End of the Youth Gang - Fad or Fact?

• NCJ Number: 92523
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Dated: (November 1983) Pages: 585-602
• Author(s): H Bookin-Weiner; R Horowitz
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Revision of article presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Washington, D.C., November 1981

Annotation

The varying attention criminologists have paid to youth gangs over the past several decades cannot be explained completely by the actual seriousness of gang delinquency and its extent relative to other kinds of delinquency.

Abstract

In order to explain this changing focus of attention by delinquency researchers, this article explores the interrelationships among four types of factors: social and political conditions, ideology, current sociological theory, and available methods. We focus on ideology and methodology, and argue that when ideology is largely centrist, such as during the 1950s and 1960s, theory would most likely be interactionist or subcultural and gangs would likely be of interest. During periods of greater ideological polarization, such as the late 1960s, however, we would expect to find more theoretical and empirical concern with either the individual or with social and economic structure and little interest in gangs. (Publisher abstract)