of this essay is devoted to discussion of the manner in which
our research agenda addresses Sampson’s “hard problems.” Identifying
social mechanisms and dynamic processes associated with urban growth
and development, the PHDCN set the stage for study of interactional
processes among local residents, groups, and organizations in neighborhoods,
and of adaptations to historical, social, and ecological changes by those groups,
organizations, and communities. We begin with a brief example from our
study of the nature of street gangs under changing conditions at the local
community level. YSP narrative data constitute an unparalleled opportunity
to study these changes through the lens of history, noting both similarities
and differences in consequences for gangs and their communities.
CHANGING GANGS AND GANGLANDS: WHEN RACIAL TRANSITION IS NEARING COMPLETION
The period of most active YSP data collection (1959–1962, with a limited
follow-up study in the early1970s) were years of tumultuous change (Cohen
& Taylor, 2000; Diamond 2009; Drake & Cayton, 1962; Grossman, 1989;
Lemann, 1991; Pattillo, 2013).2 While the forces of economic and political
change gathering in Chicago were evident elsewhere in the nation, the tools
2. Our research agenda includes historical inquiries of more than 20 Chicago communities and neighborhoods in which YSP gangs were located.

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

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that ensured segregation, isolation, overcrowding and deteriorating housing
were forged in Chicago (Hirsch, 1983). Those tools changed old ganglands
and brought into being new gangs and ganglands.
The Dukes, the lone PDW white gang in the summer of 1959, were one
of several gangs and youth clubs located in Grand Crossing Park (Chicago
Community Area 69). The park reportedly had been the site of a “prearranged ‘gang fight’” between blacks and whites just 2 years earlier (Diamond
2009, p. 222). Grand Crossing had changed rapidly from 94% to 13.8% white
between 1950 and 1960; changes in black residency were equally dramatic,
from 5.8% to 85.9%. Until then, population density had been stable. As whites
continued to leave the area, total population declined by nearly a third over
the next two decades.3
Excerpts (edited) from the first interview (July 13, 1959) of the detached
worker assigned to the Dukes described clear status distinctions in Grand
Crossing’s ethnic history:
Up until the Negroes began to move in, the Italians were looked down upon
as the inferior people of the park area, the downtrodden, the poor slobs. Since
the Negroes have begun to move in, the Italians have new status. They have
a chance to ridicule a people lower than themselves. The park groups are a
mixture … the majority are lower-class working people.

The Dukes and other park groups also had clashed with a Mexican gang,
the Chevels, once with dynamite exploding near an automobile filled with
members of the latter.4 However, the bulk of the gang’s attention was focused
on “invading” black residents. Expressions of hostility toward blacks and
community support of resistance to blacks in community life took several
forms. An observer’s report, dated September 15, 1959, captures the spirit of
such resistance among young people.
Fifteen minutes after we arrived, two guys … Larry, who had finished practice
with his charges in the park talked to the boys present, many of whom were
Dukes. He really laid into them for getting involved in gang warfare. He talked
in a matter of fact way, not preaching, so they listened to him without getting
mad. Among Larry’s comments “on the senselessness of the boys from the park
fighting the Chevels”; they should save it for the “niggers”; after all, they were

3. Census tract data suggest that in-migrants were of somewhat higher socioeconomic status than
the remaining white residents: median family income, years of school completed, percentage white collar
workers, family income less than $3,000 and over $10,000, unemployed in male labor force, and 1960 home
ownership and rentals (median values) favored predominantly black tracts.
4. Detached worker interviews and an observer’s report provide detailed accounts of this clash and
its aftermath. Gunfire had been exchanged, but no one apparently had been hit.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

the real enemies.5 Why fight each other when someday you will be fighting
together against someone else?6

Among non-Hispanic white boys and girls, ethnicity and gang membership
clearly mattered less than being white.7 One consequence was that teen hanging patterns commonly involved members of more than one group, gang, or
club. Larry’s hypercritical interactions with the boys typified relationships
between generations not far removed from one another.
By the end of 1960, only a few of the Dukes lived in Grand Crossing, most
having moved further south, many to Avalon Park, which remained virtually
all-white.8 PDW services to the Dukes ceased midway in the research program, but the worker maintained his contacts through a new position with
a city-wide youth commission. His final interview (July, 1961) is a revealing
commentary on the effect of such changes on local institutions and young
people.
While many gang members continued their association with Grand Crossing Park, white residents of CA 69 were either fleeing or struggling to maintain white neighborhoods and home values, and park and school authorities
and Catholic Church leaders were struggling to serve both white and black
constituencies. The park supervisor, a young “old-country Irishman” whose
“attitude was that priority should be given to the original citizens of the
area,” was replaced by a college student who initiated programs for blacks
as well as whites, “segregated” but “staggered”; blacks were programmed
on Monday and Wednesday nights, whites on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The
worker predicted, “There won’t be any white leagues next fall. The park is
going to be solidly Negro, and (after a period of intense resistance) the white
kids have accepted that.”
Two local business hangouts favored by white teens had removed some or
all booths “to get away from the teenagers,” and another had been sold to a
black man who “doesn’t particularly care for … the teenage trade, because
they don’t bring in money … white kids don’t congregate there anymore.”
In addition, St. Francis DePaul Catholic church was:
5. By 1960 “Mexicans had become the leading nationality among the foreign stock, followed by the
Irish and the Italians” who had arrived much earlier (Kitagawa & Tauber, 1963, p. 152).
6. Short and Strodtbeck (pp. 112–113) quote at length a September 1959 worker’s “incident report” in
which members of the Dukes chased unsuccessfully after a single black teenager who was seen sauntering
into the park. The chase was aided by nearby adults who shouted encouragement in their pursuit. The
worker noted that some of the Dukes present did not pursue the black teen, and that the President of
the Dukes said “that his guys reacted like a bunch of kids whenever they saw a colored guy, and openly
expressed his wish that the Negro boy would get away.”
7. “Whiteness studies” flourished in the 1990s. For a review, see Diamond, 2009. Grand Crossing is a
relevant case study.
8. Chatham (C.A. 44) immediately south of Grand Crossing, also had experienced white flight but
was more than one-third white in 1960. Avalon Park was southeast of Grand Crossing, and immediately
east of Chatham.

