Violence Causes Gangs?
Economist Russell Sobel's provocative suggestion:
Our analysis suggests not that gangs cause violence, but that violence causes gangs. In other words, gangs form in response to government's failure to protect youths against violence. The surprising implication of our insight is that efforts to reduce gang activity could actually increase violent crime.
He provides an easy-to-understand example of how this works -- prison:
This is one of the only places where a 40-year old white man would be a gang member, and for good reason. In prison, inmates are frequently the victims of violence and intimidation that go unreported (or if reported, unpunished). This makes the environment similar to that in government-run schools and on inner-city streets. An inmate who joins a gang receives protection, which lowers the odds that he will be a victim of violent crime. Once again, the underlying demand for gangs stems from the presence of pre-existing violence.
Of course, there's no reason why this must be an either/or choice. Gangs definitely cause violence. That they arise due to violence also stands to reason.
Hat tip: Richard Starr.
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Jul '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
Falling down causes gravity.
Paid for by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education and the Jose Cuervo Tequila Endowment.
Edited on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:44pmAug '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
It makes sense that violence and gangs feed off each other in a vicious cycle. But it also appears from what you quoted that government-run schools are feeding this problem, too:
Mollie Hemingway: Economist Russell Sobel:
The lack of discipline in public schools (or rather, the inverted discipline structure where chronic troublemakers are given a free pass while generally non-troublesome children get punished when they defend themselves against the chronic troublemakers -- on the grounds that a "good kid" can understand punishment while a troublemaker cannot) undoubtedly encourages gangs, who at least impose discipline and order of a sort.
I bet the modern fashion to favor large-group friendships over having one best friend only encourages gang-mentality, too. Two close friends can stand up to a gang together better than one, but large-group friendship is always gang membership in some sense, particularly in the savage world of childhood social development.
Jun '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
Do gangs reduce crime, or do they just increase the sophistication of the crime? There's nothing new about crime gangs. What they allow is, delegating the work based on age and experience, and moving from things like simple mugging or liquor store robbery to more capital-intensive and reliable crimes like drug-dealing. At least selling drugs on the corner is less violent for the public at large. The only gun in your face is your addiction.
May '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
Actually, it's an understandable conservative idea. When an overextended government fails to execute one of their most basic and fundamental duties - preserving the peace, the people will take things into their own hands.
May '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
We need to recover (and instill in our children) a sense that persons are free and responsible moral agents--not just the passive victims of circumstance and events.
It starts in stable families.
We won't have good, violence-free public schools unless and until we go back to promoting marriage and family, religion and moral virtue.
What a disaster liberalism has been.
Jul '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
katievs:
What a disaster liberalism has been. · Sep 6 at 1:03pm
But, but...liberalism is all about children.
As in:
Gloomy, ominous music, grey-toned background of a deserted swing-set.
Highly-paid voice-over guy, with just the right touch of disgust and shock:
"Barbara Boxer's opponent would have voted against a common-sense bill that could have protected your children from canker sores."
Image switches to interior of a bedroom, where helpless mom tries vainly to comfort her anguished child.
Voice-over guy:
"Carly Fiorina doesn't care about your children.
She wants them dead!"
Boxer, onscreen, surrounded by diverse group of beaming children:
"I'm Barbara Boxer and I care about every last precious child."
(Makes lame attempt to pat head of little boy, who edges away in alarm).
"Anyway, I paid for this message. And I'd rather you call me Senator."
Edited on Sep 6, 2010 at 1:34pmAug '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
katievs:
We won't have good, violence-free public schools unless and until we go back to promoting marriage and family, religion and moral virtue.
True to a large extent.
Nonetheless, the inverted discipline of public-school culture can do a lot to undermine the values instilled at home.
I grew up in a fairly affluent area where pretty much everyone was raised in a married two-parent household, people went to church (or synagogue, or mosque), and families were a big part of life (even if they were sometimes dysfunctional). However, us good kids were pretty much powerless against the depredations of the troublemakers unless we had the protection of a clique, for the reason I described earlier -- school administrators would rather disproportionately punish the relatively good kids than seriously confront the troublemakers. Therefore the moral boundaries we had been taught at home did not seem to matter much in school.
If more local power -- parental power in particular -- were returned to public schools, or if families had more alternatives (like vouchers) to public education, the public school system would be less immune to changing its corrupt culture of inverted moral boundaries.
Edited on Sep 6, 2010 at 2:09pmMay '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
I agree with pretty much everything you say, MFR.
It's just that I think improving discipline in schools will only work as one facet of a general overhaul of civic life and virtue.
