Weaker the gang, harder the exit
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9680447 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Megan Kang (0000-0001-6814-5108, Department of Sociology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 780-814 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-1384 • E-ISSN: 1745-9125 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1745-9125.70008 |
| OpenAlex | W4414284783 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 135 |
This study draws on 95 interviews and observations with gang‐affiliated individuals in Chicago to examine how gang structures shape disengagement and desistance from crime. During the last two decades, the city's gangs have experienced a decline in group closure, or their capacity to regulate membership and member behavior, and a blurring of boundaries between those active in a gang from all others. In the past, Chicago's gangs maintained closure and bright boundaries that made gang affiliations, norms, and territories clearly defined. Leaving these gangs required costly exit rituals that signaled an unambiguous departure while facilitating desistance. Today, with weaker gang structures and blurry boundaries, leaving a gang is no longer a distinct event. The ease of gang disengagement, however, makes desistance harder as inactive members struggle to knife off past ties and access turning points. In this uncertain landscape, desistance tactics can backfire, sending “blurred signals”—behaviors intended to create distance from former affiliates and rivals but appear as wavering commitment to supporters—that trap individuals in a liminal space between social worlds. Contrary to leading desistance theories that emphasize individual readiness, opportunity, and prosocial bonds, this study underscores how group structures critically shape pathways out of crime
Closure (psychology · Disengagement theory · Interpersonal ties · Liminality · Prosocial behavior · Space (punctuation) · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Homelessness and Social Issues
The gang
Code of the street
People and folks
The sociology of science
Honor and the American dream
Religion and Gangs
A Relational Approach to Street Gangs
Views from the Streets
Making good
Collision of Wills
Renegade Dreams
Islands in the Street
Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective
The Ties That Bind
Continuity and Change in Gang Membership and Gang Embeddedness
“From Your First Cigarette to Your Last Dyin’ Day”
An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances
Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior
Economy and Society
Ethnic groups and boundaries
Group process and gang delinquency
Delinquent Boys
Principles of Criminology
The Truly Disadvantaged
Street Corner Society
Leaving the Gang
Muslim narratives of desistance among Norwegian street criminals
The Long-Term Incarceration Consequences of Coming-of-Age in a Crime Boom
Wounded City
Competing for Control
Codes of the Underworld
Neighborhoods and Crime
Amputation or Reconstruction? Notes on the Concept of “Knifing Off” and Desistance From Crime
Durable Inequality
Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas
The Social Order of the Underworld
The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime
Where is the land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology
Barrio Gangs
Wrestling the Devil
Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives
Self-Control and Crime
Gang Research in the Twenty-First Century
The lost concept
The Importance of Cohesion for Gang Research, Policy, and Practice
Elements of Successful Desistance Signaling
With God on my side
Disengagement From Gangs as Role Transitions
Bright vs. blurred boundaries
Motives and methods for leaving the gang
Mara forever? Factors associated with gang disengagement in El Salvador
Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime and Delinquency
Self‐control Through Emerging Adulthood
Group Cohesiveness, Gang Member Prestige, and Delinquency and Violence in Chicago, 1959–1962
The long arm of the gang
An Empirical Framework for Studying Desistance as a Process
Turning Points in the Life Course
Criminal Group Embeddedness and the Adverse Effects of Arresting a Gang's Leader
I don't have time for drama”
The social foundations of racial inequalities in arrest over the life course and in changing times
Beyond Adolescence‐limited Criminology
Learning to Be Bad
If it don't kill you, it'll take away your life”
Ethnic Boundary Making
Why Islam is like Spanish
God’s Gangs
The Response of Gang Leaders to Status Threats
Conceptualizing Criminal Governance
Understanding Desistance from Crime
Street Gang Patterns and Policies
Social Change and Crime Rate Trends
The Permeability of Class Boundaries to Intergenerational Mobility Among Men in the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden
How Puerto Rico Became White
On the Run
Border Crossing
Rio's New Social Order
Governance and Prison Gangs
La distinction, critique sociale du jugement
Group Processes and Street Identity
Theory Construction in Qualitative Research
Race Mixture
The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences
Leaving the Pervasive Barrio
The Birth Lottery of History
Contested Boundaries
Murder by Structure
The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries
Gender, Crime, and Desistance
The Social Organization of Street Gang Activity in an Urban Ghetto
Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital
Are we a family or a business?' History and disjuncture in the urban American street gang
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |