Victimization appears to be a significant risk factor for future involvement in crime for

Over the past decade, research focused on gangs has produced clear evidence that gang membership is associated with significant involvement in serious offending. This finding has been consistent across research methodologies and measurements of offending. Longitudinal self-report studies in Denver, Pittsburg, Rochester, and Seattle all have indicated that gang members engage in significantly more delinquency and drug use than non-gang members (Klein & Maxson, 2006). Likewise, cross-sectional studies relying on school samples (Esbensen et al., 2001) and samples generated through contacts with the police (Katz et al., 2000, Katz et al., 2005) have shown that gang members engage in higher levels of crime and delinquency than non-gang members. Both qualitative and quantitative research has established that gang membership increases involvement in serious violent offending, drug dealing, and drug use (Klein and Maxson, 1989, Klein and Maxson, 2006). Klein and Maxson (2006) point out that the relationship between gangs and crime is so strong that it transcends gender, race/ethnicity, and age categories. Much of the concern about the proliferation of gangs over the past 20 years has been about its close association with violence. Researchers have invested considerable energy in studying how factors such as community (Curry & Spergel, 1988), peers (Battin-Pearson et al., 1998), drugs (Katz, Webb, & Decker, 2005), family (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996), subculture (Spergel, 1995), and organizational structure (Decker, Bynum, & Weisel, 1998) affect gangs and gang violence. In doing so, researchers have studied gang members almost exclusively as offenders.

Given what we know about the link between crime and victimization (Cohen and Felson, 1979, Lauritsen et al., 1991, Shaffer and Ruback, 2002) and crime and gangs, there is good reason to believe that gang membership is associated with an increased risk of victimization (Curry and Decker, 2003, Peterson et al., 2004). Gang members may be more likely to be victimized than non-gang members for a number of reasons. For example, victimization may be due to gang members’ risky lifestyles (e.g., drug use and drug sales), risk of retaliation from rival gangs (e.g., drive-by shootings and assault), and risk of violence from within their own gang (e.g., gang initiation and punishment for breaking rules) (Taylor et al., 2007). Furthermore, some research indicates that gang members join gangs for protection from crime victimization (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996), which also suggests that gang members may be at an increased risk of victimization. Violent victimization may also be a function of competition between gangs, which may result from rival gangs initiating violence or engaging in retaliatory violence (Kumar & Skaperdas, 2008). Among the handful of studies that have examined this relationship, findings are mixed although the majority of the research suggests a relationship between victimization and gang membership (e.g., Curry et al., 2002, Fox et al., 2010, Miller, 2001, Miller, 2002, Miller and Brunson, 2000, Taylor et al., 2007).

Qualitative studies often suggest that gang members experience violent victimization. Using surveys and in-depth interviews among a sample of high-risk women, Miller (2002) reported that 52% of gang members had been physically attacked compared with only 26% of non-members. Similarly, whereas 56% of gang members reported being threatened with a weapon, only 20% of non-members reported being threatened (Miller, 2002). Much of Miller and colleagues’ related work has similarly reported that gang members are at especially high risk for violent victimization (Miller, 1998, Miller and Brunson, 2000, Miller and Decker, 2001). Joe and Chesney-Lind (1995) found that many female gang members revealed experiences with child abuse and sexual assault by family members. Ethnographic research with gang members also indicates that they often described being victimized by their own gang (e.g., initiation rituals) and by rival gang members (e.g., fights) (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996).

Quantitative research has only recently begun to empirically test the extent to which gang members are victimized and the findings have been generally consistent with the qualitative work described above. Middle school students who admitted being gang members were more likely to report being shot (28%) than the gang-involved juveniles (15%) or the non-gang members (4%) (Curry et al., 2002). One of the more sophisticated analyses of the relationship between gang membership and victimization to date has used self-report data from 5,935 8th grade students in 11 cities, collected as part of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) evaluation. Peterson et al. (2004) were among the first to empirically examine the gang-victimization link using these data and reported that gang members had significantly higher victimization rates than non-gang members, and that those findings held true before, during, and after gang membership. However, the authors reported that individuals who joined a gang for protection did not experience significantly lower rates of victimization.

Taylor et al. (2007) also examined the G.R.E.A.T. data and reported that after controlling for involvement in delinquency, gang members were less likely to be victims of “general” violent crime (including simple assault, aggravated assault, and robbery), and more likely to be victims of “serious” violent crime (aggravated assault and robbery only). The authors concluded that the lifestyle factors that helped protect gang members from some forms of violence also served to increase the probability of their becoming a victim of more serious forms of violence. As an explanation for this finding, the authors suggested that gang members may be at a higher risk for gang-related crimes and they may be at a lower risk for experiencing other non-gang related crimes. In a more recent analysis of the same data Taylor, Freng, Esbensen, and Peterson (2008) examined the link between youth gang membership, violent victimization, and lifestyle/routine activities. They reported that although gang members were significantly more likely than non-gang members to experience violent victimization, increased involvement in delinquency and the perceived availability of drugs significantly mediated the relationship between gang membership and violent victimization.

