Juvenile and Youth Gangs

There are two competing views about the role of gangs and gang members in drug sales. The first argues that street gangs are well-organized purveyors of illegal drugs who reinvest the profits from drug sales into the gang. Proponents of this view include researchers Jerome Skolnick, Carl Taylor, and Martin Sanchez Jankowski. Several conditions are required for this understanding of gang drug sales to be operational. First, an organizational structure must be present. This hierarchy must have leaders, roles, and rules. Second, group goals must be widely shared among members. Third, allegiance to the larger organization must be stronger than that to subgroups within it. Finally, the gang must possess the means to control and discipline its members to produce compliance with group goals.

A second approach rejects this notion. Its proponents claim that drug sales by gangs are seldom well-organized and gang members often act independently of the gang in selling drugs. This approach presents a view of gangs as loosely confederated groups generally lacking in persistent forms of cohesion or organization. This view sees the link between gangs and drug sales as much more casual. Traditional street gangs are not well suited for drug distribution or any other businesslike activity. They are weakly organized, prone to unnecessary and unproductive violence, and full of brash, conspicuous, untrust-worthy individuals who draw unwanted police attention. For all these reasons, big drug operators, those who turn to drug dealing as a serious career, typically de-emphasize gang activity or leave the gang altogether.

This view is supported by field research with gangs in Milwaukee, San Diego, and St. Louis, among other places. John Hagedorn characterized gangs in Milwaukee as dynamic, evolving associations of adolescents and men. In general, gangs lacking formal roles and effective organizational structures for achieving consensus among members regarding goals or techniques for achieving those goals. Hustling (including street drug sales) was seldom well organized because gangs lacked the organizational structure to effectively control their members. In St. Louis, virtually all of the gang members reported that they used the profits from drug sales for individual consumption, such as to buy clothes or compact discs, not to meet gang objectives. Few gang members reported that they joined their gang for the opportunity to sell drugs; instead they affiliated with the gang for expressive reasons having to do with prior associations in the neighborhood.

A review of police arrest records from five Los Angeles area police stations by Maxson and her colleagues examined the differences between crack sales involving gang members and nongang members. In Los Angeles, individual gangs appeared to lack an effective organizational structure, had an absence of permanent membership or roles, and a lack of shared goals. Compared to nongang transactions, gang crack sales were more likely to occur on the street, involve firearms, include younger suspects, and disproportionately involve black suspects. However, most of these differences were small. In other words, the characteristics associated with crack sales by gang members were not much different from those of nongang members.