Getting Out

Youth Gangs, Violence, and Positive Change

Keith Morton

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781613766774
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

For eight years Keith Morton codirected a safe-space program for youth involved in gang or street violence in Providence, Rhode Island. Getting Out is a result of the innovative perspectives he developed as he worked alongside staff from a local nonviolence institute to help these young people make life-affirming choices. Rather than view their violence as pathological, Morton explains that gang members are victims of violence, and the trauma they have experienced leads them to choose violence as the most meaningful option available. To support young people as they "unlearned"violence and pursued nonviolent alternatives, he offered what he calls a "Youth Positive"approach that prioritizes healing over punishment and recognizes them as full human beings. Informed by deep personal connections with these youth, Morton contends that to help them, we need to change our question from "What is wrong with you?"to "What happened to you?"

Chapter One

Thinking about Gang//Violence

Thus the gang, itself a natural and spontaneous type of organization arising through conflict, is a symptom of disorganization in the larger social framework.

—Frederic M. Thrasher, The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago

There is no consensus definition of “gang,” largely because the various stakeholders interpret the term differently and because any meaningful understanding or definition is specific to a local situation. The term has a complex, layered cultural history, reflected in its etymology, in contradictory public perceptions, and in patterns of experiences of youth involved in gangs and the street. The ways we understand “gang” reflects more about us, as observers, than it does about any objective experiences of youth on the streets. In this chapter I describe what I see as the most consistent assumptions behind the use of the term “gang” in contemporary public culture and reflect on what we might learn by testing our assumptions against experience.

Etymology of “Gang”

“Gang” is an odd word, if you consider its history (Oxford English Dictionary) and think about how it came to be applied to groups of youth who are transgressing normative cultural boundaries. It is both noun and verb. The first use of it as a noun dates to 825, and by the 1630s its colloquial use had begun to take its current meaning: “Any band or company of persons who go about together or act in concert (chiefly in a bad or depreciatory sense, or associated with criminal societies).”

The word “gangbuster” dates to 1930: “An officer of a law-enforcement agency who is known for successful (and often aggressive) detection of organized crime.” This phrase is associated with intense energy: coming on “like (the) gangbusters: with great speed, force, or urgency; (hence) vigorously, successfully.” Ironically, by 1946, “gangbuster” was beginning to be used to convey the idea of “an outstandingly successful person or thing; a winner, a hit.”

“Gangbang,” on the other hand, emerged by 1945 as slang for “an occasion on which several people (usually men) have sexual intercourse one after another with one person.” And by 1953 it came to mean “something undertaken or experienced by a group of people, esp. a situation or activity characterized by high stress, intensity, or confusion.” In 1969 “gangbang” appeared in R. L. Keiser’s Vice Lords (1969), describing “a fight between rival gangs.” “The social context of a ‘gangbang’ (gang fight),” Keiser wrote, “is considered by Vice Lords to be one of the most important social happenings in street life.”

I wonder, as I think about the etymology of “gang” and contemplate its long years of use, how it got from “a way of going” to a group of people associated with violent criminal activity. Perhaps the most perplexing use is “gangbang,” where the meaning is simultaneously sexual and violent. I think of love reduced to sex and sex reduced to violence: rape. “Gangbang” is a paradigmatic example of what it means to reduce a person to an object, to replace intimacy with alienation, and to replace relationship with violence. By extension, gang fights, like gang rape, are about force, objectification, domination, and humiliation.

Overall, then, “gang” has to do with groups of people who walk or travel together, and as these persons share visible characteristics and symbols they become increasingly “other.” Their status is simultaneously minimal (their lives are forfeit) and mysteriously attractive: transgressive, violent, and unrepressed. It is an apt description of “gang” in the popular imagination: a modern-day “gang” travels together, represents a place, and is identified by colors, style, and hand signs. They “gangbang”: fight and have sexual lives that are less civilized, more “real,” and tear away the veneer of polite society. Gang members are often portrayed as having literally and metaphorically chosen a transgressive journey, and they occupy a liminal social status because of their perceived relationship with violence and sex. Labeling someone a gang member is a way of reducing them to an object defined by violence.

Gangs, Crews, and Boys

Reality is more complicated and multidimensional than the word “gang” suggests. In Providence, Rhode Island, the place of most of my experience, there are gangs and crews and even more diffuse “boys.” A gang has some sort of formal identity, recognized by others in the community as a discrete group. Some of these gangs are organized and structured in such a way that they will survive transitions in leadership and provide their members access to valuable resources such as a space to be and economic opportunity (even if it is part of the shadow economy), as well as identity, some security, and status. Other “gangs,” or crews, are organized around one or two charismatic leaders, emerge out of specific situations and relationships, and are unlikely to survive a change in leadership. They are often less organized and are less likely to have consistent access to their own spaces beyond a street or block or section of a neighborhood. They may or may not participate in a shadow economy. They do offer security, identity, and support. “Boys” are just that—groups of young people, usually young men, who hang out together, watch each other’s backs, and usually travel in small or large groups. They are often not involved in organized economic activity; they tend not to have a discrete space beyond a street or block that they share. Gangs, crews, and boys all organize around and are involved in violence. The people involved recognize a continuum of violence, from scuffles based on respect and disrespect to head-up fights and shootings. Choosing to carry a weapon—a knife or gun—is a big step. Developing a reputation as a “serious” person—someone who can fight and is a leader—is a mixed bag: it confers power but can increase risk by making you a more likely target.

The youth involved often only see the organized gangs, with membership, colors, economic activity, as gangs. Crews and boys are informal groups of friends. Police and other authorities, however, tend to see gangs, crews, and boys as gangs. Being seen associating with someone in a gang is often enough to get you on the police gang list. Young men out on the streets often feel they are labeled as gang members when all they are doing is getting by. Authorities responsible for policing youth (Giroux 2010) see boys as nascent gang members, crews as less effective gangs, and gangs as the enemy.

Paradoxically, then, “gang” is a social construct built by the ways that protectors of civil society view and define “gang” and “gang member” and by the ways youth understand the terms. These views are at odds with one another, and the differences matter because power is involved: civil society institutions such as schools, youth programs, police, and the judiciary wield enormous power in shaping the lives of youth. The ways in which they view, define, and respond to youth involved in the streets reflect the core values on which these institutions are built and direct the ways in which these institutions will respond to youth they see as gang involved. More often than not, that response is punitive. Institutional power also matters as we begin to recognize how race (racism) and class (poverty) are built into “gang,” but made invisible when youth and their families and communities are blamed for individual and moral lapses in judgment. In this chapter, I describe several perspectives on “gang.” The last of them is my story—what I have learned from the youth of Rec Night and Smith Hill, the Providence, Rhode Island, neighborhood that was home to Rec Night. The ways we name and define phenomena often suggest how we should begin to respond and contain the seeds of potential solutions. If we are serious about ending street violence by and on youth, then we need an understanding of “gang” that can more effectively direct our individual and collective responses.

By the Numbers

The great majority of gang-involved youth in Rhode Island live in three “core” cities of Providence, Central Falls, and Woonsocket, concentrating their presence. The 2008 estimate (Malinowski 2008) for Providence was 1,400 gang members and a dozen or so gangs in a city of 171,000; in 2014 (Reynolds 2015), police estimated that number had grown to 1,800 members and thirty-six different gangs, though only 400–500 of the members and twelve to fifteen of the gangs were considered “active.” These numbers are likely overestimates because of the loose criteria that can get a person listed in the gang database kept by the police, including being seen with someone who is a known gang member.

Noting that the definition of “gang” and “youth gang” is slippery at best, the National Gang Center (2016) estimates that there were some twenty-nine thousand gangs and 850,000 gang members nationally in 2012. The National Drug Intelligence Center (2009) suggests that there are approximately 1 million gang members nationally and that 40 percent of them are juveniles, aged seventeen or under, which would place the total number of youth gang members at 400,000–500,000. Other estimates (Pyrooz and Sweeten 2015) place the number of gang members between the ages of five and seventeen at just over 1 million.

There appears to be no consistent methodology for defining and gathering data, and there is little reliable data on which to base any of these estimates. It is best to view the numbers with skepticism, using them as general indicators rather than precise estimates. One way of looking at it is that gang members make up approximately 0.3 percent of the total population of the United States. While small, the number of gang members in Providence constitutes 0.8 percent of the city’s population, supporting the idea that gang involvement is geographically concentrated in urban cores.

