Suchergebnisse

Criminological research on fear of crime primarily has been based on, and supportive of, an opportunity framework. The current research tests an expanded risk‐assessment model of fear, which is rooted in an opportunity framework, by incorporating a measure of delinquent lifestyle, which is a known risk factor for victimization, using a sample of youth aged 10–16 years. The findings from longitudinal structural equation models do not support the applicability of a risk‐assessment model of fear in adolescence. Namely, although increased involvement in a delinquent lifestyle is associated strongly with an increase in victimization over time, no such association exists with the perceived risk of victimization. Most importantly, as adolescents become more involved in a delinquent lifestyle and are victimized at a higher rate than nondelinquent youth, their fear of victimization actually decreases at a significantly higher rate than more prosocial youth.

Assessing Traditional and Non-traditional Data Collection Methods to Study Online Phenomena -- Ethical and Methodological Issues in Gang Ethnography in the Digital Age: Lessons from Four Studies in an Emerging Field -- Researching Transnational Gangs as Agents of Mediationin the Digital Era -- Women and gangs in the digital media: a distorted image? -- The Role of Online Communication Among Gang and Non-Gang Youth -- Examining the Physical Manifestation of Alt-Right Gangs: From Online Trolling to Street Fighting -- Youth Perspectives on Gangs, Violence, and Social Media in a High Crime City -- Leaving gangs – failed brotherhood and reconstructed masculinities -- Anger with love. How professionals get through to high-risk youth in troublesome groups -- New meanings, new communities and new identities? Former biker gang members involved in public sharing of life experiences -- The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Disengagement from Gangs -- Misconduct among Incarcerated Gang and Non-Gang Youth: the Role of Structured and Unstructured Activities -- Understanding Adverse Effects in Gang-Focused Interventions: A Critical Review -- Moral Disengagement and Gangs.

Gang‐involved youth are disproportionately involved in criminal behavior, especially violence. The processes accounting for this enhanced illegal activity, however, remain speculative. Employing a life‐course perspective, we propose that gang membership can be conceptualized as a turning point in the lives of youth and is thus associated with changes in emotions, attitudes, and routine activities, which, in turn, increase illegal activity. Using prospective data from a multisite sample of more than 1,400 youth, the findings suggest that the onset of gang membership is associated with a substantial change in emotions, attitudes, and social controls conducive to delinquency and partially mediate the impact of gang membership on delinquent activity. Desistance from gangs, however, was not associated with similar systematic changes in these constructs, including delinquent involvement.

Over the past quarter-century, evaluation researchers have recognized the importance of documenting implementation practices of programs as they are transferred from controlled to realworld settings. As programs become widely disseminated in the general population, there is a tendency for practitioners to alter programs in a manner more conducive to their immediate needs, which may adversely affect program outcomes. The current paper uses findings from an ongoing evaluation of a school-based victimization prevention program to highlight some of the difficulties in maintaining a high degree of fidelity when providing prevention programming in a school-based setting. The results, based on observations of program delivery and program provider descriptions of implementation, allow for the examination of fidelity based on different data collection techniques.

AbstractThe findings from a large body of research on the ecology of violence indicate that individuals demonstrate a willingness to engage in violence to reduce their risk for violent victimization. Scholars have suggested that a reputation for toughness and aggression acts as an informal signal that deters mistreatment. Anderson (1999), in his street code thesis, in particular, argued that adherence to the street code functions as a signal that reduces violent victimization risk. Other research findings, however, reveal that the street code leads to an increase in victimization risk; moreover, violent offenders are routinely victimized at high rates given their lifestyle and routine activities. The evidence, therefore, does not show support for the position that a reputation for toughness or aggression effectively reduces violent victimization. In the current study, we operationalize the concept of nerve, which findings from criminological studies indicate is an important mechanism for protecting adolescents from victimization. Using data from the second national evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program, we test this operationalization of nerve to determine whether the concept is associated with later violent offending and violent victimization in ways consistent with theory and research on the ecology of youth violence. Our results demonstrate support for the notion that nerve is positively associated with violent offending, whereas those at the highest levels of this construct experience fewer violent victimizations.

The threat of victimization has been regarded as a central feature in both the development and the continuation of youth gangs. Although many studies find the need for protection to be a common reason youth join gangs, recent literature suggests that gang members are at an increased risk of victimization. Given this seeming contradiction between expectations and reality, the current article examines the "objective" and "subjective" dimensions of gang member victimization using panel data collected from youth between the ages of 10 and 16 years. Findings reveal that gang members report higher levels of actual victimization and perceptions of victimization risk than non‐gang‐involved youth. Gang membership is associated with reduced levels of fear, however. Overall, although gangs may not be functional in terms of actual victimization, they seem to decrease anxiety associated with the threat of future victimization.

Active parental consent policies have been blamed for low participation rates and selection bias (i.e., loss of "high-risk" youths) in school-based studies. In this article, the authors describe active consent procedures that produced an overall active consent rate of 79% in a sample of more than 4,500 middle school students attending 29 schools in seven cities across the United States. Consent rates, however, varied considerably both within and between schools. To better understand factors associated with active parental consent rates, the authors examined district-level, school-level, and teacher-specific effects on consent rates.

AbstractOverlooked in the extensive literature on self‐control theory are propositions with respect to street gangs. In Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) perspective, gangs are loose confederations of youth with low self‐control and their criminological relevance is attributable to "politics and romance" rather than to rigorous empirical research. Prior research is limited by the use of cross‐sectional data, which takes on added importance in light of recent findings on self‐control instability. Using six waves of panel data from a large sample of youth, we test three propositions: gang membership is endogenous to self‐control (selection), self‐control is unrelated to gang membership (stability), and self‐control confounds the well‐established link between gang membership and delinquency (spuriousness). The main findings from stabilized inverse propensity‐weighted multilevel structural equation models are that 1) self‐control is one, but not the only, source of selection into gangs; 2) levels of self‐control worsen during active periods of gang membership; and 3) gang membership maintains a direct association with delinquency, as well as an indirect association operating through self‐control. The empirical evidence does not support reinterpreting gangs in self‐control perspective, instead pointing to the continued relevance of the group context to criminology.