Critical and Intersectional Gang Studies 9780367748371, 9780367742140, 9781003159797

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CRITICAL AND INTERSECTIONAL GANG STUDIES

This book ofers a critical and empirical examination of gang life, using an intersectional framework considering race, class, gender, and other characteristics. The book reexamines mainstream defnitions of gangs, identifes myths and misconceptions, and presents the complex subcultural or countercultural realities of gang members and their associates. Special attention is given to the importance of structural violence experienced by gang members and their communities. This book also interrogates how mainstream gang research is complicit in the oppression of marginalized individuals who join gangs. Assembling contributions from leading experts involved in gang research and the investigation of street gang culture, this book provides a perspective often missing in the conversation around gangs. Direct input from current and former gang members provides a window into the lived experiences of gang life—a picture more accurate and useful than that aforded by the privileged lens often used in gang research. Reliance on an intersectional approach fosters a non-pathological and critical look at gangs and their members. Critical and Intersectional Gang Studies is intended for students and scholars involved in the study of gangs, delinquency, and subcultural theory and will serve as a reference for researchers who wish to utilize a progressive, critical, and intersectional approach to study the impacts of gangs. Jennifer M. Ortiz is an associate professor at The College of New Jersey. Dr. Ortiz earned her PhD in criminal justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her research interests center on structural violence within the criminal justice system, with a focus on prison gangs and reentry post-incarceration. Ortiz’s most recent scholarship has been published in The Prison Journal, Corrections: Policy, Practice, and Research and Criminal Justice Review. Ortiz currently serves as an executive board member for Mission Behind Bars and Beyond, a Kentucky-based nonproft reentry organization and as Division Chair for the Division of Convict Criminology of the American Society of Criminology.

CRITICAL AND INTERSECTIONAL GANG STUDIES

Edited by Jennifer M. Ortiz

Designed cover image: © Colonel / Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Jennifer M. Ortiz; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jennifer M. Ortiz to be identifed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-0-367-74837-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-74214-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-15979-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of Contributors 1 Introduction Jennifer M. Ortiz PART I

Gang defnition 2 “Gang Ain’t in My Dictionary”: Utilizing insider perspectives to develop a critical gang defnition Jennifer M. Ortiz

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5 7

3 Demystifying alt-right gangs: Are white power groups cut from the same cloth as conventional gangs? Matthew Valasik and Shannon E. Reid

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4 [Folk]tales of diferent peoples: Transgressing gang defnitions and historical ties Brian Cabral and Sarah Bruno

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PART II

Critical refections on gang studies 5 Toward a decolonial imaginary to reexamine and redefne mainstream defnitions of “Gangs” and “Gang Members” in America Amy Andrea Martinez 6 MS-13, gang studies, and crimes of the powerful Kenneth Sebastian León and Maya Barak

65 67 84

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7 Evolution of the folk devil: Deconstructing claims about hybrid gangs Christian Bolden and Renee D. Lamphere PART III

Intersectional gang studies 8 Gang as a proxy for race: How the criminal justice system uses “gang” to reinforce oppression in minority communities Jennifer M. Ortiz 9 “I wanted to be the frst Mexican Mafa female member”: An intersectional criminological analysis of Chicana gang members in California Marisa D. Salinas and Xuan Santos

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119 121

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10 LGBTQ gang members’ intersectional identities and experiences Vanessa R. Panfl

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Index

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CONTRIBUTORS

Maya Barak is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies and afliate of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She holds a PhD in Justice, Law and Criminology from American University. Dr. Barak is an expert in capital punishment, sociolegal theory, gangs, immigration, courtroom workgroups, and policing. A  specialist in interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approaches, her scholarship is tied together by a consistent focus on how race, gender, and citizenship are confgured in legal and extralegal contexts. Her work makes signifcant empirical and theoretical contributions to understandings of crimmigration, legal consciousness, procedural justice, and state-corporate crime with scholarly and real-world implications. Christian Bolden is the Robert Hunter Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice at Loyola University New Orleans. He earned his PhD in Sociology from the University of Central Florida. His recent book Out of the Red: My Life of Gangs, Prison, and Redemption (Rutgers University Press) received the 2020 Frank Tannenbaum Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Convict Criminology. The book also resulted in Dr. Bolden receiving the 2021 Faculty Senate Award for Research from Loyola University New Orleans. In 2012–2013, Dr. Bolden was the “Futurist in Residence” research fellow for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. His areas of research are gang histories and processes, mass incarceration, and human trafcking. Sarah Bruno is from the south side of Chicago and graduated with her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021. She is a former member of the First Wave Hip-Hop and Urban Arts program, which prompted her investment in music, dance, and collaboration. Her dissertation, “Black Latinx Dexterity: Emotions, Bomba Puertorriqueña, and Decolonizing Diasporic Archives,” was supported by the Mellon ACLS dissertation fellowship and is currently the 2021–2022 ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University. Her research and art lie at the intersections of performance, diaspora, and colonialism—she is invested in Puerto Rico, Chicago, Blackness, femininity, and afect. Her scholarly and artistic work has been featured in Transforming Anthropology, the LatiNEXT Breakbeat Poets Anthology, Acentos Review, Anthropology News, Latinx Psych Today, and the Taller Electric

viii Contributors

Marronage blog. She aims to continue to write with care about the never-ending process of enduring, imagining, thriving, and healing in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Brian Cabral, MA, is a sociologist, born and raised in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood on the southwest side and remains committed toward organizing collaboratively against various forms of violence across the city. He is also a PhD candidate in the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) program at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. As a community-based educational ethnographer whose research lies at the intersection of race, place, language, and carcerality, his work considers the long-standing tensions of abolitionism within the context of school-carceral geographies where varying modes of confnement take place. Criminalized and institutionalized categories such as “gang member” are central to the carceral dynamics he explores. Renee D. Lamphere is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Her areas of academic interest include corrections, mixed-methods research, sexual violence and victimization, family violence, and cyber and digital-media crimes. Dr. Lamphere has a particular interest in teaching and pedagogy and has published in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education. Her most recent research project examines the #MeToo movement and sexual assault disclosure among college professors. She currently serves as the President of the North Carolina Sociological Association. She also serves as a Guardian ad Litem for Robeson County, North Carolina, where she advocates for children in the foster care system due to abuse and neglect. Kenneth Sebastian León is Assistant Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and faculty afliate of the Criminal Justice Program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He specializes in crimes of the powerful, with a focus on how state-corporate interests infuence criminal justice (CJ) systems (e.g., police, courts, corrections) and how race, class, and state-corporate power are confgured within and beyond the formal disciplinary and material boundaries of criminal justice. His work also focuses on both the promise and perils of Latina/o/x Criminologies. More information about his research can be found at www.ksebastianleon.com. Amy Andrea Martinez is Distinguished Multicultural Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Rhode Island in the Criminal Justice and Criminology Department. She recently received her doctoral degree in criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Her dissertation, “Santa Bruta, Home of El Indio Muerto: The Colonial-Carceral City’s Attempts to Eliminate ‘The Mexican Problem’” provides a complex look into the settlercolonial political and economic historical developments of Santa Barbara to examine current tattooing practices as employed by Mexican/Chicano gang members to further our understanding of agency to racial-colonial domination in the emerging 21st century. As a frst-generation, working class, and system-impacted Xicana from Southern California, her experiences inform her commitment to decolonial gang research on Mexican/Chicanx families and their associations with and experiences with gangs and street life. Vanessa R. Panfl is a criminologist, sociologist, ethnographer, and advocate. She is the author of The Gang’s All Queer: The Lives of Gay Gang Members (NYU Press, 2017), co-author of SexPositive Criminology (Routledge, 2021), and co-editor of the Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice (Springer, 2014; second edition forthcoming). Centrally involved in developing the burgeoning feld of queer criminology, her research explores how intersections of

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gender and sexuality shape LGBTQ people’s experiences with gangs, crime, victimization, and the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Within these contexts, she is especially interested in the roles of identity and emotion. She earned her PhD in Criminal Justice at the University at Albany in 2013 and is currently Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University. Shannon E. Reid is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina—Charlotte. She is the lead author of Alt-Right Gangs: A  Hazy Shade of White, published by the University of California Press in September 2020, which examines the rise of alt-right groups through the lens of street gang research. Matthew Valasik is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama. His interests are in the socio-spatial dynamics of gang behavior and strategies aimed at reducing gang violence. He is the co-author of Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White, published by the University of California Press, which examines the rise of altright groups through the lens of street gang research.

1 INTRODUCTION Jennifer M. Ortiz

Gangs are a phenomenon that has interested researchers for nearly 100  years. Since Thrasher’s (1927) seminal study of gangs in Chicago, gang research has evolved into several diferent iterations. Early studies utilized a sociological framework that sought to explore the origins of gangs, cultural aspects of gangs, the social context of gangs, and the relationship between gangs and mainstream society (Brotherton, 2015). These early studies were largely ethnographic and provided contextualized accounts of gangs. However, in the wake of neoliberalism and the tough-on-crime era that emerged in the 1970s, modern gang research has largely abandoned the early approaches to studying gangs. Today, mainstream criminology generally examines crime and social control from an ahistorical and uncritical perspective. As a result, critical perspectives are often relegated to the margins of criminal justice and criminology (Brotherton, 2015). This issue is evident in gang studies, where many researchers take a pro-criminal justice approach that operates through a punitive and crime control-oriented lens (Ortiz, 2021). Modern gang studies focus primarily on providing positivistic and empiricist explanations of gangs that center criminality while ignoring history, lived experience, and nuance (Brotherton, 2015; Fraser, 2017). The modern, positivistic approach to gang research contributes to the dehumanization of individuals who join gangs. Gangs and gang members are treated as inherently criminal and “deserving” of legal and extralegal punishments at the hands of society and the criminal justice system (Weide, 2022). Largely missing from mainstream pro-criminal justice gang research are critical studies that analyze and humanize gang members and focus on the social and cultural aspects of gang life. Ignoring the lived reality of gang membership is problematic for gang members and gang researchers. By prioritizing the pro-criminal justice lens while not engaging in ethnographic research that provides a thorough picture of gang experiences, researchers are doing a disservice to our understanding of gangs. New knowledge cannot be created, and existing research goes unchallenged because most researchers focus on criminality, which can lead to the replication of misinformation (Ortiz, 2021). Furthermore, analyzing gangs through frameworks that focus primarily on violence and criminality contributes to the dehumanization of gang members while not expanding our understanding of gangs. Gang research unintentionally creates a self-perpetuating cycle of marginalization whereby oppression is viewed as justifed because the receiver (i.e., a “violent” gang member) “deserved” the abuse based on their behavior. Moreover, much of mainstream gang research fails to critically examine the connection between gangs and the

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Jennifer M. Ortiz

social structure, which creates the illusion that gangs exist in a vacuum unafected by their social environments. In doing so, researchers often fail to explore how social institutions, particularly the criminal justice system, develop and maintain mechanisms that exacerbate the social status of gang members from marginalized communities. To ignore the role of society is to ignore the role of oppression in the emergence of gangs and the role of powerlessness in individual choices to join gangs. Thus, traditional gang research does not provide a holistic view of gangs that can help us fully understand the gang phenomenon. A new wave of critical gang research has emerged after the new millennium that seeks to provide a multidisciplinary, refective, and critical understanding of gangs (Fraser, 2017). This book contributes to the new wave of critical gang research by highlighting critical perspectives and centering the lived experiences of gang members, their associates, and their communities. Centering lived experiences and the voices of gang members in our research allows for an in-depth and multifaceted understanding of the gang phenomenon that moves beyond just criminality. Moreover, we seek to transform how researchers conceptualize and contextualize gangs by calling into question how we defne gangs (Part I), ofering critical refections on existing gang research (Part II), and highlighting the need for intersectional gang research (Part III). Traditional researchers often study gangs from a non-intersectional framework that treats all gangs as one monolithic social grouping devoid of demographic diferences (Ortiz, 2018). Gang research does not explore how demographic diferences may afect experiences within gangs. Thus, this volume highlights how some gang researchers are using an intersectional lens to understand diferences between gangs and gang members. Intersectionality, made popular by Kimberlee Crenshaw (1989), argues that race, class, gender, and other individual-level characteristics intersect with one another and afect how an individual experiences the social world and how the social world interacts with the individual. To better understand gang culture and gang life, researchers should utilize an intersectional approach. In the past, gangs have often been studied utilizing a one-size-fts-all approach (Ortiz, 2018), which has resulted in research that assesses gangs in a pathological and ahistorical manner (Brotherton, 2015). However, gang members and afliates have unique experiences and perceptions of gangs that emerge in part due to an individual’s social position within the United States. Social position is afected by gender, race, sexual orientation, and other demographic characteristics and therefore requires further analysis. Furthermore, gangs have their own unique cultural norms (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004) that should be critically studied using an intersectional approach. Intersectional analyses can allow us to study gangs through critical lenses that move beyond the pro-criminal justice perspective and toward a more holistic view of gangs. This book highlights research from diverse scholars who utilize critical and intersectional frameworks to explore the social phenomenon of gangs. This book is organized into three parts with diferent foci. The frst part of this book presents research on the defnitional issue within gang research. Chapter 2 presents a grounded-theory defnition of the term gang that is derived from a qualitative study of gang members in the Northeastern United States. Chapter 3 explores white power groups and critiques the criminal justice system’s hesitancy to label these groups as gangs similar to street-oriented groups. Chapter 4 ofers a critical analysis of how police frame gang violence and the role of law enforcement in the creation of street-level gang violence. Part II of this volume ofers critical refections on the state of gang research. Chapter 5 ofers a decolonial analysis of criminological research on gangs. This chapter interrogates the role of academia in the perpetuation of a neo-colonial-carceral social order that justifes abuses against gang-involved individuals and their families. Chapter 6 ofers a historical and political analysis

Introduction

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of the MS-13 gang that highlights how criminological experts reproduce or contest hegemonic ideas about gangs and gang members. Chapter  7 explores how law enforcement makes unfounded claims about gangs that are used to seek additional federal funding to implement oppressive gang suppression policies. Part III of this volume includes intersectional research on gangs that explores the roles of race, gender, and sexual orientation in gang policy and the lived experiences of gang members. Chapter 8 asserts that the gang label is utilized by the criminal justice system to justify the implementation of racialized policies that perpetuate oppression in economically marginalized areas. Chapter 9 utilizes Chicana and Latina gang member narratives to explore the role of gender in gang membership and to critique the scarcity of gender-specifc studies of gang membership. Chapter 10 ofers a critical analysis of how sexual orientation, gender identity, and race intersect within homosexual and heterosexual gangs. Collectively, the three parts of this volume ofer a complex view of gangs that moves beyond the traditional criminal justice narrative. Gang members are not pathologized; we ofer a humanized view of their lived experiences by presenting their voices. Gangs are not treated as inherently violent but rather as social groupings of marginalized individuals, which allows for the development of a more complex view of gangs. In diverging from the traditional approach to gang research, this volume seeks to provide a critical, intersectional view of gangs that can be used to transform how we study and understand gangs and their members.

References Brotherton, D. (2015). Youth street gangs: A critical appraisal. New York, NY: Routledge. Brotherton, D. C., & Barrios, L. (2004). The almighty Latin King and Queen nation: Street politics and the transformation of a New York City Gang. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist policies. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, 139–167. Fraser, A. (2017). Gangs & crime: Critical alternatives. London: SAGE. Ortiz, J. (2018). Gangs and environment: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(1), 97–117. Ortiz, J. (2021). Doxa is dangerous: How academic doxa inhibits prison gang research. In R. J. Gude & D. Brotherton (Eds.), International critical gang handbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Weide, R. (2022). Divide and conquer: Race, gangs, identity, and politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

PART I

Gang defnition

2 “GANG AIN’T IN MY DICTIONARY” Utilizing insider perspectives to develop a critical gang defnition Jennifer M. Ortiz

Introduction One cannot discuss gangs without addressing the defnitional issue faced by all gang researchers. Gang researchers cannot reach a consensus on a defnition of the term “gang,” with defnitions ranging from all-encompassing to overly narrow (Esbensen et al., 2001; Ball and Curry, 1995). “[The] lack of consensus [among criminologists] is primarily due to contrasting research agendas, derived from contrasting epistemological stances” (Garot, 2010: 3). Some researchers view gangs as a criminal justice issue that should be analyzed through positivist perspectives derived from quantitative data (Klein and Maxson, 2006), while others view gangs as responses to sociological factors best understood through qualitative ethnographic data (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). These opposing paradigms have produced vastly diferent defnitions of the phenomenon. Early gang research adhered to the sociological factors paradigm. In 1927, the most popular defnition of gangs did not include criminality as a prerequisite for labeling a group a gang. Thrasher (1927) argued that any childhood playgroup had the potential to become a gang, with the transformation occurring when group members encountered outsiders who opposed or disapproved of the group. Thrasher used a naturalist approach to studying gangs that resulted in “a comparative appreciation of gangs among various forms of youthful peer association” (Katz and Jackson-Jacobs, 2004: 94). If criminologists followed Thrasher’s example, “the conditions for the formation of gangs could have become a vigorous area of study” (Katz and JacksonJacobs, 2004: 97). In other words, if criminologists utilized a critical naturalist perspective, we might understand the various factors that contribute to gang formation, including the role of society (Ortiz, 2021). Thrasher’s work, although subsequently supported by data (Katz and Jackson-Jacobs, 2004) and valorized by some scholars, was highly criticized by many researchers. Gang criminologists did not view gangs as “playgroups” but rather as predatory groups of violent criminals. Hence, many modern criminologists largely ignore Thrasher’s argument that gangs are not inherently criminal. Thrasher’s research, however, did impact future studies of gangs. Thrasher largely focused on the role of individual-level adventure seeking among boys in Chicago. Thrasher ignored the role of structural issues, thereby creating a pathologizing analysis of the gang problem (Brotherton, 2015). Subsequent gang studies adopted this individualized approach and further pathologized gangs. Gangs were explained and assessed using a

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psychological approach that attributed blame to individual defciencies or abnormalities while ignoring the structural and historical contexts that resulted in the emergence of gangs. The War on Crime of the 1970s manufactured social fear that gave rise to the tough-oncrime paradigm that dominates American society until today. This fear, coupled with societal unrest, led many to place the blame for all crime on youth gangs. By 1971, criminality was included in the most widely accepted defnitions of gangs (Klein, 1995). One such defnition arose from the work of Klein (1971), who defned a gang as: [A]ny denotable group of youngsters who: (a) are generally perceived as a distinct aggregation by others in their neighborhood; (b) recognize themselves as a denotable group (almost invariably with a group name) and (c) have been involved in a sufcient number of delinquent incidents to call forth a consistent negative response from neighborhood residents and/or law enforcement agencies. (p. 13, emphasis added) Defnitions that mandate the presence of criminal behavior are largely the result of the positivist movement that abandoned the ethnographic studies characteristic of the early Chicago School (Brotherton, 2012). This shift away from ethnography and toward positivist forms of data collection resulted in the emergence of theories that did not originate from gangs but rather were “developed at the theoretical center” and imposed on gangs (Katz and Jackson-Jacobs, 2004: 101–102). The inclusion of criminality as a prerequisite of gang membership is especially problematic because it does not allow for the empirical testing of whether gang membership involves participation in criminal activity (Morash, 1983). Katz and Jackson-Jacob (2004) assert that criminologists have “never had a good basis for thinking that gangs cause crime” (p. 93). However, labelling gangs and their members as violent criminals allows researchers and society to ignore the role of society in the oppression of marginalized youth who join gangs. Thus, society can ignore the structural barriers and violence committed by the state against impoverished youth by attributing violence to individual-level moral failings. A defnition of gangs that is still used in gang research emerged from the work of Miller (1975), who wrote: A youth-gang is a self-formed association of peers, bound together by mutual interests, with identifable leadership, well developed lines of authority, and other organizational features, who act in concert to achieve a specifc purpose which generally includes the conduct of illegal activity and control over a particular territory, facility, or type of enterprise. (p. 9) Miller’s defnition is problematic for several reasons. First, the defnition is based on survey responses from teachers, police ofcers, and community workers, with no input from actual gang members. Thus, the defnition reinforces the tough-on-crime paradigm without bothering to directly study the gang phenomenon. Furthermore, Miller states that gangs are “self-formed” without acknowledging the presence of any structural factors that contribute to gang formation. This is problematic because “structural causes must . . . be at the forefront of any serious discussion on what causes gangs and creates gang members” (Diego Vigil, 2002: 13). For example, research found that boys form gangs when they experience status frustration due to social exclusion (Cohen, 1955). By ignoring the role of structural factors in gang formation, Miller treats gang members as individuals who reside in vacuums unafected by their place in society. A third

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issue with Miller’s defnition is the inclusion of the words “illegal activity” because he provides no direct evidence that gangs cause crime. There is no consensus among researchers regarding the inclusion of violence as a prerequisite for defning a group as a gang (Gaes et al., 2001; Klein, 1995). However, only a few researchers have questioned the link between gangs and violence (Katz and Jackson-Jacobs, 2004; see Garot, 2010 for an exception). Most gang researchers take it for granted that all gangs are violent, thereby creating a tautology rather than a research question or discoverable phenomenon (Morash, 1983). This is most evident in the Eurogang defnition of gang, which is the most widely used defnition among policy makers. Eurogang defnes a gang as “any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity” (Weerman et al., 2009). This defnition was created by multiple self-proclaimed “experts” who hold pro-criminal justice stances, including Malcolm Klein, whose original defnition was discussed earlier. The Eurogang defnition is widely accepted and utilized by policy makers because it reinforces the “othering” of gang members by treating them as violent youth in need of formal control, specifcally through the criminal justice system. By assuming that gangs are violent and out of control, society can justify weaponizing the criminal justice system against the marginalized youth who comprise the groups’ membership. The Eurogang defnition inclusion of the words “street-oriented” is a subliminal code for “youth of color,” which is evident in how the defnition is applied. The defnition creates a self-fulflling prophecy for youth of color because regardless of whether they are engaged in crime, they can be criminalized by virtue of their gang membership, an experience that is not shared with violent groups like the Klu Klux Klan, Proud Boys, and other white supremacist groups (Valasik and Reid, 2020). Some modern gang researchers have attempted to move beyond the violence model by studying gangs through a more critical lens. Diego Vigil (2007) provides a recent example of a gang defnition in his study of gangs in East Los Angeles. For his study, Diego Vigil (2007) defned a gang as a group of male adolescents and youths who have grown up together as children, usually as cohorts in a low-income neighborhood of a city, and bonded together by a street subculture ethos that maintains an anti-social stance which embraces unconventional values and norms. (p. 20) Diego Vigil’s defnition attempts to acknowledge structural-level issues by including “lowincome” and alluding to concentrated disadvantage by acknowledging that gang members grew up together in the same impoverished neighborhoods. Although this defnition is stronger than Klein’s (1971) and Miller’s (1975), there are shortcomings. To begin, the defnition states that gang members hold “anti-social” stances while failing to explain why these individuals hold these views. The defnition ignores the role of society. All members of a society, including gang members, derive their views of society based on their experiences with social institutions and organizations. A second issue with Diego-Vigil’s defnition stems from the phrase “unconventional values and norms,” which is derived from the researcher’s position as a middle-class individual. To assert that gang values are unconventional is a broad generalization based on the idea that middle-class values are conventional and therefore, correct. This is a misnomer created by the middle-class positionality of academics. Lastly, Diego Vigil’s defnition suggests that women cannot be gang members, which contradicts a rich body of literature on the role of women in gangs (Miller and Brunson, 2000; Sikes, 1998; Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). Defnitions of the word “gang” that are rooted in tough-on-crime ideology make the study of gangs fawed. Most researchers focus on criminality while ignoring the social and

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structural-level issues that precipitate the emergence of gangs. In doing so, researchers provide fuel to the proverbial fre that allows every criminal activity committed by individuals in a group to be defned as gang-related. The sole beneft of a lack of consensus in defnition is the ability for analysis that will allow for the discovery of new gang phenomena (Horowitz, 1990). In other words, the disagreement allows critical researchers to explore the phenomenon without imposing a standard defnition. One ethnographic study (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004) developed a defnition from the data that stands in stark contrast to the defnitions presented earlier. Brotherton (2008) defnes a street organization as: A group formed largely by youth and adults of a marginalized social class which aims to provide its members with a resistant identity, an opportunity to be individually and collectively empowered, a voice to challenge the dominant culture, a refuge from the stresses and strains of barrio or ghetto life, and a spiritual enclave within which its own sacred rituals can be generated and practiced. (p. 70) This defnition varies greatly from orthodox defnitions in several ways. First, the defnition removes the necessity for criminal behavior, which allows for the exploration of the gang’s culture, values, and behaviors. Brotherton and Barrios (2004) also focus on society’s role in gangs by including the role of marginalization and social class. Furthermore, this defnition views the gang as a culture that maintains a “resistant identity” and challenges the dominant class, which is often oppressive, racist, and classist. Through prolonged exposure to the gang via a multi-year ethnography, Brotherton and Barrios (2004) do not operate within the toughon-crime narrative but rather seek to truly explore the group’s structure, culture, and experiences they are studying. Due to its radical departure from the “canon,” this defnition is largely ignored in American mainstream gang research (for exceptions, see Mendoza-Denton, 2008: Hagedorn, 2007). Although “leading” gang researchers have established defnitions that are utilized within the feld of criminology, many of these defnitions were developed decades ago, prior to many major shifts in criminal justice. One must assume that gangs have been afected by major shifts in the criminal justice system such as the War on Drugs, the criminalization of youth, policing policies, and mass incarceration, in addition to major shifts in resistance both locally and globally (Hagedorn, 2005). Furthermore, most criminologists do not attempt to allow gang members to establish their own defnition of their association. Rather, criminologists impose onto gang members defnitions derived from their privileged, middle-class positions (Katz and JacksonJacobs, 2004). The present chapter seeks to follow in the footsteps of other critical gang scholars by utilizing insider knowledge to develop a new gang defnition.

Methods The present study approached the defnitional issue through a grounded theory approach by asking gang members to defne the term in their own words. Grounded theory research focuses on developing theories that are rooted in the data rather than beginning with a theory and imposing it on the data (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This method of analysis examines and seeks “patterns of action and interactions between and among various types of social units (i.e., actors)” (Strauss and Corbin, 1994). A grounded theory approach is well suited for the present study because I seek to understand not only how gang members experience gang membership but also how society and its social institutions respond to and interact with gangs.

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Data collection The data for this chapter was derived from a larger qualitative analysis of prison and street gangs. The data consists of 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated gang members in the New England area. These individuals served sentences in fve diferent states, the federal correctional system, and one US territory. The sample ranged in age from 19 to 57 and served an average of 70 months in correctional facilities. Respondent-driven sampling was used to acquire the interviews. The researcher worked with formerly incarcerated individuals and not-for-profts to locate the initial participants, who then assisted in locating the remainder of the sample. Interviews were audio recorded and occurred at locations chosen by the participants. The average interview length was 48 minutes. Interview questions centered on individuals’ experiences with membership in gangs.

Data analysis Interview transcriptions and notes were analyzed within Atlas Ti, a qualitative data analysis software. Initial data analysis utilized the listening guide strategy (Maxwell and Miller, 2007), which entails reading interview transcripts multiple times and discerning diferent information during each reading. The initial reading forms a detailed summary of the interview. Subsequent readings address the various research questions in a study. The secondary data analysis phase utilized open coding, a method that involves the development of words or phrases “that symbolically assign a summative . . . attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data” (Saldana, 2012: 2). The fnal analysis phase consisted of thematic analysis, which involves locating similar codes or trends in the data and collapsing these codes into large themes or fndings (Bernard and Ryan, 2009).

Findings The data revealed that respondents held a negative view of the term “gang” and believed that society did not comprehend the positive aspects of their organizations. When asked to defne their organizations, respondents described their groups as empowering, resistance organizations that provide a sense of inclusion and belonging, and are often subjected to structural-level violence at the hands of the criminal justice system.

“Gang Ain’t in My Dictionary” A common theme across the interviews was an aversion to the term “gang.” Respondents largely agreed that they did not use the term within their organizations. Several individuals asked the researcher to refrain from using the word throughout the interview, which indicated a strong hostility to the term. In lieu of the term “gang,” the researcher used the term street organization (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). Interestingly, however, the individuals who asked the researcher to refrain from using the term subsequently used “gang” to refer to their organizations throughout the interview. Respondents stated that the term “gang” had a negative connotation derived from “outsiders’” unwillingness to acknowledge gang members as human beings instead of violent individuals. The following quote from Tyrone speaks to the “othering” nature of the term “gang.” [Society] calls us a gang because the word gang intensifes hatred. It gives you the sense of ‘these criminals’. Its gives you that sense of negativity.

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Respondents viewed the term “gang” as a label used to justify diferential treatment of gang members. The respondents’ views are supported by research. Rios (2007) explored how police utilized the gang label to justify the stop-and-frisk of men of color. Maeder and Burdett (2013) found that mock jurors provided longer sentences to individuals identifed as gang members compared to non-afliated members, even when the crimes committed were identical. Furthermore, jurisdictions throughout the United States have developed laws that criminalize gang membership regardless of involvement in criminal behavior (Walker et al., 2012; Rios, 2007).

Misconceptions of the term Other respondents indicated that the term gang was used by society because there is a reluctance to accept that gangs can have a positive efect on some youth and their communities. George discussed outsiders’ inability to see the positive aspects of gang membership. Outsiders look at it as a gang. We don’t look at it like criminals and violent people. Outsiders look at it like criminals and violent people because that’s the only part of gangs they see: the violence. They never see the good part of it. Although George’s comments referred to all outsiders, his comments illustrate academic views of gangs as well. As mentioned earlier, most gang researchers cannot divorce themselves from the tough-on-crime, all gangs are violent narrative. Thus, they are unable to see the “good part” of gangs even when confronted by direct evidence from gang members. Moreover, unlike gang researchers, gang members do not portray just one side of gang life; respondents admitted to committing crime. Some respondents viewed “putting in work1” or “going on missions” as an essential part of their membership in the organization. Respondents did not attempt to portray themselves as innocent victims of poor publicity, rather they expressed a desire for society to acknowledge the positive aspects that do exist within their organizations. In other words, they wanted to develop a full picture of their lived experiences rather than focusing on the criminality, which comprised only a small percentage of their time in the gang. Existing gang literature supports the notion that gangs have positive aspects. Studies have revealed that gangs do serve constructive functions for their members including empowering them (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004) by providing a collective identity (Fong and Buentello, 1991), a sense of belonging (Sanchez-Jankowski, 2003), and resistance identities (Hagedorn, 2007). Gangs also provide economic support (Knox, 1995) and safety from physical violence (Ortiz, 2018). Gangs further serve as informal social control in neighborhoods where citizens have lost faith and trust in the criminal justice system (Venkatesh, 2008). Another common theme across interviews was the notion that the term “gang” could be used to refer to a variety of organizations including religions, colleges, and even law enforcement. Jose indicated that the term gang was broad and therefore did not solely refer to the stereotypical image of a violent, criminal group. Gang [is] a group of people with a cause. It isn’t so much the word “gang” that’s the problem or not the problem. I think the word “gang” is used totally wrong. Like you can criticize anybody as a gang. Christians, Muslims, Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings . . . the police. A gang is a group that is united somehow. A group that moves for the group. A group that take cares of one another whether it be something good or something bad.

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Jose’s quote reveals a very diferent view of “gangs” than the one held by mainstream society and gang researchers. Gangs are perceived as a group with a cause that actively seeks to support its members. The comparison of gangs to other groups, such as religions and law enforcement, is interesting because these legitimate organizations are viewed as subcultures (Britz, 1997; Greeley, 1972) and share many characteristics with gangs. Religions and law enforcement organizations utilize symbolic representation (e.g., crucifxes, badges), require individuals to earn entrance via membership processes (i.e., rituals, academies), adhere to strict formal and informal rules of conduct (e.g., Blue Wall of Silence), regulate the behavior of members, require a devotion to a set of beliefs, and hold antagonistic views toward individuals who express disapproval of their beliefs or organizations. The similarity across group characteristics supports Jose’s argument that any group can be a gang, even a religious organization. The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, in fact, refer to themselves as a religion. The ALKQN Manifesto states, “The Almighty Latin Kings Nation is a religion, which gives us faith in ourselves, a National self-respect, power to educate the poor and relieve the misery around us.” Furthermore, religions and law enforcement have utilized violence against individuals outside of their groups, are involved in crime, and cover up crimes committed by other group members, such as the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal (Terry, 2008) and the Abner Louima case in New York City (Chan, 2007). The parallels between the organizations suggest that the term “gang” may be used improperly, as Jose suggests, or that the term is overly broad. Moreover, society only uses the term “gang” against marginalized groups. Here we see how society quite literally creates “gangs” by identifying the outgroup or “other” and labelling them as deviant (Young, 1999). Despite the overwhelming parallels between street gangs and other groups like law enforcement and Greek fraternities, including their involvement in crime, the negative label “gang” is almost exclusively applied to marginalized groups comprised of lower-income individuals who are from communities of color (Valasik and Reid, 2020).

Empowerment and resistance When respondents were asked to defne and describe their gang or organization, most provided similar responses. In every interview, the respondents used the terms “organization” or “family-oriented” to describe their groups. Respondents also spoke of the strong historical and cultural ties associated with their organizations. These organizations were rooted in political and community-level movements aimed at empowering members. Respondents discussed how their organizations aimed to protect their communities from crime committed by outsiders and structural-level violence at the hands of law enforcement and politicians. We was created to protect the community from anybody who tried to come in [such as] police, people robbing our neighborhoods, stuf like that (Clarence) Netas started in prison to deal with the COs . . . they [COs] abused their power. [The Association] kept inmates safe . . . stopped inmates from attacking other inmates . . . It was about keeping the peace. (Antonio) Reggie spoke directly to the political origins of his organization. We push to follow in the footsteps of the Black Panthers. Black Panthers were for the community. No matter what happened in the community, if it was right, the Panthers have a part of it. If it was wrong, they had a part of it. That’s how we’re supposed to move.

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The political origins of gangs have been documented by gang researchers (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004; Weide, 2022a) and are also documented in the written manifestos and histories of street gangs (Davis, 2006). For example, the Nuestra Familia’s2 constitution states that the “primary purpose and goal of this O [organization] is for the betterment of its members and the building of this O on the outside into a strong and self-supporting familia” (quoted in Skarbek, 2014: 54). In these various narratives and gang literature, we see how these organizations were born from a need to protect themselves and their communities. To fully understand these organizations, we must understand the historical climates in which they emerged. Many gangs, including the Latin Kings, the Bloods, the Crips, and Asociación Ñeta were founded in the 1950s–1980s, an era where people of color had few rights and were physically beaten and killed without receiving justice. Moreover, these organizations emerged from impoverished neighborhoods who were excluded from social institutions by white America (Quicker and Khalfani, 2022; Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). At the core of these organizations is a desire for empowerment and resistance against their oppressors. Many respondents spoke to the positive infuences of their organizations, including leaders who emphasized the need for members to acquire an education as a means of bettering themselves and strengthening the organization. A high-ranking member of the United Blood Nation spoke of punishing members who were caught skipping school. George attributed his current success to the infuence of older members. My Big Homie made me graduate. He made me go to school. He made me do all that. That’s why I got the job I got right now. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be on my block right now hustling. Antonio spoke of older members assisting younger members with school work before meetings. We can’t let the young ones [mess] up. So, whoever got an education needs to help the ones trying to get one. Before meetings on Sundays we get together and see if we can help them with their [school] work. Other positive infuences identifed by respondents included members who actively assisted others in seeking employment. Luis described his role within the organization as follows: My role is like a big brother. [Members] will ask me if they should do [something], whether good or bad, and I will let them know with feedback if it’s good or bad and my other job is to create opportunity for them. So, if I fnd something that can beneft them, as far as a job or school or anything, I would tell them, call them . . . that’s my job. It is evident in these narratives that gangs provide some positive aspects for their members. Furthermore, the focus on education, employment, and self-improvement reafrms existing criminological theories that argue individuals engaged in deviance believe in traditional middleclass values (Matza, 1964). Respondents discussed being drawn to their organizations after witnessing the positive changes the groups brought about in their communities. David described his reason for joining his organization as follows: I saw what the Almighty Latin King Nation was doing in my neighborhood . . . like not allowing drug selling on the block . . . They wouldn’t let the police mess with anybody

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in the neighborhood if it was unjust, we would all come out and if there was an unjust case like even if it [meant] confronting the cops . . . keeping our community safe . . . and I wanted to be a part of that. David’s experience sheds light on how society plays a role in the formation of gangs. Youth who witness or experience violence and oppression at the hands of state actors view joining gangs as liberating and empowering. Thus, society’s use of structural and physical violence against marginalized people causes individuals to fght back against the violence. Gangs are one mechanism for responding to that violence. Another common theme across the interviews was the notion of safety. Respondents spoke to the protective nature of gangs. Within communities, there was a sense that not belonging to a gang would result in physical harm. Luis spoke of the need for gang protection within his neighborhood. He stated, “If you’re not in a gang, it’s like you’re in the middle of the ocean. Basically, anything can happen to you.” The protective function of gangs is supported by ethnographic gang studies in several major cities (Skarbek, 2014). Inclusion and belonging In addition to protection, gangs provide a sense of inclusion and belonging. All 30 of the respondents utilized terms such as “family,” “family-oriented,” “love,” “united,” “community,” and “belonging” when defning the term gang. Respondents discussed situations in which the organization provided them with support similar to what is expected in “traditional” family units. For example, Clarence described returning home after serving nine years in a correctional facility. The majority of his biological family was either incarcerated or addicted to narcotics. Upon release from prison, he could not aford to purchase clothing. His organization welcomed him home and purchased an “entire new wardrobe.” The formerly incarcerated often spend a great deal of time during the reentry process “trying to secure material and non-material (i.e. emotional, spiritual, psychological, and social) well-being” (Scott, 2004: 115). For individuals like Clarence, the gang provides a “cushion” that eases the pains experienced during reentry (Scott, 2004). The structural violence enacted against the formerly incarcerated (Ortiz and Jackey, 2019) pushes gang-afliated individuals deeper into their membership as a matter of survival. The familial function of gangs is documented across gang studies (Carlie, 2002; Sanchez-Jankowski, 2003; Goldman et al., 2014). Gangs can address both the material and nonmaterial needs of gang members, including providing a sense of family, belonging, and fnancial support (Diego Vigil, 1988; Morales, 1992). Gangs also provide a sense of empowerment. Luis states that he joined his organization because he “wanted to be somebody. [He] wanted to be a leader.” Research suggests that becoming a gang member “is to have a name and clout in a setting where many people perceive themselves to be excluded and disenfranchised” (Barker, 2005: 2). Society’s role in the creation of gangs is evident yet again. Society ensures that marginalized individuals remain disenfranchised and impoverished. Therefore, the gang becomes the only viable option for reclaiming one’s power and ensuring one’s survival. There is also literature that supports the idea that gangs provide an opportunity for social capital and empowerment (Bassani, 2007; Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). Manifestos Each of the four organizations represented in this study has written manifestos, often referred to as constitutions, teachings, lessons, or literature. Manifestos or constitutions serve as the

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governing documents for each organization (Skarbek, 2012). These governing documents contain information on the historical origins of the organization, founding members, membership processes, codes or rules of conduct regulating individual and group level behavior, disciplinary measures, organizational structure and positions, and ideologies or beliefs of the organization including purposes, goals, and prayers (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004; Leeson and Skarbek, 2010). David described the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation Manifesto as follows: When I say lessons, you know, you’re king and then you’re given rules, lessons that explain to you what the Nation is about, how the Nation was founded when the Manifesto was written, what are the prayers, what to do to be elected for council, what is the defnition of an Inca,3 what is the defnition of a “Cazeke”, what is the defnition of a secretary, what are their job descriptions, what is the defnition of people like me, a Foot Solider, and what are our doings, what are we supposed to do? Like that’s what I mean by lessons, you’re supposed to like live by a code. Other respondents described ideologies described in their teachings. For example, Reggie spoke of his responsibility to procreate, a written “law” of the United Blood Nation. Antonio spoke of Neta rules dictating comportment in prison, including the discouragement of sexual abuse of another inmate. David spoke of qualities that would bar a person from membership in the ALKQN. All of these rules described by respondents are derived from their organization’s manifestos. Manifestos are used to transmit information to new members and can be viewed as a form of socialization that transmits the gang identity (Diego Vigil, 1988; Miller and Brunson, 2000).

Losing sight of their lessons Another common theme across nearly all 30 interviews was the notion that the gang had lost sight of its original purpose. Respondents spoke of the lessons they learned when joining the gang and how the actions of current members were at odds with these teachings. This fnding is true across all of the organizations included in this study. David spoke of a disconnection between the teachings and practices of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation. When I joined everything was good. I didn’t see any abuse. But the longer I was a part of it I started to see changes. We’re given lessons when we’re [initiated] and we’re supposed to live by these lessons and . . . the more time passed, things changed. We were robbing in our neighborhood and not keeping the neighborhood safe anymore. Now, we were the ones bringing problems into the neighborhood. Clarence discussed how the United Blood Nation also changed from an organization that protected its community to one that destroyed its community. My neighborhood was family oriented . . . So, if you went down here causing trouble, they’ll beat your butt just like your family . . . We was just one big group, like, my whole neighborhood was like a family. You know you have people out there selling drugs . . . like any other neighborhood. But when the gang came in, it formed like a tighter family, like ain’t nobody coming in here, this is ours. I don’t care if its police, anybody . . . ain’t nobody coming in here. So, the community was aight. We went to school . . . It wasn’t until we got older where it was like, we start destructing our own community, like we turned the community into . . . what it is. So, [the gang] went from good to bad.

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When asked why he believed the organization had lost sight of its primary goals, Clarence attributed the change to a loss of leadership caused by incarceration. He stated, “So, once [my leader] got taken away from the community we just started running wild.” The incarceration of gang leaders, especially those who were positive infuences in the community, resulted in fragmented organizations that lacked leadership. The structural dismantling of street gangs is achieved by using the “Kingpin Strategy” (Weide, 2022b), which is indicative of the federal-level Racketeer Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) cases (FBI, 2013). This strategy asserts that eliminating the gang leader will weaken the gang. However, this strategy often creates a power vacuum (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004) that leads to intra-gang confict and violence. Within correctional facilities, administrators have attempted to dismantle or weaken gang structures by utilizing indefnite solitary confnement (Center for Constitutional Rights, 2012) and transfers to out of state facilities (Fleisher and Decker, 2001). Here we see society’s role in the treatment of gangs. These organizations, originally created to combat political and social oppression, are demonized and criminalized by social institutions in an efort to reduce their collective political power. This is a common occurrence in the United States history. Every organization created to empower marginalized groups has become the target of our government. Notable examples include the Black Panther Party (Bloom and Martin, 2016), the Young Lords (Fernandez, 2020), and the Civil Rights Movement (Hinton and Cook, 2021).

Society’s treatment of gangs Most evident across the interviews was the notion that gangs were misunderstood by society. Respondents spoke to the stereotypes in society that are used to categorize all “gangbangers” based on the actions of a few. Society views gang members as inherently violent because that is the image promoted by the media. Mike spoke to the media’s unwillingness to acknowledge the positive actions of the gang and the efect media coverage has on perceptions of gang members. Even when we did good [things] like cleaning up gardens all [the media] ever talked about was shootings and drugs. It’s like no matter what we did that’s what they would talk about. Of course everybody else is gonna look at us like thugs, that’s all they see on TV. Law enforcement then uses these stereotypes to justify the mistreatment of the entire gang. Within American society, “the most destitute, threatening and disreputable residents . . . are typically made to stand for the whole of the ghetto” (Wacquant, 1997: 348). Gangs are portrayed as the primary cause of crime, which allows law enforcement to justify the abuse of gang members. Hector described being harassed by police ofcers for simply being outside. I think most police have a one track mind. If you’re in a certain neighborhood, you’re classifed, period. Like they’ll harass you. They know you’re not selling drugs. It’s just the fact that you be out here with [other members]. Other respondents discussed being stopped by police, searched, and given meritless tickets when the police could not contrive a reason to arrest the individual. Police harassment of gang members is so prevalent in modern society that cities have developed “gang ordinances” or laws that not only allow but also encourage police harassment of gang members (Packebusch, 2006). Harassment and diferential treatment of gang members extend to other areas of the criminal justice system, including incarceration and post-incarceration. Respondents discussed being targeted for violence at the hands of correctional ofcers based on their gang afliation. Some incarcerated individuals witnessed and fell victim to correctional ofcer sanctioned violence at

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the hands of rival gang members. The use of gang members as a form of informal social control within correctional facilities is well documented (Ortiz, 2018; Skarbek, 2014). A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union documented dozens of cases where correctional ofcers in the Los Angeles County Jail threatened or utilized gangs to physically punish both gang afliated and non-afliated inmates (American Civil Liberties Union, 2011). The negative treatment of gang afliated individuals extends beyond prison walls to the post-incarceration period. Parole conditions include a “no-afliation” clause that prohibits parolees from associating with known gang members and individuals with felony records. Because the majority of parolees are released in the same area where they were arrested, the “no-afliation” clause proved problematic for many respondents. Individuals described a sense of fear and frustration whenever they ventured outside of their homes. One respondent described his precarious situation as follows: “I be outside and the police harass me. I get picked up for [something minor] like loitering. Now I get violated . . . No matter what I do, I’m wrong.” Another individual described receiving a parole violation because he possessed clothing that matched the color of his organization. “I got violated for owning red clothes. My PO straight came in my house and took my clothes and gave me 30 days.” These narratives highlight how the gang label is utilized to justify structural violence against gang members. Individuals identifed as gang members by the criminal justice system are subjected to extralegal punishments that are traumatic, can cause economic harm, and perpetuate their marginalized positions through incarceration and fnes. The fear of police interactions and parole revocations shapes the respondents’ daily behaviors as they try to navigate their onerous social position (Ortiz and Wrigley, 2022). The creation of stereotypes for gang members and the mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement align with the theoretical concept of “othering” proposed by Young (1999, 2007). Young posited that we live in an exclusive society where there is a constant need to dehumanize or demonize a given group in order to reafrm our sense of self-worth and place in society (Young, 1999). Society actively others individuals to create a binary “us v. them” where “we” are superior to “them.” Othering is a process that begins with the creation of an ideal set of qualities (cultural or biological) that a given group is said to possess (Young, 2007). Once the ideal set of qualities is established, society locates and denigrates a group that does not possess these qualities. The group is dehumanized and viewed as inherently diferent from “us.” Stereotypes and prejudices regarding the group are established, and society begins to attribute many of the existing social problems to the behaviors of the group (Young, 2007). By dehumanizing the group, society justifes excluding them from mainstream society and utilizing violence against them. A common form of violence against the group is structural violence whereby society subjects a group to economic marginalization and punitive criminal justice practices including police harassment (Young, 2007). The grounded theory analysis of the respondent’s narratives suggests that gangs are “othered” by mainstream society. Grounded theory defnition of “Gang” Based on the themes that emerged from this grounded theory analysis, I developed a new defnition of the term “gang” that is rooted in the respondents’ insider knowledge and experiences. A gang is: A subculture of resistance that (1) utilizes manifestos and teachings to promote activism and empowerment among its marginalized members; (2) is demonized by the media and society, and (3) is subsequently subjected to structural and physical violence by the criminal justice system as a mechanism for weakening the group’s collective power and ensuring its members remain in a socially marginalized position.

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This defnition difers from other defnitions of gangs in three key ways. First, this defnition acknowledges the existing gang teachings that are vital to socialization into the group. Second, it centers the role of society and structural violence in the oppression of gangs and gang members. Highlighting society’s role in the oppression of marginalized populations is vital to moving beyond a tough-on-crime narrative and toward a critical perspective on gangs. In doing so, researchers can move beyond their criminal justice-based assumptions about gangs and return to a more sociological perspective that seeks to humanize and understand the gang and its relation to social institutions. Furthermore, this defnition does not necessitate violence and criminality as a prerequisite for defning a group as a gang. A critical perspective on gangs should explore whether a given group or members are engaged in criminality rather than assuming every gang is engaged in crime. This distinction is crucial to developing a holistic view of gangs and gang culture that seeks to explore and understand these subcultural organizations rather than criminalizing them. Furthermore, this distinction allows for the development of new theories of gangs that emerge outside of the criminal justice paradigm. In doing so, we can utilize our criminological imagination (Young, 2011) to study gangs beyond criminality and return gang research to its sociological origins.

Conclusion Researchers do not agree on a single defnition of the term “gang.” The lack of consensus derives from diferences in epistemological stances (Garot, 2010). Orthodox gang researchers develop and impose defnitions of gangs derived from a middle-class perspective that supports the status quo rather than questioning the role of society and the criminal justice system in the oppression of gang members and communities. Moreover, researchers develop these gang defnitions with little to no input from actual gang members. Most gang researchers utilize defnitions that derive from a positivist, tough-on-crime ideology that centers criminality. The most widely utilized defnition, the Eurogang defnition, highlights the key issues surrounding the use of positivist defnitions. These defnitions include violence and criminality as a prerequisite for labeling a group a gang without studying whether the gang is engaged in criminal behavior. Furthermore, these middle-class academics develop these defnitions based on interviews or surveys of criminal justice ofcials and community members who have little to no substantive contact with gang members. Thus, these defnitions perpetuate oppression by providing politicians with justifcations for developing problematic policies like gang injunctions (Rios, 2007) that are subsequently used to reinforce the oppression of marginalized youth and entire communities. A small but growing number of critical gang researchers utilize defnitions that move beyond the tough-on-crime paradigm. These critical defnitions are derived from ethnographic research that explores gang culture and the lived experiences of gang members, which leads to in-depth defnitions that focus on more than just criminality. Although these defnitions are rooted in rich data, leading gang researchers largely ignore them in order to support the criminal justice narrative that permeates much of gang research. The present chapter provides a defnition of gangs developed based on insider information provided by gang members via in-depth interviews. Based on the interviewees’ narratives, a gang is A subculture of resistance that (1) utilizes manifestos and teachings to promote activism and empowerment among its marginalized members; (2) is demonized by the media and society, and (3) is subsequently subjected to structural and physical violence by the criminal justice system as a mechanism for weakening the group’s collective power and ensuring its members remain in a socially marginalized position.

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This defnition difers from other gang defnitions by centering the role of society, structural violence, and the criminal justice system in the oppression of marginalized youth. Moreover, this defnition begins by highlighting the role of socialization (i.e., teachings) as a mechanism for empowerment. By moving beyond the tough-on-crime, criminal justice narrative that dominates gang research, the defnition seeks to encourage gang researchers to abandon the middleclass measuring rod they utilize to pathologize gang membership. Moreover, the defnition seeks to shift the focus of gang research away from individual-level pathology and toward a macro-level analysis that focuses on the State’s use of structural violence to systematically oppress marginalized peoples.

Notes 1 A slang term that refers to committing criminal activity. 2 A California prison gang. 3 Inca, Cazeke, and foot solider are positions within the ALKQN hierarchy.

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Esbensen, F., Winfree, L. T., He, N., & Taylor, T. J. (2001). Youth gangs and defnitional issues: When is a gang a gang, and why does it matter? Crime & Delinquency, 47(1), 105–130. FBI. (2013). Gang leader sentenced to 25  years in Federal prison in RICO case. Los Angeles, CA: Federal Bureau of Investigations. Retrieved from www.fbi.gov/losangeles/press-releases/2013/ gang-leader-sentenced-to-25-years-in-federal-prison-in-rico-case Fernandez, J. (2020). The young lords: A radical history. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Fleisher, M. S., & Decker, S. H. (2001). An overview of the challenge of prison gangs. Corrections Management Quarterly, 5(1), 1–9. Fong, R. S., & Buentello, S. (1991). The detection of prison gang development: An empirical assessment. Federal Probation, 55¸ 66–69. Gaes, G. G., Wallace, S., Gilman, E., Klein-Safran, J., & Suppa, S. (2001). The infuence of prison gang afliation on violence and other prison misconduct. The Prison Journal, 82(3), 359–385. Garot, R. (2010). Who you claim: Performing gang identity in school and on the streets. New York, NY: New York University Press. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Goldman, L., Giles, H., & Hogg, M. A. (2014). Going to extremes: Social identity and communication processes associated with gang membership. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 17(6), 813–832. Greeley, A. (1972). The denominational society. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman Company. Hagedorn, J. M. (2005). The global impact of gangs. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21(2), 153–169. Hagedorn, J. M. (2007). Gangs in late modernity. In J. M. Hagedorn (Ed.), Gangs in the global city: Alternatives to traditional criminology. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Hinton, I. E., & Cook, D. (2021). The mass criminalization of African Americans: A historical overview. Annual Review of Criminology, 4, 261–286. Horowitz, R. (1990). Sociological perspectives on gangs: Conficting defnitions and concepts. In C. Ronald Huf (Ed.), Gangs in America (pp. 37–54). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Katz, J., & Jackson-Jacobs, C. (2004). The criminologists’ gang. In C. Sumner (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to criminology (pp. 91–124). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Klein, M. W. (1971). Street gangs and street workers. Englewood Clifs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Klein, M. W. (1995). The American street gang: Its nature, prevalence, and control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klein, M. W., & Maxson, C. L. (2006). Street gang patterns and policies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knox, G. (1995). The economics of gang life. Chicago, IL: National Crime Research Center. Leeson, P. T., & Skarbek, D. B. (2010). Criminal constitutions, Global Crime, 11(3), 279–297. https://doi. org/10.1080/17440572.2010.490632 Maeder, E. M., & Burdett, J. (2013). The combined efect of defendant race and alleged gang afliation on Mock Juror decision-making. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 20(2), 188–201. https://doi.org/10.1 080/13218719.2011.633330 Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and drift. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons. Maxwell, J. A., & Miller, B. A. (2007). Categorizing and connecting strategies in qualitative data analysis. In P. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Emergent research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Mendoza-Denton, N. (2008). Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Miller, J., & Brunson, R. (2000). Young women and gang violence: Gender, street ofender, and violent victimization. Justice Quarterly, 18, 115–140. Miller, W. B. (1975). Violence by youth gangs and youth groups as a crime problem in major American cities. Washington, DC: National Institute for Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention. Morales, A. T. (1992). Latino youth gangs: Causes and clinical intervention. In L. A. Vargas & J. KossChionio (Eds.), Working with culture: Psychotherapeutic intervention with ethnic minority children and adolescents (pp. 129–154). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Morash, M. (1983). Gangs, groups, and delinquency. The British Journal of Criminology, 23(4), 309–335. Ortiz, J. (2018). Gangs and environment: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(1), 97–117.

