KEYWORDS: social networks; gender; juvenile gangs; juvenile delinquency.

In light of recent interest in mapping terrorist networks, it is timely to begin looking at social network analysis as a tool by which to examine a broader spectrum of criminal networks, including gangs. When ethnographically researched, gangs provide a rich array of data, which can be transformed into network relationships. The purpose of these research notes is to examine one means to conduct network analysis with existing gang research.

Though much has been written as to the theoretical and historical origins of gangs and reasons for gang membership, there has been little empirical research on the metamorphoses and life cycles of gangs once they have been established, save qualitative narratives. Additionally, gangs are at times mistakenly lumped into one homogenous description1, particularly when law enforcement and social welfare agencies attempt to find solutions to the "gang problem." Yet there is overwhelming evidence from ethnographic studies of gangs that these groups are distinctly different; based on location, ethnicity, and gender. It is particularly timely to begin making comparisons between girl and boy gangs, as females are becoming alarmingly more likely to join gangs, taking a more active role in what were once male-dominated environments (Landre, Miller and Porter 1997).2

JUVENILE GANGS AND CREW CULTURES
Substantial literature suggests that a number of risk factors exist for juveniles who might be inclined to join a gang. One benefit of social network analysis in gang research is that the distinct differences between gangs can be identified. As such, the risk factors should be examined, but not necessarily generalized to every gang population. The conditions that prevail that have contributed to the formation of gangs is not limited to more recent gang activity but have existed for nearly a century, as demonstrated by youth gangs in disadvantaged neighborhoods of metropolitan cities such as New York and Chicago. Some of the conditions that appear to be the most prevalent among gang members are dysfunctional families and the development of gang ties out of spontaneous play-groups in the slums of the city (Thrasher 1927).3

From a cross-cultural standard of risk, factors from a macro analysis are city size, highly organized gangs, ethnicity, isolation of an urban underclass, a degree of institutional opposition which raises the level of gang cohesion, and age of gangs within a city (Decker 2001). As such, it is necessary to raise questions about the global urban conditions which, in combination with family risk factors, create an environment where gang affiliation is almost inevitable for juveniles.

There are generalized types of gangs. Table 1 demonstrates the various cultural and ideological compositions of the gangs that Ms. Hinojosa interviewed, fairly typical of the make up of urban gangs in America. For purposes here, typology is restricted to gender differences, since this type is not as likely to be found in studies and profiles of gang members.

The culture of violence within gangs is varying, and even defining a particular juvenile group as a gang is problematic. However, the degree of violence becomes a yardstick to identify a delinquent group as being definitively a gang. William B. Sanders (1994:16) notes that "if a group is willing to use enough violence to kill others, whether in defense or in aggression, then it should be considered a gang."4 With a definition including violence in mind, the boy gang examined in this study could be described as a gang, whereas the girl gang is perhaps better described by their own moniker, a "crew."

As the ethnic makeup and locale of gangs is varied, so are the purposes of delinquent juvenile groups. In many cases, the purpose of gang formation is due to the illegitimate drug economy. In other cases, as these groups have been formed at such a young age, as in the case of the girl crew examined in this study, the purpose of organization is self-preservation.5

Gang members do not necessarily live lives of idle delinquency. For some, education is viewed as a means out of gang life, with the foresight that the cycle of violence and delinquency is not forever (Hinojosa 1995).6 Others attempt to find employment in hopes of gaining control within established society. However, work can interfere with any attempt to go to school. With minimal wage jobs that can sometimes require long hours, as in the case of fast food restaurants that close late during the week, it can be difficult for students to maintain a normal school schedule and the ability to pass tests (Hernandez 1998).

An additional distinction that should be made between gangs is that of gender. As sex is ascribed, gender is an achieved status, which according to Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman (1998:167), is "that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means." Darrell F. Hawkins, John H. Laub, and Janet L. Lauritsen (1999:31) have suggested that more attention should be given to gender differences because "group differences in rates of serious and chronic offending among youth will likely benefit from greater attentiveness to the effects of gender differences." Female and male gang members alike are role-playing according to normative expectations, despite deviant criminal behavior.7 In other words, it is perfunctory for males to display anger and resentment aggressively, where as females are not expected to react with violence. This is not to say that female gang members do not display violent tendencies. Rather, as it is uncharacteristic for females to lash out with violence, this becomes a last, desperate response to powerlessness (Connell 1995).8 More recent statistics suggest that criminal behavior by girls is on the rise, but in the nature of less serious offenses (Chesney-Lind and Paramore 2001).

