Theory, Social Bond/Control Theory, and labeling. They find that these theories have certain features which link them, such as the idea of the importance of the external socioeconomic environment in explaining gangs:
Beginning with social disorganization. . . these theories link gangs to such environmental factors as poverty, social inequality, lack of community integration, and lack of meaningful employment and educational opportunities, along with the larger economic picture of a changing labor market and the corresponding emergence of a more or less permanent underclass mired in segregated communities (Shelden, Tracy, & Brown, 1997, 62).
The authors emphasize gang membership as a social process, perhaps a social process that has been distorted, but a social process just the same. They only secondarily consider the nature of the criminal enterprise that the gang constitutes and accept the idea that gang membership in certain communities is almost inevitable. This stems from the sociological perspective that the authors take and involves them more in considering the gang as a subculture than as a criminal enterprise. The cultural aspect is evident in an examination of gangs, of course, but the authors give it such a life of its own here that they fail to consider the issue of personal responsibility for gang members because they think of gangs more in the collective than as a group of individuals who have to make individual choices.
Drug abuse has been cited as a reason for the growth in teenage gangs, and public and professional attention in recent years has been directed toward adolescents as a group for several reasons. The public believes that young people are experiencing a temporary phase of growing up and that risky behavior is a natural outgrowth of being a teenager, especially for boys. The professional view, on the other hand, is that this age can be a troublesome and turbulent period for many adolescents. T...