ABSTRACT
The importance of local community cultures, relationships, and situations for understanding and controlling violent behaviour can hardly be overestimated. It is at this level that macro-, individual, and micro-levels of explanation converge. Paul Tracy Bartone, analyzing data from the Philadelphia cohort follow-up, notes the "remarkably high proportion of crimes of all types committed on the spur of the moment," and suggests that this argues for "the importance of the microanalysis of offense situations". Group processes associated with particular roles in the gang or with status within the gang as well as between gangs are implicated in much violent behaviour by gang members. Violent behaviour by individual gang members is also heavily influenced by group values and the perceived requirements of group membership or status within the group, as well as by the individual's sense of honour, self-respect, and self-esteem, which for many gang members are also closely tied to group norms.
