Youth Gangs as Pseudo-Governments: Implications for Violent Crime

Sobel, Russell S.; Osoba, Brian J.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.986363

Cited by 28 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…At first it is important to notice that these punishment and law enforcement strategies exist in conditions of relative statelessness-again, a strike against the traditional treatment of prisons and punishments as public goods. In contrast one could argue that these gangs operate as state surrogates (Sobel and Osoba 2009), but such a complaint would have to explain the wide and subtle variety of techniques and mechanisms implemented in each scenario. If each enforcer is no different from a state why is there such homogeneity of law enforcement strategies used by traditional states and such heterogeneity and contextual specificity observed in quasistate or stateless contexts?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

D’Amico

2009

Public Choice

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

D’Amico

2009

Public Choice

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“…In this regard, Russell Sobel and Brian Osoba argue that gangs are often seen as "protective agencies" by residents and are in direct competition with the state for their loyalty. 91 John Hagedorn has also argued that gangs form more competitive relations with the state when their racial or ethnic groups are excluded from legitimate power, where the state is unable to control space, and where gangs are located in defensible spaces.…”

Section: Enforcement-evasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Criminal Politics: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Organized Crime, Politics, and Violence

Barnes¹

2017

Perspect. polit.

175

112

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Over the last decade, organized criminal violence has reached unprecedented levels and has caused as much violent death globally as direct armed conflict. Nonetheless, the study of organized crime in political science remains limited because these organizations and their violence are not viewed as political. Building on recent innovations in the study of armed conflict, I argue that organized criminal violence should no longer be segregated from related forms of organized violence and incorporated within the political violence literature. While criminal organizations do not seek to replace or break away from the state, they have increasingly engaged in the politics of the state through the accumulation of the means of violence itself. Like other non-state armed groups, they have developed variously collaborative and competitive relationships with the state that have produced heightened levels of violence in many contexts and allowed these organizations to gather significant political authority. I propose a simple conceptual typology for incorporating the study of these organizations into the political violence literature and suggest several areas of future inquiry that will illuminate the relationship between violence and politics more generally.

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“…An important source of order often comes from mafia groups, which provide extralegal governance (Bandiera 2003;Gambetta 1993, Milhaupt andWest 2000;Shortland and Varese 2014;Sobel and Osoba 2009;Varese 1994Varese , 2005Varese , 2011Wang 2014). Because of the illicit nature of their activities, organized criminal groups cannot rely on formal, state-based governance institutions.…”

Section: Rituals Governance and The Green Gangmentioning

confidence: 99%

Criminal rituals

Skarbek

Wang

2015

Global Crime

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Why do criminals use rituals? Past work argues that criminal rituals provide a sense of continuity or certainty in an inherently uncertain environment. We argue instead that rituals play an important organizational role. Criminal rituals facilitate internal governance and promote group activity through three mechanisms: creating common knowledge, mitigating the costs of asymmetric information, and shaping identity among group members. Using internal documents and written constitutions, we apply this framework to understand the internal governance mechanisms used by the late 19 th and 20 th century Chinese-based Green Gang.Global Crime 16(4) 2015: 288-305

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Youth Gangs as Pseudo-Governments: Implications for Violent Crime

Cited by 28 publications

References 44 publications

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

Criminal Politics: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Organized Crime, Politics, and Violence

Criminal rituals

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