Gangs and Violence

Decker, S. H., Pyrooz, D., & Densley, J. A. (2022). Joining the Gang. On Gangs (1st ed.), pp. 93-117. Temple University Press

Harding, D. J. (2009). Violence, older peers, and the socialization of adolescent boys in disadvantaged neighborhoods. American sociological review, 74(3), 445-464

Anderson, E. (1994). The code of the streets. Atlantic monthly 273(5), 81-94

Urbanik, M. M., Thompson, S. K., & Bucerius, S. M. (2017). ‘Before there was danger but there was rules. And safety in those rules’: Effects of neighbourhood redevelopment on criminal structures. British Journal of Criminology, 57(2), 422-440

Fader, J. J., & León, K. S. (2024). Code of the street 25 years later: Lasting legacies, empirical status, and future directions. Annual Review of Criminology, 7(1), 19-38

Sinclair, R., & Grekul, J. (2012). Aboriginal Youth Gangs in Canada: (de)constructing an epidemic. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 7(1), 8–28

Miller, J. (1998). Gender and victimization risk among young women in gangs. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 35(4), 429-453

Batchelor, S. (2009). Girls, gangs and violence: Assessing the evidence. Probation Journal, 56(4), 399-414–

Grekul, J., & LaRocque, P. (2011). “’Hope is Absolute’: Gang-Involved Women – Perceptions from the Frontline.” Aboriginal Policy Studies, 1(2), 132-160

Maldonado, K. L. (2018). The Youth Control Complex: Gang-Affiliated Latina Teen Mothers Navigating Hypercriminalization. Aztlán; A Journal of Chicano Studies, 43(2), 231–247

Nimmo, M. (2001). The “Invisible” Gang Members. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Winnipeg: CCPA

Stuart, F. (2020). Code of the Tweet: Urban Gang Violence in the Social Media Age. Social Problems, 67(2), 191–207

Urbanik, M.-M., & Haggerty, K. D. (2018). ‘#It’s Dangerous’: The Online World of Drug Dealers, Rappers and the Street Code. The British Journal of Criminology, 58(6), 1343–1360

Lane, J., & Stuart, F. (2022). How Social Media Use Mitigates Urban Violence: Communication Visibility and Third-Party Intervention Processes in Digital Urban Contexts. Qualitative Sociology, 45(3), 457–475

Patton, D. U., Leonard, P., Elaesser, C., Eschmann, R. D., Patel, S., & Crosby, S. (2019). What’s a Threat on Social Media? How Black and Latino Chicago Young Men Define and Navigate Threats Online. Youth & Society, 51(6), 756–772

Patton, D. U., Lane, J., Leonard, P., Macbeth, J., & Smith-Lee, J. R. (2017). Gang Violence in the Digital Street: Case Study of a South Side Chicago Gang Member’s Twitter Communication. New Media & Society, 19(7), 1000–1018

Roks, R. A., Leukfeldt, E. R., & Densley, J. A. (2021). The hybridization of street offending in the Netherlands. The British Journal of Criminology, 61(4), 926-945

Storrod, M. L., & Densley, J. A. (2017). “Going viral” and “Going country”: The expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(6), 677–696

Frank, M. J. & Terwilliger, Z. (2015). Gang-Controlled Sex Trafficking. Virginia Journal of Criminal Law, 3(2), 342-434

Havard, T. E., Densley, J. A., Whittaker, A., & Wills, J. (2023). Street gangs and coercive control: The gendered exploitation of young women and girls in county lines. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 23(3), 313-329

Marshall, H. (2022). Young men’s perspectives on child criminal exploitation and their involvement in county lines drug dealing: An intersectional analysis. In H. Healy & B. Colliver (Eds.), Contemporary Intersectional Criminology in the UK (pp. 87–101). Policy Press

Gundur, R. V. (2022). The changing social organization of prison protection markets: When prisoners choose to organize horizontally rather than vertically. Trends in Organized Crime, 25(4), 1–19