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Ortiz, J. (2021). Doxa is dangerous: How academic doxa inhibits prison gang research. In R. J. Gude & D. Brotherton (Eds.), International critical gang handbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Ortiz, J., & Jackey, H. (2019). The system is not broken, it is intentional: The prisoner reentry industry as deliberate structural violence. The Prison Journal, 99(4), 484–503. Ortiz, J., & Wrigley, K. (2022). The invisible enclosure: How community supervision inhibits successful reentry. Corrections: Policy, Practice, and Research, 7(3), 230–245. Packebusch, J. E. (2006). Gang loitering ordinances post-Morales: Has vagueness been remedied? Somerville, Massachusetts says yes. Criminal and Civil Confnement, 32, 161–185. Quicker, J. C., & Batani-Khalfani, A. S. (2022). Before crips: Fussin’, cussin’, and discussin’ among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Rios, V. (2007). Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys. New York: NYU Press. Saldana, J. (2012). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Sanchez-Jankowski, M. (2003). Gangs and social change. Theoretical Criminology, 7, 191–216. Scott, G. (2004). It’s a sucker’s outft: How urban gangs enable and impede the reintegration of ex-convicts. Ethnography, 5(1), 107–138. Sikes, G. (1998). 8 ball chicks: A year in the violent world of girl gangs. New York, NY: Anchor Publishing. Skarbek, D. (2012). Prison gangs, norms, and organizations. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organizations, 82(1), 702–716. Skarbek, D. (2014). The social order of the underworld: How prison gangs govern the American penal system. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1–18). London: SAGE. Terry, K. (2008). Stained glass: The nature and scope of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35(5), 549–569. Thrasher, F. M. (1927). The gang: A study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Valasik, M., & Reid, S. (2020). Alt-right gangs: A hazy shade of white. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Venkatesh, S. (2008). Gang leader for a day. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Wacquant, L. (1997). Three pernicious premises in the study of the American ghetto. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 22(3), 507–510. Walker, S., Spohn, C., & DeLone, M. (2012). The color of justice: Race, ethnicity, and crime in America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Weerman, F. M., Maxson, C. L., Esbensen, F-A., Aldridge, J., Medina, J., & van Gemert, F. (2009). Eurogang program manual. Retrieved December  6, 2022, from https://www.umsl.edu/ccj/old/Eurogang/ EurogangManual.pdf Weide, R. (2022a). Divide and conquer: Race, gangs, identity, and politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Weide, R. (2022b). Structural disorganization: Can prison gangs mitigate serious violence in carceral institutions? Critical Criminology, 30, 113–132. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09611-6 Young, J. (1999). The exclusive society: Social exclusion, crime and diference in late modernity. London: SAGE. Young, J. (2007). The vertigo of late modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Young, J. (2011). The criminological imagination. Cambridge: Polity Book.

3 DEMYSTIFYING ALT-RIGHT GANGS Are white power groups cut from the same cloth as conventional gangs? Matthew Valasik and Shannon E. Reid

Introduction Just like the famous 1964 opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio by US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on describing obscenity (i.e., hard-core pornography), “I know it when I see it,” the same sentiment applies to the characterization of street gangs. At nearly 100 years of researching street gangs, the feld of gang research, let alone criminal justice system policy makers, remains unable to agree on a universal defnition of what constitutes a gang, who should be considered a gang member, or even what constitutes a gang-related incident (e.g., crime and homicide). Howell and Grifths (2018: 51) clearly identify this challenge when mentioning that “no other deviant group is shrouded in more mythic and misleading attributes than gangs.” The lack of agreement in defning gangs, gang members, gang-related incidents has greatly contributed to the explicit exclusion or, at best, implicit inclusion of members of white power groups (e.g., racist skinheads, far-right “militias”) in street gang studies or in the gang databases of law enforcement (Brosseau, 2016; Flores, 2017; Howell, 2015; Howle, 2016; Reid and Valasik, 2020a; Simi, 2006; Simi et al., 2008; Valasik and Reid, 2021a). As a result, white power youth groups, particularly longstanding racist skinheads, are treated as the “Schrödinger’s cat” of street gangs, being regarded simultaneously as a street gang and not being treated as a street gang, depending on the study or the jurisdiction (Klein, 1996, 2001b, 2009b; Klein and Maxson, 2006; Pyrooz et al., 2018; Reid and Valasik, 2018, 2020a; Simi, 2006, 2009; Simi et al., 2008; Valasik and Reid, 2019, 2021a). Furthermore, a true defnitional distinction between street gangs and white power groups that necessitates the removal of the latter from gang research does not exist. Instead, there is a reliance on an outdated understanding of these groups and their members (see Curry et al., 2014; Hamm, 1993; Klein, 1995). The goal of this chapter is to critically evaluate existing gang defnitions by highlighting the defnitional tension for why white power groups should be labeled and treated as an alt-right gang. The characteristics that are required for a group to be defned as an alt-right gang are then detailed. Proud Boys, a prototypical alt-right gang, is used as a case study to illustrate how the features of an alt-right gang are actually presented in the real world. Next, the legacy of white supremacy in policing will be discussed, focusing specifcally on the underpolicing of alt-right gang members. The chapter concludes by detailing what public policy responses should be realized to better deal with and combat alt-right gangs.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-4

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Defnitional issues surrounding street gangs From the inception of studying street gangs variation has existed in defning these social groups. The earliest studies of street gangs relied on surveying youth at school. Sheldon (1898: 428) characterized fghting gangs as “predatory organizations” common among young boys, between 10 and 13 years of age. Pufer (1912) contended that youths’ tendency to form gangs was directly associated with the lack of parental supervision, suggesting that the gang was in fact one of the youth’s three primary social groups, after the family and the neighborhood. Pufer’s (1912) characterized gangs as having a distinct group name, involving youth from 10 to 16 years of age, who hang out daily in a designated space, have initiation rituals, participate in delinquent and criminal activities, and are likely to have a leader. Importantly, Pufer (1912: 38) considered a gang to be a “social organism . . . with a life of its own which is beyond the lives of its members” that was able to encourage prosocial behaviors among its membership in addition to antisocial behaviors. Yet, it was Thrasher’s (1927: 57) seminal work and his defnition of a street gang, an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously and then integrated through confict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, confict and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unrefective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a local territory, which constrained gang researchers from expounding on what constitutes a gang for some time. Subsequent gang scholars have built on and adapted Thrasher’s defnition, continuously competing to one-up each other in describing the social phenomenon and languishing to achieve agreement (see Howell and Grifths, 2018 for a detailed discussion). The intense focus on differentiating the specifc features that transform a group into a street gang, the “pathological” inclusion of criminality (see Brotherton, 2015), and animosity among academics have been instrumental in the inability for the feld of gang research to achieve a universal defnition (see Ball and Curry, 1995; Curry, 2015). Papachristos (2005: 644) astutely infers that such distinctions mean little to the cop on the street, the victim of gang violence, or even gang members.” Adapting Everett C. Hughes (1948) defnition of an ethnic group, Papachristos (2005) argues that a gang exists not because of some observable or measurable diference that distinguishes it from another group. A gang exists because members inside the group, and individuals outside the group believe, feel, act, and socialize as if it is a gang. That is, “gangs take their meaning instead from their function and from the consequences of their actions” (Papachristos, 2005: 644). Gang members are unconcerned about the scholarly semantics or legal defnitions that determine the bounds of a street gang (Papachristos, 2005). Similar to gang researchers lacking a comprehensive defnition of a street gang, the criminal justice system is just as problematic, with every state in the United States having its own varied defnition of a criminal street gang enshrined in state law. That being said, there are consistencies between states. The National Gang Center (2016) reports that illegal or criminal behavior is listed in every state’s defnition for a criminal street gang. Forty states designate gangs to be an “organization, association, or group.” Thirty-six states call for a gang to be composed of three or more individuals. Thirty states say a gang must have a common name, symbol, or sign that uniquely identifes the group. The lack of defnitional consensus among researchers, law enforcement, and policy makers on street gangs led to the creation of the Eurogang Program of Research, a network of international gang scholars (Esbensen and Maxson, 2018; Klein et al., 2001; Weerman et al.,

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2009). The initial intent of the group was to determine if American street gangs were similar to troublesome youth groups observed in Europe (Esbensen and Maxson, 2018). A  suite of survey instruments within an integrated research design were developed, along with a common defnition for a street gang/troublesome youth group (since the term “gang” does not always translate precisely) to achieve this cross-national comparison (Esbensen and Maxson, 2018). The Eurogang defnition recognizes a street gang as “any durable, street-oriented youth group whose own identity includes involvement in illegal activity” (Weerman et al., 2009: 20). Developed meticulously over the course of several years and multiple conferences, this defnition contains four essential components required for a group to be considered a street gang: durability, streetorientation, youthfulness, and a group identity revolving around illegal behavior (Esbensen and Maxson, 2018; Weerman et al., 2009). The Eurogang defnition, while not reaching a unanimous has achieved a lot of buy in from the feld of gang research, arguably reaching a consensus among conventional gang scholars. Despite opposition by critical gang scholars (see Brotherton, 2015; Brotherton and Barrios, 2004), the Eurogang defnition is by far one of the most widely employed, modern defnitions of a street gang (Maxson and Esbensen, 2016). Even prominent gang researchers, who are not true believers, still subscribe to the Eurogang defnition being “sympathetic and skeptical adherent(s)” (see Sanchez and Tostlebe, 2021).

Explicitly defning alt-right gangs There has been some reluctance to use the term alt-right to describe this current iteration of the white power movement, as it is an attempt to soften the image of white supremacy and reduce the social stigma associated with such racial/anti-Semitic hate and misogyny (Fielitz and Thurston, 2019; Mudde, 2018). Yet, the alt-right is not just an extension of the more traditional white power movement but something uniquely diferent as well (Daniels, 2018; Reid and Valasik, 2020a). The majority of prior research studying white power youth groups has focused on racist skinheads and treating them as a distinct “terrorist youth subculture” which has long excised them from conventional gang studies, arguably the most equipped researchers to investigate these groups (Hamm, 1993: 71). The argument for this defnitional disconnect is centered around the reliance on an outdated understanding of present-day white power groups and their members (Reid and Valasik, 2018, 2020a). The mythology around racist skinheads as “the foot soldiers” of the far-right (Baysinger, 2006; Christensen, 1994) and bastions of the working class ideal (Pollard, 2016) have been driving factors for this “otherness.” Yet, within the last 25  years a more inclusive and modernized defnition of a street gang “has become widely adopted and appears regularly in publications,” the Eurogang defnition (Maxson and Esbensen, 2016: 7). Under this defnition, racist skinhead groups would clearly be considered a street gang, as indicated by Pyrooz and colleagues (2018) recent study. Additionally, over many edited volumes of street gang scholarship guided by the Eurogang Program of Research include studies that examine white power gang groups (see De Waele and Pauwels, 2016; Dekleva, 2001; Kersten, 2001; Lien, 2001; Reid et al., 2020; Salagaev, 2001; Salagaev et  al., 2005; Sela-Shayovitz, 2012; Shashkin, 2008; Simi, 2006; Tertilt, 2001). Furthermore, Klein (2001a: 17) states in The Eurogang Paradox: Skinheads—more prominent in Europe than in the U.S.—stretch the meaning of street gangs; they are less street-oriented, and more focused on a particular crime pattern, for example. Yet I fnd I am comfortable placing them in the Specialty gang category of the paradigm.

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Despite Klein’s (1996, 2009b; Klein and Maxson, 2006) change of heart to treat skinhead groups as “specialty” street gangs,1 traditional gang scholars have consistently continued to ignore their inclusion (see Curry et  al., 2014; Esbensen et  al., 2004; Fraser, 2017; Howell and Grifths, 2018; Kontos et  al., 2003; Maxson et  al., 2013). In fact, it seems that the rationale for not including white power groups (e.g., racist skinheads/alt-right gangs) in the spectrum of street gangs remains a post-hoc decision, and their inclusion or exclusion in gang studies is much more fuid than expected given the importance scholars place on their perceived ideological diferences (see Pyrooz et al., 2018). Regardless of scholars or criminal justice actors’ receptiveness to white power groups being designated as a gang, street gangs exist because members belonging to a group and individuals outside of that group, feel, believe, act, and socialize as if their gang is a discrete social entity (Papachristos, 2005). Another facet of discerning who is or is not a gang member rests on an individual’s selfnomination in the group. Self-nomination is a validated and robust measure of gang membership that is routinely used in gang research (Curry, 2000; Decker et al., 2014; Esbensen and Carson, 2012). Keeping this in mind, it should be noted that members of white power groups (e.g., racist skinheads) identify themselves as gang members (see Simi et al., 2008; Valasik and Reid, 2019) and their groups as gangs (Rogan, 2017; Simi et al., 2008; Wooden and Blazak, 2001). Given that self-identifcation is regarded as an appropriate standard for being designated as a member of a gang, this approach should not be discounted in an efort to exclude white power groups as being considered a street gang. While the Eurogang defnition would clearly capture white power youth groups (see above), a slight modifcation by Reid and Valasik (2020a) creates a more acute defnition to specifcally capture these white power groups. Reid and Valasik (2020a: 20) defne an alt-right gang as: A durable, public-oriented group (both digitally and physically) whose adoption of signs and symbols of the white power movement and involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity. To highlight the appropriateness for utilizing this defnition in framing how white power youth groups are generally thought of and treated by policy makers, law enforcement and society at large, each element of the defnition is unpacked. In order for an alt-right gang to be considered durable, the group must exist for several months, in spite of membership churning. It is common for gangs and gang-like groups in the white power movement to coalesce and dissolve within short time periods (Belew, 2018; Peterson et al., 2004; Tenold, 2018). As such, durability results it the named group enduring and not the continuation of any particular collection of members. Alt-right gangs direct their actions toward public spaces, both digitally and physically. Altright gang members interact in public forums and image boards (e.g., reddit, 4chan, 8kun) and on social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Telegram, Parler) with each other but also to harass and troll outsiders (DeCook, 2019, 2020; Fielitz and Thurston, 2019; Klein, 2019; Marantz, 2019; Nagle, 2017; Neiwert, 2020; Stern, 2019; Reid et al., 2020; Ross, 2020). Public space in the real world would be any location outside of a gang member’s residence (e.g., park, bar, street corner). It is in these public spaces that alt-right gangs are able to intimidate the general public with their actions being in full view and not hidden away or obscured (Reid and Valasik, 2020a). Furthermore, these public spaces that are attractive for alt-right gang members to manifest tend to be poorly supervised by agents, formally or informally, of social control. A key component of an alt-right gang’s identity is the inclusion of white power signs and symbols or other related imagery (e.g., swastikas, SS bolts, 88, 14, Pepe the Frog) that may be

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displayed on clothing, banners, or tattoos (see Kutner, 2020; Gilbert and Elley, 2020; MillerIdriss, 2018, 2020; Pollard, 2016; Simi and Futrell, 2015). The stigma associated with the public display of imagery associated with the broader white power movement does not deter alt-right gangs from presenting it in the open (Reid and Valasik, 2020a). Conversely, some alt-right gangs also attempt to mainstream their group’s image by downplaying the more traditional farright imagery and instead use signs and symbols that are novel and more likely to go unnoticed in mainstream society (e.g., the “OK” hand sign) (Cooter, 2006; Kamali, 2021; Miller-Idriss, 2018, 2020; Neiwert, 2019, 2020; Simi and Futrell, 2015). Relatedly, the commercialization of brands, particularly clothing (e.g., Lonsdale, Thor Steinar, Erik and Sons, Ansgar Aryan), that embeds white power signs/symbols in their merchandise has further fueled this mainstreaming process (Miller-Idriss, 2018, 2020). Additionally, alt-right gangs have appropriated mainstream brands that have nothing to do with the far-right (e.g., Papa Johns, New Balance) and adopted them as white power symbols (Miller-Idriss, 2020; Reid and Valasik, 2020a). The last element in Reid and Valasik’s (2020a) defnition is the requirement for the group’s identity to emphasize criminal behavior, with activities extending beyond just being an annoyance. Alt-right gangs, similar to conventional street gangs, engage in a wide range of violence and criminality, which is what distinguishes them from other social groups that they attempt to characterize themselves as (e.g., sports teams, intramural clubs, fraternal organizations). Included within illegal activities are bias-/hate-motivated crimes, however, these types of serious ofenses remain relatively infrequent when compared to other forms of criminality (Simi, 2009; Simi et al., 2008; Simi and Windisch, 2020; Windisch et al., 2018; Valasik and Reid, 2019).

(Un)importance of ideology Regularly discussed when diferentiating between alt-right gangs and conventional street gangs is the role ideology plays. When individuals associated with alt-right gangs are compared to members of conventional street gangs too much focus is placed on “ideological perceptions, overt racism, political violence and international connections” (Simi et  al., 2008: 755). Simi and colleagues (2008: 756) further contend that the exclusion from conventional gang studies is guided by the incorrect portrayal of alt-right gang members as being “Nazis” whose focus is on “bias-motivated political violence” (see also Simi, 2006). Furthermore, assertions that “the majority of skinheads across the country are racist, neo-Nazi whites who feel threatened by Jews, non-whites, and homosexuals” which characterize alt-right gangs as being indistinguishable from other white power groups (e.g., Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Republican Army, Silent Brotherhood) is misleading to say the least (Landre et al., 1997: 83). In fact, Holt and colleagues (2020: 14) fnd that even in online extremist forums, where far-right users feel safe and secure and more likely to speak their minds, users “do not constantly and consistently post messages stressing ideological beliefs.” The most frequent ideological statements posted were xenophobic in nature, yet they only represent just 10% of all posts (Holt et al., 2020). Instead, Holt and colleagues (2020) do fnd that far-right users were more likely to employ ideological usernames, signatures, and imagery. This fnding further highlights just how superfcial the majority of far-right adherents are, lacking any steeped knowledge about the ideological tenets beyond the simplistic talking points and rhetoric of the white power movement. Broadly speaking, the ideological beliefs of racial or cultural superiority, male supremacism, and white identity flter throughout white power groups, yet the existence of varied and sometimes even contradictory beliefs complicates such a simplifcation (e.g., mythologies/religious beliefs such as Odinism, the World Church of the Creator, or National Socialism) (see Berry, 2017, 2021; Burlein, 2002; Gardell, 2003; Goodrick-Clarke, 2002; Kamali, 2021; Pollard, 2016;

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Simi and Futrell, 2015). There is no ideological monolith that unites all alt-right groups. Instead, diferent alt-right gangs embrace ideological elements that best suit their group’s ambitions. For instance, the American favor of white supremacy, which focuses on white racial purity, has greatly infuenced who is eligible to join white power groups by shifting toward an individual’s phenotype (i.e., skin color) and away from their genotype (i.e., ethnicity) to assess their racial identity (see Dyck, 2017; Miller-Idriss, 2018; Mudde, 2005; Panofsky et al., 2021; Panofsky and Donovan, 2019; Saini, 2019; Simi and Futrell, 2015). Pollard (2016) highlights that the racial hierarchies regularly associated with Nazism have been largely abandoned as more and more individuals with Slavic and non-Aryan backgrounds join white power groups or have relationships with non-Aryan individuals (see also Dyck, 2017; Pilkington et al., 2010; Tenold, 2018). Reid and Valasik (2020a) argue that the adherence to a rigid ideology among alt-right gangs is actually quite varied and exists on a spectrum. As such, ideology should be treated as a descriptor instead of a defner. This shift allows researchers to be better able to appreciate the risk factors and antisocial behaviors of far-right groups rather than focusing on the categorization of each distinct ideological group (see Reid and Valasik, 2018). It is important to be mindful that ideology exists on a spectrum with a range of how integral white power beliefs are to an alt-right gang or an individual member. As van Gemert and colleagues (2012: 8) underscore when discussing neo-Nazis and racist skinheads in Europe, “[t]hese groups may or may not be linked to political organisations. In some countries juvenile gangs exist that merely use extremist symbols to add to their identity.” Klein’s (2009b: 134) travels across Europe further highlight the fact that many perceive skinheads as being characterized “more in political terms rather than as a street gang” viewing them as a “mob, hooligans, extremists, and in one area bunch of psychopaths’ without seeing the group aspect that holds these youth together.” Even in the United States, the image of the white power foot soldier is often contradicted with evidence highlighting alt-right gangs (i.e., racist skinheads) as lacking both the defned goals and shared beliefs to make them a well-organized, far-right insurgency (Cooper, 1989; Crothers, 2019; Hamm, 1993; Wooden and Blazak, 2001). Hamm (1993: 42), who ardently contends that racist skinheads’ political motivations totally remove them from the realm of street gangs, even spurns them as “idiots with ideology” (quoting Coplon, 1988: 87). Simi and colleagues (2008: 766) further highlight the lack of political orientation by alt-right gangs when interviewing members of PEN1: We [PENI] were a group of fucken white boys that formed together to protect each other, gang style. It wasn’t nothing fucken political at all. Some of the members might have been more political . . . but generally we were only interested in being gangsters. Another example of an alt-right gang that has overlooked racial concerns for membership is the Nazi Low Riders (NLR). NLR have strong ties to California’s Division of Juvenile Justice, demonstrating their members youthful age range. For years NLR have permitted members with Latinx and Asian heritage to join with the standard of “at least half white blood, but no black blood” (Valdez, 1999: 46). It seems that the white supremacy aspect for NLR is more about being anti-Black, anti-Semitic, and anti-Norteno (a Northern California Latino gang member), rather than advocating for white racial purity. For NLR, or other alt-right gangs, being infexible limits the gang’s ability to be safe or to make money. For example, with the overall demographics of Southern California, it would be hard to imagine that a successful gang could manage a drug market without allowing the group to recruit individuals from other races/ethnicities, such as Latinx or Asian (see Finnegan, 1997; Valdez, 1999). Being “selective” in their choices allows NLR to symbolically “manage” their image without inhibiting their ability to gain resources.

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Relatedly, conventional street gangs do not proscribe to a universal set of beliefs, but instead have varying positions on society. In fact, alt-right gangs are not the only ones that may have an ideology integrated with their group’s identity. For quite some time gang scholars have highlighted that marginalized Black and Latinx/Chicano youth have incorporated ethnic/race-based pride and/or political ideology to their conventional street gangs (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004; Cureton, 2011; Hughes and Short, 2005; Montejano, 2010; Short, 1974; Short and Moland, 1976; Tapia, 2019). Brotherton and Barrios (2004) even observe street gangs integrating spiritual or religious principles, as seen by the Almighty Latin Kings and Queens Nation (ALKQN), as an instrument to resist American society’s dominant culture objectifying, dehumanizing, and criminalizing their group. Clearly, variation exists among a gang’s level of political activity, altright or conventional. Similarly, gangs may not have a true ideology but are instead established to provide youth with respect and dignity in their ethnic heritage. The creation of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) in the city of Los Angeles was associated with Salvadorian pride and identity (Bruneau et al., 2011; Cruz, 2010; Ward, 2013; Wolf, 2012, 2017). Vigil (1996: 151) notes an analogous pattern for Chicano gangs in Los Angeles “afrms one’s ethnic identifcation .  .  . showing they are ‘Chicano’” (see also Moore, 1978, 1991; Tapia, 2019; Vigil, 1988a, 1988b; 1996). Scholars have also revealed that street gang members readily adhere to the “code of the street,” which could be considered a secular ideology, disseminated through popular culture, and “gangsta” and trap rap (see Anderson, 1999; Dunbar et al., 2016; Harkness, 2013; Kubrin, 2005, 2006; Kubrin and Nielson, 2014; Lauger and Densley, 2018; McFarland, 2008; Storrod and Densley, 2017; Urbanik and Haggerty, 2018; Van Hellemont and Densley, 2019; Weitzer and Kubrin, 2009). Recurring tropes include misogyny, money, drugs, guns, violence, and criminal activity. Anderson (1999) depicts the “street code” as a set of norms, beliefs, and rituals that establish order to individual social interactions, particularly through the use of violence, in distressed communities that lack opportunities and resources (see Kubrin and Wadsworth, 2003; Kubrin and Weitzer, 2003; Harding, 2014; Matsuda et al., 2013; Mitchell et al., 2017). As with religious or political ideologies, devotion to the “code of the street” provides a robust set of norms and behaviors for adherents to follow if they wish to attain greater reputation and status within their gang, among rival groups, and among the local community. Subscribing to an ideology, political, religious, or secular, is not a unique phenomenon for alt-right gangs or conventional gangs. Given that there is no “universal” ideology uniting or organizing every far-right group, instead alt-right gangs are able to adopt elements that suit their point-of-view, such as the Proud Boys’ embrace of “western chauvinism” (see the following text for more detail). The alt-right remains a confederated movement, derived from a multitude of competing factions that coalesce by opposing immigration, multiculturalism, globalism, feminism, political correctness, and establishment politics (Hawley, 2017, 2019; Kamali, 2021; Lyons, 2018; Main, 2018; Marcotte, 2018; May and Feldman, 2018; Nagle, 2017; Neiwert, 2017; Waring, 2018, 2019; Wendling, 2018). Treating ideology as a descriptor provides researchers an opportunity to escape the need to treat each group with a distinct ideology as a unique entity (Reid and Valasik, 2018). Concentrating on the race-based orientation of alt-right gangs neglects the important role that ideology and racial/ethnic pride play in the formation and endurance of many conventional street gangs.

Physical and digital territoriality As Valasik and Tita (2018: 843) highlight, the relationships between conventional street gangs’ patterns of behavior and the broader community “are complex and sometimes competing.” The

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same goes for alt-right gangs. While traditional street gang research has been dismissive of altright gangs as being as territorial as conventional street gangs (see Curry et al., 2014; Hamm, 1993; Klein, 1995), yet research has emphasized that street gang territoriality and mobility is actually quite dynamic and varied (for an overview see Valasik and Tita, 2018). Regarding altright gangs (i.e., racist skinheads) a few studies explicitly reveal the complexity of the relationship between alt-right gangs and their use of space (Futrell and Simi, 2004; Simi, 2006, 2009; Simi and Futrell, 2015; Simi et al., 2008). An alt-right gang’s “whiteness” imbues it membership with the belief that they have “natural dominion” over the space they occupy (Simi and Futrell, 2015: 55). As such, some alt-right gangs may feel there is less of a necessity to delineate and protect a home turf. Other alt-right gangs may be highly mobile claiming a hangout (e.g., a park, bar) that is not proximate to members residences (Simi, 2009). Conversely, other alt-right gangs are highly territorial focusing their street-oriented activities in particular neighborhoods, keeping their bias/hate-motivated behaviors “territorial and localized” (Simi et al., 2008: 766). The use of space by alt-right gangs is analogous to conventional street gangs (see Reid and Valasik, 2020a). Alt-right gangs employ space as a tool to maintain group solidary and reinforce the collective identity of their group, as observed by Simi’s (2006) research on racist skinheads naming themselves after locales the groups’ claimed as turf (e.g., Norwalk Skins, Huntington Beach Skins, and LaMirada Punk (LMP)) (see Valasik and Tita, 2018). It is quite common for alt-right gangs to gather in Aryan free spaces “where white power members meet with one another, openly express their extremist beliefs, and coordinate their activities” (Simi and Futrell, 2015: 4). Aryan free spaces are usually nondescript places (e.g., local hangout, bar, crash-pad, MMA gyms, residence) that allow members to freely express their group’s antagonistic identity toward mainstream society and for it to nurtured and refned over time (Futrell and Simi, 2004; Miller-Idriss, 2020; Simi and Futrell, 2015). Reid and Valasik (2020a: 88) maintain that Aryan free spaces are in fact no diferent than “conventional street gangs” set space, being localized, geographically distinct areas where members gather” (see Tita et al., 2005; Valasik and Tita, 2018). It is these distinct zones of infuence that allow alt-right gang members to feel secure and safe from outsiders, permitting them to embolden their abrasive behaviors and rhetoric. While the development of alt-right gangs may have begun as an online phenomenon, the actions of members does not remain in the virtual realm and spills out into the material world (Castle and Parsons, 2019; First Vigil, 2021; Khalifa Ihler, 2021; Stern, 2019). The habitual demonstrating in cities across the United States (e.g., Berkeley, Lansing, New York, Portland, Washington, D.C.) by far-right groups (e.g., Patriot Prayer, Oath Keepers, Groypers, Boogaloo Bois) and alt-right gangs (e.g., Proud Boys, Rise Above Movement) over a variety of issues ranging from “free speech” to COVID-19 restrictions to fabricated, systematic voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election that readily involves into public intimidation and street violence (First Vigil, 2021; Khalifa Ihler, 2021). The most notable example being the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (Atkinson, 2018; Hawley, 2019). In addition to congregating at Aryan free spaces in the material world, alt-right gangs also utilize “virtual Aryan free spaces” to an equal or greater extent (Reid and Valasik, 2020a: 90). This is not surprising given the long-established history of the white power movement’s asymmetric use of the Internet to bolster their membership (see Belew, 2018; Daniels, 2009). A variety of virtual Aryan free spaces exist, allowing for alt-right gang members to chat (direct message), plan activities or gathering, post social media content (i.e., memes, videos, photos, documents), listen to white power music, play racist video games and even indoctrinate children (Castle and Parsons, 2019; Daniels, 2009; Lewis, 2018; Miller-Idriss, 2020; Simi and Futrell, 2015). Traditionally, the white power movement repressed their communications to niche communities online,

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such as Stormfront or The Daily Stormer (Daniels, 2018; Perry and Scrivens, 2019; Winter, 2019). Unlike the veteran groups in the white power movement, the profciency and prevalence of alt-right gangs’ membership at employing mainstream digital communication to propagandize, harass rival groups, enlist new members and maintain robust connections with active members is what makes these far-right groups unique (DeCook, 2018; Fielitz and Thurston, 2019; Klein, 2019; Miller-Idriss, 2020; Nagle, 2017; Reid et al., 2020; Ross, 2020; Simi and Futrell, 2015). Yet, it is important to distinguish that despite alt-right gangs’ penchant toward the digital technology, they are not just a bunch of trolls relegated to a virtual landscape but actively engage in serious criminal acts in the material world (First Vigil, 2021; Khalifa Ihler, 2021). They are tweeting in the streets as violence follows the wake of their digital footprint.

Proud boys as a case study Reminiscent of the exclusive, fraternal organizations (e.g., Elks Lodge) that were popularized in the 20th century, Proud Boys describe themselves as a “western chauvinist” men’s club (DeCook, 2018; Dickson, 2021; Proud Boys, 2021; Reid and Valasik, 2020b). Under this guise, they argue that Western civilization is superior to all others (e.g., Orthodoxy, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu) and that white privilege is not a problem in modern society (Proud Boys, 2021). Despite these extreme viewpoints, non-whites are encouraged to join Proud Boys, however, they must endorse that (1) being white is not a problem in modern society and (2) Western Civilization is the highest form of human development (DeCook, 2018; Proud Boys, 2021). Proud Boys routinely draw attention to the fact that their membership is composed of non-white members (Proud Boys, 2021). In fact, Proud Boys’ ideological tenet of abstaining from masturbation is derived from a Black, male comedian, Dante Nero and former Proud Boy member and fgurehead (NPR, 2017). Yet, the liberal use of racial slurs, white supremacist rhetoric, and the death of Heather Heyer at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville made him abdicate from the alt-right gang (NPR, 2017). Nero testifes that the ideological jump from believing that “the West is the best” to “white people are the best” is quite illusive (NPR, 2017). Additionally, Proud Boys oppose multiculturalism, immigration, political correctness, gun control measures, racial guilt, and feminism. The latter actually drives much of Proud Boys’ nostalgic, misogynistic beliefs that men are superior to women and that feminism has driven women into the workforce, cutting in line in front of deserving men and stealing their opportunities, and away from being happy housewives (see Hermansson et al., 2020; Hochschild, 2016; Ross, 2020; Stern, 2019). Founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes (see Dickson, 2021; Rogan, 2017), Proud Boys “very much functions like a fraternity or more accurately, a gang; their gatherings often involve heavy amounts of drinking and violence, there are rituals involved in gaining status in the group, and there is a uniform and agreed upon logo (including colors) to signify their group identity” (DeCook, 2018: 7). Despite the labeling of Proud Boys as a white power street gang by non-gang researchers (e.g., journalists, news media) and even Gavin McInnes’s public self-nomination on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, “I started this gang called the Proud Boys” (Rogan, 2017), it is important to assess how the groups’ characteristics collate with Reid and Valasik’s (2020a) defnition of an alt-right gang. As a group, the Proud Boys are durable, having been in existence since 2016. Similar to other gang nations (i.e., People, Folks, Blood, Crips, etc.), regional and local chapters have formed across the United States, and potentially across the globe, under the Proud Boys’ patronage (McCabe, 2018; Proud Boys, 2021; Reid and Valasik, 2020a; Rogan, 2017).

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Like conventional street gangs use of space to maintain group solidarity and reinforce collective identity, members of Proud Boys spend the majority of their time bonding by “hanging out and drinking beer” (Stern, 2019: 71). It is within these Aryan free spaces (i.e., local pubs) that members feel safe and protected from rivals and/or outsiders. Like all altright gangs, Proud Boys’ “whiteness” imbues its membership with the belief that they have “natural dominion” over any space that they occupy, structuring their relationship with space to be much more fexible than conventional street gangs (Simi and Futrell, 2015: 55). This allows alt-right gangs to have greater mobility but also remain highly territorial, focusing their street-oriented activities in particular neighborhoods, keeping their bias/hate-motivated behaviors “territorial and localized” (Simi et al., 2008: 766). Unlike conventional street gangs, the Proud Boys have a substantial digital footprint that incorporates a range of digital media, such as social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Gab), social network applications (e.g., Telegram, Parler), web videos, and an online magazine, to cultivate a group identity and maintain solidarity among members (DeCook, 2018; Klein, 2019; Reid and Valasik, 2020a; Ross, 2020; Stern, 2019). Thus, the Proud Boys have a public orientation in both the material and digital world. In terms of criminal involvement, Proud Boys’ activities range from harassment, public intimidation, and disorderly conduct to actively calling for and engaging in violence, including assault, battery, murder, rioting, and hate crimes (DeCook, 2018; Dickson, 2021; First Vigil, 2021; Owen, 2021; Klein, 2019; Reid and Valasik, 2020a; Valasik and Reid, 2021a). For instance, DeCook (2018: 12) underscores Proud Boys’ desire to readily attack Antifa as “the true enemy of the Christian, white ethnonationalist west because of their embrace of socialism and multiculturalism. By positioning them as the enemy, the solidifcation of an ‘out-group’ strengthens the in-group’ identity” (see also Klein, 2019; Kutner, 2020; Rogan, 2017). Another key component that identifes Proud Boys as an alt-right gang is the inclusion of white power signs and symbols or other related ideological imagery (e.g., swastikas, SS bolts, 88, 14), typically displayed on clothing, banners, or tattoos, that are used to reify the group’s identity (see Kutner, 2020; Gilbert and Elley, 2020; Miller-Idriss, 2018, 2020; Pollard, 2016; Simi and Futrell, 2015). Broadly, alt-right gangs attempt to downplay the use of traditional far-right ideological imagery, using signs/symbols that remain disguised in mainstream society (e.g., Pepe the Frog, 6MWE, the “OK” hand sign) and, thus, more easily pass unnoticed (Cooter, 2006; Miller-Idriss, 2018, 2020; Neiwert, 2020; Simi and Futrell, 2015; Woods and Hahner, 2019). Not unlike other conventional street gangs (e.g., Bloods, Crips), Proud Boys have adopted a particular color scheme and symbol, black and yellow, along with a mascot, a cockerel, to publicly display their afliation and membership (see Reid and Valasik, 2020a). Proud Boys’ members regularly display these colors and logo on a unique uniform, black Fred Perry polo shirts with yellow trim (PBS, 2021, Reid and Valasik, 2020a). The appropriation of Fred Perry polo shirts without the company’s consent has long been ingrained in racist skinhead culture, adding to the countercultural, edgy aesthetic image projected by Proud Boys (Swenson, 2017). To become more prominent and have greater infuence in the group, Proud Boys’ members also brand themselves with tattoos showcasing their afliation to the group, not unlike conventional street gangs or white power groups (Hall, 2018; Hawley, 2019; Rogan, 2017). Members also frequently use the “OK” hand sign, a mechanism employed by many in the alt-right to identify themselves and Proud Boys as being within the larger white power movement (PBS, 2021; Reid and Valasik, 2020a). While the signs and symbols used by Proud Boys were not originally associated with the white power movement, their routine use by far-right groups has made them unmistakably attached to alt-right gangs (see Woods and Hahner, 2019).

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White supremacy policing Are members of alt-right gangs or Proud Boys “real” gang members, or are they simply adherents of a subculture with an ideology that the general public disapproves of? This distinction may seem trivial in terms of how these groups are studied by researchers; however, it matters a great deal in how law enforcement agencies deal with them. For instance, if a police ofcer stops and talks to a young Black or Latino male who associates with a BIPOC group and then enters that individual and his group into a gang database, this outcome is substantially diferent than if an ofcer stops a young white male, or more likely does not (e.g., Kyle Rittenhouse), who identifes with an alt-right gang. Instead, the ofcer is more than likely to refrain from entering the individual and his group into the gang database. Even worse that white male and his alt-right gang may actually receive preferential treatment, as has been documented in the relationships between Portland Policing Bureau ofcers and alt-right gangs (see Bernstein, 2019a, 2019b; Neiwert, 2019; Ortiz, 2019; Wilson, 2018). This pattern of far-right groups not being treated equally under the law when compared to BIPOC groups (e.g., Black Lives Matter, Black Panther Party) has been a paradigm in American policing. The latter gets treated as a dangerous threat to society while the former gets political protection. Ward (2018: 168) contends that a legacy of white supremacy in policing, and the “racist ideologies, violence, and other political actions of law enforcement authorities, and under policing of white supremacist threats by legal authorities,” has endured in American law enforcement agencies since its founding (e.g., slave patrols). For example, over 35  years ago, there was a group much like Proud Boys that established a collective “street” identity, founded chapters (cliques) all over the country, advocated a political message, endorsed nationalism and street toughness, and wore a recognizable uniform. That group was the Black Panther Party. Unlike today’s alt-right gangs, the Black Panther Party was targeted by the FBI, with the aid of local law enforcement being relentlessly attacked until the group was eradicated (Bloom and Martin, 2016; Cunningham, 2003). Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident as of lately the FBI (2017) have been more concerned with “Black identity extremists” than the more pressing threat of alt-right gangs and the broader white power movement, as witnessed in the insurrection that transpired at the US Capitol Building on 6 January (see Miah, 2018; Updegrove et al., 2018). History exposes that when law enforcement, at the local and/or the federal level, is seriously concerned about a BIPOC group, overtly oppressive actions will be utilized to disrupt, disband, and destroy the group, as witnessed with the Black Panther Party (see Durán, 2013, Ward, 2018). Law enforcement’s negligence has resulted in white supremacists being the most “persistent and lethal threat” in the United States today and likely for some time (Sierra, 2021). In the end, it has been the weak response by law enforcement that has allowed for alt-right gangs to emerge and sustain themselves (Perry and Scrivens, 2018, 2019; Reitman, 2018).

Gang databases The discretion of law enforcement ofcers and agencies to exclude or include alt-right gangs and their members in a gang database greatly impacts future criminal justice decisions, as the gang label greatly disadvantages someone throughout the criminal justice system (Howell, 2011; Klein, 2009a; Knox and Fuller, 1995). Many law enforcement agencies would contend that the exclusion of alt-right gang members is not intentionally based on their race, as white youth who are members of a conventional street gang whose membership is predominantly composed of individuals of color are treated as a gang member. Yet, the decision to overload gang databases with individuals of color can greatly hinder the reliability and legitimacy of a police agency’s

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gang database or shut it down all together (Bernstein, 2017; Brosseau, 2016; Dumke, 2018a, 2018b; Flores, 2017; Howle, 2016; Klein, 2009b). The lack of attention paid to alt-right gangs is plainly (un)documented throughout American law enforcement agencies in the extensive under reporting of white gang members documented in gang databases. The racial/ethnic favoring of white gang members is disproportionately revealed in state gang databases, as seen in Minnesota (18.5%) and California (8.2%), but also the gang databases of municipalities, as observed in Chicago (4.3%), Charlotte (4%), Denver (1.76%), and New York City (1%) (Aba-Onu et al., 2010; Durán, 2013; Flores, 2017; Howell, 2011, 2015; Howle, 2016). Furthermore, the criteria used by many law enforcement agencies to distinguish an individual as a gang member are biased to urban youth culture (e.g., clothing) (Aba-Onu et al., 2010; Howell, 2011; Lee and Bubolz, 2020). Howell (2011: 653) maintains that “the disparity between law enforcement estimates based on broad criteria . . . leads to substantial over-inclusion of young men of color.” As such, the legitimacy of police gang databases becomes a question in itself (see Densley and Pyrooz, 2020; Howell, 2011, 2015; Klein, 2009b). For instance, the Portland Police Bureau’s Gang Database listed 359 gang members, yet only 32 of those individuals were listed as being members of a white power group, or less than 9% of all known gang members (Brosseau, 2016). Today, Portland, however, does not lack violent alt-right gangs (Campuzano, 2018; Reid and Valasik, 2020a; Wilson, 2018). In fact, Portland’s history of overt racism (Capatides, 2017; Geiling, 2015; Neiwert, 2017; Semuels, 2016; Shapiro, 2017) and legacy of segregationist policies, being a “sundown town” (see Brown, 2017; O’Connell, 2019), actually facilitated the growth and persistence of white power groups hoping to make the city a “White Utopia” (Novak, 2015). Furthermore, the public resurgence of the white power movement with alt-right gangs (e.g., Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer) recurrent participation in violent demonstrations, rallies, and protests since 2017, particularly in more liberal and progressive urban centers across the country, further highlights the systemic underpolicing of white power groups by legal authorities (Dickson, 2021; Khalifa Ihler, 2021; Reid and Valasik, 2020a;). Presently, the only time members of white power gangs are systematically classifed in a database is upon entering a correctional facility (Goodman, 2008, 2014; Pyrooz and Decker, 2019; Valasik and Reid, 2019, 2021b). While such a tool was designed to garner gang intelligence, it resulted in policies of racially segregating inmates, in an attempt to curb institutional violence (see Gaston and Huebner, 2015). The separation of inmates by race, however, inadvertently fueled the rise and dominance of prison gangs (i.e., security threat groups) in carceral settings (Blazak, 2009; Skarbek, 2014; Trammell, 2011). Overall, it is necessary for the criminal justice system to be aware of how decisions on who is labeled a gang member impact decisions on individual’s lives, data used by researchers and analysts, and overall public policies.

Policing protests and putsches Since the disastrous and poorly policed “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, America’s law enforcement community has failed to treat far-right groups, including anti-government “militias,” like Oath Keepers, accelerationists, like Boogaloo Bois, online trolls, like Groypers, and alt-right gangs, like Proud Boys, as threats to society. While there was speculation that these far-right groups would ebb back to their online free spaces (e.g., Gab, Reddit, 4chan, 8kun, Twitter) following the “Unite the Right” rally, however, former President Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and apologetic stance toward alt-right street violence created an

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environment conducive to the mobilization of alt-right gangs. The result was an ongoing slew of public protests advocating for free speech, condemning police violence, opposing COVID-19 restrictions, vaccinations, and mask mandates, and endorsing former President Trump’s reelection eforts (Khalifa Ihler, 2021; Reid and Valasik, 2020b; Valasik and Reid, 2020). A consistent theme at these events is the presence of Proud Boys, and other far-right activists, making them ripe for recruitment and helps to mainstream these group’s credibility. Furthermore, the public support and endorsement by former President Trump amplifed and invigorated the accelerationist activities of these far-right groups, culminating in insurrection at the Capitol Building attempting to prevent the certifcation of the 2020 election. The insurrection at the Capitol, as with the “Unite the Right” rally, and many other subsequent protests since 2017, has been met by law enforcement with varying responses at best to nonexistent at worst (Campuzano, 2018; Shepherd, 2020; Neiwert, 2021; Valasik and Reid, 2021a; Weill, 2021). These events underscore the unevenness of law enforcement responses across local, state, and federal jurisdictional levels. It is not surprising, considering the happenings at the “Unite the Right” rally and the insurrection at the Capitol Building, for “Antifa [to brand] local police forces as sympathetic to the ‘alt-right’ and even as protecting groups like the Ku Klux Klan: ‘Cops and Klan go hand in hand’” (Klein, 2019: 313). The roving bands of alt-right gangs brawling on the streets, terrorizing communities, and intimidating local residents are the same boisterous and violent street presence that has been observed among traditional street gang research for nearly the past century. Yet, even when traditional crowd control techniques are deployed by law enforcement agencies, they consistently fail to restrain the violent and destructive behavior of Proud Boys and other alt-right gangs (Dickson, 2021; Neiwert, 2021; Valasik and Reid, 2021a). For instance, if the DC National Guard had been deployed at the US Capitol Building, as documented with Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2021, this level of police presence may have been enough to prevent the destruction and rioting that ensued (see Chavez, 2021). The willingness of law enforcement to use a range of intimidating interventions to disrupt BIPOC-led protests and groups needs to be refected in how these agencies interact with other far-right groups (Valasik and Reid, 2021a).

Public policy approaches to target alt-right gangs For law enforcement, policy makers and practitioners, there are several practical implications that can be integrated into current eforts at reducing white power gang violence. By more accurately understanding the reality of these groups, through research and dedicated programming, our ability to direct policy would be greatly improved. This is especially true as we work to adapt criminal justice approaches to combat alt-right gangs. Disaggregating the reality of these alt-right gangs from their mythos is a critical step in accurately and efectively developing programs and policies to reduce recruitment, group violence, and criminality. Alt-right gangs are often portrayed inaccurately, as being highly structured organizations that transcend national boundaries, not unlike conventional street gangs (e.g., Mara Salvatrucha [MS-13]). Yet, this mythology cloaks alt-right gangs, hiding them in plain sight from law enforcement. If police agencies are looking for an international criminal syndicate in their jurisdiction sympathetic to the white power movement but are unable to fnd such an organization or individuals afliated with it, then that community must be devoid of alt-right gangs (Reid and Valasik, 2020a; Valasik and Reid, 2021a). Law enforcement’s focus on alt-right gangs being united by ideology, intent, and coordination, has resulted in them chasing an amorphous white power movement down a rabbit hole. This misguided perspective has diverted law enforcement’s attention away

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from identifying localized, criminogenic groups with white power sympathies and applying recognized intervention and suppression strategies (see Kirkpatrick and Feuer, 2021). Given altright gang members “cafeteria-style” pattern of antisocial behaviors and criminal ofending it is likely that they come under some type of law enforcement scrutiny and would be well-known in their communities. As Reid and Valasik (2020: 130) point out “alt-right gang members who sell drugs are not drug-selling individuals in some racist subculture; rather, they are alt-right gang members participating in the drug market, and law enforcement should be monitoring them for that reason.” The initial stage of this process would include systematically collecting information from feld interviews, arrests, and other contacts with law enforcement into either existing gang databases or an analogous system. Currently, it is unclear how, or even if, departments are capturing these youth in their gang databases. While gang databases are still a contentious tool utilized by law enforcement (e.g., removal of desisting members from the system, casting too wide a net, misidentifying associates), the infrastructure for such databases readily exist in many jurisdictions making them a cost-efective apparatus that can be easily appropriated to be a repository of information (see Barrows and Huf, 2009; Densley and Pyrooz, 2020; Huf and Barrows, 2015; Wright, 2005). Furthermore, there needs to be concerted coordinated eforts between corrections facilities since this is often the frst criminal justice institution that keeps track of white power gangs/ security threat groups (see Goodman, 2008) and local law enforcement. Since most incarcerated individuals are released back into society it would be invaluable for corrections departments (i.e., state prisons, local jails) to pass along intelligence on an individual’s white supremacy connections to the local law enforcement. This intelligence sharing would allow for greater coordinated eforts to enhance monitoring and ultimately shift behavior patterns to reduce future recidivism. As gang scholars can attest, efective strategies aimed at preventing or reducing the criminality of alt-right gang members need to move beyond suppression eforts (e.g., aggressive policing, enhanced prosecution) if they are going to be successful in disrupting these groups (Klein and Maxson, 2006). For instance, Operation Ceasefre utilized a diverse working group that included researchers, police, outreach workers, and criminal justice (Kennedy et al., 1996). This working group used extensive and coordinated information to build an intervention and suppression program. A critical lesson from this project is understanding the need for a comprehensive understanding of the alt-right gang problem if practical policy is going be used. Alt-right gangs, similar to street gangs, are often comprised of marginalized youth from distressed communities. Given that alt-right gangs are group-based and have similar proclivities to violence as street gangs, the adaptation of successful intervention programs could be used or adapted for youth vulnerable to alt-right gang membership. In designing interventions that facilitate desistance from alt-right groups, the literature on gang desistance (e.g., Pyrooz et al., 2014) would be a suitable starting point. For instance, gang alternative programs are designed to supply opportunities (e.g., job training, educational assistance) to individuals outside of the gang to decrease group attachment and encourage desistance (Gravel et al., 2013). Given the socialization and persistent intergenerational exposure to white supremacy ideals, intervention eforts will need to be coordinated not only with at-risk individuals but also with their families. Analogous eforts have been utilized throughout Europe (Hemmingsen, 2015; Vice, 2017) and America (Boghani, 2016) to deradicalize youth sympathetic with jihadist terrorist groups (e.g., The Islamic State). While empirical assessment of deradicalization eforts efectiveness remains difcult to ascertain (Horgan and Braddock, 2010) the gang desistence literature, informed by large longitudinal datasets, is the best starting point in meantime to craft interventions for altright youth.

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Lastly, policy eforts must not forget the role of digital media as a point of prevention, intervention, and suppression. Since online communities play such an important role in the communication, recruitment, and legitimization of alt-right groups, policy and practice must integrate this into future eforts. This process requires working with social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) to limit youths’ exposure to hate-based social media and aggressively remove content related to the alt-right.

Conclusion There is an infection point today in how we should deal with far-right groups, particularly altright gangs. For a subset of far-right groups, using the lens of street gangs to view, study, and develop policy ofers an opportunity to leverage existing literature and approaches. Academia, researchers, policy makers, law enforcement, and the broader criminal justice system need to reorient their conceptions about far-right groups into appropriate categories, particularly antigovernment “militias,” like Oath Keepers; accelerationists, like Boogaloo Bois; and alt-right gangs, like Proud Boys. Now is the time for law enforcement to seek out and use alternative, more proactive approaches to be employed to thwart the ongoing violence brought about by these far-right groups. As we see continued violence by groups such as Proud Boys, understanding the group-based dynamics and individual risk and protective factors that have been key to preventing, intervening, and suppressing conventional gang activity is necessary. Despite a desire to consider these alt-right gangs and far-right groups feeting and therefore not worth focusing on, history has demonstrated that these groups are resilient, able to shift between physical and digital environments, and will not be disappearing anytime soon.

Note 1 Klein (2001b, 2009b; Klein and Maxson, 2006) characterizes “specialty” street gangs as being focused on a specifc type of crime (e.g., violence, drug sales, motor vehicle theft). These gangs are small in size, less than 50 members, and lack cliques or subgroups. Additionally, the range in age of members is generally narrow, less than 10 years, but may be larger. The lifespan of these groups is less than 10 years. Finally, the gang has a territorial component with where members hang out or where they conduct their criminal activity.

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O’Connell, H. A. (2019). Historical shadows: The links between sundown towns and contemporary black—white inequality. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 5(3), 311–325. Ortiz, E. (2019, February  15). “Disturbing” texts between Oregon police and far-right group prompt investigation. NBC News. Retrieved December 11, 2019, from www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ disturbing-texts-between-oregon-police-far-right-group-prompts-investigation-n972161 Owen, T. (2021, January  5). Proud boys and hardcore trump supporters are turning their backs on cops. Vice. Retrieved January  14, 2021, from www.vice.com/en/article/88avmx/ proud-boys-and-hardcore-trump-supporters-are-turning-their-backs-on-cops Panofsky, A., Dasgupta, K.,  & Iturriaga, N. (2021). How White nationalists mobilize genetics: From genetic ancestry and human biodiversity to counterscience and metapolitics. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 175(2), 387–398. Panofsky, A.,  & Donovan, J. (2019). Genetic ancestry testing among white nationalists: From identity repair to citizen science. Social Studies of Science, 49(5), 653–681. Papachristos, A. V. (2005). Interpreting inkblots: Deciphering and doing something about modern street gangs. Criminology & Public Policy, 4, 643–651. Perry, B., & Scrivens, R. (2018). A climate for hate? An exploration of the right-wing extremist landscape in Canada. Critical Criminology, 26(1), 169–187. Perry, B., & Scrivens, R. (2019). Right-wing extremism in Canada. Hoboken, NJ: Palgrave. Peterson, D., Taylor, T. J., & Esbensen, F.-A. (2004). Gang membership and violent victimization. Justice Quarterly, 21(4), 793–815. Pilkington, H., Omel’chenko, E. L., & Garifzianova, A. (2010). Russia’s skinheads: Exploring and rethinking subcultural lives. London: Routledge. Pollard, J. (2016). Skinhead culture: The ideologies, mythologies, religions and conspiracy theories of racist skinheads. Patterns of Prejudice, 50(4–5), 398–419. Proud Boys. (2021). Proud Boys. Retrieved May 18, 2021, from http://proudboysusa.com/ Public Broadcasting System (PBS). (2021). American insurrection. Frontline, Season 39, Episode 7. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/flm/american-insurrection/ Pufer, J. A. (1912). The boy and his gang. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifin. Pyrooz, D. C., & Decker, S. H. (2019). Competing for control: Gangs and the social order of prisons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pyrooz, D. C., Decker, S. H., & Webb, V. J. (2014). The ties that bind: Desistance from gangs. Crime & Delinquency, 60(4), 491–516. Pyrooz, D. C., LaFree, G., Decker, S. H., & James, P. A. (2018). Cut from the same cloth? A comparative study of domestic extremists and gang members in the United States. Justice Quarterly, 35(1), 1–32. Reid, S. E., & Valasik, M. (2018). Ctrl+Alt-Right: Reinterpreting our knowledge of white supremacy groups through the lens of street gangs. Journal of Youth Studies, 21(10), 1305–1325. Reid, S. E., & Valasik, M. (2020a). Alt-right gangs: A hazy shade of white. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Reid, S. E., & Valasik, M. (2020b, April 28). Why are white supremacists protesting to ‘reopen’the US economy? The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protestingto-reopen-the-us-economy-137044 Reid, S. E., Valasik, M., & Bagavathi, A. (2020). Examining the physical manifestation of alt-right gangs: From online trolling to street fghting. In Gangs in the era of internet and social media (pp. 105–134). New York, NY: Springer. Reitman, J. (2018, November 3). U.S. law enforcement failed to see the threat of white nationalism. Now they don’t know how to stop it. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/ magazine/FBI-charlottesville-white-nationalism-far-right.html Rogan, J. (2017). Joe Rogan experience #920—Gavin McInnes [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from www. youtube.com/watch?v=qm9lfWTGmDY Ross, A. R. (2020, December 30). Proud boys are at war with their female extremist wing. Daily Beast. Retrieved December 31, 2020, from www.thedailybeast.com/proud-boys-are-at-war-with-their-proudgirls-female-extremist-wing Saini, A. (2019). Superior: The return of race science. London: Beacon Press.

