California Leads U.S. in Gang Growth

A dramatic growth in youth gangs occurred over the last three decades, spurred by increases in immigration and drug trafficking, a Justice Department study released Tuesday concludes.

California led all states with 363 communities reporting gang problems, followed by Illinois, Texas and Florida, according to the department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. By the late 1990s, 3,700 communities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia reported gang problems, nearly a tenfold increase in the number of cities with similar problems in 1970.

Walter B. Miller, a criminologist and former Harvard professor who wrote the study, attributed the rise in gang activity mainly to increased immigration and narcotics trafficking. However, other factors have included ethnic pride and the attention and occasional glamorization applied to gangs by the media, Miller said in an interview.

He added that some sociologists have seen youth gangs as “a major vehicle for bettering the life of ghetto and barrio residents.” Some gangs, he said, have been “rooted in the community and represented an untapped reservoir of potential leadership that could enhance the dignity of low-income youth.”

All too often, however, gang rivalries contributed to violence in many communities, the report noted, as evidenced by street wars between the notorious Crips and Bloods factions in Los Angeles County.

“Immigration has played a major role in the formation and spread of gangs for more than a century,” the report notes. “Gangs in the 1800s were composed largely of recently immigrated Irish, Jewish, Slavic and other ethnic populations.

“Major waves of immigration during the past 25 years have brought in many groups of Asians and Latin Americans whose offspring have formed gangs in the classic immigrant gang tradition.”

The report added that “there is little doubt that the drug trade” has added to the spread of gangs.

The study did not attempt to count the actual number of gangs in any state or locality, but only the number of communities experiencing problems with them. Within California, the report says the following counties had the most communities affected by gangs as of 1995:

Los Angeles (88), Orange (27), Riverside (18), San Bernardino (18), San Diego (14), Contra Costa (11), Alameda (11) and Ventura (10).

The Justice Department study found that gang activity did not increase significantly in the 1980s as compared to the 1970s, but a major increase was noted in the 1990s.

In the 1970s, counties with gang problems “were concentrated in a relatively small number of states, principally California and Texas,” the study says. “But by the 1990s, ‘gang counties’ were spread widely throughout the nation.”

Although gang problems traditionally have been a big-city phenomenon, the picture changed radically in the last 30 years of the 20th century, according to the report.

“In the late 1990s, there were approximately 200 cities with populations of 100,000 or more, and every one of these large cities reported youth gang problems,” it says.

“Gang problems, however, were by no means confined to large cities. One of the best documented developments of this period was a striking increase in the growth of gang problems in the nation’s smaller cities, towns and villages. The size of the average gang city population fell from 182,000 to 34,000, an 81% decline.”

There also was a regional shift. In the 1970s, the West ranked highest in the reported number of gang communities, and the South ranked lowest, the study says. By 1998, however, the South had experienced a 33-fold increase in communities affected by youth gangs, pushing the region to second place. Officials conceded they had no ready explanation for this change.

Miller said, however, that there are hopeful signs that violent gang activity may be on the decline, citing FBI figures that youth crime and arrests for violent crime are decreasing. He attributed this partly to “new police tactics, primarily community policing in conjunction with new technologies and greatly increased community participation in anti-crime efforts.”

Another criminologist, Jack Levin of Northeastern University, said police work has been aided by “a cultural revolution” in attitudes toward violence.

“There is a campaign against violence in this country that I’ve never seen before,” Levin said. “We are profoundly concerned with and disturbed by violence, and we’re addressing this issue for the first time, and that is making a big difference.”

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Gang Problems

These 10 states have the most cities reporting gang problems. Each column represents cities newly reporting gang incursions.

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Source: Justice Department