Research using other data to quantitatively examine the gang-victimization link also show support for this relationship. Using National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data, Delisi et al., (2009) found a relationship between gang membership and victimization. Specifically, the authors found support for an enhancement effect to explain the gang-victimization link, suggesting that gang members are victimized more often than non-gang members, regardless of gang affiliation, and are victimized at an even higher rate while in the gang compared to non-gang members. Among a sample of high school students, Gover et al. (2009) indicated that gang members were significantly more likely to be victimized compared to non-gang members, and that these rates did not significantly differ between boys and girls. Decker, Katz, & Webb (2008) compared the victimization experiences of current versus former gang members within a sample of juvenile arrestees. The authors found that current gang members were more likely than non-gang members to be violently victimized. Similarly, prior research indicates that gang members are significantly more likely to experience both property and personal crimes (Fox et al., 2010) and actual and perceived victimization risk (Melde, Taylor, & Esbensen, 2009).

While much of the published work supports the gang-victimization link, recent research suggests that other factors may render this relationship non-significant. For example, Spano et al. (2008) used the lifestyles/routine activities theoretical perspective to examine the risk of violent victimization attributable to gang membership, gun carrying, and employment among a sample of 1,295 youth. Although the bivariate analyses indicated that gang members were significantly more likely to experience violent victimization, the effects were not significant when simultaneously controlling for demographic, family, and deviant lifestyle factors. Similarly, Gibson, Miller, Jennings, Swatt, and Gover (2009) reanalyzed the G.R.E.A.T. data and found that gang members were significantly more likely to be victimized before employing propensity score matching (a procedure designed to reduce selection bias between gang and non-gang members). Once gang and non-gang members were matched based on a series of covariates, the authors found no relationship between gang membership and crime victimization.

These two recent studies that do not show support for the gang-victimization link (Gibson et al., 2009, Spano et al., 2008) suggested that future research is needed to further disentangle these relationships, especially since most research has found a gang-victimization link (Decker et al., 2008, Fox et al., 2010, Gover et al., 2009, Melde et al., 2009, Peterson et al., 2004, Taylor et al., 2007, Taylor et al., 2008). Additional research may reveal that the gang-victimization relationship varies by level or degree of gang involvement. The majority of the gang-victimization literature measures gang membership dichotomously and does not examine variations, such as current gang member, former gang member, and gang associate (Delisi et al., 2009, Fox et al., 2010, Gibson et al., 2009, Gover et al., 2009, Peterson et al., 2004, Spano et al., 2008, Taylor et al., 2008, Taylor et al., 2007; but see Curry et al., 2002). Despite recent advances in our understanding of the link between gang membership and violent victimization, research in this area is still limited, especially in terms of incorporating theory.

Theoretical backdrop

Prior research has highlighted the importance of two inter-related theoretical models for understanding the relationship between gang status and violent victimization: lifestyle/routine activities theory and collective liability. The first mechanism, lifestyle/routine activities theory, suggests that people behave in ways that are consistent with their socio-demographic characteristics, which may explain variations in victimization rates based on characteristics such as sex, age, and race (

The present study

The current study is driven by three hypotheses: (1) gang involvement and involvement in other risky lifestyles is related to violent victimization, (2) involvement in gang crime is associated with violent victimization, and (3) the presence of rival gangs is related to violent victimization. The study contributes to the understanding of the ways in which gang members experience violent victimization by expanding on prior literature in two important ways. First, the current study is among the

Research design and sample

The present study uses data collected between 1999 and 2003 as part of the Arizona Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program.1 The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) established ADAM in 1987 (formerly the Drug Use Forecasting Program) to monitor drug use trends, treatment needs, and at-risk behavior among recently booked arrestees in 35 sites across the United States.2

Descriptive results

Table 1 displays the descriptive statistics for the sample, comparing the juveniles’ background characteristics by gang status. The majority of the respondents in the sample (81.6%) were male and just over 15 years old (15.41 years) at the time of arrest. Regarding racial or ethnic group membership, about 45% reported being Hispanic, 41.5% reported being White, 10.1% reported being African American, and 3.4% reported being American Indian. Approximately two-thirds (66.7%) of the sample reported

Discussion

Using data obtained from 909 recently booked juvenile arrestees in Arizona, the current study examined the relationship between gang status and violent victimization. Additionally, a theoretical rationale provided a background for explaining the nexus between gang status and violent victimization. The present study suggests that the relationship between violent victimization and gang status might be more complex than previously concluded; this has important theoretical, methodological, and

Acknowledgements

All correspondence regarding this paper should be directed to Charles Katz. This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in Toronto, Canada on November 18, 2005. This research was funded in part by a grant from the Motorola Great Communities Grants Program and the National Institute of Justice. The opinions expressed in the manuscript are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Motorola Corporation or the National Institute of Justice. The

Charles M. Katz is the Director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, and is an associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. Dr. Katz earned his Ph.D. in criminal justice from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1997. He is the co-author of two books: Policing Gangs in America (Cambridge University Press) and The Police in America: An Introduction (McGraw Hill Publishing). His work has appeared in journals such as

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  One recent study, which included both male and female participants, found that violent victimization was 2 1/2 times greater for gang members versus non-gang members (Taylor, Peterson, Esbensen, & Freng, 2007). In another similar study (Katz, Webb, Fox, & Shaffer, 2011), violent victimization in the past 30 days was most common among current gang members (47.8%), followed by former gang members (30.8%), gang associates (22.7%), and non-gang members (18%). Further, upon including involvement of gang crime in the analysis, gang membership was no longer associated with violent victimization.

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