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Salagaev, A. (2001). Evolution of delinquent gangs in Russia. In M. W. Klein, H. J. Kerner, C. L. Maxson,  & E. G. M. Weitekamp (Eds.), The Eurogang paradox. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-94-010-0882-2_14 Salagaev, A. L., Shashkin, A., Sherbakova, I., & Touriyanskiy, E. (2005). Contemporary Russian gangs: History, membership, and crime involvement. In European street gangs and troublesome youth groups: Findings from the Eurogang research program (pp. 169–191). Cantabria: AltaMira. Sanchez, J., & Tostlebe, J. (2021, February 15). Gangs and self-control—David Pyrooz. The Criminology Academy, Episode 12. Retrieved May 18, 2021, from https://thecriminologyacademy.com/category/ spring-2021-episodes/ Sela-Shayovitz, R. (2012). Gangs and the web: Gang members’ online behavior. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 28(4), 389–405. Semuels, A. (2016, July 22). The racist history of Portland, the whitest city in America. The Atlantic. Retrieved April 25, 2019, from www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portland/492035/ Shapiro, A. (2017, May  30). Portland train murders highlight Oregon’s history of white supremacy. NPR. Retrieved May  28, 2019, from www.npr.org/2017/05/30/530769807/ portland-train-murders-highlight-oregons-history-of-white-supremacy Shashkin, A. (2008). Origins and development of racist skinheads in Moscow. In F. van Gemert, D. Peterson, & I. L. Lien (Eds.), Street gangs, migration and ethnicity (pp. 97–114). New York, NY: Willan. Sheldon, H. D. (1898). The institutional activities of American children. The American Journal of Psychology, 9(4), 425–448. Shepherd, K. (2020, August 22). Portland police stand by as Proud Boys and far-right militias fash guns and brawl with antifa counterprotesters. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 28, 2021, from www. washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/22/portland-police-far-right-protest/ Short, J. F. Jr. (1974). Youth, gangs and society: Micro- and macrosociological processes. The Sociological Quarterly, 15(1), 3–19. Short, J. F. Jr., & Moland, J. (1976). Politics and youth gangs: A follow-up study. The Sociological Quarterly, 17(2), 162–179. Sierra, G. (2021, February 3). The most persistent and lethal threat. Why It Matters. Retrieved May 18, 2021, from www.cfr.org/podcasts/most-persistent-and-lethal-threat Simi, P. (2006). Hate groups or street gangs? The emergence of racist skinheads. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Simi, P. (2009). Skinhead street violence. In Hate crime and hate ofenders. London: Greenwood Press. Simi, P., & Futrell, R. (2015). American swastika: Inside the white power movement’s hidden spaces of hate. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefeld. Simi, P., Smith, L., & Reeser, A. M. S. (2008). From punk kids to public enemy number one. Deviant Behavior, 29(8), 753–774. Simi, P., & Windisch, S. (2020). Why radicalization fails: Barriers to mass casualty terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 32(4), 831–850. Skarbek, D. (2014). The social order of the underworld: How prison gangs govern the American penal system. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, A. M. (2019). Proud boys and the white ethnostate: How the alt-right is warping the American imagination. London: Beacon Press. Storrod, M. L., & Densley, J. A. (2017). “Going viral” and “going country”: The expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(6), 677–696. Swenson, K. (2017). The alt-right’s Proud Boys love Fred Perry polo shirts. The feeling is not mutual. Washington Post. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/ wp/2017/07/10/the-alt-rights-proud-boys-love-fred-perry-polo-shirts-the-feeling-is-not-mutual/ Tapia, M. (2019). Modern Chicano street gangs: Ethnic pride versus “gangsta” subculture. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 41(3), 312–330. Tenold, V. (2018). Everything you love will burn: Inside the rebirth of white nationalism in America. New York, NY: Bold Type Books. Tertilt, H. (2001). Patterns of ethnic violence in a Frankfurt street gang. In M. W. Klein, H. J. Kerner, C. L. Maxson, & E. G. M. Weitekamp (Eds.), The Eurogang paradox: Street gangs and youth groups in the U.S. and Europe (pp. 181–193). New York, NY: Springer.

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Thrasher, F. M. (1927). The gang: A study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tita, G. E., Cohen, J., & Engberg, J. (2005). An ecological study of the location of gang “set space.” Social Problems, 52(2), 272–299. Trammell, R. (2011). Enforcing the convict code violence and prison culture. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Updegrove, A. H., Cooper, M. N., Orrick, E. A., & Piquero, A. R. (2020). Red states and Black lives: Applying the racial threat hypothesis to the Black Lives Matter movement. Justice Quarterly, 37(1), 85–108. Urbanik, M. M., & Haggerty, K. D. (2018). “#It’s dangerous”: The online world of drug dealers, rappers and the street code. The British Journal of Criminology, 58(6), 1343–1360. Valasik, M., & Reid, S. E. (2019). The Schrödinger’s cat of gang groups: Can street gangs inform our comprehension of skinheads and alt-right groups? Deviant Behavior, 40(10), 1245–1259. Valasik, M.,  & Reid, S. E. (2020, June  5). Why are white supremacists protesting the deaths of black  people? The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/ why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-the-deaths-of-black-people-140046 Valasik, M.,  & Reid, S. E. (2021a). Why law enforcement needs to classify far-right groups as gangs? Contexts, 20(4), 70–71. Valasik, M., & Reid, S. E. (2021b). The alt-right movement and US National Security. The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters, 51(3), 5–17. Valasik, M., & Tita, G. E. (2018). Gangs and space. In The Oxford handbook of environmental criminology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Valdez, A. (1999, March). Nazi low riders. Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine, 23(3), 46–48. van Gemert, F., Peterson, D.,  & Lien, I. L. (2012). Street gangs, migration and ethnicity. New York, NY: Routledge. Van Hellemont, E., & Densley, J. A. (2019). Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities. Crime, Media, Culture, 15(1), 169–189. VICE. (2017). Charlottesville: Race and terror. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/ watch?v=RIrcB1sAN8I Vigil, J. D. (1988a). Barrio gangs: Street life and identity in Southern California. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Vigil, J. D. (1988b). Group processes and street identity: Adolescent Chicano gang members. Ethos, 16(4), 421–445. Vigil, J. D. (1996). Street baptism: Chicano gang initiation. Human Organization, 55(2), 149–153. Ward, G. (2018). Living histories of white supremacist policing: Towards transformative justice. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1), 167–184. Ward, T. W. (2013). Gangsters without borders: An ethnography of a Salvadoran street gang. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waring, A. (2018). The new authoritarianism: Vol. 1: A risk analysis of the U.S. alt-right phenomenon. New York, NY: Ibidem-Verlag. Waring, A. (2019). The new authoritarianism: Vol 2: A risk analysis of the European alt-right phenomenon. New York, NY: Ibidem-Verlag. Weerman, F. M., Maxson, C. L., Esbensen, F.-A., Aldridge, J., Medina, J., & Van Gemert, F. (2009). Eurogang program manual. University of Missouri-St. Louis. Retrieved from www.umsl.edu/ccj/Eurogang/ EurogangManual.pdf Weill, K. (2021, August 12). Proud Boys are back to brawling on America’s streets. Daily Beast. Retrieved August 17, 2021, from www.thedailybeast.com/proud-boys-are-back-to-brawling-on-americas-streets?ref=scroll Weitzer, R., & Kubrin, C. E. (2009). Misogyny in rap music: A content analysis of prevalence and meanings. Men and Masculinities, 12(1), 3–29. Wendling, M. (2018). Alt-right: From 4chan to the White House. London: Pluto Press. Wilson, J. (2018, August 5). Portland far-right rally: Police charge counterprotesters with batons drawn. The Guardian. Retrieved August  17, 2018, from www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/04/ patriot-prayer-to-carry-gun-at-portland-rally-as-fears-of-violence-rise Windisch, S., Simi, P., Blee, K., & DeMichele, M. (2018). Understanding the micro-situational dynamics of white supremacist violence in the United States. Perspectives on Terrorism, 12(6), 23–37.

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4 [FOLK]TALES OF DIFFERENT PEOPLES1 Transgressing gang defnitions and historical ties Brian Cabral and Sarah Bruno

Introduction On 29 March 2021, during the early morning hours, a 13-year-old young boy was found near Farragut High School in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago with a 21-year-old young man. Initial news reports indicated that there had been a police shoot-out that resulted in the arrest of the 21-year-old and the death of the 13-year-old. No one, including his family, knew who the 13-year-old was. Two days later, across a plethora of social media platforms, news stories revealed that the 13-year-old who had been shot and killed by a Chicago police ofcer was Adam Toledo. Adam’s death rapidly became a site of contestation. Community residents, politicians, political pundits, and others expressed personal conjectures on the events that transpired on 29 March. On one end, people vilifed him and his family, going as far as blaming Adam for his own death, alleging that the murder by police ofcer Eric Stillman was justifed. On the other end, there were clear attempts at rejecting the stigmatized narrative of victim blaming, and a push for police accountability in the form of an eventual abolition of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) ensued by young people, which called for a defunding of the city’s police department and a reinvestment of funds into neighborhoods that have historically experienced gun violence, including from police (Rodríguez Presa et al., 2021; Bedi, 2021). We begin this chapter using Adam Toledo’s death as an entry point to the broader discursive intervention we make related to the category of “gang member,” street gangs, violence, confict, and law enforcement. Adam was not in a gang, though the broader public response portrayed him as a member of the Latin King neighborhood street gang in Little Village, Chicago. Local aldermen or alderpeople, which are the equivalent of a local council person in other towns and cities, also perpetuated an “us” vs. “them” narrative that re-positioned Adam as another criminal fgure that did not deserve empathy or “martyr-ism” due to his alleged gang afliation (Zamudio, 2021; Zorn, 2021). In essence, Adam, much like others who are recruited into street gangs and into the category of gang member, or those who are adjacent to gang infrastructures, was reminded of his disposability in life and in death. This recent hyper-local example served as a catalyst for us and the argument we are poised to make regarding a shift in critical gang studies that transgresses gang defnitions and historical ties. This shift, we argue, includes the prevention of sidestepping how coloniality, which we defne in a subsequent section, structures populations within city and neighborhood limits in a constant loop of criminalization across time.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-5

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In this chapter, we place monumental texts in sociology, anthropology, and gang studies in conversation with each other. Through this, we ofer an alternative critical perspective on ways to discuss street gangs in the contemporary. We supplement this with media discourse that includes on-the-ground conceptualizations of gangs that are contextual to Chicago’s Black and Latinx gangs. We take seriously the racial justice eforts and events in Chicago’s summer 2020 and put them in context with the city’s historical racial and neighborhood formation processes. We contend that the racial and gang conficts and tensions—looting being one of them—witnessed across Chicago neighborhoods at the height of the racial justice movement resurgence in the summer of 2020 were situational and contextual on one level, but historical on another. Across the United States, summer 2020 witnessed uprisings after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Elijah McClain, to name a few, but joined by many others, by the police. This occurred amidst a COVID-19 global pandemic, which altogether elucidated a historical cyclical coercion that divided and isolated communities of color that simultaneously sustained the power and surveillance of the Chicago Police Department. We argue here that the historical assemblage of criminalization regarding Chicago’s “racial/ ethnic gangs” as purveyors of violence is a manipulation of CPD as the real perpetrators of structural violence that shapes even the most intimate parts of Chicagoans who are not directly gang afliated. We posit that gang tensions across racial lines in Chicago are not by chance but instead socio-politically engineered conficts based on and proliferated by long-standing conditions of hyper-segregation, dispossession, and containment (Stovall, 2018). Further, within this perspective, we argue that the gang and racial conficts discussed herein and across other cities purportedly experiencing similar conficts are an open secret where law enforcement, particularly local police ofcers and departments, are the purveyors and perpetrators of these tortuous conficts (Ibid; Ralph, 2020; Vargas, 2016). The structure of this chapter is guided by our research questions. We asked, how did Mexican gangs on the southwest side of Chicago, who purportedly protected “Latino” storefronts and owners, get permission from CPD to weaponize anti-Black attitudes? Further, how does this weaponization sidestep state-sanctioned violence and frame it as “gang violence” or narrowly as a “gang issue?” Relatedly, we asked why the Chicago Police Department and a Black woman mayor were championed during these contentious moments as it became an issue of “Latino gangs” across the media. Finally, we explored on-the-ground responses by local organizations to facilitate peace talks between “Black and Brown” communities across Chicago. We structured this chapter by reviewing relevant literature within gang studies frst. Then, we made a brief note on our methods, followed by our fndings that address our research questions. Neither of us as co-authors is directly involved in street gangs, though both of us share intimate relationships and histories with current and former gang members who are family members, friends, and neighbors. Given these relations, and our proximity to gangs given our roots in Puerto Rican (see Bruno, 2022) and Mexican Chicago, we share a profound commitment toward shifting pathological narratives surrounding gangs and gang members that are primarily centered on criminality. Instead, we move beyond ornamental individualized pathologies by animating the structures that facilitate the conditions that not simply lead individual people to join gangs or address the formation and transformation of collective gangs across urban city neighborhoods, but to resurface the ways law enforcement pepper and engineer urban geographical confict.

Shifting perspectives: defnitional wars There is no shortage of scholarly attempts at reaching a universalized defnition across geographies for what a gang or gang member is (Covey, 2010). To our knowledge, there also exists

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no contemporary text that captures the shifting perspectives, which are not quite the same as defnitions, related to scholarly conceptualizations of how gangs are discussed relative to earlier arguments and theorizations. Though there are recent attempts at capturing historical gang, research shifts to contextualize 21st-century understandings of gangs (Moore and Stuart, 2022). Moore and Stuart (2022) contend that there are fve major shifts in gang research: macro-level economic transformations, the expansion of a punitive state apparatus, an infux of digital and web-based infuences, broad-scale globalization, and expansive conceptualizations of gender. Based on these shifts, we are poised to revisit current understandings of gangs to be more inclusive of critical and intersectional perspectives. Our contribution to this edited volume is part of this scholarly project to ofer contemporary perspectives to historical phenomena. We are not interested in entering the gang defnitional wars to attempt another operationalization of what urban street gangs are. Instead, we delved into the existing literature to selectively piece together a working defnition for us that re-centers the role of law enforcement in what is understood as contemporary gang conficts. We call the myriad of existing gang defnitions “defnitional wars.” What exactly constitutes a gang or a gang member? Partial answers to this question largely depend on the context of where—both in geography and in ideology—the question stems from. An early defnition of gangs is attributed to sociologist Frederic Thrasher and his foundational ethnography, The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Thrasher (1926) reassured readers in his frst chapter that “no two gangs are just alike; some are good; some are bad; and each has to be considered on its own merits.” The Gang is a central text of the Chicago School of Sociology, primarily developed by Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, who pushed for empirical texts that forged daily mundane life with theory through ethnographic methods. In fact, Park, in The Gang’s preface, argued that “gangs, like most other forms of human association, need to be studied in their peculiar habitat” (Ibid, p. vii). Thrasher’s ethnography went on to infuence a plethora of future gang studies, each with its own contextual understanding of what gang life is (see Sánchez-Jankowski, 1991; Bourgois, 1995; Hagedorn and Macon, 1988; Cummings and Monti, 1993; Rodriguez, 2005; Mendoza-Denton, 2008; Contreras, 2013; Vargas, 2016; Rios and Vigil, 2017; Stuart, 2020 as examples). There have also been attempts to revert to Thrasher’s initial ethnography to refocus our attention on the particularities of his research questions and defnitions (Dimitriadis, 2006). Dimitriadis reminded us that Thrasher’s questions asked: What is a gang and who is in it? Where are gangs found? How are gangs organized? In what kind of activities do gangs engage? What is the gang’s relation to the community? And, fnally, what is to be done about gangs? (Ibid, p. 336) These questions, however, were abandoned in later iterations of gang defnitions. From the 1950s and onward, gangs and gang member categories became intertwined with criminality in criminal legal and justice studies, which diverted us away from considering the contexts and conditions of which gangs formed and their relative positions in the racially and economically segregated communities they are located (Hagedorn and Macon, 1988; Rios and Vigil, 2017; Rosas, 2019). Hagedorn and Macon (1988) stated that gangs “are a friendship group of adolescents who share common interests, with a more or less clearly defned territory, in which most of the members live” (p. 5). Thirty years later, Rios and Vigil (2017) and Rosas (2019) acknowledged that gangs are best understood to be members of segregated communities who are institutionally labeled as “gang members.” These gang labels are “a powerful one that generate . . . specifc resources, actions, and interactions within the various institutions these young people

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navigate” (Rios and Vigil, 2017: 21). Further, Durán (2013) reminded us that gang membership is “socially constructed,” and should be understood as a fuid, not static, category wherein those associated with the gang label enter and exit from it over time. Gang categories also have profound implications in other institutional contexts, such as schools (Flores-González, 2002; Rosa, 2019) or carceral spaces (Lopez-Aguado, 2018; Ortiz, 2019). This is attuned to Hagedorn and Macon’s (1988) earlier point that gangs are composed of “age-based structures” that are intergenerational, yet that also point to the fact that diferent people join, leave, or stay in gangs at diferent moments in their lives. These defnitions highlighted three main elements of gangs: (1) geography (defned by gang territories), (2) gang labels, and (3) temporality (coming of age). We reeled in another defnition more relevant to the Chicago context of where our chapter is situated. Sánchez-Jankowski (1991) defned gangs as “an organized system that is both quasiprivate and quasi-secretive . . . and governed by a leadership structure that has defned roles and pursues goals whether the action is legal or not.” Vargas (2016) noted that this latter defnition is attuned with his feldwork in Little Village, Chicago where gangs are understood as a “territorial and loosely associated group of people engaged in criminal acts,” versus gangs understood to be corner boys or crews or digital gang members (Papachristos et al., 2013; Stuart, 2020). These defnitional issues, or wars, have dire consequences. One of the most pronounced issues is that of gang databases across cities that primarily serve a function of surveillance and sentence enhancement if arrested and convicted for an alleged crime; these databases wrongfully include people not in gangs (Brown, 2008; Spergel, 2009; Marston, 2018).

Turf wars—a territorialized perspective Sociologist Robert Vargas’s (2016) ethnography of Little Village’s east side provided an argument that involved the interconnectedness of historical turf wars in the neighborhood vis-àvis gang and political turf wars. This text is central to our chapter as it highlighted turf—or land—as a vantage point to view contemporary gang feuds. We contend that a territorialized perspective of gangs must not side-step the ways coloniality, the “most general form of domination [and power] in the world today, [even after] colonialism as an explicit political order was destroyed” (Quijano, 2007: 170),2 and colonial logics structure the conditions that Chicagoans and other urban city residents experience that deeply criminalizes those rendered as gang members. From this perspective, we understand there to be a central role of the government as entities who are positioned to control and respond to gang conficts on the ground. In fact, during local elections, politicians rely on discourses of safety, control, and repression related to the “gang problem” in neighborhoods like Little Village to garner votes and support from residents, though this pressure minimizes or altogether diminishes once elections are over (Vargas, 2016). Political turf wars are similarly contentious sites as gang turf wars. What this framing ofered gang studies is the understanding that gang and gun violence is best understood as taking place within these turf wars in the backdrop, though they vary block by block. Said diferently, gang feuds that may lead to instances of gun violence are determined by land disputes informed by, as we also argue, colonial logics, imagined gang boundaries, and disruptions to existing leadership infrastructure. For example, a response to control and contain gang and gun violence on the local level, pushed by politicians through policy, was to eliminate those at the top of the gang structure, which government entities referred to as “the Kingpin Strategy.” The Kingpin Strategy is rooted in global eforts to combat drug cartels and terrorist organizations, but its efectiveness remains fraught and inconclusive (Lindo and Padilla-Romo, 2018; Rowlands and Kilberg, 2011). The logic was too simplistic: if they got a hold of the top leaders of the organization

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through captivity by infltration or other means necessary, the organization would allegedly seize to exist (Hagedorn and Macon, 1988; Vargas, 2016; Moore and Stuart, 2022). The disruption and eradication of these criminalized organizations did not occur. Instead, other unintended consequences precipitated from the use of this strategy at both the global and local levels (Jones, 2013). At the local level, one of those consequences was that smaller gang factions and intra-gang, including interracial, confict arose (Stovall, 2018). In addition, Little Village, as well as other urban sites of study, became experimental sites for violence reduction and prevention strategies that brought a host of alternative governing structures to address alleged gang criminality and criminal activity (Spergel, 2007).

Law enforcement: the other players involved Politicians do not act in solitude. Law enforcement, namely police and police departments, are equally if not more involved in framing gang issues. Further, law enforcement ofcials have historically had tensions with localized gang entities (Hagedorn and Macon, 1988). Their main task involved gang repression or the elimination of gangs altogether. Stovall (2018) and Rosas (2019) remind us how homicide rates in Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively, are often attributed to be resultant of gang violence. They argued that the blame is misplaced at an individual level. Instead, there are structural elements to the increasing and heightened levels of homicides experienced across cities in the United States. For example, in both Chicago and Los Angeles, the local police departments “teamed up” with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to “enforce the Racketeering Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) on suspected gang chiefs in the city” (Stovall, 2018: 77). Consequently, there was an infux of arrests of gang leaders or chiefs through the enforcement of RICO (in part infuenced by the “Kingpin Strategy” discussed briefy earlier). This resulted in “a bifurcation of traditional gang allegiances” (Ibid, p. 78). Further, Lugalia-Hollon and Cooper (2018) argued that the success of arresting and prosecuting older gang leaders on the South and West sides of Chicago during the 1990s–2010s is best understood as an organized and orchestrated war on neighborhoods, not on drugs or gangs as it has been historically framed by law enforcement. The same strategy is true in other major cities like Los Angeles and New York City, where specifc neighborhood actors who served as protectors of community space were removed by broader carceral and policing apparatuses fostered by state structures (Sojoyner, 2016; Hagedorn and Rauch, 2007). Consequently, these very communities experience profound sufering, alongside ongoing lack of community and state-based protection. In essence, the gang repression strategies and tactics deployed by law enforcement, and supported by politicians, did not address any of the root or contextual problems associated with gang afliated youth, it simply shifted local gang operations and dynamics. One of the remaining fundamental issues within gang studies has been that scholars have theorized alleged gang behaviors from the vantage points of criminality, mainly derived within criminal justice studies composed of perspectives from law enforcement, lawyers, and judges whose core purpose is to punish, contain, and control “criminalized” behaviors (Hagedorn and Macon, 1988). Much has not changed over the past 30 years, though similar critiques within criminology remain prevalent, calling attention to cultural sociology scholarship in continuing to re-shift the rigidly empirical “lack of imagination” criminologists bring to issues of “crime” and “justice” (Hagedorn and Rauch, 2007; Young, 2011). We thus push an alternative perspective that re-shifts attention from these individualized behavioral perspectives of “gang members” to historically existing structural ones. Our main objective is to resurface and recalibrate the central role that law enforcement plays in creating, facilitating, and combating the racial and racialized gang conficts today.

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Methods For this chapter, we took a case study approach to situate our arguments in a hyper-local context in Chicago (Verschuren, 2003; Crowe et al., 2011). While we focus on the events that took place in the summer of 2020 in Chicago’s south and southwest sides, the case study method afords us the opportunity to use the summer 2020 as instructive and formative for a contemporary understanding of gangs and gang categories, as well as a robust contribution to critical and intersectional gang studies perspectives. We used news stories and social media posts as guides for the construction of our case study, as well as personal jottings and refections by the co-authors who lived through the events that transpired in Chicago during the summer of 2020. The authors, along with an undergraduate research assistant, compiled a list of 35 news stories related to the racial and gang conficts that ensued on Chicago’s southwest side beginning in June 2020. We used a constructive grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006, 2017) to analyze the news stories and construct relevant themes and summaries associated with the way neighborhood residents, gangs, politicians, and law enforcement were discussed amidst ongoing conficts. From here, we asked the critical questions of what is the confict, how is the confict framed, who is said to be involved in these conficts, what is being said about them, who is left out, and who is being deemed as perpetrators or peacemakers of these conficts? From this analysis and the ongoing dialogues between research team members, we formulated summaries that led us to the need for a shift in the ways confict and the purveyors of this confict are understood across time. We supplemented our literature review, the case study approach, and grounded theory analysis with social media analytical tools such as hashtag ethnography and discourse analysis of tweets shared via Twitter or posts via Facebook amidst the conficts in summer of 2020 (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015; Albert and Salam, 2013). We did not directly conduct a digital ethnography for this chapter, but instead used social media posts as supplementary contextual sources. For example, in the introduction we suggested that alderpeople in Chicago expressed opinions related to neighborhood conficts, particularly related to Adam Toledo’s murder in 2021. The same held true during summer 2020. One specifc alderman in a historical neighborhood known to be part of the larger Mexican Chicago (De Genova, 2005) became a central fgure in re-crafting interracial tensions as narrowly understood to be simply a “gang cultural problem.” His tweets were used in the news stories we analyzed as well, which signaled to us the need for digital sources like tweets or posts to be used for supplementary purposes. We proceed to recount the racial justice uprisings in Chicago during the summer of 2020 using ethnographic vignette prose.

Summer 2020 racial justice uprisings in Chicago After the pandemic struck Chicago, life bore a striking resemblance to a post-apocalyptic sci-f movie. There were lines to enter grocery stores, people who shifted their eyes continuously to ensure six-feet of separation, and an ongoing smell of sanitizing alcohol. As much as the city attempted to sanitize and prioritize safety during the COVID-19 outbreak and the following quarantine, Chicago showed the wider world’s stage that it’s malignant tendencies on its communities of color were ongoing. News reports praised Mayor Lori Lightfoot for her diligence in keeping citizens of Chicago safe during the pandemic (see Associated Press, 2020 in Voice for America for an example on Lightfoot’s “hard line” approach). But, shortly after George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight, and his death broadcasted digitally to an entire nation and world, Mayor Lightfoot demonstrated that she would use those same strict preventative COVID safety measures to police and pathologize communities of color. For example, Mayor Lightfoot

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positions the pandemic and uptick in violence happening in Chicago as fertile ground to rethink policing in the city, however, we demonstrate that her reimagining of the city’s police department limited itself to what has always existed in Chicago: a historically antagonistic relationship between communities and the police force (Scanlan, 2020). As Minnesota burned in outrage over Floyd’s death, the fames of indictment against police brutality and state-sanctioned violence heated the entire United States. Chicago was no different. As a city with a long history not only of police brutality but also with extensively documented cases of police torture (Ralph, 2020), organizers in the city used their outrage and despair as fuel to stand in solidarity with those across the nation condemning the Minnesota Police Department and police departments nation-wide. Consequently, between 29 and 30 May, many Chicagoans took to the streets in protest and solidarity. One of the frst demonstrations on Chicago’s notorious Magnifcent Mile in its downtown area would echo for months. Many people, led by pain, frustration, and a need to be in community during such a traumatic time for Black people in the United States, gathered with paper and fabric masks, backpacks flled with hand sanitizer, water and frst aid kits (see the following text of a set of Tweets3). Peaceful protests continue in #Uptown #chicago Protestors supporting others with hand sanitizer, masks, bottled water, food and medical supplies. #community #BlackLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatterchicago [image of a group of people, mostly wearing black t-shirts in a protest outside of Target near the intersection of Sunnyside and Broadway] 10:10 pm CST, June 1, 2020, by @peaceldyintrptd

CHICAGO PPL: I am putting together kits this week intending to get stuf out to people before this Saturday’s protest. I have supplies for 24 kits so far, please DM me if you need one, BIPOC friends/mutual especially. Stay safe out there y’all [two images attached outlining what each kit has; frst image: “In EACH kit: -water bottle (x2) -Spray bottle w/baking soda/water mix -pretzels—(Latex, lmk if you have an allergy) Gloves -Disposable Mask -Ear plugs pair (x2) -Hand Sanitizer -Travel 12 pm frst aid kit”; second image: “In EACH frst aid kit: -2 Hand wipes -4 frst aid gauze pads -2 *3/4 in 3 in* band aids -2 *5/8 in x 2 ¼ in* band aids”] 9:54 am CST, June 1, 2020, by @saltegan On the ground, many of us knew these items were necessary because we learned from the 2014 uprisings in Ferguson and other uprisings prior. Most of the demonstrators were young people. They adamantly reminded those looking on at the demonstration that “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” which is a quote from Assata Shakur where she urged for the collective unity of Black people to dismantle white supremacy and its violent infrastructures (Shakur, 1988; Harris, 2019). Media outlets, however, reported that people at the peaceful protest then became agitated and began to loot the storefronts down Magnifcent Mile in downtown Chicago, despite organizers’ insistence that they had no afliation with the looters. Regardless, whether a looter or not, there was collective rage across the entire city. Buildings displayed bare shelves, people ran out in the street with arms full of items, and some people proceeded to set fre to property amidst the chaos (NBC Chicago, 2020; see also WGN Web Desk, 2020). The police, emboldened by Mayor Lightfoot’s command, kettled all protesters in the vicinity, without any assessment whether they were looting storefronts or not. Police ofcers wore SWAT and riot gear. However, trapping or kettling the protestors intimately by police ofcers

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was not enough. Then, while hundreds of young people were downtown away from TVs and evading the police and attempting to get on the public trains, Mayor Lightfoot made a move that deemed the protestors and looters as disposable. She announced a curfew only 60 minutes before it would be put into efect, simultaneously shutting down various bus and train lines within the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). This meant that no buses or trains ran and proceeded to direct city ofcials to lift the bridges so that any person downtown could not leave (Dukmasova, 2020; Dumke, 2020). This entrapped many people, many who got arrested and potentially faced jail time. This move had racial implications. A historical narrative of the city is that most of Chicago’s Black and Brown communities are on the south and west sides of the city (Deaton and Oladipo, 2020), meaning most of the young Black and Brown people downtown were left stranded. On this day, people quickly organized ride shares and pooled resources together to get those who were in downtown Chicago home safely. This was primarily organized via social media networks. As this was happening, social media outlets also began sharing multiple videos that showed police ofcers cornering young people and bashing them into submission. In fact, police ofcers swung people by their backpacks onto the ground, kicked them, struck them with batons, and in some instances, clusters of ofcers jumped on one person to get them contained and arrested. Borrowing from Vargas’s (2016) turf war framing, we contend that downtown was delineated as the Chicago Police Department’s territory or turf, which they defended with all the authority they had and was granted by Mayor Lightfoot. Similar rights have been granted to the police by politicians in previous riots and looting to protect territory of wealthy people and corporations, which were also sparked by ongoing racial injustices, such as the 1992 riot in Los Angeles following the acquittal of all ofcers involved in the beating and detainment of Rodney King (Van Den Haag, 1992), or the Watts rebellion in 1965 (Adam Matei and BallRokeach, 2005). Popular discourse framed these downtown events that transpired as an example of law enforcement power energized by the unchecked acts that they were allowed to display by kettling and arresting protestors and alleged looters. Their presence, tactics, and arrests were positioned as victorious, considering that they accomplished and gained the jailing of many demonstrators. The media, however, did not showcase the aggressiveness of CPD’s violent tactics or instances of excessive force. Police remained unscathed by the mainstream media (Jones, 2020). Further, independent monitoring teams were required to centralize complaints about excessive force on the part of CPD during the 2020 uprisings (Masterson, 2020). Further, we highlight that Mayor Lightfoot demonstrated her authority over the city of Chicago by shutting down the Chicago Public Schools free lunch program (Silverstein, 2021). We posit that this was framed as another form of punishment for all “looters” and demonstrators for the events that transpired at the end of May 2020. The free lunch program had been instituted during the pandemic to feed school age children who needed meals and depended on the school to provide them with meals during normal academic years. At the time she made the announcement about cancelling the lunch program, she simultaneously praised the police and condemned the “rioters,” despite the videos that surfaced online showing that CPD were active perpetrators of the violence that ensued. This is one instance where Lightfoot’s political and symbolic leadership, as head of the city, is once again indicative of her resentment toward Black and Brown communities in Chicago (Kelley, 2004). In this case, we argue that both the mayor and the police department were on the same side, a side that primarily protected property, not people, which is a historically forged solidarity (Mitrani, 2013). Solidarity between the mayor and CPD became more evident as the news came out that most of the COVID relief funds Chicago received by 2020 went to police ofcers’ salaries and benefts (Byrne, 2021).

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Anxieties over demonstrators returning home We narrate what occurred in late May of 2020 to contextualize what transpired on the south and west sides of Chicago in early June. We contend that the blockades that Mayor Lightfoot called for that led to multiple arrests and kettling in downtown Chicago had a spillover efect for historically racially hyper-segregated neighborhoods (see Lopez-Aguado, 2018; Braga et al., 2019 for “spillover” logic). That is, the closure of public transportation and the imposed blockades on the south side of the bridges in downtown signaled that the northside and downtown area of the city were deemed more valuable and worthy of protection. This meant that Chicagoans on the southside and westside were victims of negligence and caught in the crux of a power struggle happening between the Chicago Police Department and those condemning it (the demonstrators). The implications of this are that those residing in south and west side neighborhoods had a harder time getting home or toward safety. Social media and news reporters created a fxed fear-mongering narrative that the “looters were heading back home,” which led many business owners and neighborhood residents to shift to defense mode. As alleged looters and demonstrators went home, the demonstrations were afxed to areas without large corporate banking, insurance, or shopping centers. Instead, there were mostly mom and pop stores and businesses populating the south, west, and southwest sides of Chicago. We want to re-emphasize that the news continued to portray demonstrations and looting as synonymous when roughly 93% of protests, particularly those rendered as Black Lives Matter demonstrations, were reported as “non-violent” (Kishi and Jones, 2020). This confation caused many small business owners to worry about their livelihoods, about the spillover efect of downtown demonstrations on their own turf and businesses, so they pressured the police to serve and protect them. There is a contradiction here. The same police force tasked to “serve and protect” have been trained to execute violent tactics and strategies that are often seen used in wars (Kraska, 1999, 2007). In fact, many police departments, including Chicago’s, are historically trained using iterations of the “Warrior Training Model” developed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a military veteran whose academic work has produced “killology studies,” which he spearheads (Shults, 2020). Using militarized intelligence and combat survival tactics and strategy, police are trained to embody warrior-like personas, as opposed to embodying a protector one (Stoughton, 2014; Carlson, 2020). One may presume then that calling for police protection is a viable option for small business owners, especially when a primary function of policing is to safeguard property, public and otherwise, and considering that the ongoing police presence in neighborhoods makes some residents feel as if the police are there to provide safety, not necessarily to deploy these violent militarized techniques. Instead, what took place in Chicago by the police, though not ofcial policy, was the deputization of groups of people it had long demonized and rendered criminal: street gangs.

Deputization of street gangs to “serve and protect” As you drive down 59th street from east to west of the Dan Ryan expressway, you see plenty of murals, grafti, and tagging’s all over various properties, particularly in buildings. Given the resurgence of racial justice sentiment across local Chicago neighborhoods, however, what was new to the space was the hand drawn “Black Lives Matter” signs found in many Latino owned business storefronts. In early June of 2020, sirens sounded of and blue lights burst into chaotic constellations across the southside. We bore witness to men touting guns in dark colored clothes and pops of specifc colors historically associated with street gangs began patrolling street

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corners. Some of these patrollers expressed pride in their deputization as protectors, claiming that “we take care of our own,” or, more pointedly, “we got us.” Others expressed disappointment and anxiety over the sudden appearance of an afliation between street gangs (e.g., the Latin Kings) and the Chicago Police Department (see the following text of four diferent Tweets). latin kings protecting little village. Im fucking amazed and grateful. Crazy how I feel safer with them out there than fucking cops. Thank you #ChicagoProtests #ChicagoRiots 5:40 pm CST, 31 May 2020, by @hexbags

There are rumors that Latin gangs in #Chicago are targeting black community members around the #Pilsen area. This is a recording of police scanners where they acknowledge gang fghts and just say “let them do it,” without intervention. #plannedemic 4:05 am CST, 3 June 2020, by @OpenEyes2020 The cops working with the Latin Kings in Chicago and assaulting black protesters just goes to show that even gang-related and POC-on-POC violence is often orchestrated, instigated, or otherwise supported by law enforcement who want to see us taking each other out. 4:40 pm CST, 2 June 2020, by @reji_lauren

There are hired gangs agitators whom are bragging about looting the south side & then go to supposedly protect “their” Latin Kings, Little Village, Pilsen, Bridgeport neighborhoods. Latin Kings are known collaborators with seedy Chicago police ofcers (not all our guys in blue) [shrug emoji] 1:43 pm CST, 3 June 2020, by @MarieFlemings The concern was twofold: on one end, there was concern that more young people would align themselves more with the historically pathologized street gangs as they were perceived in a new light, as neighborhood protectors. On the other end, the concern was that police, who were always in tension with gangs, would exert their symbolic and material power to contain the gangs loitering and faunting their protector status on the streets. Further, there was confusion considering the ways law enforcement ofcers have long manipulated and surveilled gangs, rendering police a puppeteer of gang members (Vargas, 2016; Mitrani, 2013), yet relied on them in this specifc moment to help them better conduct their jobs. That is, CPD ofcers depended on purportedly criminal street gangs to “serve and protect.” This strategy is not new, however. Inside prison walls, corrections ofcers often use gang members as agents of social control within carceral gang geographies to maintain peace accords or resolve conficts, but then dispose and continually repress them when they are no longer needed (Ortiz, 2015). It is common knowledge that for years CPD held gangs and their families under constant surveillance. Through means of repression, law enforcement ofcers reminded gang members that the territory they were representing, claiming to bleed for, and be willing to serve jail time for was not theirs to claim (Ralph, 2014). Through intimidation tactics, torture, and convictions, CPD reiterated to solidify that they were the biggest and best resourced gang in the city. Some gang members contend that police ofcers would pick them up—that is, handcuf them and put them in the back of the patrol car—and then drive them to surrounding and opposing

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gang territory to instigate fghts and violence amongst diferent gangs and neighborhood blocks (Ortiz, 2015; Vargas, 2016). Further, it is well documented that historically gangs in Chicago are divided into two major nations or factions, either folks or people (Hagedorn and Macon, 1988; Valentine, 1995; Starbuck et al., 2001). Thus, while gangs might not share the same ethnicity or race, they are still cooperative with one another if they are part of the same nation afliation. We profess that knowledge of these afliations and tensions between gangs by CPD, produced by many years of surveillance and study of gang infrastructures across the city, is what allowed them to predict the potential of building a coalition with street gangs that would lend to gang members being amicable to the idea of acting as a proxy for the police by protecting their own territory. At the same time, we view this as a manipulation of gang knowledge that sought to pit communities of color against one another. While unconfrmed, we presume that the police ought to be aware of the implications of these actions, especially if they persist in proceeding to deploy them in the future. In this sense, the deputized gang members were emboldened by the co-sign, or approval, that police gave them. Latinx gangs specifcally were put on edge by the media’s recent and constant condemnation and criminalization of Black Chicagoans as destroying or stealing property (Muhammad, 2010). Amid a nationwide indictment of and on police violence, a global pandemic, and precarious economic conditions, the south and southwest side neighborhoods in Chicago witnessed Latinx gangs target Black residents through physical violence and verbal threat, relaying the message that they should stay in their homes, in their own neighborhoods, or exit the area that is not theirs (Chiarito, 2020). The message this sent to residents, as displayed across social media (see the following text of a set of Tweets as an example), was that the deputization of gangs in their own neighborhoods left CPD ofcers to protect the afuent areas of Chicago, as well as allowing them to protect their public image since acts of violence in hypersegregated neighborhoods would be attributed to the alleged “violent nature” of gangs. Lori Lightfoot weaponized the infrastructure of Chicago to protect in the loop and gold coast but an implicit reason is to arrest or identify as many protestors as possible. They announced the 9 pm curfew via cellphone alert when majority turned of their phones to not get tracked 12:34 am CST, Apr 12, 2021, by @ursiomaitype

Under Lori Lightfoot, the city became a tool of the police. Kettling tactics under the guise of “public safety.” 12:39 am CST, Apr 12, 2021, by @ursiomatype We would be remiss if we did not also highlight the fact that organizers across the city were also deputized in the same way as gangs, following analogous logics that framed them as “protecting their own.” At the onset of these racial tensions between Latinx, namely Mexican and Mexican American people, and Black people, organizers also held peace summits and conversations reminding deputized youth and gang members that they were playing into the intentional deployment of power and control by CPD (Garcia, 2020; Rodríguez Presa, 2020).

Engineered racial/gang/social/political confict Our case study of Chicago’s summer of 2020 provided us with a multi-layered contemporary example of the tensions and transformations of street gangs. What was once understood to be an

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individualized pathological narrative about gang members as violent and criminal ofenders has always remained fraught with complex contradictions. In this chapter, we argued that we cannot dismiss the infuence of history, of structures, or of power when thinking about how we speak of urban street gangs. Instead, we propose the framing of “engineered confict,” as theorized by Stovall (2018), to highlight the macro socio-political structures in place that facilitate the mesomicro level interactions. In this case, we must consider the fundamental role that law enforcement and politicians play in producing and reproducing racial, gang, and broader social conficts. This framework leads us to question a few things. First, instead of following the logic of the criminal legal system that punishes individualized people categorized as gang members, we are poised to ask a diferent question: what are the conditions that lead to gang confict in this community, on this neighborhood block? We challenge readers to ask, who are the players involved in enabling structural dynamics of inequity and oppression that facilitate conficts on-the-ground? Further, this framing avoids sidestepping the ways that state-sanctioned violence often gets misinterpreted narrowly as “gang” or “gun violence.” Instead, it resurfaces the argument that racialized gang formations are often results of neoliberal state-inficted and politically-sanctioned violence, such as the transnational street gang of the MS-13, popularized in the Salvadoran diaspora in Los Angeles in the 1980s that is also prominent across Central America, particularly in El Salvador (Osuna, 2020), or the formation of the Latin King street gang in Puerto Rican Chicago in the 1940s that began as a social club for immigrants combating capitalist oppression and racism (Bleakley, 2019). We are not simply theorizing a critical gang perspective through the shift in blame from gang members themselves to law enforcement, politicians, or broader structures. Instead, we argued that the championing of a Black woman mayor and the framing of “Latino gangs” across the media as perpetrators of violence in Chicago are broader schemes tied to the ongoing racialized surveillance of blackness and Black people (Browne, 2015). While socially engineered confict helps us make sense of certain events that transpired, racialized surveillance as “a technology of social control” becomes relevant. Racialized surveillance is defned as an apparatus “where surveillance practices, policies, and performances concern the production of norms pertaining to race and exercise a “power to defne what is in or out of place” (Ibid, p. 16). The presence of Black people in downtown Chicago in late May of 2020, their presence in historically hypersegregated Latinx neighborhoods, Adam Toledo’s presence in Little Village late at night in 2021, and countless other racialized people’s presence who are recruited into the gang category in certain spaces and locales, are susceptible to constant contact with the racialized surveillance apparatus. Thus, socially engineered confict, largely produced by major players with power, can enact, halt, or shift the engineering of these conficts through their ongoing surveillance mechanisms.

Transgressing gang defnitions and historical ties Our main task in this chapter has been to transgress gang defnitions and historical ties. We understand that historically and in the present day, literature on gangs has been infatuated with understanding individual gang members alleged violent tendencies and behaviors. In fact, if a contemporary study on public perceptions in neighborhoods historically grappling with issues on gangs were to be conducted, we hypothesize that a conceptualization of gangs as harmful and violent entities would likely remain. We do acknowledge that gangs have in fact engaged in violent activities in the past and such acts may likely persist under current colonial conditions of hyper-segregation, dispossession, and poverty. However, we reject the immediate vilifcation and criminalization of them (Ralph, 2014; Hinton, 2016). Instead, as we have argued throughout our chapter, we call for the need to expand our understanding of the conditions that lead

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gangs to react a particular way, lead someone to join a gang, and lead gangs to become deputies of their own neighborhoods. In this sense, we connect long-standing threads of structural mechanisms that infuence the interpersonal, horizontal gang violence (Cabral, 2022; Camangian and Stovall, 2022). Land ties, or a territorialized perspective, also remains relevant to the function of gangs. We must then understand gang perspectives from an intersectional vantage point that considers all things we mention and their tie to larger forces and entities that facilitate or engineer racial and gang confict, inclusive of other conficts propelled by other forms of oppression or categories related to gender, sexuality, and disabilities, for example. Further, as the movement for police abolition continues to gain traction across the United States, in what ways might our critical gang perspective serve to reckon with the ways that law enforcement has historically functioned in similar ways as street gangs, sans the criminalization and racialized surveillance? Consider, for example, the recent allegations of gang factions within the Los Angeles Police Department (Rector and Winton, 2020). However, their role in engineering racial and gang conficts may be the veil they wear to sidestep similar criminalizing surveillant apparatuses—positioning them as purveyors of safety and protection in lieu of violence—that divide and isolate hyper-segregated communities of color that sustain law enforcement power and racialized surveillance that maintain criminalized gang defnitions and perspectives. Our ongoing task, which we attempted here, is to disrupt this cycle and narrate diferent folktales of historically marginalized and dispossessed peoples by pointing upwards, calling for a more nuanced structural and intersectional perspective on gangs.

Notes 1 The use of “folk” and “peoples” here is an intentional rift to tie in the historical divisions of Chicago’s gangs into two larger factions: the folks’ side and the people’s side, though these divisions are far more complex today. 2 Put diferently, coloniality is “the continuity of colonial forms of domination after the end of colonial administrations, produced by colonial cultures and structures in the modern/colonial capitalist world− system” (Grosfoguel, 2008: 8). Other scholars of coloniality provide more nuanced extensions, defnitions, and dynamics of the term, but we use both Quijano (2007) and Grosfoguel (2008) as a starting point (see also Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mignolo, 2001; Wynter, 2003 as examples). 3 In lieu of incorporating screenshots of actual Tweets, we transcribed the written content from the Tweets verbatim and included them as block quotes throughout the manuscript.

References Adam Matei, S., & Ball-Rokeach, S. (2005). Watts, the 1965 Los Angeles riots, and the communicative construction of the fear epicenter of Los Angeles. Communication Monographs, 72(3), 301–323. Albert, C. S., & Salam, A. F. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: Toward theories in social media. Research in progress paper. Retrieved from https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2013/SocialTechnicalIssues/RoundTable Presentations/6/ Associated Press. (2020, April 11). Chicago Mayor takes hard line fghting coronavirus outbreak. Voices of America. Retrieved from www.voanews.com/a/science-health_coronavirus-outbreak_chicago-mayortakes-hard-line-fghting-coronavirus-outbreak/6187377.html Bedi, S. (2021, April  17). Chicago police ‘reform’ failed Adam Toledo. New thinking is essential. Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/17/chicago-policereform-failed-adam-toledo-new-thinking-is-essential/ Bleakley, P. (2019). Thine is the kingdom: Reconceptualising the Latin Kings street gang through the prism of revolutionary vanguardism. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 56(2), 105–122. Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 4–17.

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Bourgois, P. (1995). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Braga, A. A., Weisburd, D., & Turchan, B. (2019). Focused deterrence strategies efects on crime: A systematic review. Campbell Systemic Review, 15(3), 1051–1065. Brown, R. R. (2008). The gang’s all here: Evaluating the need for national gang database. Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, 42, 293. Browne, S. (2015). Dark matters: On the surveillance of blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bruno, S. (2022). “Yo La Bomba No La Bailé, La Bomba Yo La Vivé” (I Didn’t Just Dance Bomba, I Lived It): The pedagogy of daily Puerto Rican Life, Black Feminist Praxis, and the Batey. Transforming Anthropology, 1–15. Byrne, J. (2021, February 18). Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spent $281.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief money on police payroll. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ ct-chicago-lightfoot-covid-19-police-spending-20210217-uohx77y36nblrf2526whoedkgi-story.html Cabral, B. (2022). Linguistic confnement: Rethinking the racialized interplay between educational language learning and carcerality. Race Ethnicity and Education, 1–21. Camangian, P. R., & Stovall, D. O. (2022). Bang on the system: People’s praxis and pedagogy as humanizing violence. Urban Education, 1–27. Carlson, J. (2020). Police warriors and police guardians: Race, masculinity, and the construction of gun violence. Social Problems, 67(3), 399–417. Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: SAGE. Charmaz, K. (2017). Constructivist grounded theory. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(3), 299–300. Chiarito, B. (2020, June  4). Bridgeporters say bat-wielding vigilantes are terrorizing peaceful protesters, neighbors. Block Club Chicago. Retrieved from https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/06/04/ bridgeporters-say-bat-wielding-vigilantes-are-terrorizing-peaceful-protesters-neighbors/ Contreras, R. (2013). The stickup kids: Race, drugs, violence, and the American dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Covey, H. C. (2010). Street gangs throughout the world. London: Charles C. Thomas Publisher. Crowe, S., Cresswell, K., Robertson, A., Huby, G., Avery, A.,  & Sheikh, A. (2011). The case study approach. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 11(1), 1–9. Cummings, S., & Monti, D. J. (1993). Gangs: The origins and impact of contemporary youth gangs in the United States. New York, NY: SUNY Press. Deaton, J., & Oladipo, G. (2020). Mapping the disparities that bred an unequal pandemic. Bloomberg News. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-30/mapping-the-disparitiesof-chicago-s-unequal-pandemic De Genova, N. (2005). Working the boundaries: Race, space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dimitriadis, G. (2006). The situation complex: Revisiting Frederic Thrasher’s the gang: A study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 6(3), 335–353. Dukmasova, M. (2020, November 13). Chicago’s mayor turns city’s infrastructure into weapons against protestors. The Appeal. Retrieved from https://theappeal.org/chicago-mayor-bridges-protest/ Dumke, M. (2020, August  14). In Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago, Bridges have become barricades. Block Club Chicago. Retrieved from https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/08/14/in-lori-lightfoots-chicagobridges-have-become-barricades/ Durán, R. (2013). Gang life in two cities: An insider’s journey. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Flores-González, N. (2002). School kids/street kids: Identity development in Latino students. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Garcia, M. (2020, June 25). ‘This is what solidarity looks like’ on the South Side. Chicago Sun Times. Retrieved from https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2020/6/25/21303034/berto-aguayo-protests-unitylatinos-african-americans-george-foyd-south-side-marlen-garcia Grosfoguel, R. (2008, July  4). Transmodernity, border thinking, and global coloniality.  Eurozine. Retrieved December  6, 2022, from https://www.eurozine.com/transmodernity-border-thinkingand-global-coloniality/ Hagedorn, J. M., & Macon, P. (1988). People and folks. Gangs, crime and the underclass in a Rustbelt City. Lake View, IA: Lakeview View Press.

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Hagedorn, J. M.,  & Rauch, B. (2007). Housing, gangs, and homicide: What we can learn from Chicago. Urban Afairs Review, 42(4), 435–456. Harris, K. D. (2019). “We have nothing to lose but our chains”: Activist sustainability for black women and gender non-binary racial justice activists in the Black Lives Matter movement (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://mars.gmu.edu/handle/1920/11520 Hinton, E. (2016). From the war on poverty to the war on crime. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jones, K. (2020, August 16). A violent protest in Chicago leads to 2 dozen people arrested and 17 ofcers injured. CNN. Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2020/08/16/us/chicago-police-protests-arrests/index.html Jones, N. (2013). The unintended consequences of kingpin strategies: Kidnap rates and the Arellano-Felix Organization. Trends in Organized Crime, 16(2), 156–176. Kelley, N. (2004). The head negro in charge syndrome: The dead end of Black politics. New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Kishi, R., & Jones, S. (2020, September). Demonstrations and political violence in America: New data for summer 2020. US Crisis Monitor in The Armed Confict Location  & Event Data Project (ACLED). Retrieved from https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-americanew-data-for-summer-2020/ Kraska, P. B. (1999). Questioning the militarization of US police: Critical versus advocacy scholarship. Policing and Society: An International Journal, 9(2), 141–155. Kraska, P. B. (2007). Militarization and policing—Its relevance to 21st century police. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1(4), 501–513. Lindo, J. M., & Padilla-Romo, M. (2018). Kingpin approaches to fghting crime and community violence: Evidence from Mexico’s drug war. Journal of Health Economics, 58, 253–268. Lopez-Aguado, P. (2018). Stick together and come back home: Racial sorting and the spillover of carceral identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lugalia-Hollon, R., & Cooper, D. (2018). The war on neighborhoods: Policing, prison, and punishment in a divided city. London: Beacon Press. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–270. Marston, R. J. (2018). Guilt by alt-association: A  review of enhanced punishment for suspected gang members. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 52, 923. Masterson, M. (2020, August 20). ‘It felt like a battle zone’: Speakers share allegations of police abuse at protests. WTTW. Retrieved from https://news.wttw.com/2020/08/20/it-felt-battle-zone-speakersshare-allegations-police-abuse-protests Mendoza-Denton, N. (2008). Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Mignolo, W. (2001). Coloniality of power and subalternity. In  The Latin American subaltern studies reader (pp. 424–444). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mitrani, S. (2013). The rise of the Chicago police department: Class and confict, 1850–1894. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Moore, C. L., & Stuart, F. (2022). Gang research in the twenty-frst century. Annual Review of Criminology, 5, 299–320. Muhammad, K. G. (2010). The condemnation of blackness: Race, crime, and the making of modern urban America, with a new preface. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. NBC Chicago. (2020, May 31). Looting, fres, broken windows reported as Chicago Curfew Begins. NBC 5 Chicago News. Retrieved from www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/looting-fres-broken-windows-reportedas-chicago-curfew-begins/2280891/ Ortiz, J. M. (2015). The power of place: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs (Doctoral dissertation). New York, NY: City University of New York. Ortiz, J. M. (2019). Gangs and environment: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(1), 97–117. Ortiz, J. M. (2021). Doxa is dangerous: How academic doxa inhibits prison gang research. In R. J. Gude & D. Brotherton (Eds.), International critical gang handbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Osuna, S. (2020). Transnational moral panic: Neoliberalism and the spectre of MS-13. Race & Class, 61(4), 3–28.