The intersection of gender and race has been addressed by some researchers. Earlier research has found that the 1950s image of female gender roles in which marriage and family play an integrate part in women's lives has become difficult to maintain (Moore and Hagedorn 1996).9 This has been particularly true in light of the influences of the drug economy which is pervasive in gang communities (Moore and Hagedorn 1996). Nonetheless, it is the contention of this study that women will attempt to model the 1950s female stereotype, even in the face of obstacles such as divorce, single-parenthood,10 and a drug culture.

HYPOTHESES
When examining several ethnographic studies, there is evidence that the characteristics of male gang networks are distinctly different than those of female gang networks. Keeping in mind that in the pursuit of identifying gang characteristics there cannot be an assumption of generalizability, the hypotheses presented here are only proposed to be relevant to the New York crew members interviewed by Hinojosa.

The first set of hypotheses examines relationships among crew members. The expectation is that there are more predictable, family-like ties between young women, as compared to those of males. Evidence for this comes from the statements of the boys, expressing their distrust of other people in general, including the members of their own crew. Hinojosa (1995:26, 56) observed that one of the boy crew members, IQ, was almost abandoned by his crew [in a fight]... "I was thinking today, no matter what you do in this life, somebody is always gonna be against you." On the other hand, the girls appear to trust each other more than their boyfriends.11

Hypothesis 1a: Girl crew members are more likely to establish pseudo-familial ties to other crew members, as compared to male crew members.

Pseudo-familial ties are defined here as kinship-like ties that are ordinarily found in blood relatives. In other words, female gang members are more likely to help each other with the domestic duties of care and the raising of each other's children. This is some deviation from traditional 1950s values, but is in keeping with ethnic extended family values.

Hypothesis 1b: Because of the establishment of pseudo-familial ties in female crews, there is more trust among members of female gang crews, as compared to male crew members.

The expectation is that if female gang members are caring for each other's children, as well as watching out for younger members of the gang, that a greater degree of trust is established between members. In particular, the degree of trust is established by more equivalent relationships within a female gang, as compared to male gang networks. Each member more or less having the same position or same number of network ties within the gang measures equivalency.

Hypothesis 1c: Female crew members will be less likely to have established ties in more than one crew, as compared to male crew members.

The expectation is that female crew members will not have fractured loyalties, due to the pseudo-familial ties found in Hypotheses 1a and 1b. The second set of hypotheses is proposed to demonstrate that individual members will attempt to maintain gender expected norms, in spite of their perceived deviance and criminality.

Hypothesis 2a: Female crew members are more likely to maintain accepted female norms within the crew, as compared to the degree that males within crews enact normative male roles.

In their conversations with Hinojosa, the expectation is that female gang members may present themselves as enacting the roles that mainstream society will accept as normative, such as less aggressive tendencies, as compared to their male counterparts.12 There is some controversy within role theory, according to Jonathan Turner (1991:426), as to whether "roles are acts of conformity to norms or creative constructions of actors." Hence, since the expectation is that female gang members attempt to behave more feminine, contrary to any violent tendencies, they will attempt to assume the role expected of them, at least in the presence of an outsider such as an ethnographer.

Hypothesis 2b: Because females in crews try to maintain accepted female norms within a crew, they are less likely than male crew members to express violent tendencies.

Expression is defined as the interaction that occurs between interviewer and interviewee. Female gang members, or in this case crew members, are less likely to report serious violent tendencies but are more likely to rely on verbal assault. As some positive attention, as demonstrated by the interest of the interviewer in the gang members' lives, is better than no attention, the female interviewees signal their identities as primarily female and being gang members as the secondary role.

Hypothesis 2c: Female crew members are more likely to use sexuality as a form of power than male gang members.

For female gang members, the reality and constraints of pregnancy are real. However, female gang members are proposed to be more likely to use sexuality as one measure of power within the structure of the gang. Additionally, if there is an affiliation between a male and a female gang, it will be that of sex rather than a power alliance formed for the purpose of maintaining turf dominance in a particular area, unlike alliances between all male gangs. Sexual power is defined as using sexuality to control other members' behavior.

