The Residue of Imprisonment: Prisoner Reentry and Carceral Gang Spillover

What happens to the gang ties of people when they leave prison and return to the community? There is much speculation but little empirical research concerning carceral gang spillover, which refers to the reproduction of prison gang associations, identities, politics, and structures in communities. This study examined continuity and change in gang embeddedness in a representative sample of 802 men in Texas interviewed in prison and reinterviewed twice upon release. Based on a series of multilevel models this study arrived at four main conclusions. First, prisons are a vector of gang activity. Embeddedness in gangs dropped markedly after release from prison and continued to recede with temporal distance from prison. Second, the residue of imprisonment was moderated by pre-release gang status. Negative linear trends were stronger for active gang members and weaker for former and never gang members. Third, a temporary surge in gang identification occurred for active and former gang members despite continued declines in gang associations, reflecting a behavioral-cognitive decoupling. Finally, the types of groups with which prisoners affiliated contoured trajectories of gang embeddedness. The declining significance of gangs with prisoner reentry opens productive lines of inquiry on carceral gang spillover and offers policy and practice guidance concerning reentering populations.</p

The imprisonment-extremism nexus: Continuity and change in activism and radicalism intentions in a longitudinal study of prisoner reentry.

There is considerable speculation that prisons are a breeding ground for radicalization. These concerns take on added significance in the era of mass incarceration in the United States, where 1.5 million people are held in state or federal prisons and around 600,000 people are released from prison annually. Prior research relies primarily on the speculation of prison officials, media representations, and/or cross-sectional designs to understand the imprisonment-extremism nexus. We develop a tripartite theoretical model to examine continuity and change in activism and radicalism intentions upon leaving prison. We test these models using data from a large probability sample of prisoners (N = 802) in Texas interviewed in the week preceding their release from prison and then reinterviewed 10 months later using a validated scale of activism and radicalism intentions. We arrive at three primary conclusions. First, levels of activism decline upon reentry to the community (d = -0.30, p < .01), while levels of radicalism largely remain unchanged (d = -0.08, p = .28). What is learned and practiced in prison appears to quickly lose its vitality on the street. Second, salient groups and organizations fell in importance after leaving prison, including country, race/ethnicity, and religion, suggesting former prisoners are occupied by other endeavors. Finally, while we identify few correlates of changes in extremist intentions, higher levels of legal cynicism in prison were associated with increases in both activism and radicalism intentions after release from prison. Efforts designed to improve legal orientations could lessen intentions to support non-violent and violent extremist actions. These results point to an imprisonment-extremism nexus that is diminished largely by the realities of prisoner reentry

Self-control, differential association, and gang membership: A theoretical and empirical extension of the literature

Using data gathered from a sample of two hundred jail inmates housed in a large California city, this research extends the still nascent literature on the self-control/gang membership association. The article begins by first articulating more comprehensively than earlier research Gottfredson and Hirschi's theoretical justification for expecting a self-control/gang membership link. Next, an examination is undertaken of the relative independent influences on gang membership of self-control and a series of measures, derived from differential association theory, that mainly tap familial gang involvement. On the whole, logistic regression models suggested that self-control exerted an effect on gang membership that was almost entirely independent of, but also modest in comparison to, familial gang involvement effects, although the results also indicated the insignificance of self-control upon controlling for a series of differential association measures. Finally, theoretical implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are offered.

Disengaging From Gangs and Desistance From Crime

We study the relationship between disengagement from gangs and desistance from crime within a life-course criminological framework. Gang disengagement is conceptualized as the event of gang membership de-identification and the process of declining gang embeddedness. We examine the effects of both the event and the process of disengaging from gangs on (1) criminal desistance mechanisms and (2) criminal offending using longitudinal data and multilevel modeling. We find that disengaging from gangs is indirectly related to offending through less exposure to antisocial peers, less unstructured routine activities, less victimization, and more temperance. Gang disengagement is associated with decreased contemporaneous offending but does not predict future offending after controlling for desistance mechanisms. Evidence also suggests that those who leave gangs more quickly are less exposed to antisocial peers, and possess better work histories and psychosocial characteristics even while in the gang. We discuss implications for research on gangs and criminal desistance