Study Ranks Joblessness Top Factor in Gang Toll

Of all the factors contributing to gangs and their epidemic of violence in Los Angeles, none is more significant than the staggering rates of unemployment in their communities, according to a report to be released today by a team of university-affiliated medical researchers.

The researchers found that employment and per capita income were more closely associated with the city’s gang homicide rate than a variety of other social, economic or other demographic factors including age, race, education or the proportion of single-family households. The study will be presented today at UCLA as part of a lecture series sponsored by the California Wellness Foundation and UC.

The findings, while questioned by some criminal justice experts, suggest that the best hope of curbing Los Angeles’ gang carnage rests with community-based economic programs that would cut away at the conditions that give rise to gangs and their violence, according to the researchers.

“The bottom line of our study is that of all the variables we examined, the one factor that is the most closely associated with gang homicides is unemployment,” said Dr. Demetrios N. Kyriacou, director of trauma care in the department of emergency medicine at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. “And until our society and community leaders and business sector decide they are going to approach this problem from that point of view, we really won’t be able to prevent this epidemic of gang-related homicides.”

Because the researchers wanted to examine the root cause of Los Angeles’ gang homicides using the most reliable demographic data available from the U.S. Census, their study examined gang violence in the city between 1988 and 1992, just before and after the last census, said Kyriacou, the principal investigator for the study, which included medical researchers at Harvard Medical School and USC.

Examining eight social, economic and demographic factors, the study measured those factors against the gang homicide statistics compiled within each of the Los Angeles Police Department’s 18 geographic divisions during the five-year period ending in 1992, when there were 1,702 killings where the victim, the suspect or both had street gang involvement. Although gang killings have dropped since 1992, Kyriacou said the trend does not negate the significance of the findings.

“Street gang violence has been a social and criminal problem in American society for several decades. Over the past 20 years, however, street gangs have proliferated dramatically,” the report says, citing a 1995 study that shows that gang activity exists in 94% of U.S. cities where populations exceed 100,000.

“The city of Los Angeles, in particular, has suffered from this proliferation,” the report adds, noting that the city has America’s largest number of street gangs--406--and gang members--62,693.

Over the years, the report notes, various competing social theories have been advanced to explain why gangs form. And the factors cited in both the creation of gangs and their violence have included poverty, unemployment, delinquency, lack of family structure, lack of education and racism, the report says.

But the research on gangs, the report adds, has often been “hampered” by problems in developing a methodology, leaving studies limited by their reliance on data from case studies or surveys without comparison groups.

For this study then, researchers said, the incidence of gang violence was evaluated by comparing the relationships between community-level socioeconomic factors with the rate of homicides linked to street gangs.

What the study found was the following:

* While single-parent families and the proportion of a community’s population under the age of 20 were strongly linked to gang homicide rates, those factors were nowhere near as significant as unemployment and per capita income when all the variables were measured.

* In communities where unemployment ran highest, between 14% and 16%, there were 125 to 175 gang homicides per 100,000 population--about 15 times the killing rate compared to communities where unemployment ran a more modest 4% to 7%.

* Similarly, gang homicides in the city were almost entirely confined to communities where the per capita income was $25,000 a year or less during the five-year period studied. In the poorest communities, where per capita incomes were less than $10,000 annually, the homicide rate ranged from 75 to 175 people per 100,000 population. And in communities where the per capita income was $25,000 or more, the homicide rate was less than 10 per 100,000 residents.

By themselves, the research showed, other factors undeniably have a significant role in the number of gangs and their resulting violence. For example, the highest homicide rates were recorded in communities where the population under 20 years of age was a sizable 40%, while the lowest murder rates were reported in areas where a quarter or less of the population fell below that age.

But the age factor, while explaining the number of gang members, did not prove as pivotal in assessing the cause of gang violence when it was measured against other socioeconomic and demographic factors that remained significant even when combined with other variables, Kyriacou said.

While the report serves to underscore a position of many sociologists and public policy experts, some cautioned Monday that the conclusion may be far more sweeping than the reality.

“I don’t think it is surprising. The question is . . . exactly what does it mean in terms of the policy significance,” said Philip Cook, professor of public policy at Duke University.

Added Malcolm W. Klein, professor of sociology at USC and director of its Social Science Institute: “Employment, generally speaking, has not emerged as a significant factor [in gang violence] when you take all other factors into account.

“When you talk about gang homicides, you are clearly talking about minority neighborhoods, and as soon as you start doing that, you are talking about a host of factors related to minority neighborhoods including . . . a lower rate of public social services,” said Klein, whose book, “The American Street Gang,” is cited as a reference in the new report.

But when all eight variables in the study were mutually adjusted, UCLA’s Kyriacou said, “The only ones that remained closely correlated to gang homicides were the proportion of people employed and per capita income.”

The report is part of an ongoing research project into the medical and public health impact of gang violence in Los Angeles. Two years ago, the project included an exhaustive analysis of gang killings in Los Angeles County.

The project’s other principals include Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Range Hutson; Dr. Deirdre Anglin, associate professor of emergency medicine at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center; and Dr. Corinne Peek-Asa, adjunct professor of epidemiology at UCLA’s School of Public Health and research director for the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center. Hutson, formerly of County-USC Medical Center, and Anglin are leading the overall research project, Kyriacou said.

“We are hoping [the latest report] is a first step toward doing more research in this area and some policy discussions as to . . . the economic and social factors that are underlying the gang problem,” Kyriacou said.

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Gang-Related Homicides

A new report by medical researchers suggests that unemployment and per capita income were the most significant factors in gang-related homicides in Los Angeles between 1988 and 1992. The chart shows the five-year homicide rate and the unemployment rate in various geographic divisions of Los Angeles Police Department. Each bar represents a particular division. Generally, in areas with better economic conditions, there were fewer gang homicides.

Five-Year Gang-Related Homicide Rate Per 100,000

Percentage unemployment in each LAPD division

Sources: LAPD, Census Bureau