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

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in the process now of cutting out the (Saturday night) dance. Previously, the
dance was on Friday night. They had as good as 200 kids when I first came
into the area. Last summer they changed the night of the social from Friday to
Saturday night because they intended to initiate religious instructions to the
new citizens of the area, predominately Negroes, and they didn’t want these
Negroes coming into the church auditorium to be exposed to the white kids.
This killed quite a bit of the interest in the dance (because) if they date a girl, it’s
usually on Saturday night, and Saturday is show night. All through the winter,
the attendance kept dropping. Kids would drop in and look around and see the
big auditorium kind of empty and leave.

Although by 1962 the Dukes and other white gangs in Grand Crossing
ceased to exist as organized groups, some former members began associating with an amorphous coalition of old and new gangs that the YSP called
the 80th & Halsted gang. Through 2 years of observation, this large gang consisted of overlapping cliques with widely varying behavior patterns ranging
from fighting to theft and heavy substance abuse. Located in the contiguous
Auburn-Gresham Community Area southwest of Grand Crossing, the 80th
and Halsted groups came together from time to time for a variety of activities, including PDW programming and an abortive attempt to resist racial
integration at “Rainbow Beach,” a widely publicized confrontation between
civil rights protestors of a well-known segregated public beach.
While historian Andrew Diamond (2009) argues that street gangs played
a major role in crystallizing black consciousness and political awareness,
and were key to sustaining conflicts between races and ethnicities over civil
rights, criminological research on gangs fails to address these issues. John
Hagedorn’s (2007, 2008) review of research and his impressionistic observations in many countries is a rare exception. However, his conflation of gangs
with “alienated groups socialized by the streets or prisons, not conventional
institutions,” explains by definition much that requires explanation and
is so broad as to defy systematic analysis. Diamond’s and Hagedorn’s
documentation of the participation of young people in civil rights protest
and violence is impressive, but evidence of the role of street gangs is less so.
Short and Strodtbeck addressed these issues only indirectly. Later inquiries
by Short and Moland (Short, 1974; Short & Moland, 1976), however, found
little support for political consciousness or militancy among YSP gangs during this early period. Nonetheless, a decade marked by increasing population density followed by decline dramatically changed the racial and ethnic
character of many neighborhoods, not only in Greater Grand Crossing but
in many other Chicago communities. Street gangs and other youth groups
changed accordingly, as racial issues replaced ethnicity as the basis for organization. Further study of how this “present” transformed the immediate
“past” is an important part of our research agenda.

