Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-24T04:14:20.317Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Violence Prevention and Targeting the Elusive Gang Member

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Tony Cheng
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Who do violence preventers target to achieve violence prevention? This fundamental question of selection is typically associated with law enforcement, yet gang labeling is critical in another context: nonprofit violence prevention. Eighteen months of fieldwork in a gang outreach organization find that (a) workers operationalize gang violence prevention as social service provision, but (b) services are only offered to those deemed “ready” for life changes. Readiness is an unwritten eligibility criteria leveraged as a rhetorical tool to focus recruitment on clients who demonstrate complicity. It is reaffirmed through external pressures to document program effectiveness; organizational-level concerns for efficient resource allocation; the subpopulation of clients who actually want services; and workers’ own fears of “getting played”—losing face from free-riding clients interested in street worker perks, but not formal services. While core gang members may be most at-risk, their very centrality may deter, rather than justify, providing them services.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 42 - 69
Copyright
© 2017 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank Andrew Papachristos, Frederick Wherry, Philip Smith, Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale's Advanced Sociological Writing and Research seminar, and most of all, Bullet-Free Bridgeport. This study was supported, in part, by the American Sociological Association's Sydney S. Spivack Program in Applied Social Research and Social Policy Community Action Research Award.

References

Blumer, Herbert (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Bosk, Charles (2003) Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowditch, Christine (1993) “Getting Rid of Troublemakers: High School Disciplinary Procedures and the Production of Dropouts,” 40 Social Problems 493–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braga, Anthony, et al. (2001) “Problem-Oriented Policing, Deterrence, and Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Boston's Operation Ceasefire,” 38 J. of Research in Crime and Delinquency 195–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bushway, Shawn, & Apel, Robert (2012) “A Signaling Perspective on Employment-Based Reentry Programming,” 11 Criminology & Public Policy 21–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butts, Jeffrey, et al. (2015) “Cure Violence: A Public Health Model to Reduce Gun Violence,” 36 Annual Rev. of Public Health 14.1–14.5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Desmond, Matthew (2012) “Disposable Ties and the Urban Poor,” 117 American J. of Sociology 1295–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank (2009) Inventing Equal Opportunity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren (1992) “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law,” 97 American J. of Sociology 1531–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren (2004) “Rivers of Law and Contested Terrain: A Law and Society Approach to Economic Rationality,” 38 Law & Society Rev. 181–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren, Uggen, Christopher, & Erlanger, Howard (1999) “The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Myth,” 105 American J. of Sociology 406–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Robert (1981) “On Last Resorts,” 87 American J. of Sociology 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Robert (1983) “Holistic Effects in Social Control Decision-Making,” 17 Law & Society Rev. 425–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Robert, & Messinger, Sheldon (1977) “The Micro-Politics of Trouble,” 25 Social Problems 121–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epp, Charles, Maynard-Moody, Steven, & Haider-Markel, Donald (2014) Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm (1979) The Process is the Punishment. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Flores, Edward (2013) God's Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Fox, Katherine (2001) “Self-Change and Resistance in Prison,” in Gubrium, J., & Holstein, J., eds., Institutional Selves: Troubled Identities in a Postmodern World. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gilboy, Janet (1991) “Deciding Who Gets In: Decision-Making by Immigration Inspectors,” 25 Law & Society Rev. 571–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimer, Carol, & Staffen, Lisa (1995) “Interdependence and Reintegrative Social Control: Labeling and Reforming ‘Inappropriate’ Parents in Neonatal Intensive Care Units,” 60 American Sociological Rev. 635–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hettema, Jennifer, et al. (2005) “Motivational Interviewing,” 1 Annual Rev. of Clinical Psychology 91–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heumann, Milton (1978) Plea Bargaining: The Experience of Prosecutors, Judges and Defense Attorneys. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Holder, Eric (2009) Attorney General Eric Holder at the White House Conference on Gang Violence Prevention and Crime Control [Press Release]. Available at: http://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-eric-holder-white-house-conference-gang-violence-prevention-and-crime (accessed 24 December 2015).Google Scholar
Holstein, James (1984) “The Placement of Insanity Assessments of Grave Disability and Involuntary Commitment Decisions,” 13 J. of Contemporary Ethnography 35–62.Google Scholar
Huising, Ruthanne (2014) “To Hive or to Hold? Producing Professional Authority Through Scut Work,” 60 Administrative Science Q. 263–99.Google Scholar
Kapiszewski, Diana (2011) “Tactical Balancing: High Court Decision-Making on Politically Crucial Cases,” 45 Law & Society Rev. 471–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, David, et al. (1997) “The (Un)Known Universe: Mapping Gangs and Gang Violence in Boston,” in Weisburd, D., & McEwen, J., eds., Crime Mapping and Crime Prevention. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Malcolm (1971) Street Gangs and Street Workers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Klein, Malcolm (1996) “What Are Street Gangs When They Get to Court,” 31 Valparaiso Univ. Law Rev. 515–21.Google Scholar