METHODOLOGY: USING NETWORK ANALYSIS TO MAP GANG MEMBERSHIP
Besides the absence of gender in studying gang affiliation, social network analysis has been largely ignored in criminological methodology. Yet there are many useful tools for measurement within social network methodology to aid in the study of gangs, as gangs are nothing more than social networks of deviant juveniles and young adults (save the aberration of older Crips and Bloods members). According to Robert Hanneman (2001), graphs and matrices are borrowed from mathematics to represent patterns of relationships among social actors.13

Embeddedness is a theoretical framework that suggests that as the number of ties increases within a network, the number of opportunities to gain information or economic exchanges increases, as well as creating more constraints on the actors (Granovetter 1992).14 In the study of gangs, measurement of embeddedness would offer two insights: 1) which members have the greaterest number of opportunities for criminal acts and 2) which members are the most prominent and by their measurement considered to be in leadership positions.15 Knowing this information, it is possible for law enforcement and social agencies to identify those individuals who are the most likely to hold the network together, hence the "Achilles' heel" of the gang. Perhaps in removing these members from the gang network, the network will dissolve.

DATA AND METHODS
A secondary, non-random data content analysis was conducted using Hinojosa's 1990 interviews of female and male gang members in New York for National Public Radio.16 However, the juveniles interviewed do not self-identify themselves as a gang, but rather a "crew", despite the title of Hinojosa's book, Gang Members Talk to Maria Hinojosa. Relying on self-reporting, these groups of juveniles will be referred to as "crews," rather than gangs. The "crew" is defined as the network that is self-reported based on reciprocal ties.

Content analysis of the interviews was used to offer comparison between girl and boy gang members to test whether there are differences in the type of ties that are formed between members (Hypothesis 1a and 1c). The expectation was that female members would demonstrate more nurturing attitudes, hence pseudo-familial ties to each other, as compared to their male counterparts. The demeanor of the girls was also noted, based on Hinojosa's description of the girls during their interviews. Graphs were constructed to help establish whether ties exist between members and more than one crew (Hypothesis 1c).

The interviews were used to construct two network matrices to represent the male crew, the Flushing Top Society (FTS) (N = 7 members, 4 crews) and the female crew, Lower East Side (LES) ( N = 9 members, 1 crew) (Hinojosa 1995).17 The male crew, FTS, was heterogenic in ethnic makeup, including African American and Hispanic members, while the girl crew, LES, consisted of first and second generation Puerto Ricans (Hinojosa 1995). Hinojosa used pseudonyms for the gang members, to offer them anonymity.

In testing equivalency (or positional trust) in Hypothesis 1b, the matrices were constructed in UCINET 5, a social network analysis program which provides several statistical and network functions, including equivalency (Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman 1995). Analysis was run to test the number of ties each member of each crew possessed, using a measure of prestige. Additionally, a measure of power was run, as the designers of the UCINET 5 program warn that the prestige measure is in the experimental stage of development, and the Bonacich Power measure may be a more reliable instrument (Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman 1995). It should be noted that the male crew network includes the names of several crews that formed alliances to create larger territorial domination, as Flushing became increasingly threatened by crews invading from outside the Flushing area (Hinojosa 1995).

Comparisons based on the content of the interviews were constructed of the crew cultures, including means of social control within the crew and focal activities. These in turn were assembled into a table so as to facilitate cultural comparison. The comparisons are a means by which to demonstrate that less violent tendencies are expressed by girl crew members than by male crew members, as well as demonstrating the gender distinctions to gain and maintain power in the network structure (Hypotheses 2a, 2b and 2c). This is by no means a predictor of the cultures expected to be found in all male or female crews or gangs, but are characteristic of these distinct crews that Hinojosa interviewed.18

RESULTS
The structures of each crew are graphed in Graphs 1 and 2. In Graph 1, the girl crew, Cindy emerges as the dominant member: "Cindy was the leader." (Hinojosa 1995:66). This is demonstrated by the centrality of Cindy. In contrast, there are no distinct leaders within the boy crew, as the members appear to have formed from other fragmented crews. In particular, it is interesting to note that the girls formed their network in the third grade at the same school, suggesting that the girls eventual deviant affiliation came out of the friendships formed in elementary school (Hinojosa 1995). The only relationship that was established at a younger age within the boy crew was that of Coki and Rocstar (Hinojosa 1995). There were no blood ties between the male members, whereas Sonya and Smooth B (in the girl crew are twins, both pregnant at the same time (Hinojosa 1995). The graphs also demonstrate that the boy members were more likely to form alliances with more than one crew (Hypothesis 1c).

