Female street sex workers,sexual violence,and protection strategies

Abstract

This paper reviews empirical findings on physical and sexual violence against female street working sex workers, drawing on the findings from the researcher's own study. Thirty-two female street sex workers were interviewed in a city in the South West of England during 1998. The ethical issues of researching female prostitution are discussed in relation to this specific research project. The main findings from the current literature and this original study highlight the possible connections between childhood sexual abuse, entrance into the sex industry at an early age, and continual experience of violence. This paper explores violence from pimps and clients as well as how the street environment exposes sex workers to risk. Concluding discussion explores the self protection strategies of individual sex workers and the female sex work community as a means of maintaining a survivor identity and not a victim identity.     

Native American Youth Gangs

ABSTRACT

The number of Native American youth gangs has increased dramatically since the 1990s. These gangs bring increases in crime and pose unique challenges to tribal leaders and local police departments. Using an integrated theoretical perspective, this article connects cultural and historical factors to explain the emergence of gangs in Indian country, identify risk factors for gang involvement, and outline important considerations for effective prevention and intervention strategies. It is expected that an improved understanding of Native American culture and experiences combined with the implementation of culturally-appropriate prevention and intervention programs will lead to more positive outcomes.     

GROUP COHESIVENESS,GANG MEMBER PRESTIGE,AND DELINQUENCY AND VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO, 1959–1962

Data from Short and Strodtbeck's ( 1965 ) study of gangs in Chicago, 1959–1962, are used to examine the association between intragang friendship networks and violent and delinquent behaviors among 248 boys from 11 different gangs (9 Black and 2 White). Contrary to expectations of tightly connected gangs being the most dangerous, estimates from multilevel overdispersed Poisson regression models showed significantly increased mean levels of violence among gangs with relatively low group cohesion. No relationship was observed between delinquency and gang cohesiveness, regardless of the specific network measure employed. At the individual level, popular boys were at a significantly increased risk for both delinquency and violence, suggesting a link between prestigious positions within the structure of gang friendship networks and conformity with group processes. The implications of these findings for detached worker intervention are discussed.     

The Role of School-Related Bonding Factors and Gender: Correlates of Gang Membership Among Adolescents

In the past several decades both the education and criminology literatures have examined the influence of school factors on the attitudes and behaviors of adolescents. This literature shows that school-related factors, especially those related to social bonding, are relevant to explaining delinquent behavior. This research examines the efficacy of school-related bonding factors in explaining gang membership. In addition, it examines whether these bonding factors differentially explain male and female gang membership. The results show that delinquent involvement is the strongest predictor of gang membership among middle school children. Although several bonding variables are related to gang membership, their influence is very weak. In addition, we do not find support for the hypothesis that these variables differentially explain male and female gang membership. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

From the Asian Boyz to the Zhu Lian Bang (the Bamboo Union Gang): A Typological Analysis of Delinquent Asian Gangs

Developing a typology for delinquent and criminal gangs has a long history in criminology and criminal justice. Although many typologies have been proposed in the past eight decades, the great majority of these classifications are based on the consideration of one single factor. This approach obviously oversimplifies the nature of gangs and may give gang researchers an impression that gangs of a certain category differ totally from those of another category. The author of this paper argues that differences between gangs are relative, not absolute. To demonstrate this point, a nomenclature on Asian gangs based on the different combinations of the three factors of political belief, organizational layout, and political connection is suggested. According to this nomenclature, Asian gangs can be conceptually categorized as STP, SEP, STN, SEN, ITP, IEP, ITN, and IEN types.

Slash,Shoot, Kill: Gang Recruitment of Children and the Penalties Gangs Face

Criminal street gang recruitment of minors has proliferated through countless communities in the United States as tensions continue to rise between gangs, communities, and the police. In response, many state legislatures have proposed legislation to combat such influence. However, not only are the proposed penalties too lenient, but some states do not even have laws that prosecute criminal street gang recruitment of minors. This note proposes that all 50 states enact an anti–gang recruitment statute specifically targeting recruiters of criminal street gangs by criminalizing gang recruitment of a minor.     

The violence work of transnational gangs in Central America

Abstract

According to international relations scholars, an important change taking place in the post-Cold War context concerns the lethality of non-state armed groups (NSAGs). Underlying this observation is the conventional assumption that non-state violence is intrinsically illegitimate. This article shifts the analysis of violence away from the terrain of legitimacy, which tends to moralise the difference between state and non-state forces, and towards the terrain of work, where their violence features as part and not separate from a shared political economy. I propose the notion of violence work as a resourceful analytic into the dialectics of everyday violence and the complex processes of value production in social life. Against the background of the extreme cruelty attributed to transnational gangs in Central America, I argue that their violence work is expressive of prevailing modes of accumulating wealth in the region. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I show how gang violence work animates a system of economic cooperation that engages a wide array of subjects who traverse state/non-state and legal/illegal divides.     

Gender differences in gang participation,delinquency, and substance use

The purpose of this paper is to respond to gaps in our knowledge about patterns of female gang participation and its causes and consequences. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a panel study that overrepresents adolescents at high risk for delinquency, are used to compare gang participation and delinquent involvement of female and male adolescents. We then examine the role of theoretical variables associated with both female and male gang membership. The results lead us to conclude that, for females as well as males, involvement in gangs is associated with substantially increased levels of delinquency and substance use. There is also some similarity in the factors associated with gang membership for both sexes, although lack of school success emerges as a factor of particular salience for female adolescents. The results suggest that theory and intervention need to address the phenomenon of female gang membership as an important component of urban youth problems.Authors' names are listed in alphabetical order.     

浅析街头诈骗犯罪问题

街头诈骗已成为当前扰乱社会治安的多发犯罪,其规律及特点是:作案地点有选择,作案手 段多样,作案团伙化、跨区域,侵害对象明确。打击街头诈骗犯罪要从防范工作入手,完善诸警联动、快 速反应机制,做到防得严密,打击及时。     

Facilitating Violence: A Comparison of Gang-Motivated, Gang-Affiliated, and Nongang Youth Homicides

It is well established that gangs facilitate violent offending by members,but the mechanisms by which that facilitation occurs remain unclear. Gangsmay promote violence indirectly by facilitating members' access to riskysituations such as drug markets or directly through gang functions such asturf defense. We explore alternative modes of facilitation in a comparisonof gang-affiliated homicides (which involve gang members but do not resultfrom gang activity), gang-motivated homicides (which result from gangactivity), and nongang youth homicides in St. Louis. We find importantdifferences as well as similarities in the time trends and eventcharacteristic of the two types of gang homicide; in key respects thegang-affiliated homicides more closely resemble the nongang events. Thegang-motivated events exhibit a somewhat distinctive spatial patterning,as might be expected from their connection to turf conflicts. However, allthree homicide types are highly concentrated in racially isolated,disadvantaged neighborhoods, which remain the fundamental socialfacilitators of both gang and nongang violence.