Maxson, C. L. (2012). Betwixt and between street and prison gangs: Defining gangs and structures in youth correctional facilities. Youth gangs in international perspective: Results from the Eurogang program of research, 107-124

Ortiz, M. J. (2018). Gangs and environment: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(1), 97-117

Pyrooz, D. C. (2022). The Prison and the Gang. Crime and Justice, 51(1), 237–306. *Read until p. 263*

Cassell, C., & Weinrath, M. (2011). Barriers to leaving the gang: An exploratory analysis. The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research, 2, 72–99. Centre for Interdisciplinary Justice Studies, University of Winnipeg

Katz, Jack, and Curtis Jackson-Jacobs. “The criminologists’ gang.” The Blackwell Companion to Criminology (2004): 91-124

Hallsworth, S. and T. Young (2008) ‘Gang Talk and Gang Talkers: A Critique,’ Crime Media Culture 4(2): 175–95

Hagedorn, John M. “The global impact of gangs.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 21.2 (2005): 153-169

Bouchard, Martin, Karine Descormiers, and Alysha Girn. "What Gangs Aren’t." In The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society (Eds., Pyrooz, D, Densley, J., and J., Leverso. Oxford University Press. 2024

Densley, J.A., 2018. Gang joining. In Oxford research encyclopedia of criminology and criminal justice

Wacquant, Loïc JD. “Three pernicious premises in the study of the American ghetto.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21.2 (1997): 341-353

Jahiu, Lindi. "Social housing stigma in Toronto: Identifying asymmetries between stereotypes and statistical actualities of health, crime, and human capital." The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 68, no. 3 (2024): 340-352

Lichter, Daniel T., Domenico Parisi, and Michael C. Taquino. "The geography of exclusion: Race, segregation, and concentrated poverty." Social Problems 59.3 (2012): 364-388

Rodgers, Dennis. “Drug Booms and Busts: Poverty and Prosperity in a Nicaraguan Narco- Barrio.” Third World Quarterly (2018) 39:2, 261-276

Nelson, Jennifer J. "The space of Africville: Creating, regulating and remembering the urban ‘slum’." Canadian Journal of Law & Society/La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 15.2 (2000): 163-185

Agrawal, Sandeep, and Nicole Kurtz. "Ethnic spatial segmentation in immigrant destinations— Edmonton and Calgary." Journal of International Migration and Integration 20 (2019): 199-222

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. "Driving across settler late liberalism: Indigenous ghettos, slums and camps." In Reflections on Life in Ghettos, Camps and Prisons, pp. 113-123. Routledge, 2020

Ojo, Tolulope Helen, and Edward Shizha. "Ethnic enclaves in Canada: Opportunities and challenges of residing within." Living beyond borders: Essays on global immigrants and refugees (2018): 162-179

Barker, Adam J. "Carcerality and the elimination of Indigenous people in Canada." The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien (2024): e12962

Hagedorn, John M. Race Not Space: A Revisionist History of Gangs in Chicago.” Journal of African American History 91 (2006): 194-208

Pattillo, Mary E. "Sweet mothers and gangbangers: Managing crime in a black middle-class neighborhood." Social Forces (1998): 747-774

Venkatesh, Sudhir. The Social Organization of Street Gang Activity in an Urban Ghetto. American journal of sociology 103.1 (1997): 82-111

Adams, E. B., Morris, P. K., and Maguire, E. ‘The Impact of Gangs on Community Life in Trinidad.’ Race and Justice (2018). DOI: 10.1177/2153368718820577

Brotherton, D.C., Gude, R. “Social Control and the Gang: Lessons from the Legalization of Street Gangs in Ecuador.” Critical Criminology (2020)

Blattman, Christopher, Gustavo Duncan, Benjamin Lessing, and Santiago Tobón. "Gang rule: Understanding and countering criminal governance." Review of Economic Studies (2024)

Lauger, Timothy R. "Gangs, identity, and cultural performance." Sociology Compass 14, no. 4 (2020)

Henry, Robert. "’I Claim in the Name Of…’." Settler city limits: Indigenous resurgence and colonial violence in the urban Prairie West (2019): 222-47

