"Gangs in the
United States are becoming increasingly diverse, and they affect urban,
suburban, and rural communities. The need for comprehensive gang
information for use by professionals in the fields of law
enforcement, courts and corrections, education, social services, and
government is greater than ever." (National Alliance of Gang Investigator
Associations, 2001, removed from the site by 4 September 2009)
The demographic
composition of gangs (i.e., age, social class, gender, race, ethnicity), what they do,
and how many gang members there are varies between neighborhoods in the same
community and from one community
to another. This makes gathering accurate and meaningful statistics about gangs
and their members a little difficult.
The
demographic composition of neighborhoods vary, and this is often reflected
in the demographic composition of its gangs, if it has them. Some communities
are more homogeneous than others in terms of their racial and ethnic composition. While the more
homogeneous communities may consist of a majority population of
African-Americans, Caucasians, Asians, or Hispanics, heterogeneous
communities may include
African-Americans, Caucasians, Asians and Hispanics as well as Somalians, Russians,
Moroccans,
Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and dozens of other ethnicities. With such variety,
it is difficult to draw meaningful generalizations about the relationship
between gangs and race or ethnicity.
The demographic composition of a neighborhood can, and often does,
change over time. What was once non-gang territory is now gang territory
and, in future, may become gentrified and non-gang territory once
again. Police suppression efforts have in the past resulted in gang migration from one neighborhood to another.
This is referred to as gang
displacement. These changes also make it difficult to make generalizations
about gangs.
Further complicating the issue of gathering statistics on
gangs is
the clandestine nature of gang activity. Due to this, it is
difficult to count the number of gang members in a community, prove that a group of
delinquents is a gang, or prove a particular person is a member of a specific gang. In addition, the
legal definition of a gang
varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Finally, gangs are like the bubbles in a glass of carbonated
water. They may be large or small, they may merge with one
another or split apart, and, in time, they may even disappear. Poof,
they're gone - locked up, dead, moved to another neighborhood or community - whatever the reason. And another
gang forms overnight. Simply put, accurate statistics on gangs are elusive.
So, with this brief introduction and its cautions in mind, here is some of the best data that
currently exists on the gang phenomenon in the
United States.