I have misgivings about vouchers when I think of the threat of radical Islam.
Jun '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
At least where schools are concerned, I'm with katievs and Midge on this. The idea that every child has "a right to a free and appropriate education" has perverse consequences. Expelling a persistent troublemaker is nearly impossible unless he's found in possession of a weapon. That the same kid disrupts the learning opportunity of ninety-nine others is never the issue. Add the dreaded IEP and the offender can fall back on a permanent get out of jail card. Utter nonsense like confrontational defiant disorder is taken seriously as a "learning disability." The problem nearly always originates in the family (or lack thereof). The gang becomes a surrogate family for dysfunctional youths who then receive the coveted title "children at risk." In my day they were known as juvenile delinquents.
Aug '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
Nature abhors a vacuum. When government abdicates one of its most important, and one of it's few legitimate, functions, the maintenance of civil order, things like gangs become inevitable. It is a vicious circle as gangs further the breakdown of civil order. I look at the whole question as a vindication of Hobbes. Without some sort of authority to impose civil order the whole "nasty, brutish, and short" comes to pass. Now I might not agree with Hobbes about the proper constitution and scope of government, but I must say that he had human nature figured pretty accurately. The public schools, particularly in urban areas, are a national disgrace, but the problem is much larger. We have, collectively as a country, allowed far too many of our citizens to live in a "Hobbesian" world; denied the benefits of ordered liberty that are supposed to be a birth right in this country. So, which comes first, the violence, or the gangs? Neither, for although violent crime in some amount appears to be endemic to the human condition, the level of violent crime and lawlessness we see both fostering gangs and/or perpetrated by gangs is only possible absent civil society.
May '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
As someone who occasionally got himself into ISS (In School Suspension) in both middle school and high school, I saw how the really bad apples were not really punished. They simply lived in ISS, where teachers would send assignments and some other poor "teacher" would make sure no one left the room or started a fire or anything. If the kids were particularly bad, they might go to an "alternative" school, at which I have no idea what happens (more of the same, I guess). But that was just my district in the suburbs. Further into the city, general discipline was so bad that teachers apparently feared the students.
Knowing how gangs begin doesn't necessarily enlighten anyone on why they persist or how to end them... no more than knowing how a war began helps to end the war.
Tribalism often involves feuds and cultural expectations of revenge. In order for such a cycle to end, someone eventually has to be brave and selfless enough to offer mercy (has to accept less than full justice for crimes against his or her tribe). Tribes are basically the same whether they're in Rwanda, Brazil, Scotland or Compton. It's family.
Jul '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
Actually, if Sobel studied outlaw motorcycle gangs at all, he'd know that 40-year-old white gang members are quite common in that world.
While it's true that many gangs start out as groups banding together for protection (MS-13 for example), very few have that as their singular purpose for any length of time. And the suggestion that gang suppression would lead to increased violent crime seems dubious.
May '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
I would have to agree that violence in prison necessitates gangs but isn't this comparing apples to oranges? It seems almost self-evident that gangs in regular society exist from the top down because of the efficiencies in crime explained by etoiledunord (this is the largest incentive for staying in the structure and moving up the ranks).
It is equally self-evident that the motive to join a gang in the first place comes with the social network it provides. When a vacuum exists due to a non-existent family structure and the breakdown of secondary social relationships (schools, sports teams, clubs), you have a vacuum ripe for exploitation by criminals. The system self-perpetuates when the desire for social bonds is satisfied and the profit motive develops. This vacuum exists in the inner city with abundance and that is why gangs proliferate there; not the violence created by the gangs.
I have never heard anyone say they joined a gang because they were afraid of violence. This statement would be self-defeating; one faces more violence when joining a violent social group. We do hear testimonials - time and again - about people seeking "family" when joining a gang.
Edited on Sep 7, 2010 at 7:27amAug '10
Re: Violence Causes Gangs?
Yeah. When I called myself a good kid, I didn't mean I was an angel -- I didn't get into the typical teenage mischief, but I occasionally lost my patience with (alleged) authority figures, failed to control my snarcasm, and so got busted for insubordination.
I had ISS once. For cutting the only class I ever cut: Sex Ed. Which I cut exactly once. To talk to another teacher about something important. Usually a kid had to cut far more than one class to earn ISS, but I was a good enough kid -- and so unrepentant about cutting such a silly class (since we'd had Sex Ed three times in school already) -- that they gave me the works.
I sure learned my lesson, though. ISS meant missing useful classes for no good reason, and I couldn't even use ISS to study because the other delinquents were too disruptive. It was far easier to show up for Sex Ed and use that class as a study period.