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Papachristos, A. V., Hureau, D. M., & Braga, A. A. (2013). The corner and the crew: The infuence of geography and social networks on gang violence. American Sociological Review, 78(3), 417–447. Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. Ralph, L. (2014). Renegade dreams: Living through injury in gangland Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ralph, L. (2020). The torture letters: Reckoning with police violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rector, K.,  & Winton, R. (2020, August  6). Inside the ‘culture of violence’ alleged by LAPD SWAT whistleblower. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-06/ lapd-whistleblower-swat-mafa-homeless Rios, V. M., & Vigil, J. D. (2017). Human targets: Schools, police, and the criminalization of Latino youth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rodriguez Presa, L. (2005). The end of the line: California gangs and the promise of street peace. Social Justice, 32(101), 12–23. Rodríguez Presa, L. (2020, June  3). ‘This is a step back.’ Latino activists speak out about racial tension with black Chicagoans on Southwest Side amid George Floyd fallout. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-chicago-latino-neighborhoods-gangs-foyd-protests20200603-dsui2w2dabdy7cgxxkbz7a3c3q-story.html Rodríguez Presa, L., St. Clair, S. Hinkel, D., & Fry, P. (2021, April 21). Little Village quietly mourns as video of Adam Toledo’s fatal shooting by a Chicago police ofcer emerges. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-adam-toledo-video-protests20210416-hxjxgrtuh5fhzg6w74zbjdhhpi-story.html Rosa, J. (2019). Looking like a language, sounding like a race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the learning of Latinidad. Oxford: Oxford Studies in Anthropology of Language. Rosas, A. (2019). South central is home: Race and the power of community investment in Los Angeles. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rowlands, D., & Kilberg, J. (2011). Organizational structure and the efects of targeting terrorist leadership. Carleton: Centre for Security and Defence Studies Working Papers, Norman Paterson School of International Afairs, Carleton University. Sánchez-Jankowski, M. (1991). Islands in the street: Gangs and American urban society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scanlan, Q. (2020, July  8). ‘No question’ COVID-19 a factor in recent violence in Chicago, says Mayor Lori Lightfoot. ABC News. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ question-covid-19-factor-recent-violence-chicago-mayor/story?id=71662157 Shakur, A. (1988). Assata: An autobiography. Newmarket: Lawrence Hill Books. Shults, J. F. (2020, August  23). The war on warrior training for police: A  conversation with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. National Police Association. Retrieved from https://nationalpolice.org/ the-war-on-warrior-training-for-police-a-conversation-with-lt-col-dave-grossman/ Silverstein, J. (2021, June  1). Chicago Public Schools suspends meal distribution program because of “evolving nature of activity. CBS News. Retrieved from www.cbsnews.com/news/ chicago-public-schools-suspend-meal-distrbution-monday-june-1/ Sojoyner, D. M. (2016). First strike: Educational enclosures in black Los Angeles. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Spergel, I. A. (2007). Reducing youth gang violence: The little village gang project in Chicago. Lanham, NC: Rowman Altamira. Spergel, I. A. (2009). Gang databases-to be or not to be. Criminology & Public Policy, 8, 667. Starbuck, D., Howell, J. C., & Lindquist, D. J. (2001). Hybrid and other modern gangs. Washington, DC: Ofce of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Stoughton, S. (2014). Law enforcement’s warrior problem. Harvard Law Review Forum, 128, 225. Stovall, D. (2018). Refections on the perpetual war: School closings, public housing, law enforcement, and the future of Black Life. In Education at war (pp. 72–84). New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Stuart, F. (2020). Ballad of the bullet: Gangs, drill music, and the power of online infamy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thrasher, F. M. (1926). The gang: A study of 1, 313 gangs in Chicago (Doctoral dissertation). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

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Valentine, B. (1995). Gang intelligence manual: Identifying and understanding modern-day violent gangs in the United States. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press. Van Den Haag, E. (1992). Cause, alleged and actual, of the LA Riots. Southern California Law Review, 66, 1657. Vargas, R. (2016). Wounded city: Violent turf wars in a Chicago barrio. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verschuren, P. (2003). Case study as a research strategy: Some ambiguities and opportunities. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 6(2), 121–139. WGN Web Desk. (2020, May 31). Reports of fres, looting continue across Chicagoland. WGN Chicago News. Retrieved from https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/live-blog-restrictions-in-place-sundayafter-chaotic-night-in-chicago/ Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337. Young, J. (2011). The criminological imagination. Cambridge: Polity Book. Zamudio, M. I. (2021, April 17). Little village residents grapple with the tragic police killing of Adam Toledo. WBEZ Chicago. Retrieved from www.wbez.org/stories/little-village-residents-grapple-withthe-tragic-police-killing-of-adam-toledo/b2f394a3–7cd8–42e7-b99d-63bbc6bb6cdc Zorn, E. (2021, April 6). Let’s wait before turning slain 13-year-old Adam Toledo into a martyr. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-column-adam-toledo-chicagopolice-protests-martyr-zorn-20210406-lp7kbnzdtzee7iyjanbngfgb2q-story.html

PART II

Critical refections on gang studies

5 TOWARD A DECOLONIAL IMAGINARY TO REEXAMINE AND REDEFINE MAINSTREAM DEFINITIONS OF “GANGS” AND “GANG MEMBERS” IN AMERICA Amy Andrea Martinez

Criminalizing gang members always simultaneously valorizes middle-class America and also validates the historical and present-day practices that work to isolate, segregate, and alienate criminalized neighborhoods of color. (Cacho, 2012: 63)

How [then] should we untangle [the] ontological processes that render [gang members] always already criminal in body and being? (Cacho, 2012: 67)

Introduction (1647) Intentionally resisting conformist academic boundaries and constraints, leading gang studies scholar David Brotherton has spent the past 20 years of his academic career cautioning researchers about the dangers of positivist frameworks governing sociological and criminological discourses to the studies and approaches of the gang phenomena. Brotherton has eloquently asserted that “ ‘the gang’ [has] become part of a criminological master narrative that [has fed] society’s hegemonic processes” (2008: 58) and, through his research, has compellingly demonstrated how the emergence of gang members and gang subcultures are (unbeknownst to many) products of late modernity, colonialism, and global neoliberalism. Resultantly, he has called upon sociologists and criminologists to push forward a social movement-based counter gang paradigm to understand gangs and to situate these subcultures in their proper sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts. In recent years, critical gang studies scholars such as George Barganier (2011), Robert Durán (2013, 2018), and Patrick Lopez-Aguado (2018) have taken Brotherton’s call seriously. They have produced critical ethnographies that center and assert the complexity and humanity of gang members and the gang subculture. They have intentionally not perpetuated historical explanations of gang members as “racialized folk devils” that justify the State’s need to augment punitive punishments with gang labels and enhancements. In his recent work on African American gang members in Los Angeles, George Barganier (2011) provides a subaltern reading of the origins of the Crips and Bloods and their experiences with processes of racialized

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-7

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dehumanization and challenges radical materialist analyses of Black criminality. For Barganier, although these analyses make crucial contributions to understanding the political, economic conditions that have given rise to Black street gangs, they also pathologize Black behaviors in their over-reliance on economic conditions. In his work, Barganier calls for a decolonial reading of these conditions to push beyond the methodological eurocentrism of reductionist economic claims. He urges us to develop subaltern perspectives that critically engage the co-constitutive processes of capital accumulation and racialized dehumanization (Alvares, 2011). To accomplish this, Barganier frames his analysis of the history of Crips and Bloods in the historical project of coloniality and lays out how the historical practices of racialized dehumanization continue to play a defning role in the social, historical experiences of young Black people. Coloniality here refers to the “colonial matrix of power” or the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2007). It serves as the foundation and justifcation for exploiting the world and its resources by European systems of racial domination. Furthermore, its operationalization can be seen by creating systemic racialized hierarchies that are deeply entrenched in all levels of society and individual subjectivity in the modern world-system (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018). This analysis challenges radical materialist explanations of gang life to more fully account for the role of race in class relations. Bargainer’s work, without doubt, highlights the political motivations behind young people’s choice to participate in the gang subculture, which traditional frames have not been able to examine or understand. Critical gang studies scholar Jennifer M. Ortiz (2021) attributes these failures to academia’s complicity in reproducing orthodox criminological ideas about gangs due to the academy’s investment in grant funding from government agencies that do not care for humanizing accounts of individuals engaged in crime, violence, and/or delinquency. Due to the “publish or perish” model rampant in the academy, most academics prioritize identifying and analyzing social issues rather than addressing historical and structural problems. Ortiz cautions academics by asserting that if they do not break the doxa inherent in the academy (especially as it relates to the study of [prison] gangs), then it will only result in the ongoing development of problematic gang research that fails to consider the multifaceted characteristics of gang members and structural variables in the spawning of gangs (Ortiz, 2021; Young, 2011). Ortiz’s assertions align with Katz and Jackson-Jacob’s (2004) warning for criminologists that those who adhere to mainstream approaches to the studies of gangs can only further advance the development of pathologizing views of gangs and gang members. Most gang researchers fall into the trap of ofering reductionist views void of any sociohistorical, political, and cultural contexts to explain gangs and gang members’ ongoing emergence and existence to fulfll publishing quotas and advance their careers. As Ortiz (2021) powerfully states, “Gang members are never the providers of our theories but rather have theories imposed on their lives by researchers who are far removed from the lived realities of gang life” (p. 624). To this end, criminologist Kenneth Sebastian León (2021) insists on the development of a new scholarly project that allows for convergence between critical criminology and Ethnic Studies as it would address the dire need to “audit and deconstruct the colonial features of criminological theory and criminal justice practices” that disproportionately and negatively impact urban communities (11). While he proposes a “Latino Criminology” that “[addresses] interpersonal harms, racialized social control, and state violence” experienced by Latinx populations relegated to the margins, his proposed framework provides an adaptation to the studies and approach to gangs and gang members across racial lines (12). I  argue that contemporary gang scholars must embrace both a sociological and a criminological imagination to allow a decolonial imaginary to emerge, to allow for thick, rich ethnographic data, to not only ground our understanding of the contradictions inherent in gangs/gang members across racial lines but also to interrogate the historical backdrops that produce the social and material

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conditions that allow gang subcultures to emerge and persist (Ortiz, 2021; Young, 2011; Mills, 1959). Building on the work of Barganier and other critical gang studies scholars and taking Brotherton’s, Katz and Jackson-Jacob’s, León’s, and Ortiz’s warnings seriously on academic doxa, I aim to problematize the continued use of gangs as a racialized analytical frame within sociological and criminological studies on gangs and gang members. I  contend that reverting the colonial-carceral gaze onto academia and the State exposes their complicity in their identifcation/labeling of racialized individuals as gang members, resulting in their stripping of humanity and legibility as human beings. In other words, by understanding how mainstream conceptualizations and theories render gang members as only embodying violence, pathology, and criminality—rather than acknowledging the violent structures which shape the way they navigate their social and material conditions—we can understand how the State and academia (continue to) use marginalized populations to sustain further, maintain, and expand the historical project of coloniality. As individuals are continuously subjected to processes of racialization, resultantly, they are rendered to occupy a subhuman status through their criminalization as gang members (whether self-and/or State identifed). Once caste into a subhuman category, whatever technologies of oppression, suppression, and elimination of the state sanctions become justifed because gang members are regarded as monsters and sociopaths that need social control and/or elimination (whether symbolic or physical). Moreover, gang members are not seen as deserving of humanity or compassion since they do not hold any social and/or human value. Resultantly I ask how the academy’s and State’s labeling racialized individuals as “gang members” subjugate them as constant vulnerable “human targets” (Rios, 2017) of colonial-carceral State-sanctioned violence (e.g., policing, racialized dehumanization)? What purpose does the construct of gang members serve academia and the State to sustain and maintain an ever-expanding neo-colonial-carceral social order? The present chapter highlights the negative implications of labeling and criminalization of gang members within existing gang studies discourses and criminological studies and argues that even though we do not live in a formal state of colonialism—the power structures initiated by colonization, conquest, and oppression are ever-present in anti-gang suppression eforts. Resultantly, carceral apparatuses as a function of (settler) colonialism serve to sustain what I call a neocolonial carceral social order dependent upon the racialized dehumanization and criminalization of the State’s primary human targets: gang members. Here I introduce Emma Pérez’s (1999) theorization of a “decolonial imaginary” to negotiate and decolonize the historiographies and epistemologies of academic and law enforcement discourses on gangs and gang members. I also employ Anibal Quijano’s (2007) “coloniality of power matrix” framework—which refers to the processes by which colonial-era mechanisms of power have been subsumed and integrated into the social order—to highlight how continuities of racial meaning and domination beyond the demise of formal colonialism shape our treatment and approaches to gangs. Lastly, I tie in historian Alex Garcia’s “carcerality” framework to converge both coloniality and carcerality as the structuring framework that allows for an understanding of how ontological processes of racialized dehumanization of colonial/racial subjects (i.e., gang members) is made possible (unpublished dissertation). The central argument of this chapter is that gang scholars must develop and center a decolonial theoretical model to fully deconstruct how coloniality and carcerality converge to create a neo-colonial-carceral social order/apparatus that subjects gangs and gang members to a colonial carceral gaze that further positions them as vulnerable human targets of neo-colonialcarceral State-sanctioned racial violence as manifest by state/police surveillance, police brutality, and incarceration; technologies of oppression/suppression/elimination. Moreover, researchers, society, and law enforcement need to recognize how the labeling and criminalization of

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individuals as “gang members” serves as an extension of the historical project of coloniality that consequently has subjected gang members to a racialized rightlessness and human devaluation as it negates the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts that shape and infuence their emergence and persistence (Cacho, 2012). In solidarity with Leon, I aim to focus on the criminogenic and racializing features of capital and the academy that create the social and material conditions that lead to the further criminalization of vulnerable populations such as gang members. It is only “by articulating areas of intervention for scholars to improve criminological inquiry and depart—or unfuck ourselves—from the many settler-colonial and white supremacist inheritances of our feld” we can critically examine how our “own works have failed to address the coloniality of our present circumstances” and our “research subjects” (Leon, 2021: 28). The chapter concludes with suggestions for concrete and actionable items to protect the humanity of gang-involved individuals in urban communities, such as the decriminalization of gang labels, elimination of gang databases, and legalization of gangs. First, I begin by revisiting the genealogy of traditional gang theory to ground our understanding of how gangs and gang members have been typically treated and approached in sociological and criminological discourses and the collateral consequences of positivist frameworks.

The genealogy of traditional gang theory (2000) While the approach in the social sciences to study gangs has been varied, and along a continuum, literature trends in sociology and criminology have privileged positivism as the governing methodology that continues to categorize gang-involved boys and men within absolute categories; they are described as either pathological “super predators” or sentimentalized as revolutionary bandits (Maxson et al., 2011; Venkatesh, 2008; Yablonsky, 1998; Decker et al., 1998). Brotherton (2015) asserts that the heavy pathologizing of gangs in the past decades is due to academics’ shift away from employing a humanistic evaluation of and understanding toward gangs resulting in gangs becoming a “highly plastic folk devil outside of history” (p. 4). In other words, these defcit-based frames refect how neoliberalism has dominated US ideologies in the social sciences that privilege positivist frameworks as the governing methodology to study marginalized communities and the urban poor (Wacquant, 2009; Young, 2011). As a result, amidst an era of punitive punishment and racialized social control, the demonization of gangs and gang members has had debilitating consequences for gang-labeled individuals due to the institutionalization of anti-gang legislation and prosecution. To best appreciate the evolution and development of gang research during the 20th century, I include a brief review of some of the most conventional scholarly treatments of gangs into fve broad camps: (1) a bio-psychological view of the gang, (2) sociology of the gang, (3) disorganization, confict, and strain theories, (4) subcultural theory, opportunity structure, labeling, and near group theory, and (5) the underclass theory.

The bio-psychological determinist view of delinquency The biopsychological approach originating from Cesare Lombroso’s 1876 Criminal Man is the foundation of a psychogenic view of delinquency. Arguing that criminality was biologically inherited, Lombroso asserted that some individuals are “born criminal.” He searched for multiple-factor explanations of crime and was considered the “father of modern criminology.” For this framing, the focus is not crime but rather biological determinism1 and a medical model of criminology (where he treated criminality like a disease in need of clinical examination and individual treatment). One of his main contributions is that criminals represent a particular

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physical type distinct from noncriminals. Thus, Lombroso claimed that criminals represent a form of degeneracy manifested in physical characteristics refective of earlier forms of evolution. To this end, he described criminals as “atavistic” (primitive). Here we see the infuence of Darwinism in evolution theory. As a result, he outlined four classifcations of criminals: (1) born criminals (atavistic), (2) insane criminals (e.g., idiots, imbeciles, alcoholics), (3) occasional criminals (i.e., when opportunities presented themselves), and (4) criminals of passion (e.g., committed crimes because of anger/love/honor). As the Positivist School of criminology leader, he advocated that the severity of punishment needed to match the dangerousness of the criminal. In other words, punishments should be tailored to individuals’ crimes, and the law should allow broad discretion to judicial actors to determine punishment. He also favored capital punishment as he posited it accelerated natural selection. Contemporary positivist theorists since Lombroso continued to explore the association between intelligence, personality, learning, and criminal behavior. One of the most widely recognized and earliest works on linking the biological sciences to the study of adolescent development and juvenile delinquency has been credited to Granville Stanley Hall (1904). In a classic two-volume study titled, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, Hall popularized the phrase “storm and strain” about child development and children’s impulse to engage in delinquency. The three critical aspects to the concepts included: (1) confict with parents and authority fgures, (2) mood disruptions, and (3) risky behavior. Hall then asserted that child development reiterates his highly racialized conception of the history of human evolutionary development. In other words, Hall characterized pre-adolescent children as savages and therefore rationalized that reasoning was a waste of time with them. He also argued against intellectual attainment at all levels of public education. Hall believed students needed indoctrination to save them from the individualism that was so damaging to the progress of American culture. Here we see the infuences of Lombroso and biological determinism at play. As critically pointed out by Brotherton and Barrios (2004), despite Hall’s knowledge being legitimated within the feld, he did not go on to produce scientifc evidence to prove his claims that “hormone-bound adolescent[s] caught between childhood and adulthood, [are] more like to be any more confused, irrational, or unstable than at any other stage of [their] psychosocial development” (p. 29). This can be attributed to the parens patriae2 approach that was dominant and supported by various legislation and bureaucratic apparatuses (Ward, 2012; Platt, 1969). However, psychologists have argued that recent evidence supports storm and stress in its three aspects, but only when modifed to consider individual diferences and cultural variations. Moreover, not all adolescents experience storm and stress, but storm and stress are more likely during adolescence than at other ages. While the positivist school approach had its run in conceptualizing juvenile delinquency through a psychogenic lens, the study of delinquency eventually moved away from viewing human nature as determined by biological, psychological, and social environments. Instead, the feld began to interrogate how socio-cultural realms of sociology shaped the social and material conditions under which urban young people were being raised.

The sociology of the gang According to William R. Arnold (1966), within the feld of sociology, street gangs have been typically categorized and compared across the following group characteristics: (1) structure, (2) crime/delinquency, (3) turfs, (4) integration/cohesion, (5) confict, (6) antisocialism, and (7) community perceptions. As aforementioned, the earliest sociological studies on gangs emerged from the original work of Frederic Thrasher (1926), who defned the gang as “an interstitial

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group originally formed spontaneously and then integrated through confict” (p. 46). Infuenced by the Chicago School of thought, Thrasher held numerous sociological assumptions about gangs. He used it as a basis to argue that gangs were a natural byproduct of social disorganization among immigrant enclaves. Even though Thrasher examined crime and delinquent deviance issues, his primary focus was on unearthing the conditions from which gangs emerged. This early emphasis on the ecology of immigrant communities and environmental factors underlying gang behavior carved the path for future gang studies scholarship to call attention to the spatial processes and social factors contributing to gang development. By centering on the failure of social institutions and/or communities rather than the pathologizing of people to explain crime, Thrasher provided a critical lens to focus on individuals’ construction of social identities and urban social relationships. While Thrasher’s ecological model provides a compelling critique of reactionary theories that linked the crime to the “innate” pathologies of immigrants and laid the foundations for future gang studies, ecologically-based theories still do not provide a holistic understanding of gang members as social actors and negate the political possibilities of gangs. Albeit, Thrasher’s original body of research provided “some of the most infuential conceptual thrusts in the study of delinquency since World War II” (p. 30).

The 1920s and 1930s: social disorganization, confict, and strain theory The early works of Thomas and Znaniecki’s (1919) on the fragmentation of Polish peasants’ life as they acculturated to the rapid changes in the urban landscape of Chicago laid the foundation for the theorization of the concept of social disorganization in sociological literature. Infuenced by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess (1925), Shaw and McKay (1972) [1942] argued that the nature of the neighborhood—not individuals—regulated individuals’ involvement in a crime. In other words, the neighborhood organization was instrumental in preventing or permitting delinquent careers because neighborhoods provide opportunities for crime—especially among zones in transition. Resultantly, sociologists examined how urban factors (e.g., rapid social change brought by proletarianization, industrialization, immigration, and urbanization) infuenced the natural processes of developing nonconforming norms, values, and behavior among immigrant enclaves. For this framing, there was an outright rejection of the individualistic pathological and rational-choice views to explain deviant behavior and more of a focus on how human behavior is developed and changed by the social and physical environment of an individual rather than by genetic structure (as assumed in the Positivist School). To this end, Thrasher then rationalized the emergence of gangs as: [a] manifestation of the disorganization incident to cultural confict among diverse nations and races gathered together in one place and themselves in contact with a civilization foreign and mainly inimical to them. At the base, the problem is reconciling these divergent heritages with each other and with America. If there has been any failure here, it can hardly be laid at the door of the immigrant. (Thrasher, 1926: 154) The solution? Shaw and McKay posited that creating delinquency prevention programs that reformed both communities and individuals would help alleviate the issue of gang expansion in urban ghettos. Despite the dwindling of gangs due to newly implemented enlightened policies of social control, structural variables such as racial segregation and poverty undermined the outright elimination of gangs. As a result, McKay and Shaw (1969) revisited their original explanations of youth deviance and delinquency by reexamining how structural and historical

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conditions afected urban deviance. McKay and Shaw revealed that social disorganization does not dissipate over time through their longitudinal empirical studies. Instead, it becomes further entrenched and systematically enforced (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004 p. 31). Due to the social exclusion and marginalization experienced by urban communities, one of the coping mechanisms of such communities is the emergence of criminal and gang subcultures. To account for why young Black men became involved in the gang, Shaw and McKay explored the social processes that accounted for the persistent spatial distribution of delinquency. They emphasized the importance of neighborhood organization in preventing or permitting juvenile waywardness. While young people’s needs were met under parental supervision in afuent communities—lower-class youths who resided in the zone in transition, communities strained by quick and concentrated urban growth, transiency, heterogeneity, and poverty, did not receive the support they needed, nor were they supervised. To this end, Shaw and McKay argued that the absence of social intimacy and virtues of small-town life in the slums of Chicago allowed for social disorganization—the source of the causation of delinquency. Consequently, the weakening of controls facilitated a criminal career as inefective formal and informal social controls allowed for easy transmission of knowledge from older boys to younger boys, fostering deviance. They conceptualized this as the “cultural transmission theory,” a process in which delinquent behavior is learned from others, that once acquired enough experience, was introduced to younger boys by older cohorts; even if the family has conventional values, someone afliated with the family that may be involved in illegal activity could neutralize the family infuence. By the end of the Great Depression, Robert Merton (1938, 1949) redirected the discussion away from interests surrounding neighborhood ecological characteristics and ofered a sociological and criminological way of seeing and understanding the inconsistencies between culturally defned goals and the institutionalized means available to individuals to achieve such goals. Although his work was not readily applied to understanding gangs, by framing crime as a product of structural factors, Merton, through his theorization of strain, highlighted how social and cultural constructions of society were situated particularly within the context of the “American Dream” that placed high pressure on individuals to achieve socially accepted goals. However, they would not all have legitimate means to achieve these goals. Infuenced by Durkheim’s anomie theory, Merton’s work explained that those who still aspired to achieve hegemonic expectations of success might resort to illegitimate and deviant subcultures to achieve these goals still. The irony he posited was that a capitalist system depends on unequal opportunity; therefore, the notion of the American Dream providing opportunities for “everyone” is a fallacy.

The 1950s and 1960s: subcultural theory, opportunity structure, labeling, and near group theory Whereas criminologists in the 1920s and 1930s focused on the societal strain and the materialization of adaptive subcultures, delinquency theorists following Merton’s lead sharpened their explanations for the continued disgruntlement among urban lower-class youth during the 1950s and 1960s through subcultural, opportunity structure, labeling, and near group theories (Gilbert, 1986). In Cohen’s (1955) germinal piece, Delinquent Boys, Cohen analyzed juvenile delinquency at the group level, addressing the reemerging gang phenomenon, this time focusing on class and subculture. It was the frst attempt to solve the problem of how delinquent subcultures emerged. Cohen’s main argument is that delinquent subcultures result from status problems within the working class. While Cohen explained gang formation through status frustration and reaction formation, Miller (1958) introduced the concept of lower-class theory by examining lower-class areas in Boston, Massachusetts. Miller observed that society is composed of diferent

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social classes whose subcultures have similar/difering features. In particular, he noted that since the middle class is the dominant culture—the diferent values held by lower-class subcultures come into confict with the middle class because they have limited opportunities to legitimate means to achieve the goals of the middle-class. Despite this, they resort to innovative ways to still make things happen (e.g., Merton’s strain theory). Unlike other theorists, Miller observed how lower-class subcultures provide the necessary socialization to equip young males with the needed behaviors to succeed in their communities that the middle class defnes as delinquent (but is typical to the lower class). Miller used the concept of focal concerns rather than value to describe what was essential to this subculture. Both works of such scholars helped assuage the fear and anxiety in the public imaginary of white, upper-class people who did not understand why lower-class males engage in collective rebellion against the middle-class “measuring rod” by defning their standards for success—standards they can more readily achieve (e.g., toughness and fghting ability) (Parsons, 1957). While Cohen and Miller shifted the conversation surrounding gangs away from biological and psychological determinism, Yablonsky (1963), through his interventionist and empirical research among New York City youth, reasserted that gang theory should re-center more of a clinical psychological lens in which to understand and approach gang formation among youth. He asserted that gangs and the violence they infict were refective of a culture of poverty embedded in urban slums that rewarded sociopathic personalities and behaviors (Bartollas and Miller, 2014). Yablonsky concluded that the lack of emotional intelligence and cognitive development of youth even inhibited the possibilities of gang members to form mutual bonds that would tie them closer. Thus, he claimed that the best young people could form was a spontaneous collective (i.e., a “near-group”) created for fghting. Building on the work of Merton and Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin (1960) returned the discourse surrounding gang theory back to more of a mainstream sociological lens, asserting that the real problem of understanding delinquency lies in explaining how diferent adaptions to strain to happen and defning the context in which those adaptations appear. Cloward and Ohlin posited that delinquent subcultures emerged due to blocked access to the means necessary to achieve goals, resulting in strain. In other words, Cloward and Ohlin revealed that social structure produces pressures for deviance. Thus, they argued a second opportunity structure: the illegitimate structure. This illegitimate structure allows for various ways for juveniles to reach their aspirations (i.e., Miller’s lower-class theory). The access is just as limited as in the legitimate structure. Cloward and Ohlin also incorporated Kobrin’s (1951) ideas on integrated conventional and criminal activity in lower-class communities. They argued that delinquent subculture depends on the degree of integration present in the community. Moreover, Cloward and Ohlin (1960) identifed the ideal-typical gangs as criminal, confict, or retreatist. Ultimately, their model for understanding delinquency served as a theoretical advancement of social disorganization theories because it centered the dialectic between race and class and how that afects urban youth, which was not touched upon by Thrasher’s original works nor other subcultural theorists. As eloquently pointed out by Brotherton and Barrios (2004), Cloward and Ohlin’s early research on inner-city youth foreshadowed a debate that underlined many of the developing theories on gang formation among poor Black and Brown youth, especially during the urban uprisings of the late 1960s that remain relevant in contemporary issues related to the ongoing existence of an “underclass” (Wilson, 1987): What remains in the community is a residual of “failures”—persons who have not succeeded in the search for higher socioeconomic status. The old forms of social organization begin to break down, and with them, opportunities for upward mobility diminish . . .

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Once again, the young fnd themselves both cut of from avenues to higher status and free from external restraint. This is a period, then, in which we should expect a resurgence of violent modes of delinquent adaptation. (p. 199) As the 1960s was coming to an end, sociologist Werthman (1969) advanced some of the earliest empirically based descriptions of urban gang behavior through a labeling theoretical lens. Based on his research in San Francisco on the interactions between police and young Black gang members, he identifed the dialectical process by which mainstream and conventional identities are reciprocally constructed and fortifed and how this facilitated gangs’ participation and delinquency among youth. Resultantly, the genealogy of gang theory included labeling theories that challenged traditional assumptions of causal sequences (i.e., looking at the individual as a starting point of analysis), thus putting the onus of analysis on structural variables. Contemporary gang studies scholars such as Rios (2011) have built upon this work. Through his ethnographic study to examine labeling efects on Black and Latino youth in the city of Oakland, California, Rios’s fndings revealed that negative labels of youth as “criminal” or engaging in deviant behavior has cascading efects such as a self-fulflling prophecy. Here, he uses the example of “Tyrell,” a 16-year-old Black teenager who was constantly stopped by the police and assumed to be a drug dealer. Eventually, internalizing the negative label as a drug dealer, Tyrell ended up slanging weed (e.g., secondary deviance).

The 1970s and 1980s: the underclass As the smoke from the 1960s movements began to dissipate and a move toward experimental initiatives for social reform made their way, simultaneously, a new wave of young people began to come together to form gangs. Wilson (1987) attributed the rise in gang membership to an emerging class of urban poor and disenfranchised youth and adults who had not adapted to mainstream conventional ways of urban life. Borrowing from Myrdal (1944) and Glasgow’s (1981) conceptualization of urban decay, Wilson dubbed this emerging group of young people as the “underclass.” As conceptualized by Wilson, the underclass was determined by four characteristics: (1) high levels of joblessness, (2) deindustrialization, (3) the segregation of marginalized communities, and (4) a poor educational system. However, Wilson’s theorization on the underclass was not intended to explain the existence or emergence of gangs or gang crime. According to Spergel (1995), “the underclass formulation, or variations of it, ha[d] been a useful basis for explaining gang development and its sustenance by gang researchers and scholars” (p. 150). Resultantly researchers of the “underclass school” argued that “the contemporary street gang [was] a product of postwar systemic factors that [had] deleteriously afected the economic and institutional fabric of inner cities” (Venkatesh, 1997: 89). Moreover, the gang served as a surrogate among youth whose needs were not met by community-based institutions or nuclear families. While the underclass literature has been appropriated and further developed by many scholars, Brotherton and Barrios (2004) highlight two related though divergent perspectives categorized under the scope of underclass theory: (1) gangs as oppositional institutions and (2) gangs as integrative organizations. According to Hagedorn (1988) and Moore (1988), to understand the increase of gangs during the postindustrial era in the 1980s and early 1990s, one had to look at the underclass as a source of explanation. Their empirical research observed how this marginalized class found a way to survive by seeking welfare support economically and/or partaking in crime amidst an emerging underground drug economy (e.g., Bourgois, 1995; Contreras,

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2013). This was made feasible with the cultural and social support networks aforded by a growing subculture of street gangs. Not surprisingly, theories of the underclass were only applied to “young inner-city blacks in the rust belts of the Midwest and to Latinos/as in the so-called booming metropolises of the West” (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). Irrespective of the racialized dimensions in which these theories were appropriated to understand emerging gang subcultures amongst the underclass, the fnal diagnosis was that these gangs cultivated and transmitted selfdestructive behaviors and antisocial value systems directly in opposition to hegemonic middleclass culture. In her work on the Chicano gangs of East Los Angeles, California, and on their Black counterparts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Moore (1991) believed it important to note that one of the stark diferences of contemporary gangs to those of the past could be understood through an underclass lens as the gangs of the 20th century were disproportionately Black and Latino young people unlike the ethnic European gangs of the 1920s whom only existed for a single generation. Therefore, it was vital to acknowledge that when discussing contemporary gangs, the term “gangs” and “gang member” serve as a race-neutral code to discuss “quasiinstitutionalized structures” within marginalized communities of color. As a response to the trend of studying gangs through a lens of pathology, there also began to emerge a more critical look at how and why Black and Latino gang subcultures persisted. To this end, Martin Sanchez-Jankowski (1991) conducted a ten year multisite, bicoastal study on multiple gangs to understand gang participation and organization. Contrary to most claims of the gang being unorganized, he found that they were highly organized, fully integrated into their respective communities, and established their street codes to ensure structure and discipline. In other words, their behavioral responses to their economic and social deprivation are guided by rational decision-making processes. Thus, Jankowski concluded that due to gang members’ deep immersion in the community and still having similar aspirations as those in the community who are law-abiding, even if they go through illegitimate opportunity structures to achieve such goals, so long as they are in peace with their community, law-abiding community members will continue to tolerate the gang’s operations and refuse to involve law enforcement on their crime and activities (e.g., Pattillo, 1998). As a result, the expansion of gangs continues.

Toward a Xicana decolonial imaginary in counter-gang paradigms In Emma Pérez’s (1999) innovative work, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History, she compellingly advocates for the interrogation of what she calls the “colonial imaginary” that has demarcated hegemonic regimes of power—especially as it relates to how colonialism has shaped how history is typically understood and produced. To this end, she challenges scholars to develop what she theorizes as a “decolonial imaginary,” a critical apparatus to recover the voices and experiences, particularly that of Chicanas who have been omitted in dominant narratives of history. While her work is grounded in a decolonial feminist praxis with the intent of highlighting how archival silences, erasures, and omissions in the production of knowledge facilitates the uncontested terrains of dominant narratives of history, it provides adaptation also to challenge mainstream positivist frameworks existent in both criminology and sociology that have been used to examine and understand the gang phenomenon and curate defnitions of gang membership through a lens of pathology and criminality. In this process, we miss vast opportunities of grounding our research in critical analysis. By taking for granted singular views of gangs and gang members as irredeemable sociopaths, we fall prey to buying into sensationalist accounts, or what Susan Phillips (2012) refers to as “narratives of precision” that conveniently omit to take into account crucial historical and cultural contexts “and subsequently manufactures key images that justify the shape of police action [against gangs and gang members]” (47). Consequently,

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researchers produce work that obscures the complexity of gang formation and limits the depth of analysis needed to understand the gang phenomenon. Utilizing Pérez’s theorization of the concept of the decolonial imaginary, I envision us working toward developing a critical gang paradigm that refuses to accept the colonial logics that have undergirded both criminological and sociological theories and discourses on gangs and law enforcement’s conceptualization of gangs that have fueled their long-standing anti-gang suppression tactics. Departing from conventional gang theories, I  look beyond narratives of pathology and criminality and toward a “decolonial option”—a rupture and paradigm shift in criminological production that intentionally “dismantles criminology’s Western universality narratives and its logic of separation that lie in modernity” to “provide a diferent understanding of modernity that looks behind its universalizing narratives and designs (e.g., development, progress, salvation) to expose “coloniality”—modernity’s dark, destructive side” (Dimou, 2021: 1). In other words, by centering a decolonial epistemological and conceptual framework to the treatment and approach to gangs, I aim to produce work that reveals the positivist narratives upon which current gang theories have built upon that have failed in their capacity to question whether conventional frameworks or contemporary solutions are applicable or equipped to understand/ mitigate the longue durée of gangs. To this end, to successfully develop a decolonial imaginary as a decolonial option within sociological and criminological approaches to gangs, it is frst necessary to understand the legacies of colonialism and coloniality to have a strong foundation of how processes of ontological subordination are made possible. Here I introduce Anibal Quijano’s (2007) “coloniality of power” as a foundational framework to understand how the underlying structures and logics of Western Civilization have pushed forward the continuities of racial meaning and domination beyond the demise of formal colonialism. In other words, if we as gang scholars want to understand and examine the emergence and persistence of gangs in a critical manner, then we need to develop a framework that gives us an understanding of how the colonial-carceral social order of the United States has banked on the racialized dehumanization of criminalized groups such as gangs and its members. According to Quijano (2000), it is through the “discovery” and conquest of the Americas that there frst emerged a social construction of race, which was used as a biological structure that “placed some in a natural situation of inferiority to the others. The conquistadors [then] assumed this idea as the constitutive, founding element of the relations of domination that [their] conquest imposed” [emphasis mine] (534). Resultantly, this bifurcated people in the Americas into two categories: human or subhuman and therefore, birthed “a new structure of control of labor and its resources and products” as “an articulation of all historically known previous structures of control of labor together around and upon the basis of capital and the world market” (Quijano, 2000: 534). This would inadvertently mark the convergence between capitalism and processes of ontological subordination premised on the idea of race (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Quijano, 2007). As emphasized by Quijano, race plays a crucial role in the coloniality of power as it facilitates the underlying logic of valuing proft over human life. As eloquently explained by Dimou (2021): [Race] also provided the cognitive means for the needs of capitalism by producing a global process of labeling (Acuña, 2015; Lugones, 2007): new subjectivities were formed (e.g., Blacks, Indians, Mestizos), which were designated as naturally inferior to white European colonizers and, as such, could be exploited (Quijano, 2000). Essentially, a conception of humanity was constructed that diferentiated the world’s populations into two groups: inferior and superior or savage and civilized (Lugones, 2007). This construction of racism—this establishment of the superiority of the White European colonial

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subjectivity—enabled the hierarchical organization and distribution of labor along racial/ ethnic lines of the world’s population that persists until today (Quijano, 1992). According to Lugones (2007: 191), this racist classifcation has been the “deepest and most enduring expression of [coloniality],” with slavery, alongside destruction, dispossession, expropriation, extractivism on a mass scale, and genocidal violence, representing coloniality’s crudest manifestations of dehumanization, exploitation, and death for proft. (Mignolo, 2018; Vazquez, 2009) Here, Maldonado-Torres’ (2007) defnition of “coloniality” is also helpful to understand how colonial subjects are made through “long-standing patterns of power that [have] emerged as a result of colonialism, but that defne culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” that result in coloniality surviving formal colonialism as it is “maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in commonsense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience” (243). According to Barganier (2011), this classifcation system organizes the world’s population into a hierarchy of human/subhuman that racialized dehumanization arises. It is a dialectical process that helps sustain one another. As Dimou (2021) contends, “the epistemological and ontological foundations of criminology . . . are based on and largely reproduce this racial order by constructing and legitimizing White/heterosexual/patriarchal/Christian rule, power and violence through the law, state policies and the [Criminal ‘Justice’ System]” (9). An understanding of colonialism and coloniality would be incomplete without understanding the symbiotic role of carcerality and coloniality in academic, societal, and law enforcement discourses and treatments of gangs and gang members. Here historian Alex Garcia’s (unpublished dissertation) conceptualization of carcerality—a reference to the social and political systems that formally and informally promote discipline, punishment, and incarceration—is helpful to understand how the State intentionally targets populations it deems disposable (e.g., gang members). I  argue that the convergence of both coloniality and carcerality as an analytical framework exposes how ontological processes of racialized dehumanization of colonial/racial subjects (i.e., gang members) are made possible. Resultantly, carcerality as a function of colonialism and coloniality comes together to create a neo-colonial-carceral order and apparatus. Like the treatment and examination of gangs must be situated within its broader sociohistorical context, so too must there be an acknowledgment of how colonial-carceral control in the United States is reliant upon the systematic use of violence and problematic narratives of precision play a role in the production, construction, understandings, and defnitions of the pathological gang member subject. Understanding how these apparatuses (i.e., colonialism, coloniality, and carcerality) converge to operationalize in knowledge production and shape Western epistemologies that infuence how foundations of criminology/sociology and law enforcement depict self-and/ or State identifed gang members is one step toward decriminalizing and rehumanizing some of the most vulnerable subjects in urban America.

Conclusion The emphasis on the study of gangs “as a crime problem” allows criminal justice researchers to study gang members as felons or law violators and not as part of the community . . . variables of race, sex, age, and class are used solely to explain behavior which violates the law. Broader concerns about social and economic structures or community processes are not seen as necessary. (Hagedorn, 1988: 27)

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Given the arbitrariness and ease in which racialized individuals fnd themselves classifed as gang members, there are currently 1 million registered gang members in the United States across all 50 states (National Gang Intelligence Center—United States). What is most concerning about the criminalization associated with labeling individuals as “active gang members” is the real-life and death (i.e., symbolic/physical) consequences and implications for this large racially dehumanized surplus carceral subproletariat. As Santos and Bickle (2017) assert, once an individual is labeled as a gang member, they become eligible for a series of intensifed technologies of surveillance, policing, and punishment since their humanity and dignity are stripped away as they are no longer conceived of as human subjects amidst the public imaginary. Consequently, they are also not considered deserving of the rights and protections of conventional citizenship. Resultantly, they are then targeted for gang enhancements when and if they are charged with a crime in the future. They are subject to gang policing, added to gang databases (often without their knowledge), among many other things. These formal processes of legal exclusion (coupled with incessant contact with juvenile/criminal legal systems) subject racialized individuals to not merely a second-class citizenship—rather a distinct form of “political membership”—what Miller and Stuart (2017) call “carceral citizenship.” Here “carceral citizenship” is defned as: [A] distinct form of political membership experienced by and enacted upon people convicted of a crime. It is not like second-class citizenship, where the State fails to guarantee the rights of a subgroup that under normal circumstances would be considered complete and equal members of a free society . . . Nor is it like “custodial citizenship,” a “diminished form of citizenship,” where criminal justice involvement teaches the subjects of criminal justice intervention their place in U.S. democracy (Lerman and Weaver, 2014). Instead, carceral citizenship begins at the moment of a criminal conviction. It is distinguished from other citizenship forms by the restrictions, duties, and benefts uniquely accrued to carceral citizens or people with criminal records. (533) Even if not convicted of any crime(s), to be classifed as a gang member involved/associated with gangs has become hyper-criminalized within the United States. By extension, such individuals become a walking human target. I argue that it is imperative that “we untangle [the] ontological processes that render [raced individuals] always already criminal in body and being,” primarily through their labeling as gang members in association to/with gangs (Cacho, 2013: 67). Those who come from urban marginality “are [always] held responsible today for crimes they might never commit in the future” (Ibid., p. 83). Furthermore, one step toward breaking the academic doxa inherent in gang studies within sociology and criminology. We need to develop new frameworks that investigate the State’s dependence on criminological narratives of “gang members” in its larger project of sustaining and expanding a neo-colonial-carceral social order carried out at the hands of legal court systems and law enforcement. If not, we are complicit in the processes that work toward criminalizing self-and/or State identifed gang members—ultimately circumventing these individuals’ life chances of enjoying freedom without persecution. So, how can we take our decolonial imaginary and a neo-colonial-carceral order to mobilize against the racialized dehumanization and criminalization of gang members? As laid out by activist Josmar Trujillo and critical criminologist Alex Vitale (2019), we must work toward abolishing. Anti-gang suppression eforts (e.g., the implementation of gang injunctions, gang databases) and criminalization of the label gang members that renders self-and/or State identifed gang members to occupy a zone of nonbeing, a state of ontological subordination, and subhuman

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status that ultimately results in their premature death (e.g., through incarceration, deportation). To approach the gang phenomenon from this “third space” (Cantú, 2013), that is, by recovering and reexamining the operationalization of coloniality, Dimou’s call for a decolonial option enables us to get at the root of the sociopolitical grounds that are fertile for the emergence of gangs. It also allows us to interrogate the hidden matrices of power to demonstrate what gangs and gang members have to teach us about engaging in a decolonial imaginary that is rooted in an abolitionist praxis that holds the potential to dismantle apparatuses of coloniality vis a vis the academic doxa inherent in both academic and law enforcement institutions. To this end, I encourage community members to materialize a decolonial imaginary by demanding police abolition to remove the State’s primary agents of social control that primarily seek to target racialized bodies. As scholar Lopez-Aguado (2016) has eloquently argued, The geographic concentration of both mass incarceration and its collateral consequences not only directs aggressive policing into . . . residential spaces but also structures a relationship between prison[s] and neighborhood[s] that reinforces the recognition of community members as criminal. (1) Abolishing police would fnally allow communities of color to develop the kinds of care disassociated from deadly racialized forms of social control to help uplift young people and their communities. Moreover, I encourage academics to take the necessary time required to spend time in the colonial trenches of urban, rural, and suburban municipalities to understand better the sociopolitical and cultural histories and contexts in which gangs and gang members emerge from. I argue that academics can only do this through a deep and thorough ethnographic immersion into the world of gangs. Such an endeavor would necessitate academics to spend more than simply one to two years “in the feld” to understand the multiple identities and contradictions inherent in gangs and gang members. In my personal experience, building intimate relationships with gang members and their families has allowed me to reach the levels of empathy, understanding, compassion, and critical thinking skills needed to engage in a decolonial imaginary to produce critical analyses of gangs and gang members that are disassociated from limited and positivist theoretical models existent in sociology and criminology. However, it must be noted that not every academic, even if well-intentioned and critical, will acquire the access necessary to build the kind of rapport needed to immerse themselves in the gang subcultures of the United States. We should relinquish our academic egos and urge to produce work for the sake of academic promotions to ensure that we do not promote academic doxa. Furthermore, academics (both of color and white) must interrogate their own biases, prejudices, (intellectual and cultural) limitations, and intentions when stepping into the world of gangs. The work we produce can and does have the potential to infuence policies that can further criminalize and dehumanize the very young people that we study who are considered and labeled as “gang members,” and that often are the frst to sufer the consequences of such punitive anti-gang laws. Thus, we must take the importance of doing this line of work with integrity, academic rigor seriously and being mindful of not perpetuating the very same stigmatizing, pathologizing, and demonizing tropes that many scholars before us have chosen to use to explain the life and experiences of people coming from the gang life. Our work should protect the humanity of gang-involved individuals in urban, rural, and suburban communities. We can do so by producing work that pushes against the criminalization of gang labels, advocates for eliminating gang databases and gang injunctions, and the legalization of gangs. We

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must get comfortable employing an interdisciplinary and decolonial lens to the treatment and approaches of gangs to get at the heart of the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts that give rise to gangs, gang members, and violence. While I acknowledge that there are numerous ways to materialize and develop a decolonial imaginary to reexamine and redefne mainstream defnitions of “gangs” and “gang members” in the United States, the frst step toward such a project is to do our internal work to “unfuck ourselves from our many settler colonial and white supremacist inheritances” that get in the way of reverting the colonial-carceral gaze unto the State (León, 2021: 28).

Notes 1 It is important to note that Lombroso was prejudicial to women, Blacks, and social groups he deemed inferior. 2 Parens patria is Latin for “parent of the nation.” In law, it refers to the public policy power of the State to act as guardian for those who are unable to care for themselves, such as children or disabled individuals, and/or intervene against an abusive or negligent parent, legal guardian, or informal caretaker. Moreover, the State serves as a surrogate parent for any child in need of care and protection. The philosophy was derived from reformists (“child savers”) of the late 1800s who believed that juveniles are dependent and unable to make decisions. If parents fail to raise their children to be productive members of society, the State will intervene to take on the parent’s responsibility.

References Acuña, R. M. (2015). The politics of extractive governance: Indigenous peoples and socio-environmental conficts. The Extractive Industries and Society, 2(1), 85–92. Alvares, C. (2011). A critique of Eurocentric social science and the question of alternatives. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(22), 72–81. Retrieved July 15, 2021, from www.jstor.org/stable/23018594 Arnold, W. R. (1966). The concept of gang. The Sociological Quarterly, 7(1), 59–75. Barganier, G. (2011). Fanon’s children: The black panther party and the rise of the crips and bloods in Los Angeles (Doctoral dissertation). Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley. Bartollas, C., & Miller, S. (2014). Juvenile delinquency in America. Boston, MA: Pearson. Bourgois P. (1995). Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brotherton, D. C. (2008). Beyond social reproduction-bringing resistance back in gang theory. Theoretical Criminology, 12(1), 55–77. Brotherton, D. C. (2015). Youth street gangs: A critical appraisal. New York, NY: Routledge. Brotherton, D. C., & Barrios, L. (2004). The almighty Latin king and queen nation: Street politics and the transformation of a New York City gang. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Cacho, L. M. (2012). Social death: Racialized rightlessness and the criminalization of the unprotected. New York, NY: NYU Press. Cacho, L. M. (2013). Gang members, Juvenile delinquents, and direct democracy. In Reinventing race, reinventing racism (pp. 259–269). London: Brill. Cantú, N. E. (2013). Sitio y lengua: Chicana third space feminist theory. In Landscapes of writing in Chicano literature (pp. 173–187). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Cloward, R. A., & Ohlin, L. E. (1960). Delinquency and opportunity: A theory of delinquent gangs. New York: Free Press. Conquergood, D.,  & Conquergood, L. D. (1993).  Homeboys and hoods: Gang communication and cultural space. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Afairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University. Contreras, R. (2013). The stickup kids: Race, drugs, violence, and the American dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Decker, S. H., Bynum, T. S., & Weisel, D. L. (1998). Gangs as organized crime groups: A tale of two cities. Justice Quarterly, 15(2), 395–423. Dimou, E. (2021). Decolonizing southern criminology: What can the “decolonial option” tell us about challenging the modern/colonial foundations of criminology? Critical Criminology, 1–20.

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Durán, R. J. (2013). Gang life in two cities: An insider’s journey. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Durán, R. J. (2018). The gang paradox: Inequalities and miracles on the US-Mexico border. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Fanon, F. (1970). Black skin, white masks (p. 120). London: Paladin. Gilbert, J. (1986). A cycle of outrage: America’s reaction to the juvenile delinquent in the 1950’s. New York: Oxford University Press. Glasgow, D. G. (1981). The black underclass: Poverty, unemployment, and entrapment of ghetto youth. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Hagedorn, J. M. (1988). People and folk. Chicago, IL: Lake View Press. Jankowski, M. S. (1991).  Islands in the street: Gangs and American urban society  (vol. 159). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Katz, J., & Jackson-Jacobs, C. (2004). The criminologists’ gang. In C. Sumner (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to criminology (pp. 91–124). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Kobrin, S. (1951). The confict of values in delinquency areas. American Sociological Review, 16(3), 653–661. León, K. S. (2021). Latino criminology: Unfucking colonial frameworks in “Latinos and crime” scholarship. Critical Criminology, 1–25. Lerman, A. E., & Weaver, V. L. (2014). Arresting citizenship: The democratic consequences of American crime control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lopez-Aguado, P. (2016). The collateral consequences of prisonization: Racial sorting, carceral identity, and community criminalization. Sociology Compass, 10(1), 12–23. Lopez-Aguado, P. (2018). Stick together and come back home: Racial sorting and the spillover of carceral identity. Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press. Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186–209. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–270. Maxson, C. L., Matsuda, K. N., & Hennigan, K. (2011). “Deterrability” among gang and nongang juvenile ofenders: Are gang members more (or less) deterrable than other juvenile ofenders?  Crime  & Delinquency, 57(4), 516–543. Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672–682. Merton, R. K. (1949). Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press. Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On decoloniality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Miller, R. J., & Stuart, F. (2017). Carceral citizenship: Race, rights and responsibility in the age of mass supervision. Theoretical Criminology, 21(4), 532–548. Miller, W. B. (1958). Lower class culture as a generating milieu for gang delinquency. Journal of Social Issues, 14(1), 5–9. Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Moore, J. (1988). Gangs and the underclass. In J. M. Hagedorn (Ed.), People and folk. Chicago, IL: Lake View Press. Moore, J. W. (1991). Going down to the barrio. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Muñiz, A. (2015). Police, power, and the production of racial boundaries. New York, NY: Rutgers University Press. Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma: The Negro problem and modern democracy. New York, NY: Harper. Park, R. E., & Burgess, E. (1925). The city. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Parsons, T. (1957). The structure of social action. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Pattillo, M. E. (1998). Sweet mothers and gangbangers: Managing crime in a black middle-class neighborhood. Social Forces, 76(3), 747–774. Pérez, E. (1999). The decolonial imaginary: Writing Chicanas into history. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Phillips, S. A. (2012). Operation fy trap: L.A. gangs, drugs, and the law. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Platt, A. (1969). The rise of the child-saving movement: A  study in social policy and correctional reform. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 381(1), 21–38. Quijano, A. (1992). Colonialidad, modernidad/racionalidad. Peru Indigena, 13(29): 11–20. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232.

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6 MS–13, GANG STUDIES, AND CRIMES OF THE POWERFUL Kenneth Sebastian León and Maya Barak

Introduction: another day, another IRB consent form We walked into Beltway South Jail1 that day just as we had the last time and the time before that. Our visits were always for the same reason: to gain a better understanding of the scope of MS-13’s criminal activity and social networks in the United States and abroad. Part of a welleducated, well-intentioned, and well-funded transnational team, our mission for the day was to continue surveying and interviewing gang members and police experts in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding metropolitan area. By this visit, we no longer dressed like eager capitol hill interns in business professional garb. Our dress code was closer to “business as usual” attire, or “smart casual” that was not as stif as an academic job talk, but still signaling expertise and authority in a nonthreatening manner. IRBapproved forms, digital audio recorders, and a powerful drug-like substance known as sucrose in hand,2 we had our rhythm and routine in sync. A few escorted walks through sally ports and securitized zones and we are back in the interview rooms to do what we came to do: extract interview data from self-identifed and alleged members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. After a few of these visits, cracks were starting to form at the bases of our preconceived notions and theoretical assumptions about this nebulous entity. We thought we would fnd competent, hardened, transnational gang members and the naive or simply wayward teenage recruits who would soon be associated with a dystopian penchant for violence. After all, we had done what we understood to be our homework: hours of engagement with scholarship on Central America, piloting the delivery of our IRB forms in both English and Spanish, and a close following of news coverage for all things MS-13. With each visit, we felt less like experts and more like students: the more we learned, the less we could claim to know. The door opened. Most of the faces that looked back at us were worlds apart from the threatening profles commonly found when searching pictures of “MS-13” online. When the project started, we thought we might be able to connect images seen “out there” in popular media to people and events that could be interrogated “in here” (i.e., correctional environment). After all, the grant was formally titled “Assessing the Transnational Capacity of MS-13 in the U.S. and El Salvador.” It would take several months before we came to terms with just how misplaced our attention really was, and how the facial expressions of these mostly teenage boys and men refected an entirely diferent orientation to concepts of gang formation and structural violence.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-8

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This chapter shares some of what we’ve learned along the way, and how our orientation to gang studies has changed. The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is among the most internationally recognized Latino gangs in the western hemisphere. Composed primarily of Salvadorans and their US-born descendants, MS-13 is often presented as an external threat from Central America despite its US origins, and is known as the “most dangerous” and “most violent” gang operating within the United States (Barak et al., 2020). The gang is associated with grisly homicides, interpersonal youth violence, and both real and perceived threats to community safety. However, MS-13 also serves as a pretext for: (1) policing, surveilling, and controlling Latino and Central American men; (2) xenophobic attitudes toward Central American communities; and (3) advancing restrictive migration policies under the guise of violence prevention (León and Barak, 2019; Osuna, 2020). This makes MS-13 a compelling socio-political phenomenon for interdisciplinary scholars of crime, violence, and racialized social control. MS-13 also ofers an empirical platform for understanding gang formation as both a cause and symptom of crimes of the powerful, which includes state-corporate crime. In previous scholarship, we have ofered practical and evidence-based ways of highlighting the inadequacies, collateral harms, and negative impacts of state policies and responses to MS-13 (see Barak et al., 2020). As scholars of this volume have further emphasized, an intersectional approach to gang studies requires careful attention to how power is confgured and exercised between and within human groups. In our specifc context, we grappled with a structural contradiction involving state legitimacy. This contradiction consists of the state (e.g., institutions of formal control) simultaneously existing as the cause and solution for the problem of gang violence. Through discriminatory laws, policies, and mobility regimes (e.g., de facto and de jure segregation; immigration and deportation controls), the state creates fertile ground for “the gang problem” to develop. Through police, courts, and corrections, the state is simultaneously situated as the presumptive source of how to best solve the same exact problem. Grounded in our refections as researchers participating in a multi-year study of gang members and gang-specifc police units, we begin this chapter with a discussion of the epistemological gaps and tensions that have shaped these omissions from the gang studies canon. In so doing, we critique common theories, methodological approaches, and political assumptions that have permeated US gang scholarship over the last half century. Next, we advance our claim that MS-13 is a byproduct of state criminality, situating it within “crimes of the powerful” literature. We then examine the history of US–Central American relations and foreign policy in relation to the genesis and continued evolution of MS-13 through this lens, drawing upon the lived experiences and narratives of Yesenia, a self-identifying gang member interviewed on two occasions between 2014–2016. We conclude with a discussion about why transnational gangs like MS-13 are framed as an external problem, as opposed to an endemic consequence of both migration policies and xenophobic imperialism in the Americas. By doing so, we argue how state-corporate machinations have produced gendered, racialized, and classed subjects within the study of MS-13.

Not the therapy session you were expecting In this women-only section of the jail, Yesenia proved to be quite the conversationalist. Gregarious yet vulnerable, she raised the suspicion of being a very good talker. Everything that Yesenia might say was especially valuable by virtue of its scarcity. Alleged and self-identifed women of MS-13 were statistically rare in our sample, consistent with criminological studies that primarily focus on men and boys (see Gutierrez-Adams et al., 2020; Peterson and Panfl, 2014; Sutton,

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2017). With consent to interview and record, we mine this human subject and strike gold. Heavy, weighted, qualitative gold. “Have you ever been to Canada?” “No, they won’t let me in. And it’s too cold.” “I’m from up north, near the border. It’s pretty cold. And there’s a lot of snow.” “Nah, no way. Not for me.” “And do any of your friends belong to a clique?” “All of them.” “All of them?” “All of them,” Yesenia says from across the long metal table No taller than fve feet, her hair is cut into a short mullet: spiked on top, dusting her neck in the back. Her small stature and facial expression give her the appearance of someone much younger than 19. Yesenia presents herself as a Romeo of sorts. With multiple women vying to be her girlfriend both in and out of jail, she’s a resident heartbreaker. She reaches for another donut. “I haven’t had a donut in a year.” “Have you ever been part of a clique?” “Yes, I am,” repeats Yesenia. “And the clique is part of MS-13?” “Mmhmm.” Having established Yesenia’s gang afliation, we cover the fundamentals. What is your role in the clique? When did you join? Why did you join? What did you have to do in order to join? As Yesenia speaks, the familiar defcit discourses of being “at risk” come to the fore. Abandonment, delinquent peer groups, domestic abuse and sexual assault, elementary school dropouts, lack of self-control, the need for protection and respect, poverty, propensity for violence, social disorganization, substance use, and addiction. Pick any random page of a Criminological Theory Handbook and you’ll fnd a biographical reference point. The catalog of crimes that she has experienced as a victim, co-victim, witness, or ofender is also in overwhelming supply. Arson, assault, extortion, homicide. The list goes on. Criminologists have helped us understand how the lines between victim and ofender are perpetually blurred. Yesenia fts this mold perfectly. She has seen some things. She’s also done some things. She was residing at Beltway South Jail for allegedly stabbing a relative with a knife after he tried to assault her. She had been in this same jail before, too. The frst time was for lighting ablaze a car that belonged to an extended family member. “My father asked me if I want to continue this way,” Yesenia says, pausing, “Well, the truth is, no. I don’t want to die like a dog either. I don’t want to fght for my life. The truth is, in 19 years I’ve never been happy . . . I’ve been dealing with too many memories in this cellblock. I know that one day I’m going to wake up in a bad mood and I’m going to see [my cellmates] sleeping and I’m going to do something. I feel it. When I feel something, I have to avoid it. But, the truth is, it’s mental. Like I told my father, ‘I’m a sociopath.’ Never in my life have I been sincere with anyone, but now I’m telling you. Because, the truth is, I want to talk to someone. I want to vent what I feel. Because I’m holding it all deep inside. I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stand this pain. All of the memories that

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are coming back to me. All the harm I’ve done. All the deaths, all the faces are watching me. This is why I don’t sleep. Even the smallest noise wakes me up. Because I can’t sleep peacefully. This is what I’m afraid of now.” Our graduate methods courses might have had a reference or two to ethics and the politics of representation in the feld, but no substantive training on what it means, qualitatively, to capture and code human sufering. No handbook on qualitative methods prepares you to accept this kind of information. Is this the MS-13 data that the Department of Justice wanted us to fnd? Is this the kind of precursor to transnational gang activity that criminal justice ofcials and policy makers wanted to account for? Would Yesenia’s life history be seen as relevant in the eyes of our funders? Among all the rhetorical questions that might be explored, part of our mission in this project was to ask law enforcement experts a surprisingly challenging question: what, even, is a gang, and how do you operationalize a gang member?

A hemispheric orientation to racialized state crime The history and contemporary reality for many Latinos in the United States are ones where not only crime but also state crime features prominently (see Gonzalez, 2011; Menjívar and Rodríguez, 2005). “The state” refers to a plurality and hemispheric collection of agencies, entities, and gubernatorial bodies, with varying relationships to US foreign policy and US hemispheric interests. State and municipal governments in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and extrajudicial government enterprises, like the Central Intelligence Agency and state-funded right-wing militias, are critical drivers of gang formation in the Central American context, and especially with regards to MS-13. Machinations of state-corporate crime have conditioned when and which populations and sub-groups end up feeing their home countries and migrating to places like the United States (León, 2021a). Central Americans did not migrate at random, and US foreign policy and geopolitical hegemony factor into the historical genealogy of the MS-13 we know today. Considered a transnational and Salvadoran gang, MS-13 is often mischaracterized as an “import” to the United States (Diaz, 2009; Martínez d’Aubuisson, 2015; McGuire, 2007; Ward, 2013; Wolf, 2014). MS-13 emerged in 1970s Los Angeles as the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners (MSS). For the most part, MSS was a run of the mill “party gang,” just a group of young guys who got together to smoke pot and listen to heavy metal (Martínez d’Aubuisson, 2015; Ward, 2013). It earned its “badass reputation for evil” from a few “hard-core Satanists” that counted themselves among MSS’ membership (Ward, 2013: 77). By the late 1980s, however, MSS had become MS-13: a traditional street gang with cliques throughout the Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas. Primary among the factors leading to MS-13’s transformation during the 1980s and into the 1990s was the Salvadoran civil war and the United States’ response to it. The civil war began in 1980, following fve decades of military rule, seven military coup d’états, and nearly 20 years of social unrest (Baloyra, 1982; Hobden, 2000). Fought between the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Salvadoran government, the confict spanned more than a decade. It resulted in mass internal displacement, external migration, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Salvadorans. Over 300,000 Salvadorans fed to the United States during the war (Hobden, 2000).3 Because the United States supported the Salvadoran government during the war, it chose not to extend Salvadoran migrants refugee status (Coutin, 2000). Most Salvadorans who came to the United States during the period were unable to obtain US visas, coming without authorization. Lacking

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documentation and refugee status—as well as the formal government support that accompanies it—and traumatized by the war, most Salvadoran immigrants faced immense hurdles upon arriving in the United States. Many settled in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Some young Salvadoran refugees began forming cliques to protect themselves from existing Black and Hispanic gangs. These cliques eventually coalesced with MSS to become MS-13. MS-13 presented law enforcement with an interesting opportunity during the 1990s as most of its members were immigrants, many undocumented. Thus, unlike US-born gang members, most members of MS-13 could be deported. Moreover, a criminal conviction was not necessary to secure deportation—if an immigrant lacked a valid immigration status that was sufcient to transfer them to the custody of the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)4 and placed in deportation proceedings. “Enforcement through deportation” quickly became the norm as criminal justice and immigration agencies partnered with one another in an early example of the modern-day American crimmigration enterprise (Martínez d’Aubuisson, 2015; Ward, 2013; Zilberg, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2011). Not only did the deportation of MS-13 members fail to prevent the growth of MS-13 in the United States, but it also led to the gang’s proliferation in El Salvador. There, the gang—along with its L.A. rival, Barrio 18—quickly proliferated. Former FMLN and government combatants with military training and weapons left over from the war, some of whom had been child soldiers, joined the gang (Courtney, 2010). By the late 2000s, gang violence was widespread throughout El Salvador, with entire neighborhoods, jails, and prisons controlled by MS-13 and Barrio 18. To address the growing gang problem, the Salvadoran government enacted a series of “tough on crime” policies to address growing gang violence (e.g., Plan Mano Dura5 and Super Mano Dura) further entrenched organized crime and repressive state violence (Roque, 2017). Gang violence and violent governmental and nongovernmental responses to it “fed each other, embedding war and terror in everyday [Salvadoran] life” (Roque, 2017: 503). By 2015, the murder rate in El Salvador, a country smaller than Rhode Island with just over six million inhabitants—rose to 104 homicides per 100,000 people (Partlow, 2015). That summer was the bloodiest in Salvadoran history, far exceeding the violence experienced during the whole of the country’s civil war. Averaging 700 murders per month (Brabo, 2015), or nearly one homicide per hour, El Salvador earned the title of most violent country not at war in the world (InSight Crime, 2016). As violence was reaching a crescendo in El Salvador, the United States saw a sharp rise in migration. Particularly of note were the 68,000 unaccompanied minors apprehended at the US–Mexico border in 2014, over 50,000 of whom were Salvadoran (Stinchcomb and Hershberg, 2014).

Gang studies and hegemony For decades, stakeholders in research, policy, and criminal justice professions have grappled with how to best defne gang membership (Barrows and Huf, 2009). In a polemic sense, wrangling over the defnition of the word gang is “essentially an argument over the correct description of a ghost” (Katz and Jackson-Jacobs, 2004: 106; see also Barak et al., 2020: 4). In short, defnitions will vary based on the practical use. But even in practical and applied contexts, abstract and technical issues abound. For example, criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) experts have thoroughly documented issues associated with gang databases and intelligence systems, which include challenges to civil liberties and a net widening of racialized surveillance (Barrows and Huf, 2009; Dumke, 2018; Flaherty, 2019; Jacobs, 2009; Winston, 2016). This is not solely a

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normative critique about threats to abstract concepts like “rights” and “principles.” Even if gangrelated policing strategies were pitched as imperfect means toward valuable ends, gang-related information systems—no matter how legally or normatively problematic—have not delivered on the intended results of eliminating gang-related violence (see Petering, 2015). The (allegedly) most advanced and powerful country on earth with the most robust known intelligence gathering and surveillance systems both domestically and abroad apparently still wanted PhD candidates to interview people like Yesenia to see what all was going on transnationally with MS-13. What role do CCJ gang researchers have in all of this? After all, with so many gadgets and guns at the state’s disposal, what have multiple decades of Big Box CCJ studies yielded? In addition to the shortcomings of gang-related policies, it becomes a curiously radical or “critical” position to simply point out that gangs are political categories created by state and federal legislatures. Labels like pirates, terrorists, insurgents, and enemies of the state, refect political decisions to defne a group as a category worth policing, capturing, controlling, or eliminating. In other words, the political economy of power is often left out of the most visible portions of criminological scholarship on gangs. CCJ does not hold a monopoly on the study of crime, criminality, and criminalization. Major portions of our collective project are incentivized to role-play as economists of crimerelated data. Economists are not elevated to prestigious posts and high ofces for questioning the foundations of our economic system. They are rewarded for shaping “what works” within the confnes of a pre-existing (and hegemonic) system. The same critique applies to the historical genealogy of CCJ, and this shapes how and why our gang-specifc scholarship often fails to coherently describe and explain gangs in all their permutations. Instead, the issue tends to be anchored in either some defcit explanation—often implicitly racist and classist—or a technobureaucratic narrative of simply needing to adjust policies and funding streams here and there to optimize gang-related interventions. To be clear, scholars from a wide range of disciplinary traditions and subfelds have provided invaluable contributions to understanding CCJ-related phenomena, including gangs (see Durán, 2013; Fraser and Atkinson, 2014; Huerta and Rios-Aguilar, 2021). However, it is important to understand how gangs (in general) and MS-13 (in particular) are conceptualized and measured in formal CCJ outlets. Historically, the bulk of CCJ gang scholarship was dominated by raced, classed, and gendered discourses that “punched down”—where relatively powerful and privileged knowledge-brokers wrote about structurally disadvantaged and minoritized populations. Even well-intentioned portrayals replicated bourgeois value systems whereby the educated readers (a primarily white audience) learned about a distant and “savage” population (a primarily non-white and formally stigmatized group) residing in their midst. The person who formally studied and published manuscripts about gangs was seldom ever biographically proximate to gang-related life, stereotypes, or formal CJ involvement. Still today, gang studies (in CCJ proper) are advanced by mostly white, highly educated people making scientifc claims about nonwhite, lower education, men and boys, resulting in a deeply fawed—yet intellectually and politically legitimized—body of knowledge. There are critical exceptions to the rule, but the rule (i.e., trend) persists.6 Laundering socio-political and structural factors into pathological attributions (e.g., self-control; social bonds; subcultures of criminality), the onus is placed on the criminalized subject and not on the criminogenic social structure in which both cops and criminals play their respective roles.7 This is not a critique of any individual scholar or of past and present white guys who are the vanguard of CCJ gang studies. This should be understood as a structural critique of how identity and positionality shape the kinds of crime-related questions that one thinks are worth asking (see León, 2021b).

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Abstract empiricism in action Quantitative studies and hypothesis testing dominate the most visible portions of CCJ scholarship. At least in North America, outlets like Criminology and Criminology & Public Policy are comfortable homes for causal inferences and econometric gospel. Though the fetishization of quantitative methods is a critique that lies beyond the scope of our current focus (see Young, 2011; Mills, 1959), that trend nevertheless conditions the body of CCJ literature on gangs. In our own work, our research design was mixed methods, relying on instruments that yielded data for both qualitative and quantitative assessment. Yesenia’s testimony is just one example of the diferent kinds of challenges that come with qualitative inquiry, including the ethics and challenges of how to write other humans into being. From the palace intrigue of “dangerous feldwork” to the decisions made for transcribing and translating the voice of another person, there are countless ways to argue for the importance of refexivity in gang studies. For starters, privileged access is a form of professional capital. The self-serving allure and mystique of “dangerous feldwork” often replicates stigmatizing and reductionist views of the very things that are positioned as dangerous or exotic. “Journalist (or sociologist) goes deep into Dangerous Group territory and returns with nuggets of enlightenment.” What’s more, criminologists, sociologists, and anthropologists—among others—who focus on vulnerable populations or the consequences of human conficts are professionally rewarded for getting as close to the phenomena as possible (see Rozakou, 2019), and coming back with a publishable story. The group in question is not asked to evaluate the book or journal article. Instead, tenured and pedigreed professors are positioned as both the evaluators of quality and the target audience. Is it fair to only ofer gift cards to the people whose lives are captured by the researcher? Immersive or qualitative research designs on gangs, like immersive methods in other “dangerous settings,” can often reinforce or reduce people to the labels that were used to justify studying them in the frst place. From this position, CCJ gang scholarship must be understood as part of a broader social, political, and ideological backdrop. For most of its nascent history in CCJ, the subfeld of gang scholarship has aligned with state-centric, legalistic approaches to law, order, and governance. Gangs were violent problems that could be solved by pulling levers of governmental policy and power. Adopting the most hegemonic features of both Classical and Positivist criminology, deterrence-oriented models were paired with trait-based and community-based pathologies. Policy levers and iterations of swiftness, certainty, and severity of surveillance and control modalities were applied to populations whose personhood was marked by a criminal pathology. Major swaths of CCJ gang studies treated gang-related groups as dangerous entities to be controlled, and not as historical and sociopolitical creations of the state (see Ortiz, 2021). Major gangs, both on the street and in correctional settings, have an important historical genesis that is often left out of mainstream gang scholarship. California prison ofcials, for instance, beneftted from the creation of race-based gangs by formally segregating inmates according to their race. This long-standing practice, though challenged in 2005 by the US Supreme Court, became colloquially known as an example of a “divide and conquer” strategy—whereby inmates would be too preoccupied with inter-racial conficts to organize collectively against the system(s) that held them captive (Fortino, 2020; Hunt et al., 1993; Stoltze, 2008). MS-13, like the Bloods and the Crips, were formed as a direct function of racism, xenophobia, and structural inequality that left minoritized youth vulnerable to harm from both state actors (e.g., police) and other minoritized groups. Opportunities for prosocial youth clubs, particularly for young men and boys, were signifcantly conditioned by racist values, precluding the involvement of Black youth in fraternal, social, and developmental organizations occupied and administered by white people (see Alonso, 2004). Though there are ample reasons to

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avoid confating or consolidating Black experiences with those of other ethnic groups, there are similarities to be found in the structural drivers of gang formation. By examining diferent vectors through which power is confgured and communicated, MS-13 ofers criminologists a similar-but-diferent vehicle for examining the links between gang formation and state violence, state borders, and capitalist interests, as well as how class location, racial formation, and Latino masculinities are produced in institutional contexts. By identifying the state as a source of hegemony, and not as a neutral arbiter or a mere delivery mechanism of apolitical criminal justice policy, MS-13 also reveals intersections of gang-related crime with the “crimes of the powerful.”

Crimes of the powerful and gang studies reconsidered You know what gang violence is, mostly? [And the people don’t want you to hear this] If somebody shoots your family member Of course you retaliate, You know what I mean? Same thing the U.S does except nobody even shot their family members They see that, somebody bomb a school And all these people get killed So the United States feel like ooh that’s messed up We gotta go show em who tha real killers This country was built on gangs, you know I think this country still is run on gangs Republicans, Democrats, The Police Department, The FBI The CIA, those are gangs, you know what I mean The correctional ofcers I had a correctional ofcer tell me straight “We the biggest gang in New York state Straight up.” —Tupac, in “Revolution” (Shakur, web) A decade ago, Khalil Muhammad (2011) asked a simple yet incisive question: where did all the white criminals go? In the above lyrical except, Tupac problematizes the dominant ways of thinking about gangs. Muhammad, through archival and historical analysis, similarly problematizes the popular discourses about gangsters, mobsters, and organized crime actors: White mobsters and organized crime fgures experienced a sociopolitical clemency of sorts, whereby their violent and property-related crimes became increasingly romanticized, if not glamorized and venerated, as White ethnic groups (who were previously “othered” and racialized) were assimilating into the political boundaries of whiteness proper. In the above lyrical excerpt, Tupac Shakur ofers political critique and commentary on the fact that can be interpreted in all kinds of ways. For us, these lyrics point to how formal organizations are not all that diferent from gangs in terms of monopolizing markets both through violence and the threat of violence, and in terms of being organized according to hierarchies, visual aesthetics, and subcultures. But these lyrics are also consistent with Muhammad (2011)’s

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question: there is no inherent need to specify the racial composition of the groups being mentioned. It is assumed that the listener will know that the major political parties and agencies like the CIA will be white institutions, and the incarcerated population is a heavily racialized population. Between the time period of Muhammad’s study and the biographical time period of Tupac Shakur, the anti-Black and white supremacist features of crime control policy had become so pervasive that this lyrical excerpt does not need to contain references to race, though any reader (or listener) who knows the U.S. context will immediately know that the political critique of these lyrics unequivocally focuses on racial asymmetries of power and social control. Criminologists have made similar and diverse critiques like this before. The state has been studied as a source of gang-related problems, primarily through the formal labeling of individuals and groups via criminal law and gang-related policies (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004, 2009). But the roles of race, ethnicity, and citizenship are of particular importance for understanding MS-13. Latinos are generally considered to be “the largest proportion of any racial or ethnic group involved in gangs” (Durán and Campos, 2020: 1). Critical perspectives on state power, racialization, and the nuts and bolts of gang-related police interventions exist (Barak et al., 2020; Osuna, 2020) but as this volume suggests, the literature is often fragmented across the disciplines and subfelds of the researcher(s) and their targeted audience. Still, inasmuch as gangs have been linked to both labeling and structural factors (e.g., lack of educational and employment opportunities, high crime neighborhoods, and under-resourced communities), the role state criminality plays in producing gangs and furthering gang violence has generally been ignored. Indeed, neither the state’s role in legally and symbolically labeling individuals, communities, and places as “gang-involved” nor its absence, neglect, or overzealous policing captures the state’s role in creating, facilitating, and perpetuating gangs. Gang-related media coverage and public opinion has informed scholarship on moral panics and the continued justifcation of surveilling, policing, and punitively “cracking down” on gang-related phenomena (see Zatz, 1987). In the context of MS-13, Osuna (2020) specifcally argues that discourses about MS-13 refect “a byproduct of the capitalist state’s racialization process, which reinforces common-sense notions of criminality and evades critiques of capitalist social relations” (p. 5). In a general sense, we can think of “capitalist social relations” as a governing logic behind social stratifcation. What does this mean, practically? Phrases like “racial capitalist patriarchy” or “racial capitalism” become redundant once we understand that capital (and capitalism) fundamentally requires asymmetrical categories of personhood. In our actually existing form of capitalism, both race and gender have functioned as technologies of stratifcation, giving predictability and consistency to this hegemonic imperative. As emphasized throughout this volume, gang related labels, like the function of felony convictions, help to demarcate ingroup and out-group members of a political body. The cognitive ability to send weapons, soldiers, and both overt and covert intelligence resources to destabilize El Salvador in the name of fghting Communism is only possible through racist ideologies that dehumanize the targeted subject. When “the Commies” are non-white and separate from one’s primary identity group, the wanton violence and systematic homicide perpetrated against them becomes more articulable. The state, in this case, not only created conditions of violence and instability that resulted in mass migration to the United States but (through de jure and de facto racist laws and policies) also created conditions favorable to gang formation, and inter- and intra-gang violence. This volume ofers a timely intervention for viewing gang-related phenomena through an intersectional lens. For us, this also invites a more direct integration with perspectives and literature associated with “crimes of the powerful” literature. In the political center of CCJ scholarship, gangs should be understood as a byproduct of the harms perpetrated by the state in

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collaboration with other powerful actors against historically abused, exploited, and otherwise marginalized people in the interests of capital, power, and white supremacy. These harms include the violation of human rights (Green and Ward, 2004), as well as crime at the intersection of the state and business (Michalowski and Kramer, 2006) in connection with both the prison-industrial complex and broader processes of immigration controls and deportation regimes (Barak, 2021). In an efort to “unmask the crimes of the powerful,” Tombs and Whyte (2003) argue that: an adequate understanding of the harmful activities of the powerful necessitates an understanding of how those activities are produced, sustained, and given momentum by states. This requires a concrete appraisal of the expansion of the power of local, national, and international state structures, their ability to regulate markets, intervene and mediate in struggles within and between social groups, and ultimately their primary role in structuring social relations. (224) The state has been and continues to be a primary architect—and exporter—of violence, including but not limited to “the gang.” Locating portions of gang studies within the purview of crimes of the powerful not only illuminates the conditions that give rise to gangs but also reorients the focus of criminologists, policy makers, and the public toward the criminogenic sociopolitical structures, giving much to the historically dominant focus on the criminalized subject (i.e., the alleged and self-identifying gang member).

Transnationalism, MS-13, and state violence “Where were you born?” “In El Salvador.” “I was in the capital a couple years back.” “Really? In the capital, San Salvador?” “Yeah.” “It’s really fucked in El Salvador right now. Very dangerous.” “And what is your immigration status?” “I have residency.” “Did you enter with a visa or something like that?” “Mmhmm. Immigrant.” “How long have you been in the US?” “Five years.” “Have you ever been deported from the United States?” “Nah,” Yesenia pauses. “Not yet,” she adds, laughing. This is the frst of several references Yesenia makes to how her legal status is intimately connected to the criminal justice system.8 Just like the broader history of MS-13, Yesenia’s biography is shaped by migration policies, the political decisions of legislators, and the enforcement decisions of the state. “The government back in my county, it’s in crisis,” she points out, continuing, “Everything is expensive. Family (the gang) doesn’t provide . . . We have to charge rent.9 And if it’s not paid, we kill the person. That’s why so many come [feeing] from El Salvador. “And why did you come to the United States?”

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Yesenia was not exempt from the very processes she was describing. She had fed, and arguably still in the process of feeing. Fleeing MS-13’s rival, Barrio 18. Fleeing the Salvadoran police, who showed up at her home to arrest her. Fleeing the lifestyle of a gang member on the streets, at least for a time. “The laws in El Salvador are really tough right now,” Yesenia explains, before launching into an account of failed gang truces, extrajudicial killings, and police-gang warfare. “Look, in the year that I’ve been in here, they’ve killed eight of my ‘cousins.’ Well, they don’t know if it was the police or another gang. Others have wound up in prison. Of the MS-13 who are here [in the United States], some of them are on the run . . . to avoid jail. It’s not like jail here. [Over in El Salvador] it’s warped. They sleep on the foor together with the same Barrio 18 members they fought. Right there in jail people die. Some of them come running for their families, for their children if they have them. Sometimes they want to escape the gang, sometimes they want to reconnect with the gang. Sometimes it’s too late.” “They’re extorting a lot of people,” Yesenia continues, “And so, I ask myself, why did that kid come here feeing El Salvador? I, too, came here feeing El Salvador. It got me thinking that way. He had two months. His last day, a Friday, they killed him. He was waiting for the bus. And they didn’t do it with a knife. No, it was with bullets. Three people. One 17 years old, 18, and 20. He was on the run.” “Was he part of MS-13?” “No. Not at all. He worked . . . [The gang] wanted to kill him. He came here running. He didn’t even last a year, not even three or four months. [Following him from El Salvador,] they killed him.” These are just some of the realities that never make it onto coefcient tables or estimation equations.

Integrating “Critical” and “Applied” perspectives Intuitively, gangs are products of the state. Gangs, like the felon and the felony, are legally created before they can be said to exist. From our academic armchairs, the utility of these statements are not self-evident. In other words, critical scholarship on gangs retains the political burden of articulating why the critical perspective might also translate into “applied” or policy-oriented perspectives. CCJ inquiry on gangs, logistically speaking, will continue to be shaped by the politics and preferences of state actors, political football, and the monetary fows of governmental institutions. Our research on MS-13, for instance, was made possible only because the National Institute of Justice—among other entities—not only defned MS-13 as a “problem to be solved” but also allocated resources toward that end. (The NIJ funding opportunity was literally titled “Assessing the Transnational Capacity of MS-13 in the United States and El Salvador.”) This is consistent with the political constraints of criminological inquiry, where our research questions and approaches are signifcantly shaped by state entities (Michalowski, 2016). Critical scholarship tends to problematize and critique. Yet the parents of children and teenagers who have been murdered by other children or teenagers are not likely to beneft from scholarship that merely points out that gang labels are problematic. An intersectional and critical approach can and must be operationalized into addressing current and enduring threats to human life and public safety, which includes both structural harms (e.g., state violence, state-corporate harms) and interpersonal victimization (e.g., youth homicides, gang-associated violence). This perspective is not new, and scholars from across the political spectrum have called for focusing less on “gangs” and exclusively on violence that some might associate with gangs. This is consistent with literature that focuses on the real-world impact of gang-related social phenomena on

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cold hard facts about homicide and other forms of acute interpersonal violence (see Jensen and Thibodeaux, 2013).

Conclusion: improving the criminological gaze on gang-related phenomena There is a false dichotomy between “critical” and “policy-relevant” scholarship, as though the latter must somehow sell out in order to be politically palpable. We respectfully push back on this dichotomy. Given what we’ve learned about MS-13, how can these perspectives be translated into addressing real-world harms and improving the safety and security of variously situated publics? One important starting point is to understand Latino gangs as qualitatively distinctive from other ethnic and racialized groups. There are several reasons for this, including (1) the transnational and transjurisdictional nature of the larger Latino gang franchises; (2) the networks of inter- and intra-state coercion and control across geographic space10; and (3) the relationship between immigration policy, community policing, and violent prevention. All three of these considerations make for a challenging political and policy environment, and refect the broader consequences of tethering immigration controls to everyday criminal justice systems. Second, we need to recognize the need for a grounded, no-nonsense approach to describing what has happened in the past, and what is happening in the present. State agencies and state actors did X. Teenagers also committed Y, and a series of homicides are associated with the actions of group Z. Pointing out the relatively under-scrutinized systems associated with X does not invalidate or negate the concern for Y and Z. CCJ research on gangs could thus be improved by integrating XYZ and also explaining their persistence in a way that does not simply show statistical signifcance for theories that have delivered little other than academic prestige for insular careers. Third, another task is for researchers to take ownership of how and why their orientation to intersectionality fts, or fails to ft, their phenomena of interest. When race, class, and gender condition literally everything and our ways of interpreting and thinking, choices must be made for what a researcher focuses on and what is omitted or left on the cutting room foor. Taking an intersectional approach to gang studies, however, does not mean showing a table of distributions by race, class, and gender. It does involve a refexive acknowledgment that all qualitative data are negotiated through the bodies that we inhabit, and the identities and presentations of self that we bring to bear in any data collection environment. In addition to how qualitative data are collected, positionality also shapes how we analyze the transcriptions. Though this may be a newer practice for many criminologists, it is important for us to encourage our colleagues to share how they relate to their topic of study, the people and places involved, and their way of moving through epistemological terrain. This applies not only to qualitative scholars but also to all who make knowledge claims about other human beings.

Notes 1 Pseudonyms are used for people and places. 2 In the form of a couple boxes of donuts, or simply sugar mixed and matched with other sugars. 3 Subsequent economic instability and a series of natural disasters spurred additional Salvadoran migration to the United States, much of which was unauthorized (Coutin, 2007; Menjívar, 2006). Some unauthorized Salvadorans were eventually able to legalize their immigration status through Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a renewable nonimmigrant status designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security. TPS does not provide for a pathway to a “green card” or citizenship.

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4 The INS was dismantled in 2002 with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. It was superseded by three separate entities: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 5 Translated into English from “frm hand”—these initiatives, launched in the early 2000s, included “area sweeps and police—military patrols” and “a temporary Ley Antimaras (LAM; anti-gang law)—later declared unconstitutional—that sanctioned the arrest of suspected gang youths based on their physical traits” (Wolf, 2012: 191; see also Holland, 2013). Super Mano Dura is an iterative form of these repressive and militarized tactics. 6 Important exceptions, by way of example, include Panfl (2017)—who ofers robust empirics on queerness within gang culture and specifc gang members; and Gutierrez et al. (2020) for a contemporary examination of how female gang members negotiate privilege, power, and oppression within family and gang life. 7 For an example of how scholarship replicates the pathologizing of non-white youth while remaining tethered to theoretical traditions that fail to account for state violence, see Pyrooz et al. (2021). It is important to underscore that this is a structural critique and not a personal one. Phrased diferently, the individual scholars who do this kind of work are not the subject of critique, especially since we have been largely trained, molded, and co-opted to do the kind of scholarship that might bring material security (e.g., professional advancement). 8 Today, there are over 1.1  million Salvadorans living in the United States (Anastario et  al., 2015), of which approximately 730,000 lack authorization to be present (Baker, 2021). As such, Salvadorans comprise the second-largest undocumented population in the United States behind Mexicans (op. cit.). 9 “Renta,” or rent, is the slang term commonly used to refer to gang extortion fees (Neu, 2019). 10 Phrased diferently, the fact that there are a wide array of police and military forces, across diferent countries, that interact or engage with these larger Latino gang franchises.

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Zilberg, E. (2002). A troubled corner: The ruined and rebuilt environment of a Central American barrio in post-Rodney King Los Angeles. City and Society, IVX(2), 31–55. Zilberg, E. (2004). Fools banished from the Kingdom: Remapping geographies of gang violence between the Americas (Los Angeles and San Salvador). American Quarterly, 56(3), 759–777. Zilberg, E. (2007). Gangster in guerilla face. Anthropological Theory, 7, 37–57. Zilberg, E. (2011). Space of detention: The making of a transnational gang crisis between Los Angeles and San Salvador. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

7 EVOLUTION OF THE FOLK DEVIL Deconstructing claims about hybrid gangs Christian Bolden and Renee D. Lamphere

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to examine the validity of law enforcement claims regarding “hybrid gangs” through extant literature, history, theoretical debate, and in-depth interviews with gang members. More specifcally, the following argument engages the question of whether “hybrid gangs” are an unnecessary social construction. This chapter provides an orientation to the concept of hybrid gangs, followed by a theoretical discussion of social construction and moral panics. Finally, in-depth interviews with gang members taken in conjunction with historical information on gangs are used to assess the claims made by law enforcement about hybrid gangs. Regardless of the actual danger that gangs present, the perceived threat or problem that they represent is very real to the general public, leaving them susceptible to external infuence. As Klein (2006) pointed out, by vilifying gangs, law enforcement and prosecutors are given an opportunity to sway public opinion, and ultimately public fear, about gangs and gang members. Accordingly, whenever crime becomes a focus for a particular area, gangs are one of the easiest folk devils to blame. On a national level, the later part of the frst decade of the new millennium saw an increase in the number of gang members and gangs reported by law enforcement (Egley et al., 2010). This upswing coincided with a new purported reason to fear gangs—they had evolved into “hybrid gangs,” which, given that law enforcement were unfamiliar with this formulation, made them signifcantly more problematic. Thrasher (1927) frst discussed hybrid gangs as groups of mixed race/ethnicity. Currently, Starbuck et al. (2001) defne hybrid gangs as having: members of diferent racial/ethnic groups participating in a single gang, individuals participating in multiple gangs, unclear rules or codes of conduct, symbolic associations with more than one well-established gang (e.g., use of colors and grafti from diferent gangs), cooperation of rival gangs in criminal activity, and frequent mergers of small gangs. (Starbuck et al., 2004: 200) More and more law enforcement agencies began reporting this phenomenon, specifcally as characteristic of late-onset gangs or gangs that appeared in cities post-1990 (Starbuck et  al., 2001, 2004), and it began emerging in mainstream media. In 2008, the History Channel’s series

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-9

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Gangland aired an episode called “Sin City.” This episode, set in Las Vegas, Nevada, highlights hybrid gangs as an evolutionary advancement and emphatically states that multiple associations amongst gang members of diferent gangs is more deadly, but never explains why. Despite having no corollary verifcation of the new “hybrid gangs” in academic literature, the concept has shown up in textbooks and literature reviews (Hesse and Przemieniecki, 2021; Fox and Lane, 2010; Taylor, 2008; Yearwood and Rhyne, 2007) as an established variation of gang types. The elements of hybrid gangs have been documented by previous research in a piecemeal fashion well before their debut in the law enforcement lens, meaning the only thing that was actually new about these behaviors was the construction of them as more modern and threatening. McCorkle and Miethe (2002) argue that it is much easier to create concern about a new problem or new development than it is to maintain concern about a sustained problem. In this case the “gang problem” which may have been losing its luster, may have been bolstered by this new construction of gang evolution. What gets lost in the rhetoric about hybrid gangs is that the specifed behaviors are not in and of themselves threatening. The process of creating folk devils out of gang members bypasses the basic understanding that they are still humans and therefore subject to the same social processes as other people. Gang members do not exist in vacuums; they interact with people in their social arena who are often members of gangs other than their own in confict and cooperation (Bolden, 2014; Fleisher, 2002). Associations between members and the inclusion of afliates may confuse outside observers. Questions regarding who is actually a member of a gang or to which gang a person belongs cause considerable consternation for law enforcement. This is a direct result of long-standing disregard for the noncriminal attributes of gangs (Bolden, 2014; Fleisher, 2002). That gangs interact in non-confict situations has been documented in literature. Bolden (2014) provides an in-depth examination of relationships between gang members, fnding that most of those interviewed maintained positive relationships with rivals based on kinship, close friendship, romance, and casual acquaintance. Decker et al. (1998) also examined relationships among gangs. Studying 26 Gangster Disciples and 18 Latin Kings in Chicago, as well as 20 members of Logan Heights and 21 members of Lincoln Park Piru in San Diego, Decker et al. (1998) found that relationships with other gangs was very common. Although some would argue that gang alliances are brittle (Monti, 1993), they do not deny that gangs assist each other in varying ways. Research has also found the boundaries of some street gangs to be fuid and mutable. In San Antonio, eight out of 15 former gang members interviewed had switched gangs or belonged to multiple gangs and two gangs had switched their entire allegiance (Bolden, 2012). Although San Antonio agencies have reported gangs since the 1950s, the gangs appeared to have the same “hybrid” characteristics that were believed to be unique to emergent gangs. Weisel’s (2002) interviews portray mergers such as the Black Gangster Disciples forming from the combined gangs of the Black Disciples, Gangster Disciples, and High Supreme Gangsters. Interviews in San Diego also revealed that Logan splintered into “Logan Trece” and “Red Steps” as the gang grew larger and natural boundaries emerged. Unfortunately, more detailed information about these mergers and splinter groups was not provided. Spergel (1995) argues that splintering develops from internal competition or if more criminal opportunity becomes available. Decker and Van Winkle (1996) point to the rise of violence in causing splits. Monti (1993) argues that it is the lack of control over larger gangs that cause them to split, and that age-graded cliques are like gang building blocks that can merge, dissolve, and reassemble. Weisel (2002) views the process of merging and splintering through organizational theory, arguing that a path to organizational

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equilibrium explains why some groups dissipate and others break of from larger groups until a stable number of organizations is reached. This theoretical approach explicitly ignores the gang member worldview in favor of the assumption that gangs can be called organizations. It should be further noted that in cases where groups have identifable fgureheads, law enforcement often engage in R.I.C.O. prosecutions or tactics known as the “kingpin strategy,” or “cutting of the head of the snake,” which attempt to eliminate group leadership, ultimately resulting in leadership vacuums, group instability, internecine warfare, and splintering (Bolden, 2020: 26, Vargas, 2014, Jones, 2013). Smaller groups, on the other hand, tend to be ephemeral and temporary by structural nature, often dissolving and reassembling in diferent forms as part of co-ofending network ties (Ouellet et al., 2019).

Theoretical discussion Many theoretical standpoints exist concerning the origin and generation of gangs (e.g., Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; Klein, 2006; Taylor, 1990; Valdez, 2003). The focus here, however, is on the social processes of gangs and the representation of these processes by authority fgures. The contention is that gang members and their behaviors that would be considered positive, neutral, or innocuous if enacted by non-gang members, are deprecated in popular culture, through the discourse provided by law enforcement, and the media. Gang problems and more specifcally gang behaviors are represented as moral threats to society and this leads to overreaction in response to gangs. The concern over hybrid gangs as an evolved threat is disproportionate to any actual harm caused; therefore, a social constructionist perspective is used to discuss the “hybrid” gang phenomenon.

Social construction and moral panics Two of the primary schools of thought in the constructionist theoretical camp are the strict constructionists and contextual constructionist. For the strict constructionist, objective reality cannot be determined and the scientifc community has no better claim to reality than anyone else. The only thing to be studied from this perspective is how things come to be constructed (Aronson, 1984). For the contextual constructionist, objective threat or harm can be determined, but what is of import for research is whether the concern over the issue is disproportionate to any actual threat (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994). Since the behaviors of “hybrid” gangs can be assessed; a contextual constructionist framework is used in this analysis. According to several studies, gang threats are often socially constructed (Archbold and Meyer, 1999, McCorkle and Miethe, 1998; Meehan, 2000, Schaefer, 2002; Zatz, 1987). From a constructionist perspective, the only criteria for something to be considered a social problem, is that people defne it as such (Lowney, 2008). There is no objective standard to evaluate the identifed problem. For instance, though gangs have long been considered a social problem, the objective threat that they present is much more opaque. How is the gang problem evaluated? One could argue that it is measured by recording the number of gangs and gang members that are reported by law enforcement, but the fuctuation in reported numbers does not in itself represent more societal harm or an increased threat, nor is there a particular numerical bar set at which the gang threat becomes more or less of a problem. It is all based on how authorities represent the current situation, whatever that might be. To understand how gang issues are socially constructed, it is important to examine the relationship between law enforcement and gangs. Moral entrepreneurs, crusaders who insist that certain members of society are behaving immorally and, thus, should be punished, and rule

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enforcers, those who do the punishing, may really believe in what they are doing, or, their social position may be strongly invested in the maintenance of the panic (Becker, 1963). This process with law enforcement construction of gang behaviors is that they can be politically motivated, or result from police subcultural practices rather than academic information on gangs (Archbold and Meyer, 1999; McCorkle and Miethe, 1998; Zatz, 1987). Katz and Webb (2006) found that gang units were subjected to little direction and control. Ofcers were given extreme autonomy and minimal supervision. Most of the ofcers received little or no formal education or training, thus, many patrol ofcers were thrust into the investigative functions of the gang unit without prior knowledge or experience. Further, it was a common occurrence for these ofcers to be called on by judges or community leaders as expert advisors concerning gangs. According to Katz and Webb (2006), the testimony of gang unit ofcers was largely based on strong cultural beliefs rather than any informed, empirical data. It is of interest to understand how these strong cultural beliefs infuence the ofcial police data that is presented to and used by the media and academic researchers. Katz and Webb (2006) oppose the perspectives of Archbold and Meyer (1999), McCorkle and Miethe (1998), and Zatz (1987), who argue that gang units were created because of moral panics rather than objective threats. Katz and Webb (2006) reject the social constructionist perspective because they deem police data on number of gang members and number of gang-related crimes as objective criteria confrming an objective threat. The authors argue, however, that this objective threat was not what spurred the creation of gang units, rather, it was public and institutional pressure, as well as a mimetic process (Dimaggio and Powell, 1991), which suggests that in situations of uncertainty, organizations mimic the practices of similar organizations. Katz and Webb (2006) conclude that police data representing number of gang members and number of gang related crimes demonstrate an objective gang problem. This assertion operates under several unqualifed assumptions. First, extensive literature exists concerning the lack of consensus on what constitutes a gang or who a gang member is (Ball and Curry, 1995). Some police ofcers believe that the word gang is simply political rhetoric (Meehan, 2000). As discussed by Meehan, from the late 1970s to the 1990s in a mid-western town, police units that normally patrolled youth activities would gain the label of “gang unit” during election years, but the label would dissipate when the election year was over with, along with a declaration that the gang problem was resolved. Newspapers would subsequently report no gang problems in the following years, and the police would tell citizens that they could no longer meet the expense of responding to calls about youth disturbances in the neighborhood (Meehan, 2000). Katz and Webb (2006) never clarify how the units they studied defned gangs or gang members. A primary factor is the inclusion or exclusion of gang associates in the number of gang members, as the inclusion of associates could severely infate the number of gang members. Of the cities they studied, only Las Vegas made a clear distinction between gang members and associates when counting gang members. The number of gang members is partly determined by the subjective defnitional decisions that police departments make. Other than a footnote concerning associates, Katz and Webb (2006) do not address the issue of associates in establishing “objective” criteria. The ofcers and authors also used gang-related crime as objective criteria in demonstrating the reality of the gang problem, which is problematic. The determination of crime as gangrelated is subjective. Meehan’s (2000) analysis of calls to the police showed instances of citizens’ questionable labeling of gang activity, such as, a call about youth playing tag football under a street lamp being labeled as gang-related. Moreover, dispatchers labeled events as gang-related even when not designated as such by the caller. The inference is that law enforcement with

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duties involving gang activities may be more likely to subjectively label incidents as gang-related when, in fact, they are not. A signifcant efect on the numerical count of gang-related crimes occurs because of defnitional choice. Crimes defned as gang-related because a gang member committed them will result in a higher count than crimes defned as gang-related because they were gang-motivated. Maxson and Klein’s (1990) study of homicides in Los Angeles showed that using the gang-motivated defnition reduced the number of gang homicides by 50%. Ironically, Katz and Webb (2006) only discuss this as the reasoning that Albuquerque’s chief uses for not collecting data on gang-related crime, but do not address its relevance to their own criteria of objective measures. The authors do not discuss defnitional decisions of other units; therefore it is unknown to what extent gangrelated crime counts are boosted by defnition. Katz and Webb’s (2006) analysis revealed that there was no clear consensus or sophisticated measurement of the magnitude and nature of the gang problem. This supports the theoretical position that the gang problem is socially constructed. Meehan (2000) describes a situation where the community result of gang threat construction was largely benign, with police knowing that the gang problem was mythical and thus used tactics like “brooming,” which entailed making loitering youth move to other locations where people would not complain about them. In other cities, this was not the case. Schaefer’s (2002) study of Bloomington, Indiana for instance, describes the damage that moral panic can cause. After two men were arrested for selling drugs to college football players, Bloomington police were told by police departments of larger cities that the incident was indicative of gang migration. Outside law enforcement agencies informed Bloomington about grafti and clothing that were indicators of gang activity. Rather than using crime as an indicator of gang activity, the police presumed that the prevalence of certain types of clothes were indicative of increasing amounts of gang activity. The media has also been responsible for social construction of problems using apparel as an indicator in other locations (Ogle et al., 2003).

Constructing a gang problem Taking cultural climate and context into account also implies a relationship between gang problems and socially constructed reality. San Antonio, Texas has been identifed as having gang problems since at least the early 1900s, and solidly since the 1950s (Tapia, 2017; Klein, 1995). This would slate San Antonio as a chronic gang city. However, in the early 1990s, San Antonio ofcials applied for and were selected as one of the fve sites in Spergel’s Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Program, (Spergel et al., 2005) under the guise of being an emergent gang city. After the program was implemented it was discovered that San Antonio had many multi-generational gangs, which made little sense under a premise that an emergent gang city’s problems began post-1990. The discrepancy was glossed over with an explanation that San Antonio was a mix of a chronic gang city and an emergent gang city. Although gangs had existed for a signifcant amount of time in San Antonio prior to 1990, it is interesting to note that city ofcials began advertising the situation as a social problem during the era in which gangs were receiving national attention and federal money was being poured into anti-gang initiatives.

Moral panics Joel Best (2008) explains that when social problems organizations lose the interest of the general public they engage in a process of domain expansion, or creating new problems or more reasons that their organization is needed. McCorkle and Miethe (2002) argue that gang situations

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are taken a step further in the social problems process and placed into a category referred to as moral panics. Moral panics are distinguished from other social problems in that particular behaviors associated with certain groups of people become the focus; whether these behaviors are real or not does not matter so much as the belief that they are real (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994). As discussed by Jewkes (2004), young people are the usual target of moral panics, as their behavior is “regarded as a barometer to test the health or sickness of a society” (p. 67). Pearson (1983) argues that each generation tends to characterize specifc groups of youth as problematic, anti-social, and deviant. Originally illustrated by Cohen (1972) in his discussion of the public reaction to the fghting of two youth groups in Britain in the 1960s, a more recent example of subcultural moral panic is the law enforcement application of the label “hybrid gang” to the Juggalos, a musical subculture, whose behaviors may be considered objectionable or deviant by some, despite sparse evidence justifying the gang label (Prezemieniecki et al., 2020). These groups of people become demonized or “folk devils,” who begin to be seen as inherently negative; therefore, any positive attributes they may have are completely ignored and their behaviors become exclusively bad (Cohen, 1972; McCorkle and Miethe, 2002). In examining motifs of gang initiation rites in public discourse, Best and Hutchinson (1996) argue that false urban legends such as gang members hiding under cars and slashing ankles or killing people who fash lights at them, remain popular motifs because people prefer attributing random violence to clandestine sinister groups than actually acknowledging the mundane, rational reasons for people harming each other. Positive attributes or pro-social behaviors of gang members are usually ignored or bypassed with rhetorical arguments that any positive behavior is only a veil to hide more insidious intentions (Bolden, 2014). Even neutral or normal behaviors are described as pernicious attributes (Best and Hutchinson, 1996). This idea of hybrid gangs, for instance, indicates that gang members are just like most other members of society, in that they have relationships in multiple social circles. The second aspect of the moral panic is that the generated concern or anxiety about the situation is completely out of proportion to any objective threat that the focus of the anxiety may actually present (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994). In the case of hybrid gangs, the rhetoric that hybrid behaviors lead to more dangerous gangs is unfounded. The only major reported consequence of the situation is that law enforcement is unsure of how to categorize gang members. As gang members are easily depicted as folk devils, they are perceived as a moral enemy and therefore, increased and disproportionate hostility against the gang group occurs. The media plays an important role in disproportionate coverage of violent crimes and infammatory language that further dehumanizes the gang member (McCorkle and Miethe, 2002). However, the police are a particularly infuential “interest group” for the media, as patterns on crime reporting can be the instigator for a moral panic to occur (Hunt, 1997). Hall and colleagues observed that moral panic surrounding law and order is often originated in statements by the police, which are then magnifed by the media; therefore, the media does not create the news as much as it “reproduced and sustained” prevailing interpretations of it (Hall et al., 1978: 220). It appears that the media and the police have a symbiotic relationship in that the police are the sole crime defners and provide the media information for coverage of violence, leading to a frame of impending threat, ensuring public support of law enforcement. The fnal aspect of the moral panic is that levels of concern fuctuate over time. In Cohen’s (1972) original work on moral panics, they are viewed as short-lived episodes, fading away after months or weeks. However, some areas of concern, such as juvenile delinquency, have been present for decades if not centuries (Jewkes, 2004; Marsh and Melville, 2011). Anxiety and interest about gangs increased in the 1960s, around the time when a general panic about law and order was emerging (Hunt, 1997). This panic over gangs decreased in the 1970s, increased

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• Sole crime definers/ redefiners • Moral Entrepreneurs/Rule Enforcers • Gang Experts • Call for anti-gang policies based on unsupported claims

• Presentation of threat to the public • Sensationalized and dramatic claims • Reinforce subjective need of protection

Law Enforcement

Media

Gangs

Public

• Targeted disproportionally to actual threat • Folk Devil designation • All behaviors (i.e. hybrid) constructed as negative, insidious, or morally threatening

FIGURE 7.1

• Moral panic • Demand for protection • Fluctuation of interest

Interest Group Model of Moral Panic

again in the late 1980s and 1990s, decreased in early years after 2000, and increased again in the later years after the millennium. As discussed by Young (2009), it is the enduring nature of a moral panic that signifes their standing as a societal disruption. The reappearance of anxiety surrounding a deviant group over time confrms its status as a moral panic. Given all this, it seems that gangs as a social problem, and, more specifcally, hybrid gangs, ft quite well into the moral panic framework. While law enforcement may really believe in the moral rightness of their entrepreneurship, this stance coincides with strengthening their status positions in society. The role of police in being the sole defners of crime for the media results in the media presenting law enforcement beliefs as objective reality to the public. The public then panics, and support for strengthening law enforcement is gained. Meanwhile, regardless of the actual behaviors of gang members, they have already become iconic folk devils. When interest in the folk devil panic wanes, law enforcement must expand their domain or redefne the threat to renew interest.

Methods and data Behaviors identifed as concerning folk devils may have no objective threat, and the anxiety concerning these behaviors is disproportionate. According to the view of law enforcement practitioners, hybrid gangs are of concern because new alignments may form due to a proft motive; therefore, it is “crucial” to know the origins and rivalries of gangs, in particular Hispanic gangs, and it is important to have identifers for Asian gangs (Starbuck et al., 2001). Notably, even these “causes” for concern are not in and of themselves threatening. Previous literature and the current research identify alleged “hybrid” behaviors as regular parts of gang operation and direct results of gang social networks, not as an evolutionary advancement in gang behavior. The practice of socially constructing an issue revolves around the interest

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group making claims about a situation. The following theoretical analysis combines extant literature and historical information with an empirical study of 48 in-depth interviews with gang members in San Antonio, Texas, a chronic gang city, and Orlando, Florida, an emergent gang city. Twenty-six interviews were conducted in San Antonio, and 22 were conducted in Orlando. The two sites were chosen for comparative purposes. Twenty-four of the interviewees were gang migrants from other cities, including 13 from Los Angeles and Chicago, adding comparative value. In this study, gangs were recognized using the Eurogang defnition, “any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is a part of its group identity” (Klein, 2006: 4). The operational defnition was self-identifcation as a current or former gang member. The interview schedule included questions adapted from the Eurogang Youth Survey to verify that the interviewee was in a group that would be considered a street gang. Interviews were gained through respondent-driven sampling initiated by gatekeepers and through calls for participation given out at community colleges. Gatekeepers were responsible for setting up interviews, so that identifying information of the participants was not collected. Respondents were given a consent form and contact information for the principal investigator. Interviews occurred in public places like restaurants or at the respondent’s home if that was their preference. All interviews were audio taped and transcribed, and there was no compensation given for participation. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and 2 hours. The interview schedule was designed to examine hybrid gang behaviors from the perspective of gang members. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using an open-coding thematic system of fvepattern types—frequencies, structures, processes, causes, and consequences (Lofand and Lofland, 1995). The category relevant to this discussion is Processes, which are explanations of the order of elements that lead to structural components. The origin and extent of alleged hybrid gang behaviors were the only coded themes in this category.

Findings When the information on hybrid gangs as set forth in an OJJDP Juvenile Justice Bulletin (Starbuck et al., 2001) is compared against the fndings in this study, as well as against extant information on gangs, the validity of the entire concept of hybrid gangs is called into question. These behaviors have existed for generations and throughout geographical space, but have never before been deemed problematic. Assessing the claims about hybrid gangs reveals them as attempts toward a socially constructed moral panic.

Deconstructing hybrid claims Hybrid claim 1 Hybrid gangs are more frequently encountered in communities in which gang problems emerged during the 1990s than in localities that reported gang problems in the 1980s. (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004)

Counterpoint One of the sites in this study, San Antonio, has often been cited as a city with gang problems prior to 1980 (Klein, 1995). Yet the behavior of gang members in San Antonio concerning purported hybrid behaviors does not difer from that of gang members in Orlando, a late-onset gang city. Furthermore, the locality/time assessment would explicitly exclude the cities of gang

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origin, Los Angeles and Chicago. The 13 respondents in this study who were migrants from LA and Chicago reported the same gang behaviors in their cities of origin as what is being reported in other cities.

Hybrid claim 2 Hybrid gangs tend to have the following nontraditional gang features: They may or may not have an allegiance to a traditional gang color. In fact, much of the hybrid gang grafti in the United States is a composite of multiple gangs with conficting symbols. For example, Crip gang grafti painted in red (the color used by the rival Blood gang) would be unheard of in California but have occurred elsewhere in the hybrid gang culture. (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004)

Counterpoint Traditional gang features are never clearly defned. In the hybrid gang bulletin, it is stated that older gangs have age-graded cliques and subgroups and that Chicago gangs have rules and organization (Starbuck et al., 2001, 2004). It should be noted that all of the purported “diferences” in the hybrid gang compared to the more traditional gang have no relation to the aforementioned features of older gangs, making the phrase “nontraditional gang features” untenable. There is also the assumption that everyone knows what “traditional” gang colors are, which is again erroneous since there are several Crip and Blood sets in Los Angeles that do use colors other than blue or red to represent their gang. The Grape Street Watts Crips use purple (Leet et al., 2000: 66), Shot Gun Crips use green, Long Beach Rolling 1920s Crips use yellow and black, Neighborhood Crips and Avenue Crips use baby blue, Crips in the “Gangster Card” alliance use gray, Santana Blocc Compton Crips use black, and Fudge Town Mafa Crips use brown. Blood groups in the Los Angeles area can also vary colors with some Piru Bloods using burgundy and Tree Top Piru and Lime Hood Piru using green (Leet et al., 2000: 67). The relevance of what color gang grafti is painted is also questionable.