Glaister, Leslie. Confronting the don: the political economy of gang violence in Jamaica. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, (2010). ***only need to read pages: 12-13, and 21- 46

Dıaz-Cayeros, Alberto, et al. "Living in fear: Mapping the social embeddedness of drug gangs and violence in Mexico." Manuscript: University of California at San Diego (2011)

Wolf, Sonja. “Mara Salvatrucha: The Most Dangerous Street Gang in the Americas?”, Latin American Politics and Society, (2012), 54(1): 65-99

Horowitz, Ruth. "Community tolerance of gang violence." Social Problems 34.5 (1987): 437

Anderson, Elijah. "The code of the streets." Atlantic monthly 273.5 (1994): 81-94

Urbanik, Marta-Marika, Sara K. Thompson, and Sandra M. Bucerius. "‘Before there was danger but there was rules. And safety in those rules’: Effects of Neighbourhood Redevelopment On Criminal Structures." The British Journal of Criminology 57.2 (2017): 422-440

Kurtenbach, S., Zdun, S., Howell, S., Zaman, M. and Rauf, A., 2021. Global street code. A cross-cultural perspective on youth violence. Deviant Behavior, 42(2), pp.171-192

Van Hellemont E, Densley JA. Gang glocalization: How the global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities. Crime, Media, Culture (2019);15(1):169-189

Asbury, Bret D. "Anti-snitching norms and community loyalty." Oregon Law Review 89 (2010): 1257-1311

Mitchell, Meghan M., et al. "Criminal Crews, Codes, and Contexts: Differences and Similarities across the Code of the Street, Convict Code, Street Gangs, and Prison Gangs." Deviant Behavior (2016): 1-26

Rod K. Brunson & Eric A. Stewart. “Young African American Women and the Street Code Journal of Crime and Justice, 29:1 (2006), 1-19,

Kubrin, Charis E. "“I see death around the corner”: Nihilism in rap music." Sociological Perspectives 48.4 (2005): 433-459

Ralphs, Robert, Juanjo Medina, and Judith Aldridge. "Who needs enemies with friends like these? The importance of place for young people living in known gang areas." Journal of Youth Studies 12.5 (2009): 483-500

Arias, Enrique Desmond, and Corinne Davis Rodrigues. "The myth of personal security: Criminal gangs, dispute resolution, and identity in Rio de Janeiro's favelas." Latin American Politics and Society 48.4 (2006): 53-81

Blokland, Talja. "Facing violence: Everyday risks in an American housing project.” Sociology

4 (2008): 601-617

Papachristos, Andrew V., David M. Hureau, and Anthony A. Braga. "The corner and the crew: the influence of geography and social networks on gang violence." American Sociological Review 78.3 (2013): 417-447

Cohen, Anjalee. "Youth Gangs, Violence, and Local Culture in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (2017): 1-24

Rosen, Eva. "Horizontal Immobility: How Narratives of Neighborhood Violence Shape Housing Decisions." American Sociological Review 82.2 (2017): 270-296

Bellair, P.E. and McNulty, T.L., 2009. Gang membership, drug selling, and violence in neighborhood context. Justice Quarterly, 26(4), pp.644-669

Urbanik, Marta-Marika. "Drawing boundaries or drawing weapons? Neighborhood master status as suppressor of gang violence." Qualitative Sociology 41, no. 4 (2018): 497-519

Grekul, Jana, and Patti LaBoucane-Benson. "Aboriginal gangs and their (dis) placement: Contextualizing recruitment, membership, and status." Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 50.1 (2008): 59-82

Bucerius, Sandra M., Daniel J. Jones, and Kevin D. Haggerty. "Indigenous gangs in western Canada." In Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies, pp. 284-297. Routledge, 2021

Henry, Robert. Through an Indigenous Lens: Understanding Indigenous Masculinity and Street Gang Involvement. PhD Thesis: Department of Native Studies University of Saskatchewan

