Edited by Malcolm W. Klein, Hans-Jürgen Kerner, Cheryl L. Maxson and Elmar G. M. Weitekamp

The Eurogang Paradox is the first comprehensive collection of original research reports on the status of street gangs and problematic youth groups in Europe, as well as a set of special, state-of-the-art reports on the current status of American street gang research and its implications for the European gang situation. Seven American papers are joined with reports from England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Holland, Belgium, France, and Slovenia. Summary chapters by the American and European editors provide overviews of the street gang picture: the associated issues and problems of definition, community context, comparative research procedures, and implications for prevention and intervention. Professionals and students will find these papers easy to comprehend yet fully informative on comparative street gang studies.

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001. 335p.

By Irving A. Spergel

Every day there are new stories of gang-related crime: from the proliferation of illegal weapons in the streets and children dealing drugs in their schools, to innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of never-ending gang wars. Once considered an urban phenomenon, gang violence is permeating American life, spreading to the suburbs and bringing the problem closer to home for much of America. The government, schools, social agencies, and the justice system are conspicuous by their sporadic interest in the subject and have failed to develop effective policies and programs. Existing social support mechanisms and strategies for suppressing violence have often been unsuccessful. And, state and federal policy is largely nonexistent.In The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach, Irving Spergel provides a systematic analysis of youth gangs in the United States. Based on research, historical and comparative analysis, and agency documents and the author's extensive first-hand experience, the work explores the gang problem from the perspective of community disorganization, especially population movement, and the plight of the underclass. It examines the factors of gang member personality, gang dynamics, criminal organization, and the influence of family, school, prisons, and politics, as well as the response of criminal justice agencies and community groups.

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  Spergel describes techniques used by social agencies, schools, employment programs, criminal justice agencies, and grass-roots organizations for dealing with gangs, and recommends strategies that emphasize the use of local resources, planning, and collaborative procedures.There is no single strategy and no easy solution to the youth gang problem in the United States. There are, however, substantial steps we can take, and they must be honestly and systematically tested. Offering a practical and alternative approach to a serious social problem, The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach is a major and long-awaited contribution to this dilemma. It is required reading for criminal justice personnel, school staff, social workers, policy makers, students and scholars of urban and organizational sociology, and the general reader concerned with the youth gang problem and how to control, intervene, and prevent it.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 368p.

By Kyung-Seok Choo

Choo explores group delinquency in the Asian American community. His primary focus is two youth groups, a Korean affiliated Chinese youth gang and a Korean delinquent group. The two groups have evolved through different processes and under different community circumstances. Both manifest differing patterns of delinquent activities and require different approaches to their problems. By analyzing the demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural characteristics of the Korean immigrant community, the book discusses the unique lifestyle of Korean-American immigrants in relation to their youth and group delinquency problem. Choo also explains the phenomenon of gangs and immigrant youth by detailed comparison of the emergence, development, persistence and change of theser two distinctive groups.

New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2007. 215p.

By Ko-lin Chin

In Chinatown Gangs, Ko-lin Chin penetrates a closed society and presents a rare portrait of the underworld of New York City's Chinatown. Based on first-hand accounts from gang members, gang victims, community leaders, and law enforcement authorities, this pioneering study reveals the pervasiveness, the muscle, the longevity, and the institutionalization of Chinatown gangs. Chin reveals the fear gangs instill in the Chinese community. At the same time, he shows how the economic viability of the community is sapped, and how gangs encourage lawlessness, making a mockery of law enforcement agencies.Ko-lin Chin makes clear that gang crime is inexorably linked to Chinatown's political economy and social history. He shows how gangs are formed to become "equalizers" within a social environment where individual and group conflicts, whether social, political, or economic, are unlikely to be solved in American courts. Moreover, Chin argues that Chinatown's informal economy provides yet another opportunity for street gangs to become "providers" or "protectors" of illegal services. These gangs, therefore, are the pathological manifestation of a closed community, one whose problems are not easily seen--and less easily understood--by outsiders.Chin's concrete data on gang characteristics, activities, methods of operation and violence make him uniquely qualified to propose ways to restrain gang violence, and Chinatown Gangs closes with his specific policy suggestions. It is the definitive study of gangs in an American Chinatown.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 248p.