The main problem in counting gang members is one of definition. They can be defined as members of “organized criminal enterprises,” but this leaves out the great majority of persons that the criminal justice system, youth workers, and mainstream media view and treat as gang members. As John Hagedorn writes, “The best definition of gang . . . is an amorphous one: they are simply alienated groups socialized by the streets or prisons, not conventional institutions. . . . Young people, particularly armed young men, are everywhere filling the void left by weak, repressive, racist or illegitimate states” (2008, 31).

As Hagedorn also points out, public interest in gangs is almost exclusively focused on the violence with which they are associated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012) has this to say about gang violence in a report that looked at gang homicides across five cities: “Consistent with similar previous research, a higher proportion of gang homicides involved young adults and adolescents, racial and ethnic minorities, and males. Additionally, the proportion of gang homicides resulting from drug trade/use or with other crimes in progress was consistently low in the five cities, ranging from zero to 25%. Furthermore, this report found that gang homicides were more likely to occur with firearms and in public places, which suggests that gang homicides are quick, retaliatory reactions to ongoing gang-related conflict.” This report challenges the commonly held assumption that most gang violence is drug related. Despite public perceptions, the violence is unlikely to be directly associated with buying or selling drugs or other crimes in progress. The report suggests that people pay attention to gang violence because it happens to and is performed by youth (contradicting mainstream beliefs about childhood innocence), it happens suddenly, and it often happens publicly, generating ongoing and generalized fear. Gang and street violence are direct and intentional.

People also pay attention to gang violence because it is incredibly expensive. Ted Miller (2012), an economist with the Children’s Safety Network, estimates that firearm injuries cost the United States $174 billion in 2010. He estimates the societal cost of a gunshot fatality at $4.7 million, $3 million of which is “quality of life”—the cost of pain, suffering, and loss of future life. Removing this subjective estimate from the equation leaves a direct financial cost of $1.7 million per gunshot death. The cost for someone wounded and admitted to the hospital averages $426,000; for someone who only visits the emergency room, it is $116,000. There were fourteen homicides in Providence (Malinowski and Milkovitz 2014) in 2013 and twenty in 2014. There were 110 shooting victims in 2011, 100 in 2013, and 92 in 2014. While most of these shootings were not directly related to gang violence, the approximate direct cost of gun violence in Providence in 2014 was $73 million, an average of $405 per city resident. In an average year in Providence, approximately one-third of these homicides, between three and five per year, and perhaps 40 percent of the shootings, are gang related. A low estimate, then, is that gang-related gun violence in the city of Providence costs somewhere around $29.2 million annually, excluding the costs of incarceration.

How Much Violence Is “a Lot”?

Another useful approach to thinking about gangs begins with asking what counts as a “lot” of violence. In 2007 Providence police said that one in five murders in the city was gang related, or three of that year’s fourteen, and they noted that 59 people had been shot, up from 47 in 2006. In 2014 veteran Providence Journal reporter Bill Malinowski opened a story on street violence by writing that “there has been a constant drumbeat of violence in the capital city over the past three years with more than 100 shootings annually.” Deeper in the article he wrote, “Three of the [city’s] ten homicides this year are considered gang-related.” Three homicides is three too many, but it is important to acknowledge that the other eleven in 2007 and seven in 2014 happened in the contexts of armed robberies and domestic and relationship violence. The State Police Uniform Crime Report data (2014, 48) reports between twenty and thirty-five murders per year in Rhode Island for the period 2008–14 and between eleven and twenty-five in Providence, with an average of seventeen. Three to five of these murders statewide are gang related in any given year and are concentrated in Providence and two other cities.

Context matters, however, and the statistics on youth dying by violence contradict mainstream perceptions of childhood. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2015) estimates that approximately 90,000 youth aged twenty-four or less were murdered between 1999 and 2014, an average of 6,000 per year. Suicide was the cause of death for 74,000 youth in the same period, an average of 4,900 per year. The numbers flip for young adults twenty-five to thirty-four during the same fifteen-year period: an average of 5,800 suicides and 4,733 homicides per year. These numbers are disturbing because of the suffering they indicate and seem to demand a rational explanation: How can so many young people die by violence each year? While the great majority of these deaths are not gang related, gang-related murders are their powerful and dramatic symbol, simultaneously pointing to a social problem of epidemic proportions—the violent deaths of 11,000 youth and young adults each year—and locating its cause in “gangs,” a simplistic caricature of the “other.”

It is also important to recognize that violence is not distributed evenly across a city’s population. A nineteen-year-old man I interviewed told me that six of his friends had died from gang-related violence. A young mother in her early twenties, who grew up surrounded by “knuckleheads” involved in “the streets,” lost two brothers and the father of her son to gang violence; her current partner is incarcerated for a violent crime. Each of these people also told stories of growing up with violence and coming to believe early on that the world is a violent place. Both of them described symptoms consistent with reactions to traumatic stress, both of them worried about how they would be as a parent, and both of them were deeply concerned about what the future held for their children. In other words, as small as the numbers might be, street and gang violence is highly concentrated and has a deep, tragic, far-reaching, and long-lasting impact.

Here is what I think we can take from this all this data: by all counts, the number of gang-related homicides in Providence (and most of the country, with notable exceptions such as Chicago) is relatively low, but the violence is more likely to take place in public compared, for example, to homicides linked to domestic violence, armed robbery, or suicide; the age of the victims and perpetrators is lower than average, shocking public expectations of youthful innocence; and the violence often appears sudden, intentional, and shockingly extreme for the circumstances. The net result, as I will explore in the next chapter, is that gang violence is amplified in the popular imagination because it is public, extremely violent, and done deliberately by and to youth.

Public Perceptions of Gangs and Gang Members

Yet another way to approach “gang” is through the lens of public perception and cultural narrative. Formal descriptions of gangs and gang members tend toward some mixture of four perspectives: First are the personal narratives, memoirs, and ethnographies that introduce readers to life experiences and situations that are typically hidden from view. Some of the better-known examples are Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets (1967), Luis Rodriguez’s Always Running (1993), Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (1993), and Maria Hinojosa’s Crews (1995). Josephine Metcalf’s The Culture and Politics of Contemporary Street Gang Memoirs offers a useful analysis of this subgenre. “Contemporary gang memoirs,” she writes, “. . . have been variously demonized as violent and sensationalist or, by contrast, praised as offering a pedagogic and preventative anti-gang stance. Such contradictory responses are reflected in the memoirs themselves. . . . Their narrative arc rests on conversion: the journey from violent young gangbanger, through punishment, on to political enlightenment and the renunciation of violence. The books emphasize both the frisson of violent gang exploits and the sober, salutary reflection of politicized and educated hindsight” (2012, 4–5).

A second, and currently dominant, literature has to do with policing gangs and gang violence and the technical challenges of identifying, containing, and eliminating gangs. This literature has exploded since the early 1980s, fueled by the War on Drugs, zero-tolerance policies in schools, and dramatically increased incarceration of poor, young, urban men of color. It might be characterized as social science–criminology literature. It tends to focus on crime prevention, delinquency, and poverty, and its emphasis is represented, with only a little exaggeration, in the title of Valerie Wiener’s book of advice to teens and their families: Winning the War against Youth Gangs (1999). “Gangs as enemy” is reflected in an avalanche of shorter publications from sources such as the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention office of the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Gang Center, which collaborate on a “Comprehensive Gang Model” initiated in the 1980s. A representative title is their “Guidelines for Establishing and Operating Gang Intelligence Units and Task Forces” (2008).

A third strand offers what David Brotherton, in his masterful Youth Street Gangs (2015), calls a “humanistic” perspective. This approach has its roots in Frederic Thrasher’s (1929) study of Chicago youth gangs in the opening decades of the twentieth century. It attempts to describe the point of view from which youth gang members see the world and to reflect on what can be learned from that perspective to address personal and social problems. Older examples of this perspective, such as Thrasher’s, tend to normalize mainstream values and locate gangs as causes of social disorder even as they acknowledge the logic and validity behind the choices of gang members.

More contemporary examples of this humanistic perspective, such as Brotherton’s, incorporate the histories that produce gangs and street violence and ...