By Emma Disley and Mark Liddle

The aim of this study was to understand perceptions of the nature of urban street gangs and whether these gangs have changed in recent years in the 33 areas1 that make up the Government’s Ending Gang and Youth Violence (EGYV) programme (HM Government, 2011a). The EGYV programme aims to improve the way that gangs are tackled locally through providing peer support to local areas to help prevent young people becoming involved in violence; providing exit routes for those already involved in gangs; and ensuring that appropriate enforcement responses are put in place to address challenges associated with gangs. The study was based on the perceptions of practitioners working on gang-related issues as well as individuals who were current or ex-gang members, or associated with, or affiliated to gangs (referred to throughout as gang associates). It investigated the extent to which there were perceived similarities or differences in the nature of street gangs in EGYV areas and whether or not gangs were thought to have changed in the last two years. It also explored the extent to which there were common or divergent trends in perceptions at national or local levels. It was not the purpose of this study to evaluate the effectiveness of the EGYV programme or local measures to address gang and youth violence. The findings, based largely on practitioners’ perceptions, highlight issues and possible trends that could be more fully explored and investigated locally or nationally, using a wider range of evidence and information.

London: Home Office, 2016. 107p.

Edited by Matthew and Shannon E. Reid

Conflict, including the threat or fear of potential violence, or being witness to or a victim of physical violence, constantly surrounds gangs and their communities and is the principal driver sustaining gang life. This Special Issue examines the diverse nature of gang-related violence with the goal of better understanding the growing complexities of gang violence over the last two decades to better inform public policy solutions. The contributions included in this Special Issue highlight the complex nature of gang-related violence in the 21st Century. As much as policy makers, the media, and even scholars like to simplify gang-related violence, all of the studies included in this Special Issue highlight the nuance and variation that exists.

Basel, SWIT: MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021. 190p.

By International Crisis Group

Born in the aftermath of civil war and boosted by mass deportations from the U.S., Central American gangs are responsible for brutal acts of violence, chronic abuse of women, and more recently, the forced displacement of children and families. Estimated to number 54,000 in the three Northern Triangle countries – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – the gangs’ archetypal tattooed young men stand out among the region’s greatest sources of public anxiety. Although they are not the only groups dedicated to violent crime, the maras have helped drive Central American murder rates to highs unmatched in the world: when the gangs called a truce in El Salvador, homicides halved overnight. But it is extortion that forms the maras’ criminal lifeblood and their most widespread racket. By plaguing local businesses for protection payments, they reaffirm control over poor urban enclaves to fund misery wages for members. Reducing the impact of these schemes, replacing them with formal employment and restoring free movement across the Northern Triangle’s urban zones would greatly reduce the harm of gang activity. Charting this route, however, requires a sharp switch in current policies. Ever since mara-related insecurity became visible in the early 2000s, the region’s governments have responded through punitive measures that reproduce the popular stigmas and prejudices of internal armed conflict. In programs such as Iron Fist in El Salvador, the Sweep-Up Plan in Guatemala or Zero Tolerance in Honduras, mass incarceration, harsher prison conditions and recourse to extrajudicial executions provided varieties of punishment. The cumulative effects, however, have fallen far short of expectations. Assorted crackdowns have not taken account of the deep social roots of the gangs, which provide identity, purpose and status for youths who are unaccommodated in their home societies and “born dead”. The responses have also failed to recognise the counterproductive effects of security measures that have given maras prisons in which to organise and confirmation of their identity as social outcasts. The succession of unsuccessful punitive measures is now coming under closer scrutiny across the Northern Triangle. All three countries are experimenting with new forms of regional collaboration in law enforcement. Guatemala has introduced vanguard measures to combat extortion rackets, many of them run from within jails, and has proposed a range of alternatives to prison terms. Although the collapse of the truce with the maras in 2014 spurred unprecedented violence in El Salvador, murder rates appear to have fallen again, while parts of the maras have proposed fresh talks with an eye to their eventual dissolution – an offer shunned by the government. Mass deportation from the U.S. back to these countries risks a repeated upsurge in gang crime. However, U.S. concern with reducing the migrant flow from Central America has generated significant new funds for development in the region via the Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity. At the core of a new approach should stand an acknowledgement of the social and economic roots of gang culture, ineradicable in the short term, alongside a concerted state effort to minimise the violence of illicit gang activity. Focused and sophisticated criminal investigations should target the gangs responsible for the most egregious..

Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2017. 41p.

By InSight Crime and Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS)

Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, is one of the world’s largest and most violent street gangs. It is also one of the least understood, making it difficult for policymakers and law enforcement to confront. A new report by InSight Crime and American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS) reveals new details about the gang’s operations and provides policy prescriptions for eradicating MS13. Entitled “MS13 in the Americas: How the World’s Most Notorious Street Gang Defies Logic, Resists Destruction,” the report is based on hundreds of interviews with, and surveys of gang members and law enforcement officials in El Salvador, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Long Island. It contains insights into the gang’s hierarchy, politics, structure, and recruitment methods.

Washington, DC: InSight Crime and Center for Latin American & Latino Studies, 2018. 90p.

By Caitriona Dowd.

This paper explores the evidence available on the role of work in youth participation in violence, through a study of recent research and evidence in this field. The evidence review considers the role of ‘work’ broadly, seeking to go beyond restricted definitions of waged and formal sector employment or underemployment. It considers the role of formal and informal work, different forms of work, and the various potential roles – both positive and negative – that work may play in youth participation in violence. The study will also employ a broad definition of ‘violence’ – considering youth participation in organised, mass-mobilised conflicts; ‘radicalised’ or ‘extremist’ violent groups; less formal, criminal violence; and, where relevant, interpersonal violence. The deliberately broad definition of violence facilitates a focused analysis of the evidence and research surrounding the role of work in youth engagement in all forms of violence that constitute a disengagement from a peaceful social order, recognising the interlinkages between multiple and varied outward manifestations of violence (for example, criminal, economic, political and interpersonal violence). The study explores the evidence for the role of work in youth violence participation at the intersection of multiple forms of work, multiple forms of violence, and multiple forms of participation, mapping gaps in existing research and evidence, and opportunities for further research and analysis. Attention will be concentrated on research and evidence produced after 2010, building on the work of Cramer (2010) on unemployment and violence.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2017. 30p.

By Marylee Reynolds.

Ever wonder why the famed Chicago School of sociology at the University of Chicago studied juvenile delinquency almost to the exclusion of all else, even though it was during the height of organized crime in Chicago? This book provides an answer, and a penetrating analysis of the influence of organized crime on American academic sociology.

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012.

Edited by Matthew Valasik and Shannon E. Reid.

Conflict, including the threat or fear of potential violence, or being witness to or a victim of physical violence, constantly surrounds gangs and their communities and is the principal driver sustaining gang life. This Special Issue examines the diverse nature of gang-related violence with the goal of better understanding the growing complexities of gang violence over the last two decades to better inform public policy solutions. The contributions included in this Special Issue highlight the complex nature of gang-related violence in the 21st Century. As much as policy makers, the media, and even scholars like to simplify gang-related violence, all of the studies included in this Special Issue highlight the nuance and variation that exist.

Basel, SWIT: MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021. 188p.

Edited by Catherine L. Ward, Amelia van der Merwe, Andrew Dawes, Cathy Ward and Andrew Dawes.

Sources and Solutions in South Africa. This book thoroughly and carefully reviews the evidence for risk and protective factors that influence the likelihood of young people acting aggressively. Layers of understanding are built by viewing the problem from a multitude of perspectives, including the current situation in which South African youth are growing up, perspectives from developmental psychology, the influences of race, class and gender, and of the media. The book examines the evidence for effective interventions in the contexts of young people’s lives – their homes, their schools, their leisure activities, with gangs, in the criminal justice system, in cities and neighbourhoods, and with sexual offenders. In doing so, thoughtful suggestions are made for keeping an evidence-based perspective while (necessarily) adapting interventions for developing world contexts, such as South Africa.

Capetown: University of Cape Town Press, 2013. 447p.