Figure 1. Network Structure of Lower East Side (LES) (Girl"Crew")

Source: Hinojosa 1995.

There are several indications within the content of the interviews that the girls were more likely to form family-like, abetting, dysfunctional relationships. One issue that the girls faced was the fact that pregnancy and subsequent motherhood created a vulnerability that the boys did not have to deal with. When babies do arrive, the girls establish an extended family within their own ranks, to care for the infants. As Hinojosa observed (1995:66), "the other girls took turns holding him [Nicky's baby], burping him, feeding him. . ." However, there didn't appear to be any adult role models to aid in the care of infants. In fact, there was omission of discussing their family lives in great detail beyond boyfriends, a profound contradiction to the way in which the boys openly discussed their own disorganized and dysfunctional home lives. It appears that the boys blame their families and in some cases, God, for their circumstances, whereas the girls tend to blame themselves. Hinojosa (1995:16, 25, 48, 80, 86) documented the following dialogues of crew members, to support these contentions:

"I say, God, please help me, but he can't. There's no other way for me to relieve the frustration….Once by mistake I fell asleep at my friend's house and I thought, Oh no! Mom is gonna kill me . . . So I went home and they were all asleep. I woke up thinking they were gonna scream at me and nothing happened." - Shank, FTS

"Three days later Christmas came, and he [Coki's father] sent me back to my mother, and she opens the door and says, 'Get outta here! What do you want?' On a Christmas night! 'What the hell do you want and get out of here!' I mean, I was a kid. . . I'm just a kid." - Coki, FTS

"Her mother is paying three hundred dollars a month for for her to go to Catholic School, and she is messing up the last year she is going to high school. And she swears she has so many problems, well, she brings it on." - Smooth B on Cindy's home life, LES

"They're [Cindy's parents] trying to teach me right from wrong. I mean, my father hits me 'cause of my room, that's because I'm stupid." -Cindy, LES

This is evidence that the girls' frustration and anger is turned inward rather than necessarily displaying outward behavior leading toward more violent tendencies.

Figure 2. Network Structure of Flushing's Top Scoiety (FTS) (Boy"Crew")

Source: Hinojosa 1995

The centrality of the matrices, utilizing a measure prestige, found that in the case of the girl crew, Cindy takes an expected dominant position with a score of -.002. In measures of prestige, the lower the score, the more prestige that particular individual has within the network. As Cindy is the central figure demonstrated by examination of Graph 1 and her prestige score, it can be predicted that she has the greater number of ties (ergo opportunities) in the network, but also is more constrained, as predicted by Granovetter's theory. In the case of the boy crew, the results are less clear. Chow appears to have a position of prestige, but as additional crews were included in the analysis of boy members, the analysis is less reliable than other measures. A more precise measure of centrality is that of power. Again the findings are that Cindy has the greatest number of ties in the girl crew, and Shank in the boy crew has the greatest number of ties by reason of his number of ties to different crews. Relatively speaking, with Cindy demonstrating a score of 3 as compared to Shank's score of 3.5, Shank demonstrates greater power within his network, though he has not been definitively identified as the leader of FTS.

Turning attention to the measures of individual role maintenance (Hypotheses 2a-c), there are distinct differences in the cultural environments of the two crews. The girls tend to be more nurturing of their members, particularly in the case of the youngest member, Carmela, as reported to Hinojosa (1995:68):

"Carmela is the youngest, she's twelve, but she acts mature. She wants to be like us, to be older - you know lipstick and stuff - but we hang out with her 'cause her friends, they all smoke. We do too, but we don't influence her, we don't tell her, 'Here, here, smoke this,' cause her friends all smoke."

