Although a lot of research has been conducted on the delinquency of boys who are members of gangs, only a few quantitative studies have analysed the involvement of girl gang members in delinquency and its link with victimisation. In this study, the prevalence rates of girls who are members of gangs in Italy and in Switzerland are shown. We compared the Italian data (N=5.784) and Swiss data (N=3.459) from the second wave of the International Self-Reported Delinquency Study (ISRD-2); the population used for this comparison was made up of teenagers from the ages of 13 to 16. Members of deviant youth groups accounted for 5.7% of the Italian sample and 4.7% of the Swiss sample; in both countries, about a third of gang members were girls. In general, girls who are members of gangs commit more delinquent acts than both girls and boys who are not members of gangs. Girl gang members are also more often victimised than girls and boys who are not members of a deviant youth group.

This study aimed to examine the association between the availability of firearms at home, and the proportion of firearm suicides in Switzerland in an ecological analysis. The data series were analysed by canton and yielded a fairly high correlation (Spearman's rho=0.60). Thus, the association holds also at a sub-national level.

The literature on risk factors for joining street gangs has relied mainly on surveys of US youth. This article addresses the consistency of correlates of street gang involvement in several European countries. We utilize self-report surveys of middle school students in 19 European countries. We employ the Eurogang definition of gang membership and address the degree to which risk indicators from multiple ecological domains surface with some regularity across these different country contexts. Delinquent offending and negative peer behaviours emerge as the most influential and consistent correlates of gang involvement. We consider the implications of our findings for revealing a generalizable pattern of gang participation among European youth as well as the theoretical implications of the significant gang correlates.

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