By James Diego Vigil

The Pico Gardens housing development in East Los Angeles has a high percentage of resident families with a history of persistent poverty, gang involvement, and crime. In some families, members of three generations have belonged to gangs. Many other Pico Gardens families, however, have managed to avoid the cycle of gang involvement.In this work, Vigil adds to the tradition of poverty research and elaborates on the association of family dynamics and gang membership. The main objective of his research was to discover what factors make some families more vulnerable to gang membership, and why gang resistance was evidenced in similarly situated non-gang-involved families. Providing rich, in-depth interviews and observations, Vigil examines the wide variations in income and social capital that exist among the ostensibly poor, mostly Mexican American residents. Vigil documents how families connect and interact with social agencies in greater East Los Angeles to help chart the routines and rhythms of the lives of public housing residents. He presents family life histories to augment and provide texture to the quantitative information.By studying life in Pico Gardens, Vigil feels we can better understand how human agency interacts with structural factors to produce the reality that families living in all public housing developments must contend with daily.

Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007. 256p.

By Frederic M. Thrasher

While gangs and gang culture have been around for countless centuries, The Gang is one of the first academic studies of the phenomenon. Originally published in 1927, Frederic Milton Thrasher’s magnum opus offers a profound and careful analysis of hundreds of gangs in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. With rich prose and an eye for detail, Thrasher looked specifically at the way in which urban geography shaped gangs, and posited the thesis that neighborhoods in flux were more likely to produce gangs. Moreover, he traced gang culture back to feudal and medieval power systems and linked tribal ethos in other societies to codes of honor and glory found in American gangs

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. 214p.

By Sophia Falkner

Policy Exchange’s report, Knife Crime in the Capital , reveals the real injustice that at least four out of five gang related homicide victims and perpetrators in London are black or ethnic minority.

It confirms that the Metropolitan Police is losing a battle against knife crime that is out of control in some parts of London, with young black and ethnic minority men by far the most likely to be stabbed or commit knife crime. Black people in London, it shows, are five times more likely to be hospitalised than white people due to a stabbing.

The report analyses a decade of knife crime data, revealing how a combination of drill music, social media, tit-for-tat revenge attacks and a failure in police strategy are causes of dozens of deaths and hundreds more injuries every year.

London: Policy Exchange, 2021. 63p.

By Charles Puzzanchera and Sarah Hockenberry

This bulletin describes the official juvenile court referral histories of more than 160,000 youth born in 2000 from 903 selected United States counties. Using data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, this bulletin focuses on the demographic and case processing characteristics of youth referred to juvenile court and the proportion of the cohort that was referred to juvenile court more than once, as well as histories defined as serious, violent, and chronic.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs , 2022. 24p.

By Christopher Slobogin and Mark R. Fondacaro

In this book, Slobogin and Fondacaro present their vision for a new juvenile justice system, founded on the evidence at hand and promoting the principles of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. The authors develop their juvenile justice policy proposals effectively by carefully addressing the problems with past policy approaches.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 224p.

By Richard A Mendel

Diverting youth from juvenile court involvement should be a central focus in efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities and improve outcomes in our nation’s youth justice systems. Clear evidence shows that getting arrested in adolescence or having a delinquency case filed in juvenile court damages young people’s futures and increases their subsequent involvement in the justice system. Compared with youth who are diverted, youth who are arrested and formally petitioned in court have far higher likelihood of subsequent arrests and school failure. Pre-arrest and pre-court diversion can avert these bad outcomes. Research shows that Black youth are far more likely to be arrested than their white peers and far less likely to be diverted from court following arrest. Other youth of color – including Latinx youth, Tribal youth, and Asian/Pacific Islander youth – are also less likely than their white peers to be diverted. The lack of diversion opportunities for youth of color is pivotal, because greater likelihood of formal processing in court means that youth of color accumulate longer court histories, leading to harsher consequences for any subsequent arrest. Expanding diversion opportunities for youth of color therefore represents a crucial, untapped opportunity to address continuing disproportionality in juvenile justice.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 38p.