Not knowing whether the members of the gang were attempting to maintain an appearance of respectability for Hinojosa, analysis of the interviews demonstrates that both boys and girls in crews believe that education is the only means to get ahead in the future. However, they equally feel that the confines of school, plus the perception that parents and teachers don't care, make it difficult to perceive school as a priority. This is supported by the following dialogues recorded by Hinojosa (195:15, 72):

"If I try to better myself in any way, people just look at me and say, 'What are you doing? You ain't supposed to be like that. You're suppose to be a hoodlum." -Shank, FTS

"It's like the whole week you go to school, do what your mother says, do everything right, do your homework, clean, watch TV, and you know the next day you have to do it all over again. So Friday comes and there's no school on Saturday so we go and we used to hang out and act like there wasn't no law." - Smooth B, LES

In reviewing Smooth B's interview, it appears that on the most part the girls try to maintain some sense of normalcy, but are tempted away from more constructive pursuits with the availability of cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol, not to mention association with deviant male counterparts.

Sexuality appears to be expressed differently in the two gangs. The boy crew members did not discuss sexual relationships as readily as the girl crew members. This was a surprising finding, considering the popular culture clichés of locker room talk. It appears that the girls use relationships for two purposes: 1) to obtain material goods that they feel that they deserve and 2) love and sex, as noted by the conversation between two female crew members, recorded by Hinojosa (1995:83):

Sonya: We are eager to find somebody to tie down with -

Smooth b: To have somebody love us besides our mother and father and friends, to be sexual with somebody. To feel warmth and be loved by somebody. With our guys, we are weak.

Despite this pursuit of love and membership in the crew, at times the girls feel lonely, to the extent that they feel that dying is a means to escape their situation.19

The boys also report that they feel an overwhelming sense of loneliness, even with crew affiliation. One young man in particular, Shank, had contemplated suicide as a means of removing himself from an intolerable home life:

"I was so sick of being alone all the time. You know that feeling of being alone even though you are surrounded by a thousand people. That is like solitude. . . I always thought I could do it taking a lot of pills, jumping from a building." (Hinojosa 1995:42)

Others are more optimistic about the future, believing that eventually they will be a part of law-abiding society, as reported by a male crew member to Hinojosa (1995:52-3):

"One day in the future, when I'm stable I'll be happy. . . I have so many memories behind me now - so many bad memories, but I don't let them stop me. I don't want to be in the park when I'm like thirty years old, sipping some juice. I ain't down with that." -Coki, FTS

This contrast indicates that the girls attempt to maintain gender role expectations by placing more importance on relationships, rather than self-improvement. However, a sad commentary on the hopelessness of the young men is that as an adult Coki attempted to finish a course on air-conditioning repair, but dropped out when his instructor and he started doing drugs together (Hinojosa 1995). On a happier note, the most depressed member of the Flushing Top Society, Shank, began attending community college and turned his life around (Hinojosa 1995). Hinojosa (1995) notes that the interviewees felt that at the time of the interviews that they would be stuck in their situations for a long time.

Another factor that influences the way girls and boys conduct business in crews is what they are afraid of. In the case of girls, one of their biggest fears seems to be that their boyfriends may go to jail for selling drugs (Hinojosa 1995). The boys, on the other hand, spend a lot of time and effort on maintaining and protecting what is theirs. Differences between male and female culture in the New York City crews are noted in Table 1.

The most notable difference in Table 1 between boy and girl crews is the level of violence that each is willing to participate in. Claiming that guns are part of the West Coast gang culture, the boys nevertheless contradict themselves as they describe the use of firearms in the commission of crimes. They additionally reveal that anger is a great motivator for much of the violence that they unleash, as reported by a male crew member, to Hinojosa (1995:27):

"I feel pressure. Like something real dense here, in the center of my chest. I even feel like I am gonna lose my breath when I talk about it. It's like it wants to get out. Whatever is holding it back - my conscience - is like a door and that stuff inside is slamming against it - like pop, pop, pop. Yet my conscience…or whatever it is. . . my good judgment's strength is not infinite. That's how I feel. I feel tired, exhausted of holding it back." - Shank, FTS

In some cases, the girl crews will recruit boy crews to do their fighting for them.20 Though the girls did not give evidence that they were using weapons at the time of the interview, a couple did express a desire to obtain weapons some time in the future. One crew member noted that if she were carrying a gun, knife, or blade and were threatened, she knew that she would kill (Hinojosa 1995). However, the girls contradict themselves with their next statements. They do not intend to hurt anyone with a gun, but rather use it for intimidation (Hinojosa 1995).

