Peers and neighborhoods

1. Peers and neighborhoods

2. Peers • Peers play a significant role in maturation, particularly during adolescence • Strained and/or inadequate peer relationships associated with delinquency • Delinquents tend to associate with other delinquents • Delinquent acts tend to be committed in small groups

3. Peers • Many delinquents have poor social skills, hang around with others who are similar • Deviant values may be learned from a deviant peer group. Some adolescents have no prior history until they begin to “run with the wrong crowd” • Others have prior histories, find others like themselves

4. Peers • Peer associations might partly explain desistance—if a person changes peer groups, delinquency may cease • For others, the continuation of the group might lead to further criminality (substance abuse, drug selling) • Peer groups teach techniques, rationalizations for activities, attitudes

5. Peers • Whether or not a peer group has an effect on an individual depends on how much the person values the peer group, length of the association, etc. • Differential association (Sutherland)

6. Gangs • Gangs intensively studied, beginning with Thrasher’s work in 1927. • Argued that gangs provide excitement, fun, and opportunities for accomplishment and respect, typically denied to poor adolescent males in mainstream society

7. Gangs • Less attention to gangs in the 60s and early 70s: police activity, political activities, the draft, the increased popularity of heroin • Gangs re-emerged in the 1970s and spread • Reasons: involvement of gangs in sale of drugs—replacement for organized crime • Economic changes-from a manufacturing to service occupations. Less jobs for poor youths

8. Gangs • Family changes: parental absence, substance abuse, poverty, other crime (yet, some gang members come from stable families, and some youths from dysfunctional families avoid them) • Very wide variety of gangs

9. Gangs • Common classifications: organized, serious delinquent, party/social, retreatist, conflict (predatory) • Specialists vs. generalists • Vary in terms of size, age range, duration of existence, territory, activities, length of time in the gang

10. gangs • Most common in transitional neighborhoods • Transitional neighborhoods characterized by: • Poverty, high levels of unemployment • Deteriorated housing, usually rental • Adjacent to downtown or industrial areas • Physically unsafe (numerous code violations)

11. Neighborhoods • Health and mental health problems • Lack of accessible services • Housing projects • High levels of crime • Long term history of gang activity • Resident mobility • Ethnic segregation, hostility

12. Neighborhoods • Broken windows phenomenon • Suspicion and mistrust • Unsafe conditions for police officers • Residents not cooperative with police or other authority figures • Diminished neighborhood control of youths • Invasion by criminal element (esp.drugs)

13. Neighborhoods • Social disorganization • Residents unable to mobilize and stop/prevent crime • Cynicism, alienation, mistrust, fear of retaliation, discouragement • Potential leaders typically move out • Businesses, churches, etc., leave

14. Neighborhoods • Long-term tradition of crime and gangs • Members grow older, but the gangs remain • Family tradition • Recent trends • Lethal violence • Increased numbers • Greater number of ethnic groups

15. Trends • “aging” of gangs, (thought to be due to the erosion of the industrial base and the availability of the drug market)