An Ecological Study of the Location of Gang “Set Space”

Street gang theory and research: Where are we now and where do we go from here?

“…Media accounts of gang activity largely ignore the activities of White gangs (Bursik & Grasmick 1995;Spergel 1990) and rely primarily on stereotypes (Jankowski 1991). Consequently, the focus of research on relatively few gangs offers us little assurance that the locations where gangs are found are representative of gang locales or that similar places do not have gangs (Tita, Cohen & Engberg, 2005). As Sanday (1990) notes, in the U.S.A., a group of middle class youth apprehended on charges of a (gang) rape had many of the classic hallmarks of a gang including a name, regular criminal activities, and a "turf."…”

Youth gang membership: Factors influencing and maintaining membership

“…As a result of multilevel disadvantages, it has been argued that these communities do not have the capacity to implement effective social controls over unwanted youth activities and groupings (Dupéré et al, 2007;Tita, Cohen & Engberg, 2005). Sampson and colleagues (2002) proposed that these neighbourhoods leave residents feeling excluded and powerless.…”

Geographical influences of an emerging network of gang rivalries

“…In the case of gangs in Hollenbeck, it is reasonable to assume that the gang members have a clear sense of the location of their home territory, or set space, as well as the location of their rival gangs' set spaces [62]. Literature on gang activity suggests that, in general, gang members tend to stay away from their rival gangs' set spaces [29].…”

“…Further, the stochasticity observed may provide a more realistic model of the true rivalry structure. Research has demonstrated that the rivalry networks that link gangs tend to be stable over time [63,50,47], and that the activity spaces of gangs are anchored to specific places [62,39]. However, over longer periods of times, the membership ranks of gangs may ebb and flow due to incarceration, individuals "aging out" of active status, or other forms of incapacitation [64].…”

“…In areas with numerous gangs, it is common for gangs to have multiple violent interactions with many of the other gangs. Further, street gang members typically have locations, known as set spaces, where they spend large quantities of time [62,47]. It is therefore reasonable to think of each gang as a node embedded in Euclidean space [50,64].…”