27 research outputs found

    The Residue of Imprisonment: Prisoner Reentry and Carceral Gang Spillover

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    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

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

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    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.
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