Chapter THREE only pp. 60-85 (Indigenous Street Gangs and Colonial Encounters).*** (must also skim Chapter 6 for methods section). Van Ngo, Hieu, Avery Calhoun, Catherine Worthington, Tim Pyrch, and David Este. "The unravelling of identities and belonging: Criminal gang involvement of youth from immigrant families." Journal of International Migration and Integration 18 (2017): 63-84

Ouellet, Marie, Martin Bouchard, and Yanick Charette. "One gang dies, another gains? The network dynamics of criminal group persistence." Criminology 57, no. 1 (2019): 5-33

Fast, Danya, Jean Shoveller, and Thomas Kerr. "The material, moral, and affective worlds of dealing and crime among young men entrenched in an inner city drug scene." International Journal of Drug Policy 44 (2017)

Chalas, Dawn Marie, and Jana Grekul. "I’ve had enough: Exploring gang life from the perspective of (ex) members in Alberta." The Prison Journal 97, no. 3 (2017): 364-386

Wortley, Scot, et al. "Respect, friendship and racial injustice: Justifying gang membership in a Canadian city." In Street Gangs, Migration and Ethnicity, Van Gemert, Frank, Dana Peterson, and Inger-Lise Lien (Eds.) Routledge (2008): 192-209

Kelly, Katharine, and Tulio Caputo. "The linkages between street gangs and organized crime: The Canadian experience." Journal of Gang Research 13.1 (2005)

Gordon, Robert M. "Criminal business organizations, street gangs and wanna-be groups: A Vancouver perspective." Canadian Journal of Criminology 42 (2000): 39

Deuchar, Ross, Simon Harding, Robert McLean, and James A. Densley. "Deficit or credit? A comparative, qualitative study of gender agency and female gang membership in Los Angeles and Glasgow." Crime & Delinquency 66, no. 8 (2020): 1087-1114

Baird, Adam. "“Man a Kill a Man for Nutin”: Gang Transnationalism, Masculinities, and Violence in Belize City." Men and masculinities 24, no. 3 (2021): 411-431

Laidler, Karen Joe, and Geoffrey Hunt. "Accomplishing femininity among the girls in the gang." In Gangs, pp. 415-437. Routledge, 2017

Contreras, Randol. “Damn, Yo—Who’s That Girl?”: An Ethnographic Analysis of Masculinity in Drug Robberies. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Volume 38 Number 4 (2009): 465

Miller, Jody. "Gender and victimization risk among young women in gangs." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 35.4 (1998): 429-453

Van Damme, Ellen and William Carballo. Chapter 4: Women and Gangs in the Digital Media: A Distorted Image? In Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media, Chris Melde and Frank Weerman (Eds.). Switzerland: Springer (2020): 66-80

Stuart, Forrest. “Code of the Tweet: Urban Gang Violence in the Social Media Age.” Social Problems 67: 2, (2020), 191–207

Urbanik, Marta-Marika, and Kevin D. Haggerty. “#It’s dangerous: The online world of drug dealers, rappers, and the street code.” British Journal of Criminology (2018) Doi:

Reid, Shannon E., Matthew Valasik, and Arunkumar Bagavathi. "Examining the physical manifestation of alt-right gangs: From online trolling to street fighting." Gangs in the era of internet and social media (2020): 105-134

Elsaesser, C and Patton, D. Re-examining the literature on social media and gangs: critical race theory as a path for new opportunities. In The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society (Eds., Pyrooz, D, Densley, J., and J., Leverso. Oxford University Press. 2024

Storrod, Michelle, and James Densley.‘Going viral’ and ‘Going country’: the expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media, Journal of Youth Studies, 20(6), (2017): 677–696

Balasuriya L, Wijeratne S, Doran D, Sheth A. Finding Street Gang Members on Twitter. Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining (2016). doi:10.1109/ASONAM.2016.7752311

Ilan, Jonathan. Digital Street Culture Decoded: Why criminalizing drill music is Street Illiterate and Counterproductive. The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 60, Issue 4, July 2020, Pages 994–1013