By Karen Bullock and Nick Tilley

This report describes analysis and strategy development for a project aiming to reduce shootings in South Manchester. It attempts to apply problem-oriented policing principles to shootings and other serious violence associated with gangs, principally in South Manchester. Its broad approach follows that of an apparently very effective project in Boston, Massachusetts, which was associated with a rapid and sustained reduction in shootings. The project is one of a number being funded by the targeted policing initiative, part of the government’s three-year crime reduction strategy. Based on a range of quantitative and qualitative data, this report identifies some of the proximate causes of shootings in Manchester. On the basis of the analysis a strategy, involving police and partners, is sketched out. The strategy comprises a mix of preventative and enforcement based activities, some of which are adapted from the Boston model and some of which are tailored to the specific issues identified in Manchester.

London: Home Office, 2002. 68p.

By G.K. Lieten , Talinay Strehl

This brief studies the phenomenon of street children in two cities in Peru. It looks at some of the conceptual issues and, after analysing why children are in the street and what behaviour and which aspirations they exhibit, deals with the policy issues and lessons to be learned. This brief investigates when and why the transition from children on the street (street-working children) to children of the street (street living children) takes place and elucidates how they survive. It explains the fluidity and the risks involved in any type of child street life.

Cham: Springer, 2015. 66p.

By Kristina E. Gibson

Street outreach workers comb public places such as parks, vacant lots, and abandoned waterfronts to search for young people who are living out in public spaces, if not always in the public eye. Street Kids opens a window to the largely hidden world of street youth, drawing on their detailed and compelling narratives to give new insight into the experiences of youth homelessness and youth outreach. Kristina Gibson argues that the enforcement of quality of life ordinances in New York City has spurred hyper-mobility amongst the city’s street youth population and has serious implications for social work with homeless youth. Youth in motion have become socially invisible and marginalized from public spaces where social workers traditionally contact them, jeopardizing their access to the already limited opportunities to escape street life. The culmination of a multi-year ethnographic investigation into the lives of street outreach workers and ‘their kids’ on the streets of New York City, Street Kids illustrates the critical role that public space regulations and policing play in shaping the experience of youth homelessness and the effectiveness of street outreach.

New York: New York University Press, 2011. 288p.

By Michael W. Flamm

In the mid-1960s, amid a pervasive sense that American society was coming apart at the seams, a new issue known as 'law and order' emerged at the forefront of national politics. First introduced by Barry Goldwater in his ill-fated run for president in 1964, it eventually punished Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats and propelled Richard Nixon and the Republicans to the White House in 1968. In this thought-provoking study, Michael W. Flamm examines how conservatives successfully blamed liberals for the rapid rise in street crime and then skillfully used law and order to link the understandable fears of white voters to growing unease about changing moral values, the civil rights movement, urban disorder, and antiwar protests. Liberals, Flamm argues, were by contrast unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, they either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil unrest. By 1968, this seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was above all sworn to do-protect personal security and private property.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 294p.

By Antoinette Davis, Andrea Gentile and Caroline Glesmann

Over the past three decades, States have enacted legislation making it easier to transfer youth to the adult criminal justice system. Although the process occurs with male and female youth, this document specifically addresses the challenges of transferring girls to adult court and correctional systems. Mechanisms developed to move youth into adult systems include Judicial Waiver/Transfer Laws, Prosecutorial Direct Filing, Statutory Exclusion Provisions, the “Once an Adult, Always an Adult” Provisions and Age of Jurisdiction Laws. When making those transfer decisions, less consideration may be given to the idea that adult jails and prisons are not designed for the confinement of youth, and as a result most are not equipped to meet the inherent and specific needs of adolescents.

