ABSTRACT
Youth gangs have received considerable academic and media attention over the years, with a heightened interest stimulated in part by the American late-twentieth-century youth violence epidemic. Much of the literature has included discussion of definitional concerns, including terms such as ‘gang’, ‘gang member’ and ‘gang crime’. These definitional debates are difficult when carried out within one country but become even more complex when attempted cross-nationally. In 1998, the Eurogang programme of research initiated dialogue among researchers and policymakers interested in the comparative study of youth gangs (Klein et al. 2001). The following consensus definition of youth gangs was reached: ‘A youth gang, or troublesome youth group, is a durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of their group identityy.’ A youth survey form incorporating questions that allowed for operationalisation of this definition was subsequently developed. In this chapter, we employ the Eurogang definition and measurement of youth gangs to examine: (1) the distribution of gang membership — prevalence and demographic characteristics — in an American school-based sample; (2) the epidemiology of individual offending by gang membership and race/ethnicity; and (3) descriptions of gang characteristics by race/ethnicity 1 of gang members.