With these types of declarations, it may only be a matter of time for the Lower East Side to become as violent as the Flushing Top Society. At the time of the interview, the boy crew members expressed more violent tendencies with actions rather than with words as the girls did. This supports contemporary research on violence and gender differences.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Since the girls appear to take a more active role in creating a substitute extended family, it would be interesting to examine where their perception of the "ideal family" comes from, since few of them come from functional families.21

The girls face the reality of pregnancies, with their male counterparts failing to behave in the manner of a traditional father. Pregnancy does not appear to deter either gender from participating in the volatile life style associated with crew affiliation.

Of great concern is the escalation of violence that appears to be the pattern in this particular girl crew. They begin their discussion of retribution by stating that they do not have an abusive initiation into their group. When altercations do occur, verbal exchanges appear to be the weapons of choice. However, as the girls became more comfortable with Hinojosa, the potential for serious violence becomes evident in their discussion of guns. It appears that the girls were consciously or unconsciously enacting impression management with the report, but once initial interviews were conducted they revealed what could be very unladylike attitudes about life in general. This strongly supports the hypothesis that female crew members were more likely to maintain female norms, as the boys made no attempt to paint themselves as anything more than what they were, save the commonality with the girls in regards to education.

On the most part, all hypotheses presented here were well supported, to one degree or another. The weakest findings were in two hypotheses. By using positional trust as a measure, we did not conclusively find that trust is greater in girl gangs, as compared to boy gangs, save the evidence of their perceptions. It might be necessary to have further ethnographic observations of who depends on whom in the networks, to create more accurate matrices.

The second hypothesis that is not definitively supported is that the girls are more likely to use sex as a form of power. It appears that it is used as a means of forming relationships with boys. It could be that the girls are confusing the intimacy of sex with that of love, as is evident by three out of the girls becoming mothers when they were still teens. Hence it may be used as a means of gaining power in their relationships with boys, but it does not appear to add to their prestige within the crew. While the girls dress to impress the boys, the boys dress to impress other guys (Hinojosa 1995).

CONCLUSIONS
As demonstrated by this study, more research needs to be completed on the gender differences that exist between boy and girl gangs. As Hinojosa's research took place in 1990, all the crew members, including the youngest, are now adults and any attempt to ask additional questions about their experiences may be colored by the amount of time that has passed. However, there is no reason why new research cannot be conducted that will take into consideration gender differences in gangs.

The second change that should be considered in criminology and the study of gangs is in methodology. Social network analysis appears to be the strange maiden aunt of many specialties within sociology, though it is a well-respected methodology, particularly among mathematical sociologists. It is time for criminology to take a fresh look at an established means of researching organizational behavior, particularly in light of the obvious cultural differences exhibited in gangs, defying conventional generalizations.

ENDNOTES
1. Martin Sanchez-Jankowski (2003) noted that one deficiency in gang literature is the lack of distinction between gangs and other urban collective behavior. back

2. Unlike gang "wanna-bes," the "crews" examined in this study make a concerted effort to distance themselves from being labeled "gangs:" Maria Hinojosa (1995:2-3) observed that:

"Nobody called them that [gangs] or thought about them that way, either. They were called crews. And in Brooklyn and other places around the city, they were also called posses. 'There aren't no gangs around here,' they said. 'We just have our crews.' And what's a crew? A bunch of kids who hang out when they are young, there are good and bad ones."

However, these so-called "crew members" exhibit a number of risk factors associated with gang affiliation: violent or other deviant behavior, rejection of middle-class values, family disorganization and neglect, and fear of exclusion (Wiener 1999). One step towards effective gang intervention and prevention is to understand the social network dynamics of gangs, taking into consideration gender differences, which this study attempts to accomplish. More importantly, according to Canter and Alison (2000), criminal activities appear to be embedded in the transaction between individuals, adding more reason for examining gangs from a standpoint of network interaction. back

3. Our former First Lady, Senator Hilary Clinton, proposed that it takes a village to raise a child. In the absence of positive peer role models, as well as parental direction, the only option left to some juveniles is to form their own village where what is ordinarily considered deviant in "good society" is deemed the norm. Yet these children, and yes, they are still children by definition, appear to make every effort to at least appear to aspire and dream for a better life, translated as meaning middle-class values.back

4. In other countries other than the U.S., such as the United Kingdom, youth groups such as "football hooligans," are comprised of disorderly fans both adult and juveniles, whose actions are sometimes unintentionally deadly. This does not make them definitively a gang, based on Sander's definition, as the behavior is random and less coordinated or structured than gang activities (Burke and Sunley 1998). back