Hybrid claim 3 Local gangs may adopt the symbols of large gangs in more than one city. For example, a locally based gang named after the Los Angeles Bloods may also use symbols from the Chicago People Nation, such as fve-pointed stars and downward-pointed pitchforks/Youth often “cut and paste” bits of Hollywood’s media images and big city gang lore into new local versions of nationally known gangs with which they may claim afliation. (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004)

Counterpoint The Blood/Crip afliations originate in California. The Folk/People afliations originated in Chicago, and in much of the remainder of the US gangs symbolically represent both afliation systems. Rather than the assumption that youth are cutting and pasting, the use of multiple symbols actually makes logical sense since these areas include gangs of several types of afliations. For instance, in New York, the two most dominant gangs in the 1990s were the United Blood Nation, and the Latin Kings (People). If other areas in the United States include gangs of diferent afliation systems, then ways of recognizing who is friend and who is foe needs to be adapted; therefore, multiple symbols will be represented.

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The Black P Stone Nation (BPSN) is considered the original People nation gang in Chicago. There are actually two BPSN gangs in the Los Angeles area. The Black P Stone-Cities in the West Adams area and the Black P Stone-Jungles in Baldwin Village developed in the late 1960s/early 1970s (pre-hybrid era). Although they were generated from the Chicago BPSN, the Blood/Crip afliation was becoming the dominant system in LA, and these groups adapted and eventually became Blood gangs (Jah and Shah’Keyah, 1995: 203–230). All of the Blood and Crip gangs from the east coast (New York/Florida) and most of the ones in Texas use symbols either supporting or disrespecting groups in the People and Folk afliations. Rather than “cutting and pasting,” it could be that gangs have very logical reasons for mixing symbols. When these gang systems coexist in an area, they will encounter each other. Both positive and negative relationships will form, so the mixing of gang cultures is to be expected. Beyond using symbols, there were two gangs represented in interviews from the current study with heritage from both the Los Angeles and Chicago systems. “Hoover Folk” was derived in New York. Caribe explains that his OG from California started the Hoover set in New York. They took on a folk afliation. You see, the dude I ran with, he had a blue fag all of the time, so when I questioned him, he said he was Hoover, with a Crip afliation, but it is not Crip, it is Folk. While this may at frst seem contradictory, Caribe is explaining that his OG had a Crip afliation, but the gang in New York was Folk. In a broader context, Caribe places the origin of the set in New York in the mid-1990s. It was around this time that many of the Hoovers in Los Angeles dropped their Crip afliation leaving them free to do as they liked. Boxer explains that his group migrated from Chicago to Texas. In Chicago, the Mickey Cobras are a People nation gang. Entrance into a new arena necessitates adaptation. I mean we are an out of state gang, so I mean, we coming into another territory. First thing we did, you understand, we make allies with people who are real of course. The Mickey Cobras’ colors are red and black (Leet et al., 2000: 267), so it was not much of a stretch for them to adapt in a similar fashion as their Black P Stone relatives in Los Angeles did before them. The Mickey Cobras changed to the Texas Cobras and became Bloods.

Hybrid claim 4 Existing gangs may change their names or suddenly merge with other gangs to form new ones. (Starbuck et al., 2001, 2004)

Counterpoint Here again history is being ignored in favor of the assumption that this does not occur in chronic gang cities. In the Los Angeles area, after decades of warfare with other Crip gangs, several groups in the well-known Hoover Crip Gangsters dropped the Crip afliation, changed their name to Hoover Criminal Gangsters and began wearing orange instead of blue. Also the Acacia Blocc Compton Crips, Spook Town Compton Crips, and Farm Dog Compton Crips merged to become the ATF Compton Crips. Furthermore some of the major gangs in Chicago formed through smaller gangs merging. Examples of this would be the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, which was a merger of the Black Disciples, Gangster Disciples, and High Supreme Gangsters,

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back in the 1970s (Weisel, 2002) and the Black P Stone Nation, which was also a merger of several smaller gangs (Leet et al., 2000).

Hybrid claim 5 Gang members may change their afliation from one gang to another/it is not uncommon for a gang member to claim multiple afliations, sometimes involving rival gangs. For example, in Kansas City, MO, police may encounter an admitted Blood gang member who is also known in the St. Louis, MO area as a member of the Black Gangster Disciples gang/Gang members who relocate from California to the Midwest may align themselves with a local gang that has no ties to their original gang. (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004)

Counterpoint As with the previous claims, these statements sufer from assuming that these behaviors are not par for course in the life of gang members regardless of where they come from. When a gang member moves to a new city or area, his or her gang may not be in existence in the new place. Indeed, as many gang members are youth and, therefore, at the mercy of where their parents or guardians choose to move, they may fnd themselves in a neighborhood inhabited by a rival gang. Instead of sufering a certain negative fate, the gang member eventually falls in with the group in that neighborhood. Whether the individual ofcially switches gangs or not is an empirical question, but may be of little importance, because if they get caught committing crime with this current gang, law enforcement may assume that they are now a part of the group. The gang members interviewed in this study were well aware of this phenomenon and the likelihood of switching gang associations due to moving. Stixx (San Antonio):

Yeah, like if one guy used to bang one thing back in the day, let’s say he was a King, and then he ended up moving to a neighborhood and ended up being a Blood, you would call that a transformer, which he would still be down, but he wouldn’t have the same respect or the back of all of us here. ***

Slick (Chicago):

People do it. That is a, what was that, we used to call that a crusero, a crosser. That could get you killed. So a few people did it. Those who did it, basically did it out of necessity, as they had to, you know they moved into a diferent area. ***

Jenga (Los Angeles):

You know it is kind of hard for somebody like that because we kind of know that you can’t really be out there in full uniform, you know out there with your big old black pants, your white t-shirt, you know gang banging out there cause you’re out there by yourself in somebody else’s neighborhood. You can’t really be posted up . . . you are going to get your house shot up, with your parents, you know get your mom killed or something.

***

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Usually if you in that one set you stay in that one set, unless like if you move from state to state since they don’t have that same set, so maybe you drop that one and move to another one just because that set doesn’t exist where you are at?

Curly (Orlando):

*** I: Prince (Chicago/San Antonio):

Have you been a part of more than one gang? In Chicago no, I  was strictly a Latin King, but when I  moved to Texas, there was a group of Kings that I  did clique with. When I moved back down here, yes. ***

Aztec (San Antonio/Los Angeles): I: Aztec:

Well in Los Angeles, East LA, I  used to be from 21 2 Choppers. At what age did you frst join? Over there, when I was 19, but here in San Antonio, I was from the Alazon-Apache Courts and from here, I started at 11 years old.

The premise of hybrid gangs is that these behaviors are new and found in emerging gang cities. However, the interviewees representing chronic and emergent gang cities indicate the presence of gang switching behavior in both. Respondents indicate that gangs may not always be transferable, but gang status can be transferred when moving to a new area. At the time of the interview, Aztec was 59 years old, which would put his entrance into the diferent gangs in the 1960s. Even in that era, this situation was occurring. While moving seemed to be the primary scenario that resulted in gang switching, the process also occurred in conjunction with incarceration or gang politics. Joker (Chicago/Orlando):

It happens, it happens quite a lot, especially when you go to jail. A  lot of people fip fop when they go to jail. A  person, it’s, it’s kinda, kinda understandable at times cause if you are supposed to belong to that family and you went to jail for something that you did for the family . . . and the family won’t help bond you out. That is when people fip fop. That’s when people start recruiting, be like “What? They left you alone in here like that? Just come over here, we’ll take care of you, and that’s when people start fip fopping real quick.”

*** Hoops (San Antonio):

This guy, who was originally from the East Terrace (Crip) and he moved down here to Skyline and his cousin was living here and also a member of the group, so since he moved out here, with his cousin, he

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started claiming Skyline . . . He ended up getting locked up again and fipped and became ABC, you know Altadena. In Chicago, gangs are known to switch afliations (Delaney, 2006: 188) and doing so is acceptable in specifed situations. Stripe who was an original member of the Latin Dragons, describes how and why he switched to the Insane Unknowns. The hierarchy of command of the Dragons got killed, the top leader. And there was a battle going on with them and a group that was an ally to the Dragons. And they started fghting with them, which was a majority of them in the penitentiary . . . and the guys in the street decided to change their afliations and their allies (from People to Folk) because the Latin Kings were starting to fght with them and they had issue with that. Unfortunately, we weren’t standing for that behind the wall (in the penitentiary), but they went and did it. There was a term where you could have the opportunity to leave the group or change afliation or do whatever you needed to do. I chose to opt out and change my afliation and left the Latin Dragons because they were turning Folks. These accounts clearly indicate that, in specifed situations, switching gangs is common, and somewhat expected, but there is nothing to indicate that this behavior is limited to “hybrid gangs” in emergent cities. If the inter-gang social networks are taken into account, it may also explain gang switching, merging, and multiple associations as well. Caribe:

There was a set called 8 Ball and they were Crips and they fell apart. I don’t know what happened to those dudes, but then my O.G. took them in. ***

I: Jet:

So you said you were a part of a couple of diferent groups. How did that happen? Me being a part of them, well I was only a part of really one, well, it was kind of difcult. I was mainly a Blood, I’m a Blood, and I got along with all Bloods in diferent Blood gangs, you know BSV (Blood Stone Villain), BTP (Big Time Players), and then all kinds of diferent Blood gangs. ***

I: Spider:

Have other members been a part of more than one gang? Yeah, I am pretty sure they did, especially with, like with the, your own particular group, like Bloods in general, the afliation, you get so much intermingling that it almost doesn’t matter which particular set you are a part of. I am sure it was the same with the Crips too, because like you would run into a group of Crips and they would all be diferent things. One would be ABC (Altadena Blocc Crip), one would be Tray-Five-Seven, one would be Grape Street, you know but they are together and so, I’m sure that the lines just blur. ***

I: Jenga:

Is this the only group that you’ve ever been a part of? (laughs) You know, I was kind of asking myself that question when I started hanging around West Side Wilmas. Because I wasn’t really going around Torrance, I didn’t really want to go

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over there, you know all my friends were in jail, you know for big things, they weren’t gonna be getting out any time soon so I’m not gonna go over there and start hanging out with a bunch of youngsters who don’t know anything about what the gang was founded on or anything like that . . . I started hanging around West Side Wilmas, but I never really changed cliques. I never really said I was gonna be from here.

Hybrid claim 6 Members of rival gangs from Chicago or Los Angeles frequently cooperate in criminal activity in other parts of the country. (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004)

Counterpoint Like many of the other claims about “hybrid gangs” this seems to be true at frst glance. Indeed, several respondents in this study indicated that this phenomenon did occur. The error here is again assuming that these behaviors are new and that they do not happen in chronic gang cities. Take for instance the following respondent who discusses peaceful relationships between Bloods and Crips. Rocket:

We repped Bloods but we had a certain Crip group that you know we were cool with and we weren’t . . . you know “Oh Bloods against Crips” all the time. But you know we had certain people we chilled with, we accepted more groups. We were a Blood group but you know we accepted Crips, we accepted some other Bloods . . . we tied fags (made peace) you know with some Crips and stuf like that, you know, there were other groups in school but for the most part we stuck together and we basically looked out for each other.

Calling this a new or diferent phenomenon explicitly ignores the countless gang truces, such as the long-standing truce between Bloods and Crips in Watts, California, and joint projects among gang members in both Los Angeles and Chicago. Rok of the Black P Stones (People) in Chicago also describes working with rival groups. Rok:

I: Rok I: Rok:

As far as our relationship with allies, the allies that we had, we had some Latin King allies, we had Vice Lord allies, and we had some BD, Black Disciple allies. We were a real close-knit family-type organization whereas we try to secure our contacts and connects with each other, and we would get together and have parties together, things like that. Talking about groups you were friendly with, you mentioned either Black Gangsters or Black Disciples. Which one was it? :Black Disciples Aren’t they Folks? Yeah

Hybrid claim 7 Although many gangs continue to be based on race/ethnicity, many of them are increasingly diverse in both race/ethnicity and gender. Seemingly strange associations may form, such as between Skinheads, whose members frequently espouse racist rhetoric, and Crips, whose members are predominately African-American. (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004)

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Counterpoint Of all the claims about “hybrid gangs” this one is the least contentious, as indeed it is true to Thrasher’s (1927) original conception of hybrid gangs. The implication that Skinheads dealing with African-Americans would be unusual is suspect and may be an outside observer’s oversimplifcation of events. Not all skinheads are racist. Indeed, non-racist skinheads far outnumber racist skinheads in most of the United States (Leet et al., 2000: 135). As previously stated, the change in racial/ethnic make-up is a claim of less dispute, and is given statistical support from the National Youth Gang Center Report (2000). The increase in gender diversity is harder to assess, as it has been continuously argued that law enforcement have always ignored or underestimated the population and involvement of female gang members (Moore and Hagedorn, 2001; Esbensen et al., 2004). The respondents in this study were varied in their perception of demographic changes in the gang landscape. Table 7.1 gives an overview of racial/ethnic and gender diversity in the gangs represented among the interviewees. Gangs of mixed race/ethnicity had a greater presence in Orlando, the emerging gang city, but gang members from both cities indicated that female gang members were very much a part of the gang composition. From examining historical context, it becomes apparent that the hybrid gang, as presented in law enforcement rhetoric, is a socially constructed concept based on a lack of awareness about gang behavior. Six of the seven claims about hybrid gangs are faulty in that the behaviors are not new, do not indicate gang evolution, and are common behaviors of gangs throughout time and geographic space. The seventh claim concerning racial/ethnic and gender diversity in gangs may have more validity, but the question of whether or not law enforcement simply ignored female gang members before still remains. Furthermore, racial and ethnic diversity in gangs may simply be a result of a more modern era with less segregation, more cultural difusion, and more mobility amongst people of all races. The concept of “hybrid gangs” does not hold up very well under empirical, historical, and logical scrutiny. A  greater understanding of gang processes may be discovered if researchers venture beyond etic methodology and its socially constructed concepts. Modern gang members have been accused of cutting and pasting media images (Starbuck et al., 2001: 5, 2004), but it literally seems as if it is the outside observers, particularly law enforcement agents, that are buying into these images and constructing defnitions that narrowly ft into ideas of what gangs are “supposed” to be like. These socially constructed defnitions have little to no relevance for actual gang members other than the resulting treatment by law enforcement. Previous literature implies that police and media socially construct gang problems (Archbold and Meyer, 1999; Cohen, 1972; McCorkle and Miethe, 2002; Meehan, 2000), internalizing subcultural beliefs about the subjects and extemporizing these beliefs by claiming to be experts on the topics. The danger here is that the law enforcement entities have power to afect social systems and are TABLE 7.1 Gang Diversity

Gang had racial/ethnic diversity Gang had gender diversity Women were associates only Notable increase in white members Few or no white members

Orlando, FL N = 22

San Antonio, TX N = 26

50% 64% 23% 40% 55%

38% 69% 19% 35% 54%

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infuential in getting other people to internalize their ideas, making beliefs real in their consequences (Berger and Luckmann, 1996). The categorization of gang members has become a futile exercise and misdirected emphasis of law enforcement. “Because of uncertainty in reporting on problem groups such as “cliques,” “crews,” “posses,” and other nontraditional collectives that may be hybrid gangs, some police department staf spend an inordinate amount of time trying to precisely categorize local groups’/’Because these independent gangs can be the most difcult to classify, they frequently pose the biggest problems for local law enforcement” (Starbuck et al., 2001: 3; 5)

However, Starbuck et al. (2001) suggest, “[i]t is vitally important for law enforcement to concentrate on gang-related criminal activity rather than on more ephemeral aspects of gang afliation and demographics (p. 6).” If classifcation is necessary at all, it would be more prudently focused on actual behavior and not on obscure colors and symbols (Joyce, 2016). The use of new socially constructed moral panics, such as the hybrid gang, only undergirds the same societal doctrine that things are getting worse and harsher penalties are needed to deter these new threats. The empirical reality, however, is that these issues are not new, and not localized; they are as they have always been. The media and law enforcement social constructions are not the only culprits in this. The social sciences have often neglected both the examination of social processes in favor of studying the criminality of gangs, and the qualitative study of gangs in general. The resulting complete reliance on quantitative assessments of police data on gangs creates the implication that the research community already knows everything about gang processes and is sure of that knowledge. The underlying question from this exercise is “do we really know what we think we know?” More studies designed to attain the gang member’s viewpoint may potentially provide alternate understandings and create critical theoretical debate.

Compliance with ethical standards Funding: This research was funded by an award from the Eurogang Program Young Scholars. Ethical Approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This research was approved by the University of Central Florida Institutional Review Board.

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PART III

Intersectional gang studies

8 GANG AS A PROXY FOR RACE How the criminal justice system uses “gang” to reinforce oppression in minority communities Jennifer M. Ortiz

Introduction The trope of gang members as inherently violent and animalistic is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of the United States’ citizenry (Smiley, 2021; Brotherton, 2015). The overwhelmingly negative view of gangs leads to the infiction of structural violence against gang members, regardless of their individual involvement in crime (Ortiz, 2018; Rios, 2011). The criminal justice system utilizes the stereotype to justify the harassment, arrest, and imprisonment of marginalized individuals, regardless of whether the individuals are actual gang members. “Gang” has become a blanket explanation for society’s ills (Brotherton, 2015) and subsequently serves as a mechanism for further subjugating marginalized populations, especially lower-income communities, and communities of color (Muniz, 2014). This chapter utilizes data from interviews with gang members in the Northeastern United States to illustrate how the term “gang” is utilized by the criminal justice system to perpetuate oppression within communities of color.

Literature review Extensive literature assesses the efect of race, age, and gender on individual experiences in the criminal justice system. For example, it is well documented that Black people experience higher rates of contact with the police (New York Civil Liberties Union, 2011; Lundman and Kaufman, 2003), disproportionate arrest rates (Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2013), receive more punitive plea bargains (Kutateladze et al., 2014), and are incarcerated at higher rates than any other race or ethnicity (Mauer and King, 2007). The efect of age on experiences within the criminal justice system is also evident in the research. In some jurisdictions, age serves as an aggravating factor when determining sentence length, which subsequently compounds racial disparities (Franklin, 2010). Gender diferences in criminal justice are also well documented in the literature. Men constitute most individuals at all stages of the criminal justice process (Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2013). Furthermore, although studies indicate that women generally receive shorter sentences than men (Bontrager et al., 2013), women are often subjected to physical and sexual violence at the hands of criminal justice actors (Ritchie, 2017). Largely missing from the discussions of demographic variables and experiences in the criminal justice system is a discussion of the efect of the gang member label.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-11

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While gang membership is not traditionally considered a demographic category, the “gang” label has been used by the criminal justice system as a proxy for race (Muniz, 2014) and thus is also an important demographic to explore. Gang as a proxy for race is most evident in law enforcement’s hesitancy or refusal to label collectives of white individuals as gangs even if they are engaged in group-based violence (Valasik and Reid, 2020). Moreover, gang databases are comprised almost exclusively of non-white individuals, regardless of the demographic composition of the jurisdiction (Johnson, 2020; Valasik and Reid, 2020). The use of gang as a proxy for race is further reinforced by the media, which often refuses to categorize predominately white groups as gangs (Linnemann and McClanahan, 2017). Moreover, when criminal justice practices such as stop-and-frisk are deemed unconstitutional due to the disproportionate impact on people of color, law enforcement utilizes the gang label to continue implementing their racist policies (Howell, 2015). When situated within a critical race theory lens, it becomes evident how the term gang allows criminal justice ofcials and politicians to criminalize communities of color while claiming race-neutrality despite the racially disparate impact of their policies. Critical race theory “challenges the ways in which race and racial power are constructed and represented in American legal culture, and more generally in society as a whole” (Crenshaw et al., 1995: xiiv). The theory asserts that racism is the natural order of life in the United States (Asch, 2001) because it permeates social institutions. Historically, US politicians have weaponized the criminal justice system against the non-white population. Throughout American history, the government has developed peculiar institutions to control and oppress marginalized populations with a specifc focus on the Black citizenry (Wacquant, 2001). People of color, particularly Black men, have historically been the targets of these institutions (Alexander, 2011). People in positions of power have utilized the criminal justice system to reinforce and protect the oppressive institutions. Each time one peculiar institution failed to control the Black population, the United States developed a new institution to replace the previous one (Wacquant, 2000) and utilized the criminal justice system to reinforce the oppressive institution. Politicians capitalized on racial fears to justify the expansion of the criminal justice system (Barkan and Cohn, 2005) as a mechanism for subjugating people of color (Alexander, 2011; Chowdhury and Butler, 2020). Thus, the criminal justice system serves as a tool of white supremacy. Because the criminal justice system promotes white supremacy via the subordination of people of color (Brewer and Heitzeg, 2008), we should view the criminal justice system as an “instrument for preserving the status quo” (Bell, 1995: 302). Thus, we should analyze how the system and its actors fnd “innovative” ways to bypass laws aimed at curbing racial inequality. One such mechanism for disguising the racialized impact of the system is by utilizing the term gang to invoke fear and garner support for oppressive laws including the criminalization of African American culture through the gang narrative (Aprahamian, 2019; Williams, 2015). The lifestyles and behaviors of gangs and gang members have been demonized and criminalized by society. Criminalization is “the process by which styles and behaviors are rendered deviant and treated with shame, exclusion, punishment, and incarceration” (Rios, 2011: xiv). An example of criminalizing gang behavior or lifestyles is evident in the 1992 Chicago’s Gang Congregation Ordinance. This legislation authorized police ofcers to disperse any group of two or more people if the ofcer believed one of the individuals was a gang member. Any individual who disobeyed an ofcer’s order could be arrested and sentenced to six months incarceration and a $500 fne. Although eventually deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, in the three years the law was active the Chicago Police Department arrested 42,000 individuals (Walker et  al., 2012). Although race neutral in its wording, the racialized impact of Chicago’s ordinance and police gang practices remains evident in Chicago’s gang

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database, which consists of 95.7% people of color (Valasik and Reid, 2020). In other words, the ordinance allowed police to target gangs, which became a mechanism for harassing people of color and labelling them gang members in ofcial criminal justice databases. In addition to legislation that allows the police to target noncriminal behavior, some jurisdictions have criminalized clothing styles such as “sagging” pants (Heckler, 2007), which empowers police to stop and harass men of color (May and Goldsmith, 2018) regardless of gang membership. These laws are an example of how the criminal justice system has attempted to portray African American culture as synonymous with gang culture (Aprahamian, 2019) to justify the creation of laws that on the surface appear race-neutral but in practice lead to the disproportionate targeting of communities of color. Many states have also implemented sentence enhancement statutes that apply only to gang afliated individuals hence criminalizing membership, a behavior that in itself is not criminal. California, for example, has implemented a series of legislation aimed at punishing gang members for a variety of “ofenses” including visiting certain neighborhoods (Rios, 2011). These laws, which criminalize harmless behavior and disproportionally afect people of color, are part of a process of othering (Young, 1999) that further perpetuates oppression and marginalization among communities of color and lower-income communities. Young (1999) posited that we live in an exclusive society that identifes an “other” that is subsequently demonized. The “other” is viewed as inherently inferior to the powerful groups in society. Once demonized the group is ostracized from mainstream society, subjected to structural violence in the form of poverty and social exclusion, and mistreated by members of social institutions, particularly criminal justice ofcials. When the group responds to this structural violence with criminality their behavior is used to reinforce the initial stereotype and further justify the structural violence used against them (Young, 1999). The dominant group’s demonization of the “other” group is reinforced and exacerbated. Gangs are a prime example of “othering” in American society. For decades there has existed a moral panic around the presence of gangs in the United States (Brotherton, 2015). Gang imagery is developed that portrays gang members as violent folk devils (Cohen, 1972) who are tearing at the moral fabric of society. The misnomer that gangs are inherently violent and are destroying the peace within society is perpetuated by various social institutions. The media and law enforcement have jointly exaggerated the extent of gang membership and violence to fuel the tough-on-crime narrative used to justify oppressive policies (Hallsworth, 2011). Selfdescribed gang “experts,” who are largely dependent on government agencies for research funding, reinforce this misguided narrative thereby, providing the criminal justice system with the statistical “evidence” necessary to perpetuate oppression (Ortiz, 2021). The collusion between researchers and criminal justice ofcials has resulted in a criminal justice narrative that is preoccupied with attributing large-scale violence and crime to gang members even though gangs do not drive crime rates (Greene and Pranis, 2007). “Essentially, the stereotyping of gang-related inner-city populations is a favored practice of societal elites and the politicians and scribes who serve their interests, as they seek social space from and cultural control over, the ‘dangerous class’” (Brotherton, 2015: 125). The acceptance and promotion of the gang trope subsequently lead to the weaponization of the criminal justice system against perceived gang members. Law enforcement departments have developed gang units who target gangs through the federal Racketeer Infuence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). RICO allows district attorneys to prosecute any member afliated with a gang for crimes committed by other members. This policy has resulted in gang “sweeps” across the United States that criminalize individuals for actions they did not commit regardless of their gang involvement. In one RICO sweep the

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Federal Bureau of Investigations arrested 120 alleged gang members in New York City. However, a review of the arrests and indictments found that only 50% of those individuals were gang members (Howell and Bustamente, 2019), which means that 50–60 individuals were arrested and prosecuted based on where they lived (i.e., an impoverished community of color) and who they associated with, not their actual involvement in criminal behavior. This troubling practice has detrimental efects on these individuals lives as they become subjected to the over 40,000 collateral consequences of a criminal record. Once incarcerated, gang members (real or alleged) are subjected to housing in gang units (Ortiz, 2018) and inhumane stints in solitary confnement (Kassel, 1998; Pyrooz and Mitchell, 2020). Upon release individuals are again subjected to oppressive policing policies (Moore, 1991; Rios, 2011), which now appear justifed, and the endless cycle of oppression continues. The present paper explores this cycle of oppression by examining how the criminal justice system is weaponized against gang-afliated individuals to ensure they remain trapped in a cycle of incarceration, economic marginalization, and exclusion from societal institutions.

Methods Data collection The data for this chapter was derived from a larger qualitative comparative analysis of prison and street gangs. The data collection occurred in the form of 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals in the New England area. These individuals served sentences in various jurisdictions including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, the Federal correctional system, and Puerto Rico. The sample ranged in age from 19 to 57 and served between 4 months and 15 years in correctional facilities. Respondent driven sampling was used to acquire the interviews. The researcher worked with formerly incarcerated individuals and non-for-profts to locate the initial participants who then assisted in locating the remainder of the sample. Twenty-one of the 30 interviews were audio recorded and nine of the interviews were documented using interview notes. Interviews were conducted at various locations chosen by the participants and ranged in length from 30 minutes to over two hours. Interview questions centered on individual experiences with membership in prison and street gangs.

Data analysis Recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and interview notes were typed immediately following each interview. The transcriptions and notes were analyzed using the qualitative software package Atlas Ti. The initial data analysis phase utilized the listening guide strategy (Maxwell and Miller, 2007) which entails reading interview transcripts multiple times and discerning diferent information during each reading. The initial reading forms a detailed summary of the interview. Subsequent readings address the various research questions in a study. For this study, the researcher conducted four additional readings, one for each stage of the criminal justice process. The secondary analysis phase entailed line-by-line coding, a method of deducing copious amounts of qualitative data into smaller key terms. This method involves the development of words or phrases “that symbolically assign a summative . . . attribute for a portion of languagebased or visual data” (Saldana, 2012: 2). Upon completion of coding the researcher utilized thematic analysis to locate and develop common themes across the data. Thematic analysis involves locating similar codes or trends in the data and collapsing these codes into large themes or fndings (Bernard and Ryan, 2009).

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Findings This section presents a description of the key fndings or themes that emerged from the data. The frst theme presents a discussion of societal perceptions of gangs as described by the respondents, which serves as a basis for understanding the subsequent themes. Each subsequent theme will focus on the efect of gang membership or perceived gang membership on individual experiences within the criminal justice system, beginning with police interactions and ending with eforts to reenter society post-incarceration.

“Gang Ain’t in My Dictionary” Participants in this study exhibited an overall aversion to the term gang. They asserted that the term had developed a negative connotation and was used by members of society to justify the mistreatment of gang members. Individuals believed that society dehumanized them through the gang label. Tyrone, a 28-year-old who had served eight years in prison, stated, [Society] calls us a gang because the word gang intensifes hatred. It gives you the sense of “these criminals.” It gives you that sense of negativity. Other respondents asserted that outsiders held misconceptions of gangs that were afected by media portrayals of gangs. George, a member of the United Blood Nation, believed that society viewed gangs as inherently violent because that was the only image portrayed in the media. Mike, a 34-year-old member of the United Blood Nation who served six years in a correctional facility, spoke to the media’s negative portrayals of gangs and their unwillingness to acknowledge any positive aspects of these organizations. Even when we did good [things] like cleaning up gardens all [the media] ever talked about was shooting and drugs. It’s like no matter what we did that’s what they would talk about. Of course, everybody else is gonna look at us like thugs, that’s all they see on TV. The media’s role in the othering of gangs is also well documented the gang research (Brotherton and Barrios, 2004). The efect of the media driven perception of gang members as inherently evil is evident in legislation (Hallsworth, 2011). As noted earlier, most states utilize gang membership as an aggravating factor when determining sentence lengths. In states with gang enhancement statutes, a gang afliated or labeled individual will receive a longer sentence than a non-gang afliated individual for the same ofense. For example, after declaring a state of crisis over street gangs in 1987, California enacted the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP) which “required longer sentences for ofenders recognized as gang members” (Rios, 2011: 33). Although STEP is race-neutral in its wording, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) data reveal that 92% of individuals with gang enhancements are people of color (Clayton, 2019). Enhancement statutes exist in 49 states and the federal system (National Gang Center, 2022). While no study has evaluated the racial impact of these laws at the national level, based on California’s data we can extrapolate that these enhancements have racially disparate impacts in other jurisdictions. In keeping with the “gangs as terrorist” narrative, New York State passed a terrorism statute following the events of 11 September 2001. Although the statute was meant to address political terrorism, the frst individual tried and convicted under this new statute was a gang member

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(Williams, 2006). The Bronx District Attorney, Robert Johnson asserted “the terror perpetrated by gangs, which all too often occurs on the streets of New York, also fts squarely within the scope of this statute” (quoted in Williams, 2006). Although the sentence was overturned on appeal, the Bronx District Attorney’s justifcation for using the statute revealed the detrimental efect of the narratives surrounding gang members. To equate impoverished youth who join gangs due to social and economic marginalization (Taylor, 2013) with terrorists allows the state to enact violence against youth of color with the full support of its citizenry. For example, in 2010, Oakland California doubled down on the use of anti-gang legislation by imposing a gang injunction that authorized police ofcers to arrest “known” gang members “for noncriminal acts, such as associating with other labeled gang members or visiting a neighborhood” (Rios, 2011: 34). Similar to the Chicago Gang Ordinance, the Oakland law stripped people of color of their right to exist in certain areas and it empowered police ofcers to use violence against youth of color in all interactions. The police use of violence against alleged gang members is evident in study participants’ experiences with law enforcement.

Gang members and the police Once ofcially labeled “gang-afliated” or “gang-associated” by a gang unit or a police department, individuals are subjected to harassment and violence. Luis explained how the police held negative perceptions of individuals in his neighborhood, particularly gang members. So [the police] treat us like we scum basically. [They say] “Like that’s all y’all know is trouble. So, we gonna come aggressive at you every single time. And if we could do anything to get y’all of this block or this neighborhood, we will.” Hector reinforced this idea and described violence used against him and other gang members. [Police] catch you walking across the street, “Hey you come here.” They know you’re not selling drugs. It’s just the fact that you be out here with your boys . . . They will slam you against the wall and they’ll choke you . . . They wanna abuse their power. Luis and Hector’s experiences mirror those of individuals living in areas with gang ordinances. The law emboldens ofcers to abuse marginalized individuals who have little to no social or fnancial capital to challenge law enforcement’s violence. Violence was also described by George who recalled an incident where police attempted to cause him physical harm by arresting him, driving to rival gang territory, and releasing him. I was in my hood one time. Cops just snatched me up and dropped me of in a place where I’m not supposed to be at . . . We was in a group, [the police arrived] and everybody ran. So, I ran too. I got caught but I had no drugs. So, since they knew I ran and I had no drugs, that was their pay back, dropping me of somewhere where they know something’s gonna happen to me. Here again we see how law enforcement engages in extralegal punishment against gang members. The practice of placing gang members into rival gang territory in an attempt to cause harm or death has been documented in other cities in the United States (Lait and Glover, 2002; Edward, 2011). Several gang members were murdered as a result of this unofcial, unethical

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police practice (see Lait and Glover, 2002; Bentham, 2014 for examples). This behavior occurs because police ofcers know they will not face repercussions for their illegal actions because of the negative stereotypes of gang members. Because society has long since dehumanized gang members the ofcers feel justifed in their behavior. If a gang member is murdered, the media will focus on their gang membership rather than their humanity, the ofcer’s behavior will be deemed justifed and the public will rejoice. Respondents also described police ofcers who issued unjustifed tickets and completed unjustifed arrests. Reggie described an incident where he was harassed by a police ofcer for simply riding a bicycle. The ofcer stopped Reggie because he believed Reggie could not aford the bicycle he was riding and used that belief as probable cause to stop-and-frisk Reggie. I was riding my bike home . . . I got stopped. [The ofcer] looked up my state book (criminal record fle) and saw I was a Blood . . . since he couldn’t actually hit me with stealing the bike, he gave me a ticket. I’m like, ‘Brah, for real? In court, the ticket was dismissed, but the hearing caused Reggie to miss work and resulted in the loss of a full day’s salary. In Reggie’s narrative, we see how the gang label leads to harassment and subsequent economic loss. Another incident of unjustifed police harassment resulted in an individual spending two years in a local jail while battling false charges due to his refusal to provide police with information on the whereabouts of a gang leader. This respondent, who was unwilling to have his voice recorded for fear of repercussions from the police, lost two years of his life awaiting trial for an ofense he did not commit. During these two years, he was evicted from his apartment and fred from his place of employment. The process was the punishment for this individual because the incarceration led to psychological trauma and fnancial loss simply for refusing to provide information to law enforcement. Richard discussed this law enforcement approach to the acquisition of information about known or suspected gang leaders. It got to the point that [the police would] fnd something and put it on you. Like it may not be yours, but if they fnd something near you, they’re going to put it on you . . . They put a gun on me the frst time I got locked up. They picked me because I was in a gang [and] I was known in that city. Anything that came up in that area they came after me . . . So, I got locked up and [the police] came to visit me and told me “Tell us who [name redacted] is or we gonna make you go away for a long time.” Police ofcers feel justifed in their use of illegal tactics because of the societal reaction to gang members. The public believes gangs are the primary cause of crime (Greene and Pranis, 2007) so when gang members are arrested there is a sense of justice or accomplishment. Whether or not the individual is guilty becomes irrelevant. Further, because most police departments are allowed to police themselves, ofcers are keenly aware of their ability to make complaints about harassment disappear. David described the following encounter with the police: I went to get a bottle [of liquor] and some groceries for me and my [girlfriend] for dinner. I see my boy by the liquor store and gave him a pound (handshake). Next thing I know two pigs jump out a DT’s (unmarked) car and throw us up against the wall. They threw my bags on the foor, bottle my broke, my fucking broccoli is in the sewer. I’m pissed . . . I went to the precinct to fle a report. They laughed at me. One ofcer told me “Get the fuck out of here before I fnd a reason to arrest you.”

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Given the legal precedents that allow for the harassment of alleged gang members and the lack of punishment for ofcers who violate civil rights, David’s story should not come as a surprise. The gang trope “justifes” the abuse. The harassment and abuse of gang members is perhaps even more egregious when the individuals who experience harassment are not actual gang members but rather have been mislabeled by law enforcement. Respondents discussed how an individual could be labeled gang-afliated based solely on their neighborhood of residence. One respondent described how the color of one’s clothing afected how police responded to an individual. Police see you. You got on red, you got on any color, red, purple, blue, they automatically think you part of a gang just because of the area you’re in. My area is populated mostly by Bloods so [if the police] see you wearing red on, they just automatically think you’re a Blood . . . They automatically think you selling drugs [or] got a gun on you. And my area’s like, right by the precinct. So, we got to deal with it all day. Individuals were also mislabeled based on the afliations of their family members. As Richard explains, It got to the point my mother had to go to internal afairs on them [the police], because they would roll up and [search] me or my little sister, and she ain’t even in a gang. Sometimes an individual could be labeled in police records based on something as trivial as a single photo taken by a police gang unit. Rios’ (2011) work revealed similar fndings. He wrote, To compound the problem, sloppy gang labeling by law enforcement—which will include a young man in the database on the slightest provocation, such as wearing a certain color, dressing a certain way, or associating with known gang members—has become a serious danger for racialized youth. (Rios, 2011: 33) Furthermore, evaluations of gang databases fnd they often contain misinformation and do not have an impact on crime (Carhart, 2021). Individuals are often mislabeled and have no remedy for removing their name from the database. Mislabeling can afect someone’s sentence. For example, a California law titled Proposition 21 allows individuals to be prosecuted for crimes committed by members of their organization even if the individual did not directly participate in the criminal act. Hence, someone who has been identifed as a gang member by the police can face imprisonment without committing a criminal act. In some jurisdictions, being placed in a gang database may render a person ineligible for victims’ services if they are victims of crime (Anderson, 2014), which means that the individual may have no remedy for the psychological pain and fnancial loss they experience. Police harassment of people of color who reside in “gang neighborhoods” is a prime example of how gang as a proxy for race leads to economic and social marginalization of communities of color. Mislabeling of individuals by the police is especially detrimental because these labels are attached to individual arrest records and can afect a person’s incarcerated experiences.

Gang members and incarceration The gang member label afects classifcation within correctional facilities. Correctional facilities use gang afliation during classifcation to determine placement in a facility (Winterdyk

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and Ruddell, 2010). In many institutions, individuals who are gang members are classifed into higher security level facilities regardless of commitment ofense. Therefore, nonviolent ofenders may be housed in maximum security facilities based solely on their gang member status. Tyrone described his frst experience with classifcation: When I went to prison the frst time, I had no violent crimes on my jacket. I didn’t have any violent crimes on my record. But they sent me to [a maximum-security facility] which is [known as] gladiator school. This is where all the fghts break out. This is where it happens . . . You don’t have a choice. They classify you based on whether or not you’re in a gang. That’s it. That’s the only thing they use to classify you. This classifcation policy is problematic because “studies provide no clear empirical link between gang membership and prison violence” (Skarbek, 2014: 98). The assumption that a gang member will commit violent acts while incarcerated and therefore, warrants classifcation into a maximum-security facility is not rooted in substantiated facts but rather in stereotypical views of gang members. In addition to determining security level, gang membership can determine an individual’s unit placement within a facility. Gang members may be placed in a gang specifc unit where they interact with other members of their respective organizations. Placement among members of the prison-arm of a street gang can prove problematic for the individual. The prison version of a gang may vary from its street counterpart (Ortiz, 2018). Some research suggests that prison gangs are qualitatively and quantitatively diferent from street gangs (Fleisher and Decker, 2001). Ortiz (2018) found that prison gangs have diferent membership requirements than street versions of the same gang. As a result, prison gang members may not recognize an individual’s street-level membership and may require the individual to commit a criminal act to earn membership in the prison gang. David, a 33-year-old member of the Latin Kings who served six years in a correctional facility, described his experience with the prison version of his street gang. [In prison] I wasn’t a real King because according to what they told me, the guy who crowned me was not a Corona [leader] . . . According to them, he wasn’t a Corona so in order for me to be part of the Latin Kings I was given a kite. A kite is a note you get in prison. You get this little note, and it tells you what to do. You read it, tear it up, fush it, burn it, whatever you want so there’s no evidence. I read it and choose not to. I choose not to do it. So, there were consequences and repercussions. I was beaten by the Kings; I was raped by the Kings and then I was stripped (having membership removed) by the Kings. David was sexually assaulted for a period of six months. The correctional ofcers in his unit were aware of the abuse and found David in his cell bleeding from his rectum on several occasions. According to David, the correctional ofcers had an informal agreement with the Latin Kings that they would not transfer David out of the gang unit. After six months David was fnally moved out of the cell block however, instead of being moved to another unit within the facility he was placed in solitary confnement for nine months. At the end of the nine-month period David was returned to the very same unit where he had been sexually assaulted. According to David, the facility was unable to move him to another unit because of his street gang afliation. While some respondents, like David, were housed in a unit “unofcially” controlled by their own organization, other respondents entered designated “gang units.” In some facilities, gang members are housed in designated gang units that house all members of diferent gangs including known rival gangs. In New Jersey, these units are called Security

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Threat Group Management Units. These units are segregated from the facility’s general population. In order for an inmate in a gang unit to enter general population they must renounce their gang membership and “debrief ” (i.e., provide authorities with information about their organization). Gang members who debriefed were returned to general population. However, some gangs developed mechanisms to circumvent anyone’s attempt to successfully debrief. Once a debriefed individual returned to general population, the gang would send a kite informing the individual of their promotion to a new rank in the organization. The kite would be intercepted by correctional ofcers who would then return the “debriefed” individual to the gang unit under the belief that the inmate lied in an attempt to enter general population. When the inmate returned to the gang unit, they were victimized. Tyrone described this process: You [debriefed], something that you aren’t supposed to do. Now you’re paying for it. They’re gonna stab you up. So how do you feel now that they stabbed you up? You don’t want to be right there with them. But when you get out of ICU, you bring your ass back to the unit . . . You’re gonna come back. You ain’t gonna feel comfortable but you gonna come back because you a [gang] member. Because incoming gang members were made aware of potential subsequent retaliation, few inmates attempted to debrief. Therefore, the institutional rules forced gang members to serve their entire sentences in gang units. These units often experience stricter security measures, including limited access to rehabilitative programming (Winterdyk and Ruddell, 2010). In addition to violence at the hands of inmates in the gang unit, individuals must also contend with abuse by correctional ofcers. Correctional ofcers within gang units often exploit the vulnerable positions of the gang afliated inmates. The exploitation involved coercing inmates to sell contraband such as cell phones and narcotics by preying on inmates who did not receive commissary. The worst exploitative measure in gang units is the use of physical violence. Several participants recalled stories where correctional ofcers utilized gang members to assault or “punish” other gang members both within their own gangs and across rival gangs. Clarence described his experiences with correctional ofcer sanctioned inmate-on-inmate violence. So, on a tier you got eighty people in one tier . . . about seventy-fve will be gang banging. Then you got [correctional ofcers] that can’t control everybody, so they’ll pick out the two gang leaders, make them tier reps. They tell the tier rep, I want these people locked up, I want the chow area cleaned, I want this that and the third done. So, the gang members will do that just for maybe a sandwich or a soda or just to let them stay out on the unit a little longer . . . If its people acting up on this tier, the CO will go somewhere and get the gang member leader, bring ‘em back, [and tell them] “Yo, you gotta handle him. Beat him up” and the gang member will beat him up. Correctional ofcers also use an inmate’s gang afliation to harm the individual. Jason, a 29-yearold who served over four years in a correctional facility, was physically assaulted by rival gang members after an altercation with correctional ofcers. This C.O. was acting like an asshole, so I called him a bitch and walked away. He ain’t say shit to me. Next day, I’m in my cell and I hear my door [unlock]. I knew something was up ‘cause it wasn’t my time for rec or chow. Then seven Crips rush me and shank me. Then they bounce and I’m just there bleeding. I ain’t do shit to these dudes. As I stumbled out, I seen the asshole CO just standing in the [command station] smiling.

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Jason spent several months recovering from his wounds only to be returned to the same gang unit where he was assaulted. Jason’s story highlights two key issues. First, it illustrates the dehumanization of inmates by correctional staf. Secondly, it sheds light on the disastrous efect of gang classifcation systems. Similar to law enforcement, correctional ofcers are confdent they will not face disciplinary actions for their misconduct. The ofcers are emboldened to use institutional policies to engage in extralegal punishment. The current methods of classifcation for gang members are harmful because they place gang afliated individuals at risk of physical and sexual violence, which is exacerbated when discussing individuals who police mislabeled as gang members. Mislabeled individuals housed within gang units are placed in a precarious position. The individual must choose between joining the gang or becoming a victim of the gang. Hector’s story best illustrates this experience. Hector was unafliated when he entered a facility at the age of 17. The correctional institution placed him in a gang unit due to police misidentifcation. A police gang unit labeled Hector a gang member because they observed him associating with his brother, a known gang member. For the frst several weeks of Hector’s confnement his brother’s gang protected him and provided him with small commissary items such as toiletries. However, after one month, the gang informed Hector that he would have to join the organization to continue receiving protection. Although he had no desire to join a gang, the institutional policies placed Hector in a precarious situation. Debriefng was not possible because he did not possess information with which to provide the ofcers. He also could not avoid joining a gang while residing in a gang unit because he feared victimization. Left with no options, Hector joined his brother’s gang. Although he was unwilling to state the specifc act he committed to join the gang, he did acknowledge that he “had to get violent” to earn his membership. Hector’s story illustrates the danger associated with police misidentifcation and prison classifcation. Individuals labelled as gang members may experience more violence at the hands of other inmates and correctional ofcers. They also sufer from a lack of programming due to classifcation levels (Ortiz and Jackey, 2019). Refusal to provide programming in gang units makes the incarcerated individuals less prepared for reentry and more likely to recidivate (Taxman et al., 2014). Once they recidivate their mistreatment is viewed as “justifed” and the cycle of othering continues.

Efect of the gang label post incarceration The diferential experiences between gang labeled inmates and non-gang afliated inmates extend beyond the prison walls to the reentry phase of the criminal justice process (Smiley, 2021). Extensive research illustrates the difculties experienced by formerly incarcerated individuals attempting to reenter society. Gang members, however, experience two unique obstacles to their reentry: gang specifc parole restrictions and the inability to “do right.” Parole conditions are draconian and often have detrimental efects on parolees (Thompkins, 2010; Ortiz and Wrigley, 2022). Perhaps the most adverse efect of parole is revocations for technical violations. A parolee can be returned to incarceration for failing to abide by minor conditions of their parole such as missing curfew or consuming alcohol, otherwise noncriminal ofenses (Lin et al., 2010). Parole conditions often include a “no-afliation” clause that prohibits parolees from associating with individuals who have criminal records. Gang members are disproportionately impacted by the no-afliation clause of parole. Because most parolees are released to the same area from which they were arrested, the “no-afliation” clause proved problematic for many respondents. Clarence described receiving a parole violation because he possessed clothing that matched the color of his organization. He stated, “I got violated for owning red

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clothes. My [parole ofcer] straight came in my house and took my clothes and gave me 30 days.” Respondents would violate the no afliation clause simply by exiting their place of residence because it was impossible to venture outdoors without encountering an individual with gang membership or a criminal record. They could not ignore the individuals they encountered because these individuals might perceive it as a sign of disrespect that warranted retaliation. Left with no options, they associated with gang members. Other conditions of parole also place gang afliated individuals in a precarious situation. Participants in the study described an inability to “do right” (abide by societal norms) because of restrictive parole conditions. Reggie successfully found employment after his incarceration. He described how he was delighted to have found a part-time job stocking shelves at a local grocery store. He stated, “It wasn’t much but it was a job.” He informed his employer of his parole status, as required. However, Reggie did not inform the employer that he was a gang member. When his parole ofcer made an unscheduled visit to his place of employment, the parole ofcer divulged to the store owner that the participant was a gang member. The employer subsequently fred him. In Reggie’s experience we can see how the gang label leads to economic marginalization even when the individual is attempting to reestablish a “law-abiding” lifestyle. The second component of the “Do right” theme centers on the fear of subsequent police contact. Gang afliated individuals lived in constant fear of police contact because any contact with law enforcement could result in a parole violation. Now that the individuals were labeled as both gang members and felons, the police subjected them to even further harassment. Police gang units targeted these individuals when conducting neighborhood patrols or criminal investigations, which elicited a sense of fear and frustration whenever individuals ventured outside. Antonio described his situation as follows: “I be outside, and the police harass me. I get picked up for [something minor] like loitering. Now I  get violated .  .  . No matter what I  do, I’m wrong.” Participants described being afraid to travel within their own neighborhoods because ofcers would make random stops and fnd justifcations for arresting them. The respondents were keenly aware that they could be “stopped and searched for no reason, and . . . arrested for noncriminal transgressions such as hanging out with [their] friends” (Rios, 2011: 45). As a result, simple tasks such as grocery shopping or traveling to work evoked a sense of fear within the individuals. Tony described the fear he felt while walking to the grocery store located several hundred feet from his home: If I want a sandwich I gotta go to the bodega (corner store) up the block . . . It’s crazy though . . . I mean, the whole time [I’m walking] I’m looking over my shoulder ‘cause I’m scared to death that some pig (police ofcer) gonna roll up on me for no reason, that today gon’ be the day that I get locked up for doing nothing, for getting a fucking sandwich . . . for being me. I mean, to them, I’m just a thug, a gang member, a fucking low life . . . And they gon’ fnd a reason to lock me up, one way or another. And that sandwich might just be the reason. The fear experienced while on parole brought the gang member experience with the criminal justice system full circle. The cycle that began with police harassment continues with increased police surveillance and harassment. Only now the police can justify their behavior because the individual is “just a thug.” Subsequently, the racialized fear of the “thug” that is deeply embedded in the American collective conscious and that has been historically used to oppress men of color (Smiley and Fakunle, 2016) is further reinforced. The respondent’s experiences highlight how criminal justice policies and practices lead to the marginalization and oppression of entire communities of color (Clear, 2007) through the othering (Young, 1999) of gang members.

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Gang laws and enforcement strategies lead to labelling, arrest, incarceration, and the neverending marginalization of people of color. The policing of gangs translates into the disruption and fragmentation of communities of color (Flores, 2021) and thus, we must analyze the gang label and its subsequent efects as race-based structural violence. The never-ending cycle of oppression and marginalization of entire communities of color.

Discussion The respondents’ narratives and subsequent diferential treatment refect the concept of “othering” (Young, 1999) that is driven by racism embedded within the criminal justice system. Young posited that we live in an exclusive society that develops an “other” that is subsequently demonized. The “other” is viewed as inherently inferior to the powerful groups in society. Once demonized the group is ostracized from mainstream society, subjected to structural violence in the form of poverty and social exclusion, and mistreated by members of social institutions, particularly law enforcement ofcials. When the group responds to this structural violence with criminality their subsequent behavior is used to reinforce the initial stereotype and further justify the structural violence used against them. People of color, especially the Black population, have been othered throughout US history. Beginning with the institution of slavery and culminating with mass incarceration (Wacquant, 2001), the othering of communities of color is woven into the moral fabric of America. All social institutions from education to incarceration within the United States have a history of racism that cannot be detached from modern practices. The data presented in this chapter illustrate how the term gang, which serves as a proxy for race, is used to justify the marginalization and oppression of communities of color. The respondents’ experiences indicate that negative stereotypes, media portrayals of gang members, and subsequent labelling of these individuals is used throughout the criminal justice system to warrant extralegal punishment. Gang members experience harassment by the police, more punitive sanctions, classifcation diferences once incarcerated, violence and exploitation within correctional facilities, and difculties successfully reentering society due to parole restrictions and police harassment. The individual experiences systematic, structural violence at the hands of the criminal justice system based on their membership in organizations that have long since been demonized by society (Brotherton, 2015). Respondents described being harassed because of their afliation and experiencing wrongful arrests and physical violence at the hands of police ofcers. Police gang units often misidentifed some individuals as gang members based on trivial factors such as clothing color. Police ofcers also threatened gang members who were unwilling to provide information regarding leaders of their organizations. Once arrested for an ofense the individuals entered correctional facilities where they were classifed into higher security level units because of their membership regardless of arresting or convicting ofense. Some respondents were housed in gang units and segregated from the general population. Respondents who were not gang members when they entered a facility but were placed in gang units due to misidentifcation by the police, were forced to join an organization for survival. Once incarcerated and classifed, respondents began to experience structural and physical violence at the hands of correctional staf. Individuals who disrespected ofcers would fnd themselves at the receiving end of physical violence meted out by rival gang members and sanctioned by correctional staf. Ofcers also exploited the vulnerable positions of these individuals who did not receive commissary funds from outside family members. In addition to the mistreatment and exploitation by correctional staf, incarcerated gang members were unable to shed

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their gang membership because of formal institutional policies that mandated debriefng and informal policies or agreements between gang members and correctional staf that ensured gang members who provided information on their organization would experience physical or sexual victimization. Moreover, these individuals were denied programming, which placed them at a disadvantage upon their release. Respondents also experienced mistreatment post-incarceration. Upon release from a correctional facility the respondents faced great adversity when attempting to reenter society. Most individuals were released on parole, which placed unrealistic conditions on the individual. The parole conditions hindered successful reentry by destroying job prospects and reinforcing the police harassment experienced by these individuals. The respondents’ experiences resulted in the development of a stigmatic label. The negative experiences and diferential treatment of gang members in the criminal justice system have long-lasting efects on the individual. Once labeled the individual is unable to ever shed the stigma associated with their label. In the case of my respondents, not only is the stigma associated with being a gang member permanently afxed to the individual, but it is also used to justify both structural and physical violence by criminal justice actors. The gang member is no longer perceived as human but rather as a demon, a pariah, and the source of societal ills. In turn, society feels justifed in mistreating and abusing these individuals via the criminal justice system. The racialized impact of the labeling, othering, and demonization of gang members is evident in society’s diferential treatment of organized crime among white groups (Valasik and Reid, 2020), the racialized nature of gang databases (Aba-Onu et al., 2010; Duran, 2013; Howell, 2015), and the disparate use of sentencing enhancements against people of color (Clayton, 2019). Although some researchers may argue that gang is not a proxy for race, the research on racial attitudes supports the idea. Maeder and Burdett’s (2013) study of mock juries found that jurors only provided longer sentences for gang membership if the accused was non-white. Moreover, the criminal justice system’s hesitance to label white groups as gangs (Valasik and Reid, 2020) and the racialized nature of gang databases illustrate that society views gang members as people of color and thus, gang is proxy for race. Utilizing gang instead of race allows society and the criminal justice to perpetuate oppression against communities of color without being accused of racism. However, the reality remains that as long as gangs are viewed as a “communities of color” problem, we will continue to see the system justify its racism without ever having to mention race.