While not intended as a research document, this bulletin highlights challenges when transferring juveniles to the adult criminal justice system for administrators and the individual justice involved girls. It is hoped that the audience for this document will extend beyond that of adult and juvenile correctional administrators and reach other related stakeholders who are involved in the decision-making regarding the transfer of juveniles to the adult criminal justice system

Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections, 2016. 16p.

By The Pew Charitable Trusts

A growing body of research demonstrates that for many juvenile offenders, lengthy out-of-home placements in secure corrections or other residential facilities fail to produce better outcomes than alternative sanctions. In certain instances, they can be counterproductive. Seeking to reduce recidivism and achieve better returns on their juvenile justice spending, several states have recently enacted laws that limit which youth can be committed to these facilities and moderates the length of time they can spend there. These changes prioritize the use of costly facilities and intensive programming for serious offenders who present a higher risk of reoffending, while supporting effective community-based programs for others.

Philadelphia, PA: The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2015. 8p.

By The National Juvenile Justice Network and the Texas Public Policy Foundation

This report presents information on nine States that have adopted policies within their juvenile justice systems aimed at reducing the incarceration rate of youth in the United States. The nine States singled out for their efforts include California, Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio, Mississippi, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Using data collected by Federal agencies, this report presents details on national and State incarceration trends, with specific focus on the nine States. The analysis found that the decrease in youth incarceration rates is associated with changes in State policies since 2001 that have focused on increasing the availability of evidence-based alternatives to incarceration; requiring intake procedures that reduce use of secure detention facilities; closing or downsizing youth confinement facilities; reducing schools' overreliance on the justice system to address discipline issues; disallowing incarceration for minor offenses; and restructuring juvenile justice responsibilities and finances among States and counties. The nine States identified in this report were selected as a result of adopting at least four of the six policy changes, exceeding the national-average reduction in youth confinement for the period 2001-2010, and experiencing a decline in youth arrests for the same period.

Washington, DC: National Juvenile Justice Network; Austin, TX: Texas Public policy Foundation, 2013. 54p.

By Barry Holman and Jason Ziedenberg

Despite the lowest youth crime rates in 20 years, hundreds of thousands of young people are locked away every year in the nation’s 591 secure detention centers. Detention centers are intended to temporarily house youth who pose a high risk of re-offending before their trial, or who are deemed likely to not appear for their trial. But the nation’s use of detention is steadily rising, and facilities are packed with young people who do not meet those high-risk criteria—about 70 percent are detained for nonviolent offenses.

Detained youth, who are frequently pre-adjudication and awaiting their court date, or sometimes waiting for their placement in another facility or community-based program, can spend anywhere from a few days to a few months in locked custody. At best, detained youth are physically and emotionally separated from the families and communities who are the most invested in their recovery and success. Often, detained youth are housed in overcrowded, understaffed facilities—an environment that conspires to breed neglect and violence.

Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 24p.

By Clare Sharp, Judith Aldridge and Juanjo Medina

This study examined the prevalence of involvement in "delinquent youth groups" and the nature of the delinquent and criminal behavior of members of such groups (individually and as groups) among youth ages 10 to 19 in the general household populations of England and Wales. The most common DYG delinquent activity as a group was using drugs. Other common group activities were threatening or frightening people, making graffiti, damaging property, and using force or violence. The most common feature of a DYG was having an area or place the group "called its own." These findings were obtained from an analysis of the 2004 Offending, Crime, and Justice Survey. It included questions that assessed levels of involvement in DYGs among individuals between the ages of 10 to 19. The survey was designed to measures offending in the "general household population;" consequently, it was unlikely to obtain information from serious offenders/groups involved in more serious criminal activities. 5 figures, 27 tables, 53 references, and appended questionnaire

London: Home Office, 2006. 68p.