5. According to Rick Landre et al. (1997:21), "some are born into joining the gang….A second type of potential member wants to join because of the perceived benefits of gang membership. The third type wants to join the gang for protection, either from the gang he or she joins, or to be protected from other gangs." back

6. However, many of these more legitimately industrious members find themselves deficient in the necessary basic skills to succeed in school, not to mention their stereotypes that can overshadow their sincerity in the eyes of the teachers who brave inner-city schools.back

7. Some caution should be inserted here on the use of feminist criminologists' use of gender difference in order to understand street crime. According to Jody Miller (2002), there are several methodological choices to circumvent any inherent tautology issues, including the use of investigating social hierarchies. This is supportive of this particular study, as social network analysis can map social hierarchies within networks. back

8. Again it is problematic to assume that there are generalized gender differences among gangs, and studies are best served examining gender differences through the ethnographic lens.back

9. Joan W. Moore and John M. Hagedorn (1996) interviewed adult Chicano female gang members in Los Angeles as well as Africa American Latino gang members in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1986-1987back

10. Jay Fagan and Marina Barnett (2003) suggest that the degree to which there is contact between mothers and fathers, as well as the degree to which mothers perceive their children's fathers to be competent, contributes to their self-image as the consummate maternal stereotype.back

11. One observation noted by a female crew member, documented by Hinojosa (1995:65, 68), "I trust the crew more than I trust any guy…. with us you don't have to prove yourself…" back

12. It should be noted that, as with all self-reporting, a degree of embellishment or restraint may be exhibited during an interview. back

13. Graphs offer a visual of the network structure of relationships made of social ties. Ties can be representative of a multiple of relationships including friendship, economic, and/or informational exchange. In the case of gangs, this study examines social ties that are due to membership and hegemony. Matrices, which are generally used to construct graph, are also useful in conducting several statistical functions, including regression. The rows and columns of all sociomatrices are labeled identically, as they demonstrate an index of actors, identifying the type of ties between actors, including compounded relationships (Wasserman and Faust 1999).back

14. One measure of embeddedness is centrality, which is nothing more than a representation of the prominence of any given individual embedded in a network (Wasserman and Faust 1999).back

15. Again, there should be caution in assuming generalizability, as some gang networks extend beyond the edges of single network affiliations, with interlocking gangs, as will be demonstrated with the Flushing "crew."back

16. Hinojosa conducted her interviews in response to the 1990 stabbing death of Brian Watkins that occurred while he was visiting New York City with his family (Hinojosa 1995). According to Hinojosa (1995:2), when the juvenile responsible for the stabbing, Rocstar, was asked why his crew attempted to mug the Watkins family in the first place, he replied the kids "wanted the money to go out dancing." back

17. It should be noted that while the male crew's name remained on the most part FTS, the girl crew had undergone several name changes including Girls in Control (GIC) and Delancy Street Girls (DSG). LES was chosen as the definitive name, as this was the acronym most likely to be used for tagging purposes (Hinojosa 1995). back

18. The data were obtained from a limited number of interviews and not all crew members were interviewed. Additionally, the networks were diagramed to demonstrate the social ties between members and in the case of FTS, the additional gang alliances. back

19. Cindy reported that she was tired of the crew life and that she at times thought of killing herself, with the fatalistic expectation that everyone dies anyway (Hinojosa 1995). back

20. This comes across as the stereotypical "damsel in distress" scenario, with the young men coming to the aid of the weaker female. As one female crew member reported to Hinojosa (1995:91), "if anything happens to us we get a guy crew to kick a girl's ass or jump her."back

21. Previous research (Moore and Hagedorn 1996) suggests that this stereotype comes from the 1950s "Ozzie and Harriet" image of female roles. Perhaps their role models come from the media, though none of the female crew members interviewed by Hinojosa made mention of the role that mass media plays in their construction of reality. back

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Hansen received her B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California Riverside. Her dissertation included a social network analysis of the insider trader networks that were prevalent on Wall Street in the 1980s. Research interests include white-collar crime, organizational deviance, social networks in correctional institutions, and network analysis of youth gangs. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, at University of Massachusetts Boston.back

Contact Information: Department of Sociology, Wheatley Hall, UMB, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA. 02125-3393, email: laura.hansen@umb.edu.