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Kassel, P. (1998). The gang crackdown in Massachusetts’ prisons: Arbitrary and harsh treatment can only make matters worse. New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confnement, 24(1), 37–64. Kutateladze, B., Tymas, W., & Crowley, M. (2014). Race and prosecution in Manhattan. New York, NY: Vera Institute of Justice. Retrieved from www.vera.org/sites/default/fles/resources/downloads/race-andprosecution-manhattan-summary.pdf Lait, M., & Glover, S. (2002, December 8). Ofcers linked to death of teen. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2002/dec/08/local/me-cops Lin, J., Grattet, R., & Petersilia, J. (2010) ‘Back-end sentencing’ and reimprisonment: Individual, organizational, and community predictors of parole sanctioning decisions. Criminology, 48(3), 759–93. Linnemann, T.,  & McClanahan, B. (2017). From ‘flth’ and ‘insanity’ to ‘peaceful moral watchdogs’: Police, news media, and the gang label. Crime Media Culture, 13(3), 295–313. https://doi. org/10.1177/1741659016647435 Lundman, R. J., & Kaufman, R. L. (2003). Driving while black: Efects of race, ethnicity, and gender on citizen self-reports of trafc stops and police actions. Criminology, 41(1), 195–220. Maeder, E. M., & Burdett, J. (2013). The combined efect of defendant race and alleged gang afliation on Mock Juror decision-making. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 20(2), 188–201. https://doi.org/10.1 080/13218719.2011.633330 Mauer, M., & King, R. S. (2007). Uneven justice: State rates of incarceration by race and ethnicity. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Maxwell, J., & Miller, B. (2007). Categorizing and connecting strategies in qualitative data analysis. In P. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Emergent research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. May, R. A. B., & Goldsmith, P. R. (2018). Dress codes and racial discrimination in urban nightclubs. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 4(4), 555–566. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649217743772 Moore, J. (1991). Going down to the barrio: Homeboys and homegirls in change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Muniz, A. (2014). Maintaining racial boundaries: Criminalization, neighborhood context, and the origins of gang injunctions, Social Problems, 61(2), 216–236. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2014.12095 National Gang Center. (2022). Highlights of gang-related legislation. Department of Justice. Retrieved June 20, 2022, from https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/legislation/highlights New York Civil Liberties Union. (2011). Stop and frisk 2011: NYCLU briefng. Retrieved from www. nyclu.org/fles/publications/NYCLU_2011_Stop-and-Frisk_Report.pdfs Ortiz, J. (2018). Gangs and environment: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(1), 97–117. Ortiz, J. (2021). Doxa is dangerous: How academic doxa inhibits prison gang research. In R. J. Gude & D. Brotherton (Eds.), International critical gang handbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Ortiz, J., & Jackey, H. (2019). The system is not broken, it is intentional: The prisoner reentry industry as deliberate structural violence. The Prison Journal, 99(4), 484–503. Ortiz, J., & Wrigley, K. (2022). The invisible enclosure: How community supervision inhibits successful reentry. Corrections: Policy, Practice, and Research, 7(3), 230–245. Pyrooz, D., & Mitchell, M. (2020). The use of restrictive housing on gang and non-gang afliated inmates in U.S. prisons: Findings from a national survey of correctional agencies. Justice Quarterly, 37(4), 590–615. Rios, V. (2011). Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino men. New York, NY: NYU Press. Ritchie, A. (2017). Invisible no more: Police violence against Black women and women of color. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Saldana, J. (2012). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Skarbek, D. (2014). The social order of the underworld: How prison gangs govern the American penal system. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smiley, C. (2021). Prison gangs: Rise, resistance, and reentry. In R. J. Gude & D. Brotherton (Eds.), International critical gang handbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Smiley, C., & Fakunle, D. (2016). From ‘brute’ to ‘thug’: The demonization and criminalization of unarmed Black male victims. Journal of Human Behavior in Social Environment, 26(3–4), 350–366. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10911359.2015.1129256

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9 “I WANTED TO BE THE FIRST MEXICAN MAFIA1 FEMALE MEMBER” An intersectional criminological analysis of Chicana gang members in California Marisa D. Salinas and Xuan Santos

Introduction The Federal Bureau of Investigation (2022) approximates that 33,000 gangs exist throughout the United States. The National Youth Gang Survey (2010) provided a snapshot of how diferences get reported by the law enforcement community. They found that women represented 7.4% of the gangland population, compared to their male counterparts at 92.6%. The survey also highlighted that Latinx pan-ethnic gang members represent the largest racial/ethnic group at 46.2%. In California, two Latinx organizational gangs exist in the Northern, Central Valley, and Southern Regions of the state; these rival groups are known as Sureños and Norteños (California Department of Justice, 2009). Although diversity is discussed, no information about Chicana gang afliates exists, suggesting that these intersections do not matter to public researchers and data analysts. Gang criminology scholarship historically focuses on men’s experiences, which traditionally provide insight into the gangland’s world through a male-biased perspective. Scholarship on girls and women in gangs remains lacking (Belknap, 2021; Miller and Brunson, 2006; Vigil, 1988). While much of the criminological literature on women adheres to a Black and white binary (Potter, 2015), the literature on Chicanas and Latinas and crime center around gang membership, which speaks to the scholarly popular imaginary of criminalized Chicanas. Additionally, much of this work references cholas2 as an auxiliary group that serves Chicano gang members (Vigil, 1988, 2008; Cepeda and Valdez, 2003). Instead, we contend that homegirls serve as an instrumental and supportive group for fellow cholas. As the literature emphasizes their auxiliary roles, they promote leadership and empowerment roles within these subcultures. Chicana gang members confront political, economic, and cultural constraints; as they are othered, they remain marginalized by society because of their race, class, and gender (Kolb and Palys, 2016), which mirrors their epistemologies within their barrios.3 Like their male counterparts, gang-involved women long to belong to America’s national culture, and members aspire to belong to an alternative environment in which they are welcomed (Brown, 2002). Other depictions of gang-afliated Chicanas primarily situate them in sexual and reproductive roles that align racialized and gendered tropes of Chicanas. Cepeda and Valdez (2003) explored the risk behaviors of gang-involved “Mexican-American” females and distinguished them as fuid between (a) girlfriends, (b) hoodrats, (c) good girls, and (d) relatives. Another way

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-12

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chola sexualization is examined is in the rite of passage ritual that includes an initiation to join a barrio, clique, or gang. Some Chicanas get jumped in for a determinant amount of time by other women and men while others “put in work” by engaging in law-breaking behavior for the gang’s beneft. However, the literature suggests that some women get “sexed-in” (Watkins and Carson, 2021; Belknap and Bowers, 2016; Leap, 2012), usually involving fornication or sexual acts with multiple gang members, which remains the most scrutinized initiation ritual (Quinn et al., 2019; Leap, 2012; Miller, 1998; Sikes, 1998). These articles, like many others, center on the Chicana gang member stereotype that pigeonholes them as sexual objects for cholos (Peterson et al., 2001). Other references of Chicana gang members discuss teen motherhood (Maldonado-Fabela, 2019, 2022) and navigating gang desistance as mothers (Kolb et al., 2019). Chicana sociologist Katherine L. Maldonado-Fabela (2022) describes how gang-involved Chicana mothers experience a gamut of “life course criminalization,” which highlights how on a state and personal level, they experience multiple forms of violence. Life-course criminalization yields threats and trauma that produce long-term health consequences. Resistance infuences mothers to challenge the consequences of criminalization manufactured through structural, economic, and interpersonal social experiences. Nevertheless, gang-involved mothers who engaged in risky behaviors (e.g., gang involvement, using alcohol and drugs) prior to pregnancy eventually matured. Their agency infuenced their self-empowerment as they developed a new self-outlook and increased their aspirations for better futures for their children (Hunt et  al., 2005). While gang life no longer represents a priority to these Chicanas, they prefer to feel a sense of emotional and fnancial autonomy free from their child’s father and their own families (Moloney et al., 2010). Chicanas and Latinas confront institutions infused with hegemonic ideologies and discourses that amplify social inequalities that limit their life opportunities. Chicanas and Latinas receive dilapidated treatment in education (Smith, 2013; Valenzuela, 1999), sexual health instruction (Garcia, 2012), and legal protections, -especially for Latina immigrants (Villalon, 2010). These defciencies force them to navigate limited institutional resources, especially when they perceive them not to embody the ruling class’s cultural capital, including educational success, academic credentialism, professions, and careers. These institutions promote systemic failure by making assumptions that justify Chicana and Latina maltreatment and reduce care quality. Amongst criminalized Latinas, the results are even more bleak. In a study of 62 juvenile justice professionals including probation ofcers, psychologists and judges, Pasko and Lopez (2018) found that when making key decisions, these professionals enact a “Latina penalty.” They believe that Latinas engage in sexual promiscuity, gang involvement, and violence more than any group despite not being able to provide evidence. These stereotypes diminish the type of cultural and gender programming and protections that suit the needs of Latinx captives and give Latinas heavy punitive carceral sentences despite their minor infractions. Taken together, these institutions infused with racist, sexist, and gendered stereotypes reproduce the hegemonic structural arrangements that keep gang-involved Chicanas in their marginalized social positions (Mendoza-Denton, 2014). These systemic impediments shape their future quality of life, legal protections, education, and occupations by limiting the Chicana gang members’ experience with homophobia, racism, sexism, and socioeconomic disadvantages, which shape their embodiments.

Women as carceral collateral While men overwhelmingly comprise the incarcerated population, the carceral system reaches far beyond those behind bars and, instead, is a carceral continuum (Salinas, 2021) that has devastating efects on the people, communities, and institutional arrangements that comprise the

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social ecologies of the criminalized (Díaz-Cotto, 2006; Wacquant, 2001; Clear, 2007). Women have been rendered carceral collateral, bearing the heavy consequences of an ever-rising carceral state. This has happened in two major intersecting ways: bearing the primary responsibility of carceral broker ship and increased criminalization. As Richie (2002) states, “women must assume new burdens as community caregivers” (146) as they become carceral brokers that not only take on legal advocacy for their loved ones behind bars but also bear the burden of sufering (and fnding solutions to) the immediate and long-term material and emotional consequences of mass incarceration (Comfort, 2009; deVuono-Powell et al., 2015). Yet, these consequences do not fall on all women indiscriminately. Racialized women, and in particular poor Black and Latina women, are those most impacted. As they exist at the intersections of crushing forms of oppression and simultaneously sit at the support center of their communities (Crenshaw et al., 2015; Maldonado-Fabela, 2022), they perform ongoing forms of raced and gendered socially reproductive carework to minimize the familial and community carceral fallout in the context of extremely disadvantaged and divested neighborhoods (Mercado, 2022). Unfortunately, their “contributions are invisible, undervalued, misinterpreted and, in some instances, even criminalized” (Richie, 2002: 147). Second, studies have connected women’s increase in crime to their fnancially marginalized social positions by way of changes in family composition, ongoing gender wage inequality, and increasingly concentrated inequality (Heimer, 2000). Additionally, English (1993) found that trends in women’s criminal activity is predicated by the “gender diferences in legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures, in personal networks, and in family obligations” (374). For gang afliated Chicanas often living at the intersections of poverty, racialization, sexism, and xenophobia amongst other systems of domination in under resourced communities, the line between Chicana carceral care work and putting in work is a fne one.

Theory While the Feminist Pathways Perspective (Belknap and Holsinger, 2006) ofers insights into the victim-ofender overlap, namely that girls and women that have been victimized often commit crimes, for the nature of a study on Chicana gang members, such an approach is not enough. Victimization is most often constructed in feminist criminological literature as active physical and sexual violence. However, Chicana gang members’ lives are profoundly impacted by the crushing slow violence (Galtung, 1969) of poverty, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and criminalization, which manifests in the symptomology of active violence. Thus, we utilize and pay homage to Black feminist theory that centers Black women, the multiplicity of their identities, and considers how systems of power impact their agency (Potter, 2013: 308). This model leaves space to analyze and center other women of color—like Chicanas, immigrants, and gang members— and the coalescence of their identities. We extend intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) as a concept that does—as in, how overlapping mutually reinforcing aspects of identity and systems of oppression interlock to exacerbate oppressive conditions for those with multiply marginalized identities—to how we study and uphold the experiences of cholas in applying intersectional criminology as a framework (Potter, 2013, 2015; Richie, 2012; Marzo, 2020). This allows us to consider not only how the multiplicative identities of gang afliated Chicanas inform their experiences but also how structures of power shape their criminalized trajectories and treatment from the criminal justice system and other intervening institutions. Beyond an intersectional criminology framework, we ground our analysis in Chicana feminist theory (Moraga and Anzaldúa, 2015; Anzaldúa, 1999; Garcia, 1989). We recognize the rigid Chicanx cultural boundaries that constrain Chicanas as either the “ideal Chicanas,” “that glorifed

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Chicanas as strong, long-sufering women who had endured and kept Chicano culture and the family intact” (Garcia, 1989: 222) or “mujer malas,” those that defy dominant cultural paradigms dictated by machistas and the (Catholic) Church (Anzaldúa, 1999: 39). Although Chicana feminist critiques of the virtuous tightrope Chicanas must walk are dated, we contend that that walk continues today. For structurally dislocated (Arnold, 1990) to culturally excluded Chicanas, the ideal Chicana is out of reach. As the late Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) said of being pushed out of the cultura, “And if going home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture—una cultura mestiza—with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture” (44); so too do Chicana gang members carve out their own countercultural spaces that can hold the expansiveness of their identities and experiences. It is in this third space that cholas recreate a sense of value and meaning to their lives.

Findings Seminal gang research (Thrasher, 1927) locates girls’ lack of gang afliation and incorporation in cultural constructs that position femininity as counterhegemonic to gang culture. This understanding rests upon a social contract that upholds and protects female virtue (and the social meanings attached to this raced, gendered, and classed construct) through paternal supervision and control. However, feminist criminologists revealed how gang afliated girls became “neglected, sexualized, and oversimplifed” in gang research (Joe and Chesney-Lind, 1995: 412). Furthermore, intersectional feminists from Sojourner Truth (1851) to the Combahee River Collective (1977) afrmed that such protections do not apply to those who challenge hegemonic femininity standards. The latter applies to Black, Indigenous, Women of Color, poor and working-class women, undocumented women, queer women, and others who embody marginalized identities. Unfortunately, that those at various intersections of these identity categories comprise the majority of gang-involved girls and women (Moore and Hagedorn, 2001; Miller, 2002), underscore how the very foundation and subsequent genealogy of criminological research on girl and women gang membership misses the mark. In the tradition of intersectional criminologists (Potter, 2013, 2015; Richie, 2015; Jones, 2009; Maldonado-Fabela, 2022), we assert that these areas of identity and experience compound in detrimental ways to compel Chicanas into gang afliation, criminalization, and subsequently incarceration. Their subordinate status within the state’s neoliberal construct of worth (Cacho, 2012) as Chicanas born into intergenerational poverty, mixed (documentation) status families, grappling with many of the social problems plaguing socially disorganized and selectively divested racialized communities (addiction, physical and sexual violence, super surveillance and carceral fall out), becomes too heavy of a burden to carry alone. As these multiple structures of both slow and active violence coalesce on top of rigid Chicanx cultural constructs that constrain Chicana agency, some Chicanas resist by seeking afrmation, community, and freedom in gang membership. In utilizing the stories of three formerly incarcerated, gang afliated Chicanas, we illustrate how the intersectional culmination of their structural arrangements gives them entrée into gang afliation and reifes their social denigration through institutional channels—both legal and otherwise. Nonetheless, despite the many barriers they have faced as stigmatized women from marginalized identities, they still resist.

Gang entrée Esperanza is a 30-year-old Bay Area raised Chicana. Despite calling northern California home, she formerly afliated with the Sureño/southside gang as her family fed the pervasive gang culture

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of the working class, Chicanx ethnic enclave of East Los (Angeles). Unfortunately, gang cultura was not something she could evade as it was salient in her life; her father was a gang member whom she could not meet until she was a toddler due to his incarceration. While she notes her father’s ongoing incarceration as a signifcant source of her abandonment issues, she points to her brother’s life sentence as a primary source of trauma that would ultimately lead to her gang involvement. At 16 years old, her brother was one of the frst young people in California to be sentenced under Proposition 21—allowing juveniles as young as 14 to be tried as adults and given life sentences. Citing the loss of both her father and brother to the carceral system, she lost control of her life. She got in trouble at school, used drugs, and sought the kinship and notoriety of gang life. Esperanza claimed that by the age of 13, “I wanted to be the frst Mexican Mafa female member.” To Esperanza, being the only Sureña among Sureños brought a sense of pride and an opportunity to distinguish herself among the gang. After all, she internalized the cholo lifestyle, dominated by men. She acted out at school in ways that might elicit a sympathetic response from personnel but instead authority fgures labeled her a “bad and troubled kid” and referred her to the school resource ofcer (SRO) for juvenile hall, thereby pushing Esperanza on the pathway to criminalization. Like Esperanza, Ixchel, a 30-year-old Chicana, grew up in a tumultuous environment. She grew up in the community of Corcoran—a small, impoverished, predominantly Latinx prisontown community in California’s Central Valley. As a child, Ixchel’s removal from her mother’s custody occurred due to her stepfather’s murder charge. The state intervened and granted her biological father custody—an extremely abusive alcoholic that treated her as “his punching bag.” Ixchel explained that her nine siblings’ separation became a reason that made her fercely loyal to all of her social relations. As the eldest daughter of a motherless home, she felt the maternal pressure to protect her siblings and often would take beatings meant for her younger brothers when her dad would come home intoxicated and ready to fght. At 17 years old, in one such intervention, her father shattered her jaw. Legally barred from her mother’s home and feeing an abusive alcoholic father, she sought refuge amongst her Norteño/northerner homies that were an ever-present part of her life growing up. Soon she would meet and marry a local correctional ofcer where for the frst time in her life, she experienced fnancial and housing security. As a 17-year-old wife, she romanticized the relationship as she felt accomplished for fnally being pursued by someone that was not a gang member and did not physically abuse her as she experienced at home. Despite referencing her relationship as a “fairytale,” her partner chose to divorce her after ongoing infdelity and emotional abuse, ultimately expelling her from their home and his fnancial subsistence. Emotionally, she retreated again to her homies for solace, attention, and afection and shortly became pregnant by the young adult she dated. Her homies increased her involvement with the gang lifestyle, which became solidifed through direct familial ties. Similarly, Guadalupe was also the eldest daughter of a big poverty-stricken Mexican family whose father was an alcoholic that would physically abuse her mother. Whereas both Esperanza and Ixchel were born into gang cultura as their parents were veteranos (veterans), Guadalupe’s parents were undocumented immigrants with no history of gang afliation in their families. After Guadalupe described her family as an incredibly old school, traditional, Catholic, Mexican family, I asked her to explain. She described it as “no boys allowed, no makeup on, you don’t leave the house until you’re married, you had a curfew—especially in my house, mass became important. We were just constantly on top of by my parents.” Ironically enough, it was this extreme control level that Guadalupe suggested compelled her toward gang life with the Sureños in her poor, Latinx Bay Area community. Guadalupe claimed that at 15 year old, she became romantically involved with a 19-year-old cholo with intergenerational gang connections, which gravitated her to the lifestyle. She became compelled to him and the gang lifestyle. She explicated her allure, “I think the fact that my parents were super strict that I had gone through all

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these situations and didn’t really have an outlet for it, that my life was so diferent in the sense that they had all the liberty of the world, they were doing their own thing, they were able to go out when they wanted, and I didn’t quite understand . . . so I don’t know if it was [the] liberty that attracted me.” While gang scholarship might focus on chola gang participation, the three Chicanas tell a compelling story about their entrée to the gangland community. Typical of many other Chicanxs that are priced out of well-resourced (i.e., the middle class) communities due to racism and xenophobia, the three Chicanas upbringing occurred in poor, Chicanx/Mexican ethnic enclaves in California that hosted a slew of social problems. Both Esperanza and Ixchel’s families bore heavy consequences due to criminal justice policies causing their estrangement from key familial sources of support early on in their lives. Undoubtedly, these ruptures contributed to parental addiction and violence in the home—a theme across all Chicana participants. For Esperanza and Ixchel, gang afliation emerged as less of a conscientious decision than the Sureño and Norteño subcultural customs they were born into—remaining salient features of their friends and family networks. Interestingly, while familial control became a conduit for deeper entrée into the gang lifestyle, Guadalupe’s story remains diferent. Her Mexicano, immigrant, and Catholic ethnocultural constraints pushed her, as a frst-generation daughter, to fnd the gang subculture appealing. The gang-involved Chicanas sought afrmation, acceptance, and community in the subculture.

Institutional experiences In being exposed to cholos that had more freedom, Guadalupe began to assert herself more instead of falling into line as the eldest daughter of fve. One day as her family was preparing for Catholic mass, her father told her to change from her sweats and adorn herself properly for church. She told her father she would not change and would not be attending. Her dad attacked her in a ft of rage, pinning her down as her mother beat her with a belt. She was 15 years old. She freed herself by grabbing his arm, and the police intervened. She was charged with battery and taken to juvenile hall. After that point, her parents—with full trust in law enforcement— would call her probation ofcer for minor transgressions such as being a few minutes late for the curfew they established. These status crimes became probation violations, which stacked up as she went in and out of juvenile hall. However, the legal issues just began for Guadalupe. When trying to access birth control discreetly, the doctor’s ofce called to notify her mother. Her parents pressed statutory rape charges on her undocumented 19-year-old boyfriend, which after serving his sentence resulted in his deportation. These actions emotionally derailed a young and impressionable Guadalupe whose newfound self-concept revolved around that romantic relationship. She would cross international borders to be with him and soon caught him cheating. When she fnally realized the gravity of her poor decisions, she said, “it actually started hitting home and I got a sense of embarrassment . . . it did not end in anything good, it was just really not worth it.” She called her mother apologizing and committed to rectifying her wrongs—only to be arrested as a juvenile for violating her probation for being on the run in Mexico. Whereas the family’s institutional cultures, religion, health care, and the legal system informed Guadalupe’s constrained position as a working-class Chicana adolescent gang member in relation to the criminal justice system, so too did Ixchel’s identities afrm her depressing role in the gang’s social order and subsequent severity of criminal charges. After her child’s father was arrested after serving a four-year sentence, Ixchel felt pressured to claim responsibility for his drug charges to avoid a gang enhancement charge, which would result in confnement for an exceptionally long time away from her family. This sacrifcial move landed her in prison with

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a felony. When she fnally came home with an ankle monitor, he threatened to cut of her monitor. Feeling pressured, she decided to cut it of and received escape charges. Shortly after, in one of the most extensive anti-gang sweeps in the region, ofcers raided her home, which resulted in criminal charges handed to her homies, partner, and brother. With her brother facing a 46 years-to-life sentence on an attempted murder charge, Ixchel took to the streets by stealing cars to earn money to secure a lawyer for him. Although she became incarcerated for vehicle theft charges, she claimed it was worth it as she succeeded in getting him a lawyer and at the time of the interview, her brother only had seven more months to serve in prison, saying, “I would hope you’d [he’d] do that for me. Nevertheless, even if he didn’t, I’d still do it if he’d need me to.” Stuck by her unwavering loyalty to family, and, by extension, her gang—her sacrifces meant sacrifcing motherhood while she served her sentence. During one of her stays in prison, she gave birth to her son. She tearfully recounted her traumatizing birthing story, “While you’re having your c-section, that ofcer doesn’t leave. You’re chained like a chain on your arm, and you’re chained to the bed. I felt like a fucken animal! Like I don’t know . . . it was embarrassing . . . people were just watching.” After four days, Ixchel’s newborn became a ward of the state, and she did not see him during her confnement. Deterred from notifying her family, she returned to general population as if she didn’t just create life. Like Ixchel, Esperanza’s commitments to the gang ran deep. She explained that being the only female member in a male gang meant that she had to prove herself more by being pressured to take on risky orders—unlike male gang members, she was never debriefed.4 At 14, her boyfriend (also in the same set) brought her along on a home invasion without her consent. After realizing what was happening, she assumed she was the “look out,” a low stakes role often reserved for younger or female members. Believed to be empty, the homeowners and their young children were home. After a dangerous interaction, Esperanza was able to appeal to her homies to spare the victims’ lives but ultimately was apprehended by the police. Due to her being a documented gang member and a series of armed burglaries she was uninvolved in at 14-years-old, she accepted a 15 years-to-life plea deal that required her to be a ward of the state. After one of the assailants divulged that she had nothing to do with the other crimes, she received a fve-year sentence and served her time at the California Youth Authority (CYA). When it came time for parole, she remained in an arduous situation. As a working-class Chicana residing in expensive Santa Clara County, her mother could only aford to live in a tiny housing unit for herself. Esperanza’s only option was paroling to Oxnard in the central coast. Yet, Ventura County became one of the frst counties to implement civil gang injunctions—Draconian gang suppression policies that identify cities and city blocks as gang territories, where members intimidate citizens (Barajas, 2007). These safe zones bar individuals classifed as gang members from engaging in gang activities. This ordinance deters named gang injunction persons from congregating with other known gang members, nor wear certain colors and/or clothing (Santos and Leyva, 2022; Swan and Bates, 2016; Muñiz, 2016; Santos and Romo, 2007). This apartheid justice system (Santos and Bickel, 2017) makes it impossible for gang-injunction-listed relatives to co-exist in family gathering or dwellings, resulting in arrest or parole violations. The impossible situation arose for Esperanza as her cousins were also classifed as gang members, and because of that, she was facing a parole violation if she continued to stay with her family. Choosing between defnite parole violation or the possibility of succumbing to the very conditions that led to her criminalization, she chose to return home in hopes she might be able to resist. She could not. Fully understanding this unwinnable dilemma, she illuminates the contradictions of the constrained place these policies put her in, that’s problematic when you’re paroled and sent back to the place where you got in trouble in the frst place . . . what I tell people is that gangs, and gang lifestyle it’s like a drug.

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You know, especially when it’s so inculcated, so indoctrinated in you when it’s all you know and becomes all you want. And so, my parole ofcer expected me to go to school, to have a full-time job when I had no skills and had no experience, and I had nobody to support me. And so, it was a never-ending cycle of incarceration. All three of these women’s levels of participation in their respective gangs mirrored their subordinate locations in the social order. While they were not entrusted with full authority in gang matters as girls and women, they could, however, be tasked with the heavy repercussions of being caught. For Esperanza and Ixchel, this looked like serving time for crimes committed by their homeboys—whether platonic, intimate, or familial. While supporting family is an esteemed social value, it is socially admonished when it takes forms from folks that are socially excluded. As a chola with a criminal record that is gatekept from legitimate opportunity structures, Ixchel starting stealing cars to save her brother from a life sentence by providing him a lawyer as she fully understood that he would have no fghting chance with a public defender. Nonetheless, she was incarcerated for something she felt was a noble act. Whereas Ixchel was fghting for family in the criminal justice system, for Guadalupe it was family and many intersecting layers of cultural constraint (i.e.: gender, ethnicity, class, generation, religion, and sexuality) that contributed to her criminalization. Additionally, even when these gang afliated Chicanas—like Guadalupe realizing her mistakes and returning to the United States, or Esperanza doing her time and trying to live a straight and narrow life on parole—tried to right their wrongs, the legal policies in place by the criminal justice system only worked to coerce them back into the system.

Resistance Despite Guadalupe’s pursuit of gang life as a pathway away from the domestic violence she witnessed in her family, the physical violence she received, and her parents’ controlling ways sought to control her gender, embodiment, sexuality, and values. She feels a tremendous sense of regret for her past. Rather than ascribing to dominant neoliberal narratives that emphasize self-blame for gang members with criminal records, her regret comes from refecting on the time lost and how the signifcant time spent gang banging and in juvenile detention could have been spent in more meaningful ways, [N]ow that I’m in school, now that I’m working on things like how the system keeps juveniles within the system, diferent things tie in. Like now I’m like, “oh okay I give it to myself, I was an adolescent, I was a juvenile, I wasn’t developed like that yet. I wasn’t thinking things through and the fact that I was just taken in and this whole gang involvement rather than mentorship in the juvi . . . I mean I don’t know; I think about what if someone had mentored me in there or someone had talked to me or perhaps instead of just- I don’t know- secluding me into a room with a bunch of other Sureñas had talked to me and said, ‘hey we have these resources, we have this or that,’ then you know could I have perhaps been farther along in my educational path now?” Preparing to transfer to pursue her bachelor’s degree in Sociology, she seeks to transform the lives of other gang-impacted and troubled youth by being that person she did not have to explain to her what was going on in her life and provide her with a sense of direction. Resisting falling into the narratives of Chicana (former) gang members that are replete with fatalism and hopelessness, Guadalupe optimistically is committed to a positive and productive future, “I have a kid now, I’m trying to survive, I’m trying to live, make money and follow my dreams when it

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comes to education. It’s so big for me, I love education . . . knowledge is power and to be able to further myself like that is something really important to me.” While Guadalupe’s story ofers a feel-good testimonio of redemption through socially sanctioned and rewarded channels, Ixchel’s story is no less moving but equally deserving to be told as her experiences are all too common for cholas experiencing social exclusion and divestment. Ixchel is still gang banging. Bouncing from trap house to trap house, she relies on homies to allow her temporary refuge while she comes up (steals items to sell to generate cash) at night. Still not having custody of her children because of her criminal record and living conditions, her story is a powerful indictment of how the social structure creates consequential caste like constraints on many poor Chicanas. Ixchel was born into a gang-involved family marred by murder, addiction and violence, raised in a carceral community, and was criminalized as she simply tried to survive. Despite it all, Ixchel has tremendous insight as to the contradictory social situations those that are gang afliated and/or incarcerated experience as they try to navigate the slippery slope of resistance through survival and breaking moral codes that would be clear cut taboos to the haves but are necessary for the have nots, a lot of people that are there [jail/prison] for a reason, we don’t know, their situations or why they do the shit they do or whatever the case may be. If somebody’s hungry, I’m gonna- if I have to go steal or whatever- I’m not gonna steal from people- but if I have to get it, I’m going to get it. I HAVE to look out for my people. And that’s why I feel like they’re not bad people for doing that, they’re doing what they have to do to survive. And it is hard out there. The streets are hard like . . . like . . . it’s hard. A lot of us don’t have shit handed to us, we got to strive for our shit. And that’s what some people fail to realize- like we ARE struggle . . . we’re born in that shit. Ixchel gives a compelling case for how the system(s) penalizes those that are born into the consequences of social ecologies of struggle. And while her outcome (at the time of this study) does not neatly provide the type of exceptionality story often touted to interrogate monolithic constructions of gang life, she compels us to think about the how the constrained agency people are in limits their access to attaining feel good stories of resistance. Shortly after being paroled back to the Bay Area, Esperanza’s fears came true. In the same environment she got caught up in, she fell back into gang-banging, addiction, and homelessness. She faced a heavy sentence after being taken in for a murder she did not commit but stuck to the “code of honor” of not snitching on her homies. While locked up, she was encouraged by elders in the prison community to learn about her cultura. She explained that the Mexican Mafa began as a brotherhood that sought to emulate the cultural empowerment and ancestral reverence like that of the Black Panthers. Chicana gang member elders utilized typed letters passed over time from other incarcerated Chicanxs as an archive for incoming incarcerated cholas to learn about their indigenous and revolutionary past. Esperanza’s “self-education process,” liberated her mind by reading books by/about Latinx authors and other powerful Black fgures like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Dr, and Maya Angelou. This process allowed her to gain a sense of confdence and cultural pride that fueled her want to better her life, and she vowed to go to school if given the opportunity. Soon she got her opportunity as she was released when one of the assailants confessed that, once again, she had nothing to do with the crime accused. Making good on her promise, she signed up for an ofce technology program at a local adult school. After completing the six-month program in a month, her teachers showered her praise, telling her how brilliant she was. She said, “for the frst time in my life, I had people telling me I was intelligent.” They took her to the local community college and signed her up. Her frst semester

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culminated in a 4.0-grade point average, invitations to join the honors society, and she became the student body president by the following year. Interested in pursuing psychology to better understand the trauma she endured as a gang-afliated Chicana, she applied to an internationally renowned fagship university and was accepted and ofered a prestigious full-ride scholarship. Joining an organization on the campus of formerly incarcerated and systems-impacted students, she remarked, [M]y past doesn’t defne who I am. I’m capable of being more than a criminal and seeing that there were other students like me who had worked so hard to redeem themselves . . . that we could serve as role models for other people that really made me feel better. I think that’s what I got out of that group, was like, led me to believe in my own power and my own potential and acknowledging my strengths which was at that point like my lived experience. Saying her life came full circle, Esperanza is now a prominent community organizer and activist specializing in supporting formerly incarcerated and gang-afliated Chicanas. Despite coming from diferent regions and gangs, these women experienced tremendous overlap in their structural arrangements. Much of the oppressive violence they endured in their private spheres trickled into how they navigated and were treated by public institutions that had a heavy role in determining their subsequent life paths. Yet while these women had diferent outcomes, each of them resisted the oppressive conditions they were in through the mechanisms that were available to them. In analyzing their resistance, we are able to see the ways that social death (Patterson, 2018; Cacho, 2012) can be challenged as although the powerful may dictate the narratives told of criminalized cholas, they push back with their own constructs of redemption. Both Guadalupe and Esperanza changed the material realities of their lives by pursuing higher education—opening up doors unavailable to them. In some ways the most powerful considering that she was still in the trenches of criminalization and gang life, Ixchel challenged social death’s most basic principle—that the persecuted internalize the dehumanizing ideologies that the dominant proscribe of them. In the most dismal of circumstances as a poor criminalized chola with precarious access to food, housing, and fnancial security and without custody of her kids, Ixchel is still able to resist the dominant narrative told about her and others like her in the barrio and articulate her own counter story, if we had money . . . we probably wouldn’t have been growing up in the hood where you have to fght for your life or fght for whatever the cause may be . . . whether you’re in gangs or not, like you’re in the struggle-shit just happens, you know? So, if you’re born in poverty, like it’s, that says it right there, you’re gonna struggle your whole life. Together, these stories are a powerful reminder of the resilience of these women and are a testament for scholars to resist categorizing or upholding some redemption stories over others, as all of these forms are important in contesting the problematic pathological constructs of Chicana gang members.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter, we have demonstrated how working-class/poor Chicanas with similar confgurations of social identity and ecology contend with their marginalization through gang involvement. The structural arrangements of their coalescing identities as intergenerationally poor

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Chicanas living in state-divested working-class Latinx ethnic enclaves, set the foundation for their experiencing the symptomology of such ecologies: contending with addiction, various forms of abuse, threats of deportation, familial separation by way of incarceration and fragmentation, among other social problems (Clear, 2007). Because of these cultural and social exclusions barring them access to notions of worth (whether homegrown or state-sanctioned neoliberalism) (Cacho, 2012), Chicanas found refuge in the sense of afrmation and collective understanding amongst the other young, poor, stigmatized Chicanxs that comprised their gangs (Flores et al., 2017). Nonetheless, whether in their gangs, homes, or when navigating public institutions, their constrained agency was a refection of their depressed status in the social order. This positioning ultimately led to their criminalization and even when they sought to rectify their wrongs, they were placed in impossible situations between criminal legal policies and the practicalities of their material and ideological conditions. These policies only served to reafrm criminal Chicana gang member pathologies. Chicana Feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) refers to the liminal space where those in the margins live—where cultures connect and clash—as Nepantla (237). Describing Nepantla as “awkward, uncomfortable and frustrating,” cultural border-crossers are in a state of transformation where they are erecting a third space. Neither the ideal Chicana (Garcia, 1989) nor the ideal victim (Christie, 1986), these Chicanas resisted the victimization and structural exclusion in their lives to co-construct a new space where feelings of stigma, shame, and powerlessness were transformed into afrmation, strength, and community. While we do not romanticize gang cultura—especially for those marginalized within the social order—we do recognize that these collectives ofered these women a counterspace that was expansive enough to hold that which was not afrmed at home and in the public. While some Chicana gang members are still bound to the streets, others have defed the popular narratives by putting in work by utilizing their lived experiences as “OGs” to positively transform their communities (Vargas and Santos, 2020). Understood within barrio culture as original gangsters but reconfgured as “opportunity givers,” many gang afliated Chicanas have reasserted their gang commitments to their gente, loyalty, and respect to ensure that others do not have to go through many of the trials and tribulations they experienced. Because of all these reasons, gang afliated Chicanas deserve examination of them not as pathological, but rather as shapeshifters that have the ability to resist and transform in the face of tremendous adversity.

Notes 1 The Mexican Mafa, known as La Eme, represents a Southern California prison-based organizational gang that controls Mexican–American gang members, known as “Sureños,” both inside prisons and on the streets. Although Sureños dominate Mexican-American gangs from Bakersfeld to San Diego, factions also exist throughout Northern California. 2 Chicana gang members, gang-afliated Chicanas, cholas, and homegirls will be used interchangeably as they all share meaning to represent Chicana and Latina girls/women that have varying experience with gang membership and cultura. 3 Barrios are working-class, Chicanx/Latinx neighborhoods that experience selective divestment that is refected in their dilapidated and under-resourced institutions. These communities are often superpoliced and surveilled by agents of punitive social control. 4 Debriefed means that gang members preemptively share information about gang activity. One’s location in the gang’s social hierarchy (often informed by the individual’s identities) determines if and when they are debriefed by seasoned gang members.

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10 LGBTQ GANG MEMBERS’ INTERSECTIONAL IDENTITIES AND EXPERIENCES Vanessa R. Panfl

Introduction: countering orthodox depictions To say that traditional criminological gang studies have been heteronormative would be quite an understatement. Despite brief mentions of gay, lesbian, and bisexual gang members in both historical and contemporary literature, their experiences remain underexplored, likely due to assumptions made about gay people and gang life. Such omissions are especially problematic in light of how consequential LGBTQ identity can be for those living in heterosexist and cissexist societies such as the United States. Furthermore, intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, class, and ability structure individuals’ negotiations of identities and relationships, and gang members are no exception. This chapter frst delineates how much of the gang research canon—and criminology more broadly—makes assumptions about the gender presentation and sexual identity of gang members. Namely, they assume that gang members are heterosexual and hypermasculine, and when mainstream scholars have discussed ostensibly LGBTQ gang members, these depictions are reductive and sensationalized. To counter this, the bulk of the chapter explores gang members’ intersectional identities and experiences by drawing extensively from my interview-based and partially ethnographic study of 48 gay and bisexual male gang members in Columbus, Ohio. I primarily explore the intersections of sexual identity and gender presentation, and in places I explore other statuses that also intersect, such as race. Regarding gang experiences and how they are afected by these intersectional identities, I discuss these men’s decisions to join or form a gang, the activities they engage in within their gangs, the ways they interact with fellow gang members, how they construct identity as gang members, and their decisions to leave or remain in their gangs. I discuss these experiences by comparing and contrasting men in gangs with various sexual orientation compositions: straight, gay, and hybrid. I extend beyond solely in-gang experiences and explore my participants’ goals for the future, their reasons for telling their stories, and intersectional considerations in data collection. Subsequent sections of the chapter compare the fndings of this study to additional scholarly literature and popular culture sources that speak to these concerns among other LGBTQ gang members, including not just gay and bisexual men, but lesbian and bisexual women as well. I conclude by refecting on the process of presenting and analyzing narratives of gang members. I hope that this work contributes to a nuanced, humanizing portrait of LGBTQ gang members— and gang members more generally—by exploring complex social dynamics and personal identity.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159797-13

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Dynamics of GBQ male invisibility in gang research Until the very recent past, male gang members who are gay, bisexual, or queer (GBQ) were virtually invisible from scholarly work on gangs. There are several factors that have contributed to this invisibility. First is a set of beliefs that has existed in popular culture for decades, which is that gay men are assumed to be efeminate and pacifstic. These beliefs are seen to fy in the face of scholarly assumptions about gang members, including assumptions that they value hypermasculinity and even a hypersexed heterosexuality, and that violence is a key organizing feature in their lives. These “apparent” contradictions between gang life and gay men have rendered GBQ male gang members practically unthinkable (Panfl, 2014a). However, GBQ male gang members exist, and their lives and experiences are worthy of consideration. Since 2007, I personally have encountered fellow gang scholars who have told me about GBQ gang members they interacted with during their studies, but the experiences of these men received little attention in my colleagues’ works. My own work, which I discuss in depth in later sections of this chapter, seeks to remedy this and directly challenge assumptions and oversights. I suspect that there are several disciplinary factors that contribute to GBQ gang member invisibility beyond reductive assumptions. These include a disciplinary aversion to “small n” (small sample) studies, which means that groups with less representation in society, such as LGBTQ people, may be overlooked in research due to the size of the population. However, this intentional avoidance is a mistake, as LGBTQ people have been subject to extensive marginalization, discrimination, and violence—all of which criminologists should ostensibly be interested in. Queer criminology, which focuses on the crime and justice experiences of LGBTQ people, is only now making strides in reshaping the discipline even though it has contributions to make that are central to the discipline, by complicating what we think we know about crime, victimization, and justice (Panfl and Miller, 2014). Similarly, gang scholars may be resistant to moving beyond hegemonic understandings of gangs and gang members (Brotherton, 2015), and by extension, intentionally or unintentionally create roadblocks to the criminological imagination. A lack of criminological imagination can stymie many potential avenues for innovative and critical gang research (Ortiz, 2021). Within mainstream studies and publications about gang life that avoid discussion of LGBTQ gang members, it is very likely that LGBTQ people exist in those gangs, but structural characteristics of gangs, criminal social networks, and urban street life may have prevented their disclosures to fellow gang members and to researchers. Critical gang scholarship has acknowledged this. For example, Brotherton and Barrios (2004: 354) note that they interacted with several gay male gang members in the Latin Kings, but that these men “were afraid to “come out” among the rest of the members due to the history of homophobia in the organization.” Thus, a generous reading of most mainstream gang scholarship is that research participants did not feel comfortable talking about their experiences as LGBTQ people, or gang scholars did not feel they had enough contextualizing information to represent their participants’ experiences in a holistic way. This has recently changed as studies have sought to learn more about queer gang members, discussed in later sections of this chapter, but their depictions historically were often feeting or provided surface treatment.

Depictions of male “homosexuality” in historical and mainstream gang research The gang studies “canon” certainly replicates beliefs that GBQ gang members have no place in gangs, whether in the historical or contemporary context. Infuential works in criminological theory and gang scholarship articulate this both explicitly and by extension. In Thrasher’s

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(1927/2000: 79) foundational study of over one thousand youth gangs, a young man who was “a sissy” and disinterested in fghting was allowed in the gang for a short time because they wanted to share his new football but otherwise had no use for an efeminate young man. In Miller’s (1958: 9) focal concerns theory based on a delinquent gang, he discussed “a concern over homosexuality” that manifested as an insistence on masculine toughness and a disdain for femininity and “softness,” demonstrated through gay baiting, gay bashing (anti-gay assault), or using anti-gay epithets. The claim that “a faggot” was in a rival gang was used as justifcation to attack them (Miller, 2011: 645). In Totten’s (2000) study of young men’s perpetration of interpersonal violence, seven of the eight boys who described being involved in numerous incidents of gay bashing were also involved with gangs. Some gangs, such a Gangster Disciples set in Chicago, prohibit same-sex sexual contact; a member asserted that one of the most important rules of the gang was to not engage in “homosexual activity,” which was deemed a punishable ofense (Decker et al., 1998: 407). Despite these dynamics, some mid-century research chronicled the “homosexual activities,” or same-sex sexual contact, of male gang members. For example, in their list of behaviors engaged in by gang members, Short and Strodtbeck (1965) state, but do not discuss in any detail, that 7% of Black males and 14% of white males had participated in “homosexuality.” Same-sex sexual activity may not have been amongst peers, but instead with older gay men in the surrounding urban community (referred to as “queers” or “queens”) who paid the young men for sex acts (Miller, 2011 [based on his 1950s research]; Reiss, 1961). At the time, same-sex sexual activity was illegal in various jurisdictions in the United States, and such behavior was often heavily stigmatized in society broadly. Despite these young men’s engagement in stigmatized and possibly illegal sexual activity, gang males were able to justify their behavior and retain at least some of their masculinity if they were approached by the gay male, if they took the penetrative role in fellatio, and if it was solely an economic transaction that was ultimately a “hustle” and potentially exploitative of the man providing the “receptive” role (see Miller, 2011; Reiss, 1961). Occasionally, questions were raised in the literature about whether these transactions were only for monetary purposes or whether the young men engaging in these sex acts desired them or derived sexual pleasure from them—that is, these sources seem to question whether these young men were indeed gay or bisexual, and were able to engage in these activities under very particular conditions without being seen as “homosexual.” Interestingly, these scholarly sources also explicitly or implicitly questioned what would cause gang males to engage in “feminine” sexual behaviors (i.e., anything other than male/female sexual activity) considering the overarching commitment to normative masculinity and heterosexuality in the gang context. On a societal level, even in locales where same-sex sexual acts were not criminalized, they were often seen as immoral, dirty, and dysfunctional. Mid-century mainstream and orthodox gang studies viewed same-sex encounters as part of a larger pattern of sexual depravity and immorality that plagued youth gangs, as also exemplifed in their opposite-sex sexual encounters. Even the language used—“homosexual”—is cringe-inducing to many LGBTQ people and our allies. “Homosexual” is currently considered an outdated, clinical, and ofensive word to describe a gay or lesbian person (GLAAD, n.d.), and indeed, most (if not all) of the sources that employ this phrasing refer to “homosexual” conduct or people negatively. While it is not always possible to separate the scholars’ own values from the societal ones they consider when writing, critical gang studies moving forward would do well to employ more empathy and better refect the humanity of LGBTQ people. My own work, which I turn to next, has endeavored to do so.

Gay and bisexual male gang members’ experiences and identities In the subsections that follow, I discuss fndings from my interview-based and partially ethnographic study of gay and bisexual men who were current or former members of gangs. Unless

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otherwise noted, the fndings were also reported in my book The Gang’s All Queer: The Lives of Gay Gang Members (2017). For the larger study, I interviewed 53 gay gang- or crime-involved men to understand the intersections of masculinity and sexuality in their lives, 48 of whom reported current or former gang membership (the other 5 had committed crimes as part of a group but did not identify that group as a gang). At the time of the interview, those 48 participants ranged in age from 18 to 28, with an average age of about 21. I was able to interview a racially diverse sample, though nearly 90% were men of color (81% Black or African American, 10% white, 2% Latino, 6% biracial). They represented 38 diferent gangs, with some belonging to multiple gangs over time. Over 80% had been arrested and over half (55%) had been incarcerated. All self-identifed as gay or bisexual, but I sometimes refer to them as “gay,” because that more closely mirrors their speech patterns and the ways they referred to themselves. “Gay” as an umbrella term for any nonheterosexual sexual identity may also be a regional linguistic preference, as all men lived in or near Columbus, Ohio. I conducted this study in Columbus because I grew up there, and that was where I knew an initial sample of eligible participants due to my involvement in LGBTQ advocacy. To begin collecting data, I contacted men previously known to me, asked them to participate in an interview, and also asked them to introduce me to other men who would be eligible for the study. Participants were paid for the interviews, and each selected a “code name” for use in the study, some of which were highly stylized names, such as Aga and Hurricane. In the interviews, I asked each participant about his life history, his relationships and sexual identity, his gang and/ or criminal experiences, his experience with the criminal justice system, and what it meant for him to “be a man,” among other topics. I also spent time with about half of the men to better understand their lives, identities, and relationships, and took feldnotes of these interactions as well.

Gang types: straight, hybrid, and gay In order to evaluate diferences in gang structures and their efects on the gang experience, I directly asked participants to estimate what percentage of their gang’s members were gay, lesbian, or bisexual. A lot of variation existed in primarily-straight gangs, ranging from “0% besides me” to nearly 50%. Several straight gangs had a substantial proportion of gay members—onequarter to nearly one-half—which I call hybrid gangs. Most heterosexual-majority gangs had a much smaller proportion of gay members, or at least identifably or known gay members. In contrast, typically, the gay gangs were made up of 100% or nearly 100% gay members. Serendipitously, the sample was about evenly split between members of primarily-heterosexual gangs (23 men) and primarily-gay gangs (26 men); one participant had been a member of both types of gangs. In my book The Gang’s All Queer (Panfl, 2017), I discuss hybrid gangs separately, since they have features of both types of gangs, but in the following sections, I primarily focus on the diference between gay and straight gangs. Gangs with virtually no other GLB people (straight gangs), gangs with a critical mass of GLB people (hybrid gangs), and all-gay gangs have contexts that range from quite heteronormative to quite queer. It is those contexts I discuss here.

Joining or forming gangs The straight gangs were primarily neighborhood based, typically where their members lived, but perhaps a certain area where members had some control over the space, like where they sold drugs or tagged (sprayed grafti). Their average age at joining was 14.2 years old, which is in line with many studies that suggest the peak age of gang membership is 14 or 15. Reasons they joined often related to their family or their neighborhood of origin, such as joining because they thought their

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gangs could provide them with protection, support, and resources their parents had not and never could provide for them, or to spend additional time with their family members who were gang involved. They also wanted protection from neighborhood bullies or rival gangs. In their narratives describing why they joined, themes included familial discord, parental incarceration, lack of supervision, lack of attachment to parents, feeling abandoned, and wanting protection. Participants joined existing straight gangs in a variety of ways. “Passive” ways included already being a neighborhood resident and therefore “automatically” considered a gang member by the community, or becoming a member in connection to their familial or romantic relationships. About half of the men in straight gangs reported an “active” initiation ritual for at least one of their crews, all of which included violence. One ritual was being “jumped in,” where they had to either be beaten up or fght to get in; another violent initiation ritual involved assaulting and/ or robbing someone, especially a person who the OGs (“Original Gangsters”) or other higherups in the gang wanted to retaliate against. These rituals served several functions, such as proving the recruit was tough and would be loyal, and reinforcing the group’s solidarity. In contrast, the gay gangs were characterized by one major and obvious diference from the straight gangs: Gay gangs were organized around a shared sexual identity, not a geographic space. Sometimes, crew members lived 10 or more miles away from each other. The closest approximation to “turf ” or “territory” that the gay crews had were gay clubs. The average age at joining was 17.9, which is nearly four years later than the average age at joining straight gangs.1 The gay gangs were originally gay friendship groups that decided to make their groups “legit.” These groups and the gangs they became developed organically, often from a combination of school friends, cousins, love interests, and/or peers met at programs providing outreach to and services intended for LGBTQ youth. The fact that gay identity is the organizing characteristic of gay gangs likely explains why members of gay gangs joined later than men in straight gangs. Although most of the men in my study knew they were attracted to other males from a young age and identifed as gay or bisexual by or during their early teens, many did not start to “come out” to peers or family members until high school or later. After they came out, their peer groups changed in such a way that refected an increased interest in friendships and romantic relationships with other gay males. For example, Max started hanging out with his crew because it included a boy he liked, and because he “started to get uncomfortable with the straight people.” The older ages at joining gay gangs may be because, although they spent time with the same groups of people, the groups themselves shifted to an ofcial group after some time in existence as a non-gang peer group. Jeremiah said of his gay gang, “It’s not a group that you just joined, it was like, we all grew up together, and as life went on . . . I met a friend, he met a friend, add ‘em to the group, and we just grew as [we] grew up. Like, we all been knowin’ each other since like, middle school, elementary school. . . . [Just two years ago], we actually came up with a name, and decided to make it a legit group.” Boss, another member of this group echoes, “I think as we began to hang around we became, we all became more of like, a gang, versus, you know, it wasn’t just originally like that.” Regarding his own involvement, Tony noted, “I was [hangin’] with them for a long time . . . it naturally happened, I guess. I just fell right in.” Typically, these were groups they helped form, not groups they joined, so formal initiation rituals only existed for folks who were new to the group, since they did not have all of the same shared history and were expected to prove themselves.

Activities engaged in with gangs Despite popular culture that imagines gangs are constantly engaging in serious violence, participants engaged in a large range of legal and illegal behaviors with their gangs. Gay men in straight gangs provided narratives of gang life vastly similar to those seen in the orthodox gang literature.

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Time within the gang was spent participating in recreational activities or otherwise “chilling” with each other, with common illegal activities including selling drugs and fghting other gangs. Conficts with other gangs were described in ways that communicated the territorial nature of the straight gangs, for example, “they came into our hood.” About half of the men in straight gangs had sold drugs with their gang, which also suggests reasons for place-based territoriality. Violence occurred mostly in outdoor venues, such as community festivals and freworks displays, and also in participants’ neighborhoods or their rivals’ neighborhoods. However, I should reiterate, many studies of gangs fnd that “hanging out” is the most common gang activity, and my study is consistent with that. When recounting their group activities, members of gay gangs also led with legal activities like going to clubs, movies, and restaurants, which one participant summarized as “Basically what you do when you’re young: Everything!” Some of the gay gangs sought to engage in prosocial activities like helping each other secure employment and re-enroll in school, and this too became a prominent component of one gay gang’s group identity. Though some did sell drugs, they were far less likely to sell drugs within the gang context, contrary to straight gangs. Financial crimes such as “crafting” and “escorting” were committed for instrumental (moneymaking) reasons, and typically entailed learning the “tricks of the trade” from fellow crew members who were seasoned. “Crafting” encompassed a series of fnancial crimes of varying degrees of skill that included buying stolen credit card numbers or building and cashing fraudulent checks. Escorting (also referred to as “turning dates”) involved selling sex or erotic services to others, usually older men. Men in gay gangs saw these crimes as available cultural resources for gay men to utilize when formal avenues to employment were closed of to them. Gay men in straight gangs also crafted and sold sex, but typically it was a gang member activity and not a gang activity—an individual member of the gang did so, without the assistance of other members of his straight gang. Despite a popular assumption that gay men are pacifstic, the members of gay gangs were also involved in very serious and public violent behavior; two gay gangs I spent time with during my study were known as ruthless fghters and skilled fghters, respectively. Fights with rival gay gangs took place in public venues, but mostly at gay clubs or gay-themed club nights, as well as at the homes of individual gang members or rival gang members. Much of this violence was over becoming “known,” or creating a public persona as a gay man. Gay gangs also fought groups of straight men who were antagonizing them for being gay. Imani recalled an incident between his “posse” and a group of college-aged straight men who followed them, threw things at them, and called them “fags,” after which he explained, “We just took it upon ourselves to attack’em. . . . They thought they was gonna get us! I don’t know why they think gay people can’t fght.” These encounters increased the gay gangs’ cohesion, solidifed their group identity as openly gay, and helped them reclaim the masculine status that other men tried to challenge.