Goffman, Alice. "On the run: Wanted men in a Philadelphia ghetto." American Sociological Review 74.3 (2009): 339-357

Braga, A, MacDonald, J, and G, Tita. Defund the Police? Considerations for Reducing Gang Violence. In The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society (Eds., Pyrooz, D, Densley, J., and J., Leverso. Oxford University Press. 2024

Koch, Insa, Patrick Williams, and Lauren Wroe. "‘County lines’: racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain." Race & Class 65, no. 3 (2024): 3-26

Gravel, Jason, Jennifer S. Wong, and Rylan Simpson. "Getting in people’s faces: On the symbiotic relationship between the media and police gang units." Deviant Behavior 39, no. 2 (2018): 257-273

Valasik, M and J, Brantingham. “Somebody’s Watching Me: Surveying Police Surveillance of Gangs. In The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society (Eds., Pyrooz, D, Densley, J., and J., Leverso. Oxford University Press. 2024

Wortley, Scot and Owusu-Bempah, Akwasi. “The Usual Suspects: Police Stop and Search Practices in Canada.” Policing and Society 21 (4): (2011): 395-407

Brunson, Rod K., and Jody Miller. "Young black men and urban policing in the United States." British Journal of Criminology 46.4 (2005): 613-640

Vera Sanchez, Claudio G., and Dennis P. Rosenbaum. "Racialized policing: Officers’ voices on policing Latino and African American neighborhoods." Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 9.2 (2011): 152-178

Albert J. Meehan (2000) The Organizational Career of Gang Statistics: The Politics of Policing

Gangs, The Sociological Quarterly, 41:3, 337-370

Pyrooz, David, Scott Decker, and Mark Fleisher. "From the street to the prison, from the prison to the street: Understanding and responding to prison gangs." Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research 3.1 (2011): 12-24

Skarbek, David. "Governance and prison gangs." American Political Science Review 105.4 (2011): 702-716

Ortiz, M. J. "Gangs and environment: A comparative analysis of prison and street gangs." American Journal of Qualitative Research 2, no. 1 (2018): 97-117

Weide, Robert D. "The invisible hand of the state: A critical historical analysis of prison gangs in California." The Prison Journal 100, no. 3 (2020): 312-331

Fleisher, Mark S., Scott H. Decker, and G. D. Curry. "Going home, staying home: Integrating prison gang members into the community." Corrections Management Quarterly 5 (2001): 65-77

Skarbek, David. "Putting the “con” into constitutions: the economics of prison gangs." The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 26.2 (2008): 183-211

Phillips, Coretta. "‘It ain’t nothing like America with the Bloods and the Crips’: Gang narratives inside two English prisons." Punishment & Society 14.1 (2012): 51-68

Brenneman, Robert. "Wrestling the devil: Conversion and exit from central American gangs." Latin American Research Review 49 (2014): 112-128

Vargas, Robert. "Criminal group embeddedness and the adverse effects of arresting a gang's leader: A comparative case study." Criminology 52.2 (2014): 143-168

Cruz, José Miguel, Jonathan D. Rosen, and Yemile Mizrahi. "The long arm of the gang: Disengagement under gang governance in Central America." Criminology 61, no. 4 (2023): 929

O’Neal, Eryn Nicole, Scott H. Decker, Richard K. Moule Jr, and David C. Pyrooz. "Girls, gangs, and getting out: Gender differences and similarities in leaving the gang." Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 14(1) (2016): 43-60

Panfil, Vanessa R. "“I was a homo thug, now I'm just homo”: Gay gang members’ desistance and persistence." Criminology 58, no. 2 (2020): 255-279

Roks, Robert. “Crip or Die? Gang Disengagement in the Netherlands.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (2018) 47(5):695-716

Githens-Mazer, Jonathan. “From Road to Path: The Symbolic Roles of Islam Amongst South London Gangs.” Ethnopolitics, (2020) DOI: 10.1080/17449057.2020.1844510

Duran, Robert. (2009). Over-inclusive gang enforcement and urban resistance: A comparison between two cities. Social Justice, 36 (2009), 82-101