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THE GROUP PROCESS PERSPECTIVE: CONTEXTS AND MECHANISMS
A hard problem not identified by Sampson concerns the nature and consequences of group processes associated with crime and delinquency. Despite
the significance of large-scale social changes in the lives of gangs and
gang members, historical and community-level variables “cannot explain
the emergence of particular instances of aggressive delinquency from the
ongoing, largely nondelinquent, behavior of gang boys” (Short & Strodtbeck
1965, p. 185). On the basis of analysis of YSP data, Short and Strodtbeck
concluded that, “at the moment of truth,” the behavior of gang boys is
governed not by short-run hedonism but by a utility-risk calculus in which
potential status gains and losses within the immediate context of the gang
are weighed against one another and the more remote possibility of negative
societal responses. James Diego Vigil (1988, p. 42) observed a similar pattern
in Southern California, noting that “socialization to cholo ways,” itself
a function of multiple marginalities (e.g., poverty and discrimination)
among Latino/a populations, underlies a gang climate in which aggressive
behaviors come to be normative, valued, and rewarded. Meanwhile, in
Los Angeles, Malcolm Klein (1969, 1971; see Klein, 1995) has continued
to emphasize gang cohesiveness as another group process associated with
gang member violence and delinquency—an insight Scott Decker and
colleagues build upon in stressing the role of symbolic enemies and threats
in drawing gang members together in a cyclical process of violent escalation
and retaliation (Decker, 1996; Decker & Van Winkle, 1996; see also Decker,
Melde, & Pyrooz, 2013).
Knowledge of group dynamics has been slow to accumulate in the era of
“big gang research” (since the early 1990s), in part owing to “disciplinary
wrangling” and a shift in focus from gangs as groups to individual gang
members (Pyrooz & Mitchell, 2015; see also Short, 1998). Pyrooz and
Mitchell note several reasons for optimism, however, including technological advances, expanding research networks, and “integration of social
network theory and method into the gang literature, as well as insights
offered by social psychology, [which] will help tackle the primary—yet
typically unmeasured—culprit in the explanation of gang delinquency”
(p. 35). Indeed, social network analyses of YSP data are among a handful of
recent studies focusing on the group nature of gangs and the role of gang
organization, friendship ties, rivalries, and retaliatory motives in “compelling individuals to engage in what appear to be nonrational behaviors
(going on a mission into enemy territory, being beaten into a gang by a
large number of individuals, putting themselves at risk by wearing certain
colors … )” despite “doubts about the prudence of such behavioral choices
on the part of members” (Decker, Melde, & Pyrooz, 2013, p. 383; see also

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

9

Bouchard & Spindler, 2010; Hughes, 2013; Hughes & Short, 2005, 2013;
Pyrooz, Fox, Katz, & Decker, 2012).
Understanding these dynamics has implications beyond gangs and gang
members, extending to collective processes and behaviors on a broader, even
global, scale. John Hagedorn’s A World of Gangs (2008; see also Dowdney,
2005; Hagedorn, 2007) explores the significance of “hip-hop and gangsta’
culture” for youth worldwide. Similar to Diamond (2009), Hagedorn raises
important issues regarding processes related to politics, popular culture
and racial, ethnic, and group identity among disadvantaged young people
in many contexts. His argument—that gangs represent rebellion against
established authority and that the state is the primary culprit in suppressing
efforts by institutionalized gangs to become legitimate—warrants additional
attention, requiring further consideration of group processes contributing
to the development of resistance identities, as well as to the nature and
consequences, both positive and negative, of external threats.
Study of gang dynamics may contribute as well to the global reach of
historical, group and organizational processes associated with genocide
and human rights violations (for genocide, see Owens, Su, & Snow, 2013).
Vast literatures exist on these topics, but only recently have sociologists
begun to devote systematic efforts to their study. John Hagan and Wenona
Rymond-Richmond’s (2009) study of genocide in the Darfur region of Africa
documents collective processes among the aggressors that are similar to
those found among youth gang aggressors. Joachim Savelsberg’s (2010)
survey of research on human rights violations and humanitarian law also
highlights the collective nature of such behavior. Like Hagedorn, these
studies suggest the increasing scale and relevance of general processes across
historical, cultural, and group contexts for understanding special aspects
of the human condition, bolstering the case for bringing the study of street
gangs back into the mainstream.
CONCLUSION
Andrew Abbott argues that “Social life is no more … than recurrent patterns
of action in recurrent structures” (Abbott 1999, p. 220; see also Hughes 2006);
Robert Sampson notes that social causation is, above all, “contextual causality”
(Sampson 2013, p. 5). As sociologists and others are discovering, gangs represent important opportunities for studying contexts and processes of more
general interest (see, e.g., Diamond 2009; Papachristos, 2009; Papachristos &
Kirk, 2006; Pattillo, 2007, 2013). Gangs are products of, and contributors to,
these contexts and processes. Building on foundational studies of gangs and
on more recent work that expands the boundaries of criminological inquiry,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

our hope and our aspiration is to reclaim the study of gangs for the basic
social science disciplines, as well as a special field within criminology.9
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Decker, S. H. (1996). Collective and normative features of gang violence. Justice Quarterly, 13, 243–264.
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JAMES F. SHORT, Jr. SHORT BIOGRAPHY
James F. Short, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Washington State
University. He is a former editor of the American Sociological Review and past
president of the American Sociological Association and the American Society
of Criminology. He has published widely in sociology, criminology, and risk
analysis. His books include Suicide and Homicide (with A.F. Henry); Group

Bringing the Study of Street Gangs Back into the Mainstream

13

Process and Gang Delinquency (with F.L. Strodtbeck); Delinquency and Society; Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime; Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk
(with L. Clark); and Juvenile Delinquency and Delinquents: The Nexus of Social
Change (with L.A. Hughes). His current research draws on YSP data to examine neighborhood racial transitions, group structure, and group processes
resulting in delinquency.
LORINE A. HUGHES SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Lorine A. Hughes is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research interests include youth
street gangs, criminological theory testing, and social networks. Her current
research (with J.F. Short, Jr.) draws on YSP data to address links among neighborhood racial transitions, group structure, and group processes resulting in
delinquency. Recent publications based on these data appear in Criminology
and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
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