Sexual identity, gender presentation, and interactions with fellow gang members One main theme seen in almost every facet of my study is that gang sexual orientation composition—the ratio of GLB members to straight members—matters, from gang joining, to gang activities, to gang members’ interactions, to staying in or leaving the gang. More specifcally, as the proportion of GLB members increased, gay men were more likely to disclose their sexuality to their gangs, have more freedom of gender expression, and were less likely to fear negative repercussions from them. The converse was also true. Men typically did not come out to their straight gangs because they feared alienation, ostracism, and expulsion from their gangs, but also physical assault, rape, and even death. Some men

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heard frequent homophobic language within their straight gangs, or knew of their fellow gang members’ violence against gay men, such as D.C. recounting a “gay-bash-type rape” committed by a member of his straight gang. Men in straight gangs suggested they were living separate lives, which could not intersect. They avoided femininity, famboyance, and anything that could otherwise “give them away,” such as avoiding tight or colorful clothing, sweeping hand gestures, and certain slang. Toby, who joined a gang for protection, suggested: [After my frst gay experience], I continued to stay in the closet, though. Just because I had a reputation, like, a part of a gang, in [my old neighborhood], so I woulda had to keep, umm, maintain myself as a boy. . . . Cuz I feel like, if I was openly gay, they woulda kicked me out the gang, or not let me be in a gang, and I woulda got picked on. So, I just didn’t wanna go through that. . . . [The gang would] treat me diferent, yeah. They wouldn’t have been openly acceptin’, like, they probably think I’d try to mess [firt or have sex] with one of them. . . . And plus, who wants to have a gay guy in their gang? Nobody gonna take ‘em serious. Like, “Y’all got a gay dude in y’alls group, y’all not hard.” And I just didn’t wanna put ‘em through that. Like, so, I just let it go. At the time of the interview, several closeted men were contemplating coming out to their current or former gang, and hoped their long-standing relationships would prevent fellow gang members from reacting negatively. Perhaps unsurprisingly, men were more likely to come out to hybrid gangs, which had a larger proportion of openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual members despite still having a majority of straight people. On the whole, they reported relatively positive coming out experiences. For example, upon transitioning from a mostly-male crew with no other gay members to a mixedsex group, of whom almost half were gay, lesbian, or bisexual, Brandon suggested, “Once I got with [them], I was free to be myself, free to be gay, and free to say and do what I wanna do.” Others were able to get along well with their gangs due to their lack of famboyant behaviors, by making a point to tell other members that they weren’t going to hit on them, or by having grown up with them. For example, Greg said, “They know the real me, so I can be real around them.” And Batman added, “I already know they accept me for who I am, so it’s just like, cool.” Gay men in all-gay gangs did not face the same issues with coming out or impression management that the gay men in straight gangs did. Men in gay gangs reported feeling more comfortable with their gangs than with any other group. As mentioned earlier, for many, these groups comprised their primary friendship networks. Beyond that, the fact that everyone else in the group was gay meant that a man did not have to put forth efort to hide his sexual orientation, and had much more leeway regarding his gender presentation. Some men described being very famboyant with their gay gangs, able to wear whatever they wanted and use whatever hand gestures they liked, and of course, being able to talk openly about their sexual and romantic lives to enthusiastic listeners. Not only were rules of normative masculinity relaxed for men in gay gangs when compared to straight gangs, but I often also heard that when with their cliques, members reported they could really “be themselves.” Without prompting, about two-thirds of the members of gay gangs volunteered that their gangs were more like families, some even choosing the word “family” to appear in their gang’s name. For their members, gay gangs represented either a close approximation to or even a preferable alternative to their biological families. Aga went so far as to say, “I love my real family, and stuf like that, although they get on my nerves, my gay family understands me more than my regular family does, because I be around my gay family a lot, and I don’t like my real family, they

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just too much.” JD stated, “I feel like, I would never fnd a group of friends like this, ever again. . . . I feel like it’s somethin’ spiritual, too. I don’t know. Like, we’re meant to be together.” And Hurricane said: “These is my babies. I love ‘em dearly. They be actin’ funny as hell sometimes, but I love ‘em.” Gay gangs were the families they chose in light of societal or familial discord regarding their sexual identities. Due to shared experiences, especially those regarding their history of same-sex sexual attraction and coming out, gay gangs were seen as safe spaces for sexual identity disclosure and coping with gay-related stress. This of course is somewhat paradoxical, considering the fact that urban street gangs are fairly unsafe spaces in terms of the risk of interpersonal violence, including the gay gangs in this sample. Gang sexual orientation composition thus created a continuum of acceptable gender fuidity and ability to be open about one’s sexuality, with straight gangs being most restrictive, hybrid gangs being somewhat restrictive, and gay gangs being least restrictive. Despite this, all men in my study still valued traditional masculine ideals, like fnancial independence, physical toughness, and fghting dexterity, and thought that some gay men indeed acted “too gay” in a way that attracted negative attention and produced safety concerns. However, they also expressed the value of autonomy, of people being able to live authentically, even if they did not believe their gang context facilitated that freedom for them. Regarding whether they felt like they were more central or fringe members to their groups, when I asked study participants to mark on a bull’s eye target how close to the core of the gang they were, most of the members of gay gangs reported being in the innermost rings, some at the centermost point of the target. They used words such as “heart” and “ringleader” to describe their involvement, which communicated their perceived meaningfulness to the group’s functioning. They often said they were core members of these gangs, and had a hand in the group’s decision-making. In contrast, among members of hybrid and straight gangs, there was considerable variation in descriptions of how “core” they were. Importantly, several members of straight gangs suggested they were on the very outskirts of the gang. No member of a gay gang placed himself that far from the center. Considering the broader dynamics of these groups, it is unsurprising that gay men would feel most central to gay gangs that welcome them for who they are and least central to straight gangs where their perceived worth and sense of belonging are far more precarious.

Self-perceptions as “gang” members Although these 48 men all self-identifed as gang members, they commonly preferred to use words other than “gang” to describe their groups. I started having to ask a long question: “Do you consider yourself to be a member of a gang, crew, clique, set, posse, or organization?” Other words came up too, particularly “family” among the gay gangs, as discussed earlier. Men were resistant to the negative connotations they perceived “gang” to entail, particularly in gay gangs. They found meaning, belonging, and both emotional and tangible support in their all-GLB groups, the complexity of which they felt could not be captured by “gang.” For example, of his gay gang, Ricky said: “I wouldn’t call it a gang, most people would, but I would really call it like a family afliation. . . . [Most people call us a gang] just cuz we hang out so often, and we cause a lot of trouble.” Similarly, many were resistant to externally-generated labels like “gangbanger” because they thought it was immediately associated with them being “thugs,” such as being violent for no reason, heartless, and without any redeeming virtue. The African American men in my study were particularly concerned with stereotypes they thought were targeted at them—such as “thugs,” felons, wannabe rappers, and deadbeat dads, to name a few. In fact, some men spoke to

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these concerns directly, and as if they are inexplicably entwined in the public imagination. Take King’s explanation: [B]eing a Black male, because I’m already stereotyped, like if you a Black male, then you gonna be a [professional] basketball player, and I’m studying to become a nurse, I don’t wanna be a basketball player, .  .  . or that you gonna be in jail, I’m not going to be a gangbanger, I mean, I guess you could call me a gangbanger, but I really don’t know. . . . I don’t want to be known as a gangbanger, and I don’t want to be known as a deadbeat dad, . . . I don’t wanna be stereotyped, I’m already tired of being stereotyped as a Black man period, and then to add on being gay, talking about, “Gurrrl,” [being famboyant] and that you gonna contract HIV, and all that, and I don’t want to conform to that stereotype, and I’m not gonna be that stereotype. In his interview, King went on to explain how his sexuality factored into the equation of criminalized activity, as he felt there were additional stereotypes about the kinds of crimes gay men engage in: namely, crimes like crafting (e.g., bouncing checks, committing fraud), escorting, and stealing. When engaging in illicit money-making activities, men wanted to avoid unnecessary harm to others (to avoid being seen as a “thug” or engaging in “thuggish” behavior) and similarly tried to minimize their involvement in escorting and crafting because these were seen as “gay” ways of making ends meet. They valued legal work as a way to construct masculine identity and identity as a respectable gay man, but illegal means still provided the fnancial independence they desired.

Leaving or remaining in the gang Another important discussion is related to gang desistance and persistence—leaving and staying, respectively. Among the current and former members of gangs in my study, they were more likely to be former members of straight gangs and current members of gay gangs. Set within a heterosexist cultural context, the structure of the gang combined with individual shifts in personal identity to encourage pathways out of straight gangs and pathways into continued involvement with gay gangs (Panfl, 2020: 255). Men left their heteronormative gangs because of the risk of negative outcomes, as well as because of shifts in their identities. They wanted to avoid arrest or incarceration, and did not want to continue to see or experience violence or threats of violence. Major shifts in identities included being reoriented to achieving normative markers of adulthood, such as employment, education, rewarding romantic relationships, and providing safe and supportive homes for their current or future children. They voiced concerns that touched on intersectional experiences of their gender, sexuality, race, and class—how they could successfully avoid becoming a stereotype while achieving culturally valued indicators of masculine success. Finally, they wanted space to be themselves, including the ability to develop public and respectable gay identities, which meant achieving those mainstream markers of success as an out gay man (Panfl, 2020: 274). In contrast, members of the gay gangs had strong motivations to remain in their gangs primarily because they saw these groups as their families. Any attempts at leaving the gang were complicated by the familial closeness of the gay gangs, which encouraged them to continue spending time together even when their gang’s members were involved in activities they no longer found worthwhile. And, in the case of one large gay gang, their commitments to pursuing prosocial goals—while maintaining gang membership that provided them with support and status—facilitated the gang’s cohesion and its members’ stable participation (Panfl, 2020: 274).

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Goals for the future Much of the mainstream gang literature assumes that gang members are fatalistic; that they lack all aspirations for the future. However, the men in my study had detailed, specifc, and normative goals, such as fnding fulflling and steady employment, educational attainment, and healthy families, including a boyfriend or husband and possible children. They explained that they did not have to live in a huge house or become rich; they just wanted to achieve something in their lives and have possessions and relationships to call their own. These men’s goals also included existential desires such as being highly regarded and happy. Their goals were rarely related to crime and violence; in fact, leaving the gang or ending their involvement in violence was seen as facilitating their future goals (Panfl, 2022a). I learned about their goals by directly asking, per an insightful suggestion from a study participant during the research process. Contrary to orthodox gangs research and criminological theory “canon,” gang members’ “prosocial” goals demonstrate how—if we are not careful—cultural messages and mainstream research assumptions prime gang researchers to overlook or misinterpret our participants’ lives and intentions. We can avoid engaging in damaging, dehumanizing, and marginalizing portrayals of gang members by including participants in the research process and adopting an ethical standpoint of pursuing contextualized, humanistic portrayals of ganginvolved people (Panfl, 2022a).

Reasons for telling their stories Someone might wonder why a current or former gang member would participate in interviewbased or ethnographic research that would entail them discussing their involvement in gangs, crime, and violence. I directly asked gay gang members why they were willing to participate in my study. Broadly, they wanted to tell their stories because they wanted their stories to be heard. They hoped that their example would convince other LGBTQ people to not follow in their path, provided a plethora of advice to LGBTQ young people, and expressed concerns for LGBTQ youth as a collective, asserting, “Our gay community needs to be heard.” Participants were also acting in directly altruistic ways, such as helping me as a then-PhD student and researcher to pursue my criminal justice degree and scholarly career. Finally, they mentioned wanting to experience catharsis, as the interview helped them get things “of my chest.” Based on these responses, I inferred that responsible queer criminological research is valued among the populations we study, provided we present their meanings and motives faithfully (Panfl, 2022b).

Intersectional considerations in data collection Scholars conducting any research with gang members—but especially feld studies, where face-to-face interaction happens frequently—should refect on how their own experiences, privileges, and biases can impact these interactions. Although my study was primarily interview-based, it was also partially ethnographic in that I  spent hundreds of hours with about half of the men in my study to better understand their lives. In terms of ethics, I sought to conduct a study that was humanistic and nuanced, with my primary goal being to learn about how these men constructed and negotiated masculine and gay identities through gang membership and crime commission. Prospective participants sometimes thought I wanted just to hear about their “dirty deeds,” and were often pleasantly surprised when I said my study was about their identities and lives more generally, including their relationships, opinions, and values. I was vehemently opposed to creating a study that treated people as exotic, and wanted

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to avoid unnecessarily lurid or sensational depictions, considering what sorts of cultural messages my study was up against. I was sensitive to this in part because of the ways I difered from my participants—such as being a white woman with a middle-class family background and no history of gang membership—and because of the ways I was similar to my participants— growing up gay at the same time in the same locale and having been friends with several of my participants when we were younger. It was this combination of insider/outsider that allowed us to establish trust and rapport based on our shared knowledge of gay culture and Columbus (and sometimes our shared social history), but left plenty of ground for participants to teach me about things I had not experienced. Being refexive in feldwork also means having frank conversations with participants about the ways our lives—and opportunities—difered. We frequently discussed the privileges my whiteness aforded me, and I refected on these through feldnote excerpts that demonstrated those exact mechanisms (see, e.g., the only time I was stopped by a police ofcer, in Panfl, 2017: 250). Intersectional gang studies need to include a discussion of the researcher’s social positions as well, including those in relation to study participants. My choices in the feld and in the book refect various values related to transparency and reciprocity, and acknowledge pressing social problems such as systemic racism. At several points in my analyses, I critique criminology—and especially mainstream gang research—for its enduring assumptions that have rendered LGBTQ gang members as virtually unthinkable and thus invisible, as it renders the social forces operating negatively on their lives as invisible as well.

Contrasting and complementary depictions of GBQ male gang members In the two subsections that follow, I explore other contemporary works of nonfction that discuss gay and bisexual male gang members in depth, and compare their fndings to mine. Because of the relative dearth of this research in the modern period, I include documentaries in addition to more-traditional scholarly research, as documentaries are often important sources of oral history in the same way that interview-based or ethnographic studies are.

Contrasting depictions in scholarly research In his study of young men involved in interpersonal violence, Totten (2000) encountered three gang-involved gay bashers who also disclosed that they too were gay, bisexual, or questioning their sexual identity. They explained that they physically assaulted gay people, not despite their GBQ self-identity, but because of it: gay bashing was a way to distance themselves from other gay people, obscure and conceal their sexual orientations from their fellow gang members, acquire masculine status within the gang, and participate in a ritual that united the gang through its hatred and punishment of “others.” Because gay people were targets for their gangs’ violence, these young men feared that they would be violently victimized if their gangs learned of their sexualities, and they were not aware of any other GBQ gang members in their crews whose example had preceded them. Totten (2012) also reviewed narratives of 15 gay, bisexual, and transgender gang members (of varying genders) whom he had encountered in several studies of gang violence. The young men discussed in this study similarly expressed externalized homophobia exhibited through serious acts of gay bashing; internalized homophobia exhibited through their verbal expressions of self-hatred; and hypersexual or sexually abusive behavior with young women to prove to his gang peers he was “no faggot” (Totten, 2012: 13).

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Totten’s (2000, 2012) fnding that nonheterosexual male gang members bash fellow gay people starkly difers from the gay and bisexual men in my study (Panfl, 2014b, 2017), who defended themselves and other LGBTQ people from violence. Although a contrasting fnding on the subject of gay bashing, this complements my fnding that straight gangs’ homophobic climates endure partly because of a lack of openly GBQ members. In turn, gay and bisexual men do not disclose their sexual identities and take pains to present a masculine persona to the gang. This major diference could also be attributed to choices made during study recruitment and how the studies refect diferent community contexts. I  intentionally recruited gay and bisexual gang members in a gay-friendly city, starting with people who were openly gay at least to some degree and who knew other gay people, while Totten’s participants were drawn from larger studies of gang violence, conducted across Canada in varying locales. That is, Totten and I were efectively sampling on very diferent indicators: violent behaviors versus gay identity, respectively.

Complementary depictions in documentaries There are also several documentaries that feature LGBTQ gang members. Here, I  briefy explore the content of two such documentaries, both of which are primarily focused on gay and bisexual male gang members, and both provide complementary depictions to my fndings in The Gang’s All Queer (2017), specifcally about gang sexual orientation composition. “Homeboy” (2011) focused primarily on Latino young men. The documentary explores the struggles of gay Latino gang members within the contexts of both the ethnic cultures of their families of origin and their gang environments and expectations. These men described how they navigated their identities with their families and their gangs, such as the ways they felt they needed to navigate expectations of machismo originating from Latin culture and expectations of hypermasculinity in gang culture, also infuenced by machismo ideals. In one man’s words, being gay and in a gang is “so much harder” because “you gotta suppress all these feelings, you gotta put on a front,” and he recalled, “it was starting to break me down.” Luis J. Rodriguez, celebrated activist and author of Always Running, his memoir of gang life, was also interviewed for this documentary. He refected on the challenges he faced with sexuality as a heterosexual man in a gang, and about how the challenges for gang-involved gay men are heightened “in a world in which that [being gay] was considered the worst thing you could be.” Further, he explained how systemic racism and homophobia meant that these men felt like they could not ft in anywhere: “for Mexican gay men and African American gay men, they must even go through another level of stuf, because some of them can’t even relate to the white gay guys, and they’re afraid to go in those communities . . . the gay communities . . . that are mostly white, they’re afraid to even go there, so they’re . . . in a situation where they can’t be gay in their [racial/ethnic] community, but they can’t interact with the gay community, so . . . they’re completely hidden away” (Dinco, 2011). In these ways, these gay Latino gang members’ experiences mirrored those of the gay and bisexual members of primarily straight gangs in The Gang’s All Queer (2017). “Check It” (2015) focuses on a gang of the same name in Washington, D.C. made up of gay and transgender African American young people, and their experiences map very closely onto the experiences of the members of all-gay gangs in The Gang’s All Queer (2017). For example: while Check It is a gang according to law enforcement, its members thought of themselves as a family and not just a gang; they sought to have a reputation and a “name” in DC; their group was organized by shared identity and not neighborhood; and they engaged in retaliatory violence if their members were threatened, which sometimes insulated them from further antigay harassment and victimization (Conti, 2015). When information about the documentary

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was released, Check It was believed to be the “only documented all-gay or transgender gang in America,” likely due to cultural assumptions about gangs and gay men as discussed earlier. Check It was clearly not America’s only all-gay gang—as various scholarly sources show—but that framing approximated the (lack of) cultural imagination for such groups.

Lesbian gang members: a comparable story? Lesbian, bisexual, and queer female gang members may seem unsurprising in contrast to GBQ male gang members, since in the cultural imagination, lesbians are often associated with masculinity while gay men are associated with femininity. Some research suggests that lesbian gang members may be regarded more highly than gay male gang members. One all-male youth gang in the early 2000s in Italy was described as hating gay men, “although they accept lesbians” (Gatti et al., 2005: 71). Brotherton and Barrios (2004) also noted that the homophobia in the Latin Kings set they studied was directed more at gay males than at lesbians. Gay male gang members themselves also perceived that lesbians in gangs would be treated as guys and may be valued because they could provide some sexual titillation to straight male gang members (Panfl, 2017). However, these expectations may difer depending on the intersections of the young women’s gender presentation, sexual identity, and sexual behavior. Older accounts describe lesbian female gang members as being sexually assaulted and expelled from their gangs upon being discovered (Campbell, 1984), but it is unclear as to whether their sexual orientation or the fact that they kept secrets from the gang was the main driving force for this abusive treatment. Regarding female gang members who engaged in same-sex sexual activities or relationships, these relationships were seen by youth workers as a way to achieve “values and goals romantically assumed to be characteristic of middle class male–female relationships, i.e., love, trust, tenderness, and kindness” (Fishman, 1999: 79), instead of the realities of the sexual relationships these same young women had with male gang members, which could be violent and competitive. An example of an all-lesbian gang illustrates themes of resistance to homophobia, as with all-gay gangs. Dykes Taking Over (DTO) was formed by a group of young African American lesbians in Philadelphia for various reasons related to their marginalization. They claimed their school’s antibullying and multicultural educational policies were not being enforced, resulting in them facing homophobia in their school because of their sexual orientations. Additionally, the school more consistently enforced policies prohibiting firting and afection among LGBTQ youth than they did among heterosexual youth. The school, community, and media then alleged that DTO members began sexually harassing their peers. The sexual harassment has been described by scholars analyzing the case as a way for DTO to fght back in order to restore the power diferential, as well as to perform masculinity as young lesbians who presented their gender in masculine-leaning ways (Johnson, 2008). The school environment seems to have facilitated resistance strategies that ended up being harmful to various groups of students. A sensationalist news segment on FOX News’ now-cancelled show The O’Reilly Factor, titled “Violent lesbian gangs a growing problem,” claimed that lesbian gangs like DTO (which was specifcally named in the broadcast) were made up of “lawless gay people,” were recruiting young children and “indoctrinating them into homosexuality,” “raping young girls” or otherwise forcing them to perform sexual acts, physically assaulting males, and carrying pink pistols (Buchanan and Holthouse, 2007). There is no indication that DTO engaged in the specifc activities alleged in this broadcast, and those involved with the show eventually released a

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“clarifcation and apology,” particularly related to how many lesbian gangs the segment claimed were active. Inaccuracy and sensationalism aside, youth gangs like DTO are certainly concerning in that young people feel forced to combat harassment with harassment, instead of being protected by adults and institutions. In exploring how incidents of school-based anti-gay bullying and harassment can lead to violent retaliation by young gay men, Panfl (2014b) demonstrates that low teacher intervention can cause young people to feel as though the only way to protect themselves is to literally fght back and build a reputation for toughness. In an analysis of DTO, Johnson (2008) presents several suggestions for improving school climates for queer students—especially queer students of color—which may very well help to prevent gangrelated or delinquent coping too. These include: enforcing existing policies that are designed to protect students; enacting separate bullying and sexual harassment policies and then actually enforcing them; creating and supporting spaces for LGBTQ students to feel safe and afrmed; and partnering with service providers, community agencies, and advocates who can help support students on issues of ethnicity and culture as well as sexual identity. Johnson’s suggestions point to the importance of responses that acknowledge youths’ intersectional identities and the structural barriers they face.

Conclusion: queering gang research? It is no secret that I would prefer gang scholars—and criminologists more broadly—consider issues of sexuality and sexual identity in their work, especially as it relates to gang members’ life experiences and other aspects of identity. Clearly, not everyone can—or should—conduct studies of LGBTQ gang members. However, critical gang scholars have already paved the way for our feld to explore topics such as empowerment and identity construction via gang membership (e.g., Brotherton and Barrios, 2004), structural inequality and how gang members meet their needs via gang membership (e.g., Vigil, 2002), and the roles of masculinity in gang participation when other avenues to status are blocked (e.g., Rios, 2011), all of which are highly relevant for LGBTQ gang members. Integrating sexual identity would be both achievable and illuminating. Further, critical gang studies could reveal the impacts of social forces that intersect with homophobia and transphobia to negatively afect LGBTQ people’s lives, such as racism, classism, and ableism. While on one hand, I  fear that additional gang studies in the current sociopolitical context could lead to increased criminalization of LGBTQ young people of color, on the other hand, I hope (perhaps naively) that greater visibility can lead to changes in material support. My own research has demonstrated that the heterosexist backdrop of familial and societal rejection positions young gay men to engage in criminalized activity as a matter of survival: we fail them repeatedly. It’s a telling statement that these young men join gangs, which can provide young people with protection, a sense of belonging, and opportunities for socialization, instead of or in addition to other social groups. We should think really critically about what it means that young, queer people of color might think that joining a gang is their best way to feel safe, be empowered, make money, and build community. I repeat: We need to think really critically about that.

Acknowledgments I thank Jennifer M. Ortiz for the opportunity to contribute to this volume, for her vision, and for her patience and understanding.

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Note 1 Although critical gang studies often eschew mainstream methods of investigating gangs, it may be interesting to note that the diference between 14-year-old straight gang joining and 18-year-old gay gang joining was a statistically signifcant diference.

References Brotherton, D. C. (2015). Youth street gangs: A critical appraisal. New York, NY: Routledge. Brotherton, D. C., & Barrios, L. (2004). The almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street politics and the transformation of a New York City Gang. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Buchanan, S., & Holthouse, D. (2007, October 1). Rod Wheeler claims on the O’Reilly Factor lesbian gangs are raping young girls. The Intelligence Report. Retrieved from www.splcenter.org/fghting-hate/ intelligence-report/2007/rod-wheelerclaims-o%E2%80%99reilly-factor-lesbian-gangs-are-rapingyoung-girls Campbell, A. (1984). The girls in the gang. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Conti, A. (2015, March 5). “Check It”is a new documentary about America’s only all-gay gang. Vice. Retrieved from www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gdzzg/check-it-is-adocumentary-about-americas-only-all-gay-gang Decker, S. H., Bynum, T., & Weisel, D. (1998). A tale of two cities: Gangs as organized crime groups. Justice Quarterly, 15, 395–425. Dinco, D. (2011). Homeboy [Documentary flm]. New York, NY: Homeboy Films. Fishman, L. T. (1999). Black female gang behavior: An historical and ethnographic perspective. In M. Chesney-Lind  & J. M. Hagedorn (Eds.), Female gangs in America: Essays on girls, gangs and gender (pp. 64–84). Chicago, IL: Lake View. Gatti, U., Angelini, F., Marengo, G., Melchiorre, N., & Sasso, M. (2005). An old-fashioned youth gang in Genoa. In S. H. Decker & F. M. Weerman (Eds.), European street gangs and troublesome youth groups (pp. 51–80). Lanham, MD: AltaMira. GLAAD. (n.d.). GLAAD media reference guide (11th ed.). Retrieved from www.glaad.org/reference Johnson, D. (2008). Taking over the school: Student gangs as a strategy for dealing with homophobic bullying in an urban public school district. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 19, 87–104. Miller, W. B. (1958). Lower class culture as a generating milieu of gang delinquency. Journal of Social Issues, 14(3), 5–19. Miller, W. B. (2011). City gangs. Phoenix, AZ: Arizona State University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Ortiz, J. M. (2021). Doxa is dangerous: How academic doxa inhibits prison gang research. In D. C. Brotherton & R. J. Gude (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of critical gang studies (pp. 624–632). New York, NY: Routledge. Panfl, V. R. (2014a). Better left unsaid? The role of agency in queer criminological research. Critical Criminology, 22, 99–111. Panfl, V. R. (2014b). Gay gang- and crime-involved men’s experiences with homophobic bullying and harassment in schools. Journal of Crime and Justice, 37, 79–103. Panfl, V. R. (2017). The gang’s all queer: The lives of gay gang members. New York, NY: NYU Press. Panfl, V. R. (2020). “I was a homo thug, now I’m just homo”: Gay gang members’ desistance and persistence. Criminology, 58, 255–279. Panfl, V. R. (2022a). “Ask me about my goals!” Challenging pervasive assumptions of gang members’ fatalism by exploring gay gang members’ goals. Critical Criminology, 30, 71–93. Panfl, V. R. (2022b). “Everybody needs their story to be heard”: Motivations to participate in research on LGBTQ criminal ofending. Deviant Behavior, 43, 647–665. Panfl, V. R., & Miller, J. (2014). Beyond the straight and narrow: The import of queer criminology for criminology and criminal justice. The Criminologist, 39(4), 1–8. Reiss, A. J. (1961). The social integration of queers and peers. Social Problems, 9, 102–120. Rios, V. M. (2011). Punished: Policing the lives of black and Latino boys. New York, NY: NYU Press. Short, J. F., & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1965). Group process and gang delinquency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Thrasher, F. M. (1927 [2000]). The gang: A study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Chicago, IL: New Chicago School Press. Totten, M. D. (2000). Guys, gangs, and girlfriend abuse. Peterborough, ON: Broadview. Totten, M. D. (2012). Gays in the gang. Journal of Gang Research, 19(2), 1–24. Vigil, J. D. (2002). A rainbow of gangs: Street cultures in the mega-city. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

INDEX

Footnotes will be denoted by the letter ‘n’ and Note number following the page number. abstract empiricism 90–91 afliations to gangs: and being targeted for violence 17; multiple 110–115; “no-afliation” clause 18, 131; switching 112 African Americans 67, 113, 123, 155, 159, 163, 164; see also Black people; minority communities; race and ethnicity Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (ALKQN) 13, 14, 29; Manifesto 13, 16 alt-right gangs: Aryan free spaces 30, 32; comparing with conventional gangs 23–46; durable 26; explicitly defning 25–35; gang members seen as “Nazis” 27, 28; group-based 36; identity 26–27; ideology 27–29; lack of attention paid to 34; physical and digital territoriality 29–31; policing protests 2, 34–35; public policy approaches to target 35–37; space, use of 30, 32; virtual Aryan free spaces 30; white power groups as 23, 28; “whiteness” 30; see also gangs; street gangs American Civil Liberties Union 18 Anderson, E. 29 Angelou, M. 146 Antifa 32 Anzaldúa, G. 141, 148 Archbold, C. 103 Aryan Republican Army 27 Asian gangs 106 Asociacion Neta 14 Barganier, G. 67–68, 69, 78 barrios 138 Barrios, L. 10, 75, 153, 164 beliefs, internalizing 114 Best, J. 104–105 biological determinism 70, 71, 74

BIPOC groups 33, 35, 53 Black Gangster Disciple Nation 101, 109 Black Lives Matter 33, 55 Black P Stone Nation (BPSN) 109, 110 Black Panther Party 13, 17, 33 Black people: in Chicago 54, 57; feminist theory 140; higher rates of contact with police 121; radical materialist analyses of criminality 68; street gangs 29, 48; surveillance 58; see also African Americans; minority communities; race and ethnicity Bloods, the 14, 67, 68, 108, 109, 113 Boogaloo Bois 34 brooming 104 Brotherton, D. C. 10, 67, 69, 75, 153, 164 Burdett, J. 12, 134 Burgess, E. W. 49, 72 Cacho, L. M. 67 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) 125 Capitol Building insurrection (2021) 33, 35 carcerality 34, 50, 51, 56, 142; brokers 140; carceral citizenship 79; community 146; continuum 139; neo-colonial-carceral social order 2, 69, 77, 78, 79, 81; reverting colonialcarceral gaze onto academia 2, 69; women as carceral collateral 139–140; see also coloniality Cepeda, A. 138–139 “Check It” (documentary) 163–164 Chicago: Black and Brown communities 54, 57; Chicago Public Schools free lunch program, shutting down 54; communities of color 54; Gang Congregation Ordinance 122, 126; homicide rates 51; hyper-local context of studies 52; Little Village 50, 51, 58; Magnifcent

Index

Mile 53; Mexican 52; rival gangs 113; slums 73; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings 48, 52–54, 57; see also Chicago People Nation; Chicago Police Department (CPD); Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Chicago People Nation 108 Chicago Police Department (CPD) 47, 48, 54–57, 122 Chicago School 8, 49, 72 Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) 54 Chicana gang members, California 29, 148n2; gang entrée, case studies 141–143; institutional experiences 143–145; intersectional criminological analysis 138–151; research fndings 141–148; resistance 145–147; theory 140–141; women as carceral collateral 139–140 child development 71 cholas 138, 143, 147, 148n2 cholos 139 Civil Rights Movement 17 class 68, 91, 95, 138; “dangerous” 123; dominant 10; lower/working-classes 25, 73–74, 141–144, 147, 148; marginalized classes 10, 75; middleclasses 9, 10, 14, 19, 67, 74, 143, 162, 164; and subcultures 73, 74; upper-classes 74; values 14; see also underclass Cloward, R. A. 74 Cohen, A. K. 74; Delinquent Boys 73 Cohen, S. 105 colonialism and coloniality 47; defning 78; formal colonialism 77; neo-colonial-carceral social order 2, 69, 77, 78, 79, 81; of power 68, 69, 77 Columbus, Ohio 152 Combahee River Collective 141 communities of color 12, 17, 79, 121–126; and COVID-19 pandemic 48, 52; diferential treatment 134; fragmentation of 133; gang databases 33–34, 134; marginalization of 13, 76, 132; neighborhoods 67; oppression 132, 133; pathologizing 52–53; perception of gangs as 33, 52, 134; segregating 59; violence against 48, 52–54, 126; women 140; young people 9, 54, 126, 165; see also Black Gangster Disciple Nation; Black Lives Matter; Black P Stone Nation (BPSN); Black Panther Party; Black street gangs; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Program 104 confict 24, 49–52, 59, 72, 90; cultural 72; engineered/socially engineered 48, 57–58; gang/intra-gang 48–50, 52, 58, 59; intra-gang 17; with the middle classes 74; with parents and authority fgures 71; racial/inter-racial 48, 51, 52, 59, 90; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago 48, 52–54, 57; see also protests and demonstrations Cooper, D. 51

169

correctional ofcer sanctioned violence 17–18, 129–131, 142 counter-gang paradigms 76–78 COVID-19 pandemic 35, 48, 52, 54 Crenshaw, K. 2 criminal justice system: Black criminality, radical materialist analyses 68; “crimes of the powerful” 85; crimes of the powerful and gang studies 91–93; criminalizing of gang members 1, 3, 7–9, 11, 12, 17, 20, 50, 51, 58, 69–70, 78, 121, 123, 125, 127; criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) scholarship 88–90, 92, 94, 95; and gang databases/intelligence systems 88; gang-related crimes 104; gender diferences 121; improving the criminological gaze on gang-related phenomena 95; life course criminalization 139; limitations of criminal justice-oriented frameworks 1–2, 7–8; medical model of criminology 70; pathological inclusion of criminality 24; state criminality 85; tool of white supremacy 122; see also misconceptions of gang members Crips, the 14, 67, 68, 108, 109, 113 critical gang studies 2, 10, 19, 25, 47, 58, 59, 166n1; LGBTQ gang members 153, 154, 165; redefning mainstream defnitions 67–69, 77 critical race theory 122 cultural transmission theory 73 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) 96n4 Darwinism 71 data collection 8, 11, 124; intersectional considerations 161–162 databases, gang 50, 70, 79, 80, 88, 122, 128, 134; alt-right gangs 23, 33–34, 36 Decker, S. 101 decolonial analysis 2, 68, 76–78 DeCook, J. R. 32 defning gangs and gang members 49, 67–83; in the 1920s and 1930s 72–73; in the 1950s and 1960s 73–75; in the 1970s and 1980s 75–78; alt-right gangs 25–35; breadth of defnitions 12; comparisons with other groups 13; criminality included in widely accepted defnitions of gangs see under criminal justice system; critical gang defnition 7–22; decolonial imagery in counter-gang paradigms 76–78; defnitional wars 48–50; delinquency, bio-psychological determinist view of 70–71; empowerment 14, 15, 18–20, 138; Eurogang defnition 9, 25, 26; genealogy of traditional gang theory (2000) 70–78; grounded theory 18–19; inclusion and belonging 15; intersectional framework, using 2; manifestos 15–18; as marginalized groups 13; misconceptions 12–13; near group theory 70, 73, 74; negative connotations of term 11–12; “othering” nature of term 9, 11, 13, 18, 123, 133; positivist perspectives 7, 8, 19; re-examining/redefning mainstream

170

Index

defnitions of gangs/gang members 67–83; research methods 10–11; resistance 11, 14, 18, 19, 146, 147, 164; social disorganization 72–74, 86; street gangs 24–25; transgressing gang defnitions and historical ties 58–59; underclass 75–78; see also class; confict; gang members; gang studies; gangs; labeling; subcultures dehumanization of gang members 1, 18, 68, 78 delinquency: bio-psychological determinist view of 70–71; causation 73; delinquent subcultures 73, 74; juvenile 71; persistent spatial distribution 73; prevention programs 72–73; psychogenic view of 70 demonstrations see protests and demonstrations Department of Justice, US 87 deportation 88 Diego Vigil, J. 9 Dimou, E. 77–78 durability of alt-right gangs 26 Durán, R. 50, 67 Durkheim, E. 73 Dykes Taking Over (DTO) 164–165 El Salvador: civil war 87; El Salvadorans in the US 87–88, 96n8; government 87, 88; history 88; homicide rates 88; migrants 87–88, 95n3; MS-13 gang members in 88; police 93; violence 88; see also MS-13/Mara Salvatrucha, Los Angeles empowerment 14, 15, 18–20, 138 English, K. 140 ethics 87, 115, 161 ethnicity see minority communities; race and ethnicity ethnographic research see qualitative ethnographic research Eurogang Program of Research 9, 24–26 evolution theory 71 extremist forums, online 27 extremist symbols 28 Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) 87, 88 FBI (Federal Bureau of investigation), US 33, 51, 123–124, 138 feminism 29, 31; Black feminist theory 140; Chicana feminist theory 140–141, 148; decolonial praxis 76; Feminist Pathways Perspective 140; international 141; intersectional 141; and victimization 140 Floyd, G. 48, 52, 53 gang members: benefts of gang membership, perceived 14–15; creating folk devils out of 67, 101, 105; creation of stereotypes 18; criminalizing see under criminal justice system; dehumanization of 1, 18, 68, 78; diferential treatment 12, 17–18; extralegal punishment against 126–127; gender, role of 3; harassment of 17–18, 128; and incarceration

128–133; informal social control 18; labeling of individuals as 49, 79; LGBTQ see LGBTQ gang members; lived experiences 2, 3; media driven perception of as inherently evil 125; misconceptions about see misconceptions of gang members; police violence against 124, 126–128; qualitative ethnographic research 2, 7, 8; self-nomination 26; see also gang studies; gangs; gang violence gang neighborhoods 128 gang studies: Chicana gang members, California 141–148; and crimes of the powerful 91–93; criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) scholarship 88–90, 92, 94, 95; critical see critical gang studies; critical gang research 2; data analysis 11, 124; data collection 8, 11, 124; depictions of male “homosexuality” in historical and mainstream gang research 153–154; dynamics of CBQ male invisibility in gang research 153–154; early research 7; fndings 11, 107, 125–133, 141–148; and hegemony 88–89; hybrid gangs 106–107; hyper-local context, Chicago 52; integrated design 25; law enforcement 51; “leading” researchers 10; minority communities 124, 125–133; modern research 1; naturalist approach 7; qualitative ethnographic research 2, 7, 8; quantitative research 7; sociological factors 7; street gangs 23; survey instruments 25; traditional 30; see also mainstream criminology/ gang research gang violence 11, 51; alleged 57, 58, 69, 86, 93, 121, 123, 125; framing of 2, 48; horizontal 59; inter- and intra-gang violence 17, 92, 163; LGBTQ gang members 156, 157, 159, 162–165; misconceptions of gang members as inherently violent 9, 19, 57, 58, 86, 93, 121, 123, 125; MS-13/Mara Salvatrucha, Los Angeles 85, 88, 89; responses to 88; street gangs 2, 30, 31, 34–35, 36, 101; studies 85, 88, 92, 163; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago 48, 52–54, 57; victims 24; white power 27, 31, 32, 35, 37; see also homicide; violence gangs: activities engaged in 156–157; Asian 106; culture 2; databases 33–34; defnitions see defnitions of gangs; emergence of 10; European, of the 1920s 76; gay see LGBTQ gang members; heteronormative 160; hybrid see hybrid gangs; ideal-typical 74; joining or forming 8, 14–15, 85, 155–156; labeling groups as 7, 19; leaders see leaders of gangs; leaving or remaining in the gang 160; LGBTQ members 152–167; local 108–109; losing sight of original purpose 16–17; merger of 109–110; name changes 109–110; political origins 13, 14; positive aspects 12; protective function of 15; as a response to violence against the marginalized 15; and social structure 1–2, 7; society’s treatment of 15, 17–18; sociology of 71–72;

Index

symbols 108–109; transgressing gang defnitions and historical ties 58–59; units 103, 123, 124, 129–133; see also alt-right gangs; gang members; gang studies; gang violence; street gangs Gangster Disciples 101, 109, 154 García, A. 69 gay gangs see LGBTQ gang members gender: diversity 113–115; gender diferences in criminal justice 121; presentation in, among LGBTQ gang members 157–159; see also LGBTQ gang members Glasgow, D. G. 75 governing documents see manifestos, written Great Depression 73 Grifths, E. 23 Grossman, D. 55 grounded theory 2, 10, 18–19 Groypers 34 gun violence 47, 50, 58 Gutierrez-Adams, E. 96n6 Hagedorn, J. M. 49–50, 75 Hall, G. S., Adolescence 71 Hall, S. 105 Hamm, M. S. 28 hegemony 67, 73, 90, 92, 139, 153; and femininity 141; and gang studies 88–89; geopolitical 87; ideology 139; regimes of power 76; state as source 91; structural arrangements 139 Heyer, H. 31 Holt, T. J. 27 “Homeboy” (documentary) 163 homicide 23, 85, 95, 104; rates of 51, 88; systematic 92; youth 94; see also gang violence; violence homophobia 164 Howell, J. C. 23 Hughes, E. C. 24 Hutchinson, M. M. 105 hybrid gang claims, deconstructing 107–115; compliance with ethical standards 115; diversity in race/ethnicity and gender 113–115; existing gangs changing names 109–110; and gang grafti 108; local gangs adopting symbols of large 108–109; merger of gangs 109–110; more frequently encountered during the 1990s 107–108; multiple afliations 110–115; nontraditional gang features, having 108; rival gangs from Chicago or Los Angeles cooperating in criminal activity in other parts of the country 113; switching afliations 112 hybrid gangs 100–117, 155; deconstructing claims see hybrid gang claims, deconstructing; defning 100–101; moral panics 102–106; research methods and data 106–107; social construction and moral panics 102–104; theory 102–106 identities: alt-right gangs 26–27; in-group 32; LGBTQ communities 152, 157–159; resistant 10; self-identity 162

171

ideology: alt-right gangs 27–29; imagery 32 illegal activity 9 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 96n4 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) 88, 96n4 incarceration, and gang members 128–131; efect of label post-incarceration 131–133; “no-afliation” clause 18, 131; parole conditions 18, 131–132 inclusion and belonging, gangs providing sense of 15 Insane Unknowns 112 intersectional perspective 1–3, 49, 59, 85, 94, 95; Chicana gang members, California 138–151; “crimes of the powerful” 92; data collection 161–162; feminism 141; LGBTQ gang members 152, 160, 162, 165 interviews 11, 107, 162 Jackson-Jacob, C. 8, 68, 69 Jacobellis v. Ohio 23 Jewkes, Y. 105 Johnson, D. 165 Johnson, R. 126 Katz, C. M. 103, 104 Katz, J. 8, 68, 69 killology studies 55 King, Martin Luther 146 Kingpin Strategy 50, 51, 102 Klein, M. W. 8, 9, 26, 28, 37n1, 100, 104; The Eurogang Paradox 25 Kobrin, S. 74 Ku Klux Klan 9, 27, 35 labeling 73, 75, 122; and criminalization see under criminal justice system; efect of label post-incarceration 131–133; formal 92; global process 77; of groups as gangs 7, 19; of individuals as active gang members 49, 69, 79, 92, 134; mislabeling 128; of Proud Boys as white power street gangs 31; questionable, of gang activity 103; of racialized individuals 69, 134; theory 75 Latin Kings 14, 47, 56, 164 Latinx authors 146 Latinx gangs 29, 57, 68, 95 law enforcement 51–54; correctional ofcer sanctioned violence 17–18, 129–131, 142; gang databases 33; justifcation of mistreatment of gangs 17; methods 52; and MS-13 88; parole conditions 18, 131–132; police harassment 17; police subcultural practices 103; policing protests and putsches 2, 34–35; public policy approaches to target alt-right gangs 35; structural level violence 13; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago 48, 52–54, 57 leaders of gangs 17, 51, 127, 130 León, K. S. 68, 69, 70

172

Index

LGBTQ gang members 3, 152–167; activities engaged in 156–157; complementary depictions in documentaries 163–164; countering orthodox depictions 152; crafting 157; depictions of male “homosexuality” in historical and mainstream gang research 153–154; dynamics of CBQ male invisibility in gang research 153–154; escorting 157; gang sexual orientation composition 159, 163; gang types (straight, hybrid or gay) 155; gay and bisexual male gang members’ experiences and identities 154–162, 163, 164; gay men in all-gay gangs 158; gender presentation and interactions with fellow gang members 157–159; homosexual activities 154; identities 152, 154–162; joining or forming a gang 155–156; leaving or remaining in the gang 160; ratio of GLB members to straight members 157; selfperceptions as “gang” members 159–160; sexual identities 157–159; violence 156, 157, 159, 160, 162–165; youth 156, 164; see also gang members life course criminalization 139 Lightfoot, Lori (Mayor of Chicago) 52–54, 55, 57 Little Village, Chicago 50, 51, 58 Lombroso, C. 70–71 looting 48, 53–56; gang members as alleged looters 54, 55 Lopez V. 139 Lopez-Aguado, P. 67 Los Angeles, California 88, 104, 107–111, 113, 142 lower/working-classes 25, 73–74, 141–144, 147, 148; lower-class theory 73 Lugalia-Hollon, R. 51 McClain, E. 48 McCorkle, R. C. 101, 103, 104–105 machismo 163 McInnes, G. 31 McKay, H. D. 72–73 Macon, P. 49–50 Maeder, E. M. 12, 134 mainstream criminology/gang research: academia’s complicity in reproducing orthodox criminological ideas 2, 68, 69; conventional theories 77; criminality included in widely accepted defnitions of gangs see criminal justice system; misconceptions of gang members; genealogy of traditional gang theory (2000) 70–78; ignoring of structural, historical contexts and role of society 1–2, 8; non-intersectional framework 2; pathologizing analysis 7; see also criminal justice system; gang studies; gang violence; violence Malcolm X 146 Maldonado-Fabela, K. L. 139 Maldonado-Torres, N. 78 manifestos, written 15–18 Mara Salvatrucha see MS-13/Mara Salvatrucha, Los Angeles

marginalization of gang members, selfperpetuating cycle 1–2 marginalized classes 10, 75 Maxson, C. 104 Meehan, A. J. 103 Merton, R. 73, 74 Mexicans 48, 57, 138; Mexican Mafa 148n1 Meyer, M. 103 middle-classes 9, 10, 14, 19, 67, 74, 143, 162, 164 Miethe, T. D. 101, 103, 104–105 Mignolo, W. D. 78 Miller, W. B. 8, 9, 73–74, 154 Minnesota Police Department, Chicago 53 minority communities: aversion to term “gangs” 125–126; literature review 121–124; media driven perception of gang members 125; misconception of gangs see misconceptions of gang members; reinforcing oppression in 121–137; research methods, data and fndings 124, 125–133; see also African Americans; Black people; race and ethnicity misconceptions of gang members 12–13; as alleged looters 54, 55; as allegedly violent 9, 19, 57, 58, 69, 86, 93, 121, 123, 125; as inherently criminal 1, 3, 7–9, 11, 12, 17, 20, 50, 51, 58, 69–70, 78, 121, 123, 125; as inherently evil 125; as inherently inferior 123, 133; as “racialized folk devils” 67, 101, 105; see also criminal justice system; gang members; gang violence; gangs; violence mislabeling 128 Moore, C. L. 49, 75, 76 moral panic 104–106; and social construction 102–104 MS-13/Mara Salvatrucha, Los Angeles 2–3, 29, 58, 84–99; and abstract empiricism 90–91; alleged members 84; case study (Yesenia) 85–87; composition of group 85; crimes of the powerful and gang studies 91–93; emerging of (1970s) 87; hegemony and gang studies 88–89; integrating “critical” and “applied” perspectives 94–95; as internationally recognized Latino gang 85; IRB consent forms 84; and law enforcement 88; as Mara Salvatrucha Stoners (MSS) 87; racialized state crime, hemispheric orientation to 87–88; transformation in the 1980s 87; transnationalism and state violence 93–94; see also El Salvador multiculturalism 32 Myrdal, G. 75 narratives of precision 76 National Gang Center 24 National Institute of Justice 94 National Youth Gang Center Report (2000) 114 National Youth Gang Survey (2010) 138 naturalist perspective 7 Nazi Low Riders (NLR) 28 Nazism 27, 28 near group theory 70, 73, 74

Index

neo-colonial-carceral social order 2, 69, 77, 78, 79, 81 neoliberalism 1 Nero, D. 31 New York State 124, 125–126; Security Threat Group Management Units 129–130 Nuestra Familia 14 Oakland, California 126 Oath Keepers 34, 37 obscenity 23 OGs (Original Gangsters) 156 Ohlin, L. E. 74 Operation Ceasefre 36 opportunity structures 70, 73, 74; illegitimate 76, 140; legitimate 145 oppression 1, 2, 15, 59, 69, 96n6, 121–137; capitalist 58; of communities of color 132, 133; crushing 140; cycle of 124, 133; of marginalized populations 3, 8, 19, 20; perpetuating 19, 121, 123, 134; political and social 17; structural violence 19 Orlando, Florida 104, 107, 111, 114 Ortiz, J. M. 68, 69, 129 “othering” 9, 11, 13, 18, 123, 133 Panfl, V. 96n6, 165; The Gang’s All Queer 155, 163 Papachristos, A. V. 24 parens patriae 71 Park, R. E. 49, 72 parole conditions 18, 131–132 Pasko, L. 139 Pearson, G. 105 Pérez, Emma, The Decolonial Imaginary 76 Phillips, Susan 76 police/law enforcement agencies: antagonistic relations with communities 53; brutality 53–54; and gang members 17, 126–128; harassment by 17, 18, 127, 128, 132–134; protests and demonstrations 34–35; serve and protect role 55, 56; violence by 13, 35, 47, 54, 55, 57, 124, 126; white supremacy policing 2, 33–35; see also law enforcement Pollard, J. 28 Portland Policing Bureau 33; Gang Database 34 Positivist School 7, 8, 19, 71, 72 post-industrial era 75 power 58, 122; alt-right gangs see white power/ white supremacy groups; coloniality of 68, 69, 77; confguration of 85, 91; “crimes of the powerful” 85; crimes of the powerful and gang studies 91–93; diferential 164; hegemonic regimes of 76; hidden matrices of 80; intentional deployment of 57; law enforcement agencies 54, 59, 114; long-standing patterns of 78; material 55; political economy of 89; power structures 69; power struggles 55; powerful groups 123, 133; public policy 81n2; racial 92, 122; state 92; structures of 140; symbolic

173

55; systems of 140; see also empowerment; law enforcement; police/law enforcement agencies predatory organizations 24 Proposition 21, California 128 protests and demonstrations: anxieties over demonstrators returning home 55; habitual, in US cities 30; non-violent 55; policing 34–35; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago 48, 52–54, 57 Proud Boys 9, 29, 34, 37; as a case study 31–32; labeling as a white power street gang 31; white supremacy policing 33 psychological determinism 74 “public or perish” model 68 Pufer, J. A. 24 Pyrooz, D. C. 25 qualitative ethnographic research 2, 7, 8, 10, 50, 52, 124 quantitative research 7 Queen Nation 13, 16, 29 Quijano, A. 69, 77 race and ethnicity 36, 48, 68, 121; diversity in 113–115; racial/inter-racial confict 48, 51, 52, 59, 90; racialized individuals 69, 134; racialized state crime, hemispheric orientation to 87–88; racialized surveillance 58, 59, 88; racist skinheads 25, 26, 30; summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago 48, 52–54, 57; see also African Americans; Black people; coloniality; decolonial analysis; minority communities racialized state crime, hemispheric orientation to 87–88 Racketeering Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) 51, 123–124 Reid, S. E. 26, 27, 30, 31, 36 researching gangs see gang studies resistance 11, 14, 18, 19, 146, 147, 164; Chicana gang members, California 145–147; resistant identity 10; subcultures of 18, 19 respondent-driven sampling 11, 107 Richie, B. E. 140 RICO see Racketeering Infuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) Rios, V. 12, 49, 75 Rodriguez, L. J., Always Running 163 Rosas, A. 49, 51 safety, feelings of 15 San Antonio, Texas 101, 104, 107, 111, 114 Sánchez-Jankowski, M. 50, 76 Schaefer, D. 104 second-class citizenship 79 segregationist policies 34 semi-structured interviews 11 “serve and protect” function 55, 56 Shakur, A. 53 Shaw, C. R. 72–73 Sheldon, H. D. 24

174

Index

Short, J. F. 154 Silent Brotherhood 27 Simi, P. 27, 30 skinheads, racist 25, 26, 30 social class see class social disorganization 72–74, 86 social media platforms 32, 47 socialism 32 sociology of gangs 71–72 Sojourner Truth 141 Spergel, I. A. 101, 104 Starbuck, D. 100, 108, 110, 113, 115 Stewart, P. 23 Stillman, E. 47 Stovall, D. 51 strain theory 74 street gangs 14; afliation with the CPD 56; categorization 71–72; code of the street 29; collective identity 33; conventional 29, 30, 32; defnitional issues surrounding 10, 24–25; deputization to “serve and protect” 55, 56; pathologized 56; skinheads 25, 26, 30; specialty 37n1; studies 23; subcultures 9, 76; territoriality 30; violence 2, 30, 31, 34–35, 36, 101; and white power groups 23 Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP) 125 Strodtbeck, F. L. 154 Stuart, F. 49 subaltern perspectives 68 subcultures 13, 33, 67–69, 80, 89, 91, 138, 143; adaptive 73; and class 74; delinquent 73, 74; deviant 73; moral panic 105; musical 105; police subcultural practices 103; racist 36; of resistance 18, 19; social class 74; street gangs 9, 76; terrorist youth 25; theory 70, 74 summer 2020 racial justice uprisings, Chicago 48, 52–54, 57 Supreme Court of United States 122 surveillance 50, 56–58, 88, 90, 141; of blackness 58; police 48, 69, 132; racialized 58, 59, 88; systems 89; technologies of 79 Taylor, B. 48 Temporary Protected Status (TPS) 95n3 territoriality: physical and digital 29–31; territorialized perspective 50–51 terrorism 25, 50, 125–126; jihadist groups 36 Thomas, W. I. 72 Thrasher, F. M. 1, 7, 24, 71–72, 74, 100; The Gang 49 Tita, G. E. 29–30 Toledo, A. 47, 52 Totten, M. D. 154, 162, 163 tough-on-crime paradigm 8, 9–10, 19, 20 traditional gang theory (2000), delinquency, bio-psychological determinist view of 70–71 transnationalism and state violence 93–94

Trump, D. 34–35 turf wars 50–51 underclass 74, 75–78 Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville 31, 34 United Blood Nation 14, 16, 108, 125 United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) 96n4 upper-classes 74 Valasik, M. 26, 27, 29–30, 31, 36 Valdez A. 138–139 Van Gemert, F. 28 Vargas, R. 50 Vázquez, R. 77–78 victimization 131, 148, 153, 163; and feminism 140; interpersonal 94; physical or sexual 134 Vigil, J. D. 49 violence: being targeted for 17; bias-motivated 27; against communities of color 48, 52–54, 126; conditions of 92; correctional ofcer sanctioned 17–18, 129–131, 142; in El Salvador 88; genocidal 78; group 122; gun 47, 50, 58; and habitual demonstrating in US cities 30; institutional 34; interpersonal 85, 95, 162; large-scale 123; LGBTQ gang members 157, 160; against the marginalized 15; physical 12, 15, 18, 19, 57, 121; by police/law enforcement agencies 13, 35, 47, 54, 55, 57, 124, 126; political 27; preventing 85; in prisons 129; racial 69; random 105; reducing 51; sexual 121; statesanctioned 53, 58, 59, 68, 88, 91–94, 96n7; structural level 11, 13, 15, 18–20, 48, 84, 121, 123; systematic 78; threatened 160; threats of 94; witnesses 15; youth 85; see also gang violence; homicide; looting War on Crime (1970s) 8 War on Drugs 10 Ward, G. 33 Warrior Training Model 55 Webb, V. J. 103, 104 Weisel, D. 52, 101–102 Werthman, C. 75 western chauvinism 29, 31 white power/white supremacy groups: as alt-right gangs 23, 28, 30–31; American 28; policing 2, 33–35; signs and symbols 32; and street gangs 23 Wilson, W. J. 75 women: as carceral collateral 139–140; lesbian gang members 164–165; “Mexican-American” 138; teen motherhood 139; see also feminism Yablonsky, L. 74 Young, J. 18, 106, 123 Young Lords 17 Znaniecki, F. 72