Klein, Malcolm (2011) “Comprehensive Gang and Violence Reduction Programs,” 10 Criminology & Public Policy 1037–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kobrin, Solomon (1959) “The Chicago Area Project—A 25-Year Assessment,” 322 The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 19–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Issa (2013) “Misdemeanor Justice: Control Without Conviction,” 119 American J. of Sociology 351–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, Michael (1980) Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Lopez-Aguado, Patrick (2013) “Working Between Two Worlds: Gang Intervention and Street Liminality,” 14 Ethnography 186–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maruna, Shadd (2001) Making Good: How Ex-Offenders Reform and Reclaim Their Lives. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marwell, Nicole (2004) “Privatizing the Welfare State: Nonprofit Community-Based Organizations as Political Actors,” 69 American Sociological Rev. 265–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard-Moody, Steven, & Musheno, Michael (2003) Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melde, Chris, et al. (2011) “On the Efficacy of Targeted Gang Interventions: Can We Identify Those Most at Risk?” 9 Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice 279–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert (1957) “The Role-Set: Problems in Sociological Theory,” 8 British J. of Sociology 106–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Gale (1983) “Holding Clients Accountable: The Micro-Politics of Trouble in a Work Incentive Program,” 31 Social Problems 139–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, John, & Rowan, Brian (1977) “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” 83 American J. of Sociology 340–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papachristos, Andrew (2011) “Too Big to Fail: The Science and Politics of Violence Prevention,” 10 Criminology & Public Policy 1053–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peyrot, Mark (1985) “Coerced Voluntarism the Micropolitics of Drug Treatment,” 13 J. of Contemporary Ethnography 343–65.Google Scholar
Pound, Roscoe (1910) “Law in Books and Law in Action,” 44 American Law Rev. 12–36.Google Scholar
Pyrooz, David, et al. (2013) “Continuity and Change in Gang Membership and Gang Embeddedness,” 50 J. of Research in Crime & Delinquency 239–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reich, Jennifer (2005) Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Short, James, & Strodtbeck, Fred (1965) Group Process and Gang Delinquency. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Skogan, Wesley, et al. (2008) Evaluation of CeaseFire-Chicago. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.Google Scholar
Skolnick, Jerome (1966) Justice without Trial. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Snow, David (2001) “Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism,” 24 Symbolic Interaction 367–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, J. William (1994) “Homeless in River City: Client Work in Human Service Encounters,” in Holstein, J., & Miller, G., eds., Perspectives on Social Problems, vol. 6. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Spergel, Irving (2007) Reducing Youth Gang Violence: The Little Village Gang Project in Chicago. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Stark, Rodney (1996) “Why Religious Movements Succeed or Fail: A Revised General Model,” 11 J. of Contemporary Religion 133–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmermans, Stefan (2005) “Suicide Determination and the Professional Authority of Medical Examiners,” 70 American Sociological Rev. 311–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tita, George, & Papachristos, Andrew (2010) “The Evolution of Gang Policy: Balancing Intervention and Suppression,” in Chaskin, R., ed., Youth Gangs and Community Intervention: Research, Practice, and Evidence. New York, NY: Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Conference of Mayors (2006) Best Practices of Community Policing in Gang Intervention and Gang Violence Prevention. Washington, D.C.: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.usmayors.org/bestpractices/community_policing_2006/gangbp_2006.pdf (accessed 24 December 2015).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice (2010) Best Practices to Address Community Gang Problems: OJJDP's Comprehensive Gang Model. Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/231200.pdf (accessed 24 December 2015).Google Scholar
Vargas, Robert (2014) “Criminal Group Embeddedness and the Adverse Effects of Arresting a Gang Leader: A Comparative Case Study,” 52 Criminology 143–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vargas, Robert (2016) “How Health Navigators Legitimize the Affordable Care Act to the Uninsured Poor,” 165 Social Science & Medicine 263–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehill, Jennifer, et al. (2013) “Street Conflict Mediation to Prevent Youth Violence: Conflict Characteristics and Outcomes,” 19 Injury Prevention 204–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitehill, Jennifer, et al. (2014) “Interrupting Violence: How the CeaseFire Program Prevents Imminent Gun Violence Through Conflict Mediation,” 91 J. of Urban Health 84–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, James (1968) “Dilemmas of Police Administration,” 28 Public Administration Rev. 407–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Jeremy, & Chermak, Steven (2011) “Community-Driven Violence Reduction Programs: Examining Pittsburgh's One Vision One Life,” 10 Criminology & Public Policy 993–1027.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, Don (1969) “Tasks and Troubles: The Practical Basis of Work Activities in a Public Assistance Organization,” in Hansen, D., ed., Explorations in Sociology and Counseling. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar