Limiting the impact of gangs on the safety of neighborhoods is a prime public policy concern. One innovative means criminal justice professionals have used to disrupt, and hopefully diminish, gang illegal activities is the civil gang injunction. Civil gang injunctions have been used frequently in California for more than a decade while the practice recently has spread to other states. Gang injunctions make it illegal for named gang members to associate with one another within a defined geographical area that typically corresponds with the gangs territory. The strategy is controversial from a civil rights perspective since it preemptively limits individuals actions as well as from a social psychological point of view because the strategy might be counterproductive, strengthening the gang in the long run if it is perceived as a threat at the group level. Factors involved in the framing and implementation of injunctions may determine the extent to which the effort is productive.
The researchers will interview gang and nongang youth to examine the effects of the injunction on gang members behaviors and on gang joining and leaving. The objective of this project is to examine the ways that civil gang injunctions influence gangs as a group through processes that are central components of social identity theory, small groups theory, and perceptual deterrence theory. The hope is to develop an understanding of how and why gang injunctions influence perceptions and behavior and the illuminate the implications of these findings. Effective ways of sustaining a reduction in the negative impacts of gang membership on youth and on their neighborhoods may then come into clearer focus.
This project has the potential to advance our thinking not only about gang injunctions or even gang interventions, but also about the larger issues of dealing with antisocial collectives that threaten conventional society. Antisocial collective identities are thought to influence behavior broadly (e.g., terrorists collective identities) but interventions capable of effecting changes in behavior by successfully reducing the salience of an antisocial identity in favor of an alternative social identity or personal concerns are rarely explored.
Gangs and gang interventions are of interest to many in the social science research community. This research may stimulate an exchange of ideas involving prosecutors, law enforcement, youth service professionals and community leaders facing gang issues in their neighborhoods as well as faculty and students in criminology, law, social policy, social psychology, urban planning, social work and other fields that are interested in basic processes that could be harnessed to reduce criminal behavior and increase community safety.
