Leaving the gang is good for your health
A stress process perspective on disengagement from gangs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9681002 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Leverso (0000-0002-3700-7703, School of Criminal Justice University of Cincinnati Cincinnati Ohio USA, corresponding author), Cyrus Schleifer (0000-0002-4264-5697, Department of Sociology University of Oklahoma Norman Oklahoma USA), David C Pyrooz (0000-0001-6915-3812, Department of Sociology University of Colorado Boulder Colorado USA) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 503-550 |
| Publication date | 2024-08-01 |
| 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 | 10.1111/1745-9125.12377 |
| OpenAlex | W4401918194 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 120 |
During the last decade, health criminology—the study of health outcomes for justice‐involved individuals and their families—has gained traction in the field. We extend health criminology to the study of street gangs by drawing on the stress process perspective. Gang membership is conceptualized as a primary stressor that leads to secondary stressors with direct and indirect adverse effects on mental health. Leaving a gang, we hypothesize, offers relief by shrinking the stress universe to improve mental health. We test the gang disengagement–mental health link using panel data from a sample of 510 active gang members in the Northwestern Juvenile Project, longitudinal entropy balancing models, and mental health outcomes related to both clinical diagnosis and functional impairment. The results indicate that gang disengagement leads to improvements in mental health and functioning. Compared with those who stayed in gangs, those who left experienced improvements in global functioning, overall mental health diagnosis, behavior toward others functioning, substance abuse functioning, and alcohol‐related diagnoses. Secondary stressors partially, but not fully, mediated this association. Our findings extend the inventory of research on the benefits of disengagement from gangs to health outcomes and support interventions designed to promote gang disengagement
Developmental psychology · Disengagement theory · Health psychology · Juvenile delinquency · Mental health · Psychiatry · Psychological intervention · Public health · Stressor · Clinical Psychology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Employment and Welfare Studies · Medicine · Psychology · Gerontology
Policing Gangs
Birds of a Feather?
Psychopathology as a Cause or Consequence of Youth Gang Involvement
A Relational Approach to Street Gangs
Causal Inference
Counterfactuals and Causal Inference
Human Targets
Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective
The Ties That Bind
The Global Assessment Scale
Choosing among Alternative Nonexperimental Methods for Estimating the Impact of Social Programs
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Trauma in Youth in Juvenile Detention
Doubly Robust Estimation of Causal Effects
Continuity and Change in Gang Membership and Gang Embeddedness
Sampling the Stress Universe
Misunderstandings Between Experimentalists and Observationalists about Causal Inference
Nimh Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Version IV (Nimh Disc-IV)
The Stress Process Revisited
The World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative version of the World Health Organization (WHO) Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI)
Matching Methods for Causal Inference
Group process and gang delinquency
Leaving the Gang
The Influence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on the Functional Impairment of Justice-Involved Adolescents
Gang Membership and Mental Health During the Transition to Adulthood
“Every Thought and Dream a Nightmare”
Going down to the barrio
Real Gangstas
Competing for Control
Scaling Criminal Offending
Punished
Barrio Gangs
Life in the Gang
Love the Science, Hate the Scientists
Racialized Gender Differences in Mental Health Service Use, Adverse Childhood Experiences, and Recidivism Among Justice-Involved African American Youth
Disengagement From Gangs as Role Transitions
Rumination and the Displacement of Aggression in U nited K ingdom Gang‐Affiliated Youth
Childhood Adversity and the Continued Exposure to Trauma and Violence Among Adolescent Gang Members
Detecting Mental Disorder in Juvenile Detainees
Long-Term Consequences of Adolescent Gang Membership for Adult Functioning
Motives and methods for leaving the gang
Cumulative exposure to stressful life events and male gang membership
Till Porn Do Us Part? A Longitudinal Examination of Pornography Use and Divorce
I Got Your Back”
Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime and Delinquency
Group Cohesiveness, Gang Member Prestige, and Delinquency and Violence in Chicago, 1959–1962
Homeboys, Dope Fiends, Legits, and New Jacks
Reconsidering the “gang effect” in the face of intermittency
Parenthood as a Turning Point in the Life Course for Male and Female Gang Members
Consequences of mental and physical health for reentry and recidivism
Consequences of Incarceration for Gang Membership
Gang Membership as a Turning Point in the Life Course
The Cascading Effects of Adolescent Gang Involvement Across the Life Course
The Path and Promise of Fatherhood for Gang Members
Incarceration as a Fundamental Social Cause of Health Inequalities
Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects
Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching
Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference
Beyond Incarceration
Mano Suave-Mano Dura
Rio's New Social Order
The Sociological Study of Stress
The Stress Process
Legitimated Oppression
From the Hood to the Home
Incorporating Children's Lives into a Life Course Perspective on Stress and Mental Health
Stress and Health
Stress, Health, and the Life Course
Conceptualizing Stigma
Code of the Tweet
Banging while Believing
Youth Gangs and Victimization
Disillusionment and Change
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |