U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Report

The Growth of 

in the United States: 1970–98

Youth Gang

Problems
Research and Program Development Division

develops knowledge on national trends in juvenile 

delinquency; supports a program for data collection 

and information sharing that incorporates elements 

of statistical and systems development; identifies the

pathways to delinquency and the best methods to

prevent, intervene in, and treat it; and analyzes practices and trends in the juvenile justice system.

Training and Technical Assistance Division provides

juvenile justice training and technical assistance to

Federal, State, and local governments; law enforcement, judiciary, and corrections personnel; and private

agencies, educational institutions, and community

organizations.

Special Emphasis Division provides discretionary

funds to public and private agencies, organizations,

and individuals to develop and support programs and

replicate tested approaches to delinquency prevention,

treatment, and control in such pertinent areas as 

mentoring, gangs, chronic juvenile offending, and 

community-based sanctions.

State and Tribal Assistance Division provides funds

for State, local, and tribal governments to help them

achieve the system improvement goals of the JJDP

Act, address underage drinking, conduct State challenge activities, implement prevention programs, and

support initiatives to hold juvenile offenders accountable. This Division also provides training and technical assistance, including support to jurisdictions that

are implementing OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy

for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders.

Information Dissemination and Planning Unit produces and distributes information resources on juvenile

justice research, statistics, and programs and coordinates the Office’s program planning and competitive

award activities. Information that meets the needs of

juvenile justice professionals and policymakers is provided through print and online publications, videotapes,

CD–ROM’s, electronic listservs, and the Office’s Web

site. As part of the program planning and award process,

IDPU identifies program priorities, publishes solicitations and application kits, and facilitates peer reviews

for discretionary funding awards.

Concentration of Federal Efforts Program promotes

interagency cooperation and coordination among Federal agencies with responsibilities in the area of juvenile justice. The Program primarily carries out this

responsibility through the Coordinating Council on

Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an independent body within the executive branch that was

established by Congress through the JJDP Act.

Child Protection Division administers programs related to crimes against children and children’s exposure

to violence. The Division provides leadership and funding to promote effective policies and procedures to

address the problems of missing and exploited children,

abused or neglected children, and children exposed to

domestic or community violence. CPD program activities include supporting research; providing information,

training, and technical assistance on programs to prevent and respond to child victims, witnesses, and their

families; developing and demonstrating effective child

protection initiatives; and supporting the National

Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Office of Juvenile Justice

and Delinquency Prevention

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) was established by the President and Congress

through the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act of 1974, Public Law 93–415, as amended. Located

within the Office of Justice Programs of the U.S. Department of Justice, OJJDP’s goal is to provide national leadership in

addressing the issues of preventing and controlling juvenile delinquency and improving the juvenile justice system.

OJJDP sponsors a broad array of research, demonstration, and training initiatives to improve State and local juvenile programs and to benefit private youth-serving agencies. These initiatives are carried out by seven components within OJJDP,

described below.

The mission of OJJDP is to provide national leadership, coordination, and resources to prevent and respond to juvenile

offending and child victimization. OJJDP accomplishes its mission by supporting States, local communities, and tribal

jurisdictions in their efforts to develop and implement effective, multidisciplinary prevention and intervention programs 

and improve the capacity of the juvenile justice system to protect public safety, hold offenders accountable, and provide

treatment and rehabilitative services tailored to the needs of individual juveniles and their families.
i

The Growth of Youth Gang

Problems in the United States:

1970–98

Report

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

April 2001

Walter B. Miller
ii

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice

Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the

National Institute of Justice, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

810 Seventh Street NW.

Washington, DC 20531

John Ashcroft

Attorney General

This document was prepared under grant number 95–JD–MU–K001 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice.

Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily

represent the official position or policies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

Cover photos copyright © 1997–99 Photodisc, Inc., and copyright © 2000 Corbis.
iii

Foreword

The last quarter of the 20th century was marked by significant growth in youth gang problems across the

United States. In the 1970’s, less than half the States reported youth gang problems, but by the late 1990’s,

every State and the District of Columbia reported youth gang activity. In the same period, the number of cities

reporting youth gang problems mushroomed nearly tenfold—from fewer than 300 in the 1970’s to more than

2,500 in 1998, and the number of counties citing youth gang problems grew even more precipitously, from

about 100 in the 1970’s to nearly 1,200 in 1998—an increase of more than 1,000 percent.

While research conducted over the past three decades has resulted in numerous studies, surveys, and reports

addressing various aspects of America’s youth gangs, we are indebted to Dr. Walter Miller, the author of this

Report, and his collaborators for compiling such a comprehensive study of the growth of youth gang problems

in the United States from 1970 to 1998.

The Report’s trend and rate analyses are used to project prospects for future gang locality trends. While we

hope that the Report’s “crystal ball” is clear in seeing a leveling off or even reduction in the prevalence of youth

gang problems, we concur wholeheartedly with the author’s judgment that comprehensive, quality gang surveys should continue to be conducted to monitor our progress.
v

Preface

The first nationwide survey of youth gangs in the United States was undertaken in the early 1970’s. Information was gathered in the course of face-to-face interviews with 67 local service workers in 12 of the Nation’s

15 largest cities. In six of these cities, those interviewed agreed that their cities faced gang problems of varying

degrees of seriousness. In six others, there was disagreement about the presence of gang problems. The survey

was later expanded to cover a total of 23 cities and 2 counties. According to the respondents, gang problems

were present in 9 of these communities, and absent in 14. Additional data collected in both the 1970’s and

1990’s documented the existence of almost 300 cities with gang problems in the 1970’s.

By the end of the 20th century, significant changes had occurred in the youth gang situation. The number of

cities reporting youth gang problems had risen from 6 to more than 25,000. The number of youth gang surveys

had also burgeoned, and the Federal Government was conducting national surveys annually.

The major objective of this Report is to provide concrete information on statistical trends in the development

of youth gang problems during the last three decades of the 20th century. The description and analysis of these

trends were made possible by the baseline data developed by the survey in the 1970’s. The survey presented

information on approximately 25 topics relevant to youth gangs. Given the resources available to the present

study, it was not possible to obtain numerical trend data on each of these 25 topics because of the large number

of topics and the intrinsic difficulty of collecting and analyzing trend data on such topics as gang member arrests for criminal activity, including gang homicides; numbers and changes in numbers of gang members in

each gang city during three decades; the number of gang members incarcerated in jails or prisons; school experience of gang members, including dropout rates; and other similarly complex sets of statistics.

Instead, the study focused on a single topic that serves as a clearly defined unit for which information is readily

available—a unit familiar to all and whose definition is not controversial—and it accumulated as much information as possible for this unit. The unit chosen was the gang problem locality—a city, town, village, township, county, or parish whose knowledgeable authorities reported the existence of gang problems.

The selection of a single unit and the availability of baseline data from the 1970’s made possible what previously had not been possible—a method for providing concrete and detailed information on long-term trends in

the prevalence of gang problems and a solid basis for ascertaining trends in the future. Although the major unit

of analysis is a simple one, the findings resulting from its use are quite complex, as shown by the many tables

and figures presenting data on gang localities—their populations, regional locations, prevalence compared with

all localities and with gang-free localities, prevalence trends over a three-decade period, rankings by State,

concentration in counties, and growth prospects, among others.

The main body of this Report covers the 25-year period between 1970 and 1995. As originally planned, the

date for ending data collection was to have been December 31, 1995. However, during the time period required for reviewing and revising the Report, several new studies containing important new data were issued.

The new data, for example, indicated the existence of previously unreported gang localities whose number
vi

exceeded the pre-1996 number by almost 70 percent. In order to capitalize on the extended scope and character of these data, the study period was extended to mid-1998. The new findings are summarized in the last

chapter of this Report.

The historical perspective used in this study provides evidence for a major conclusion: the United States, during a time period comprising roughly the last three decades of the 20th century, experienced gang problems in

more identified localities than at any other time in history. If the past is any guide, this period, during which

the number of gang localities reached an unprecedented level, will be followed by a period of reduced prevalence. Using the data and methods of this study to obtain detailed, long-term information on gang locality

numbers and trends will enable future researchers to determine with considerable precision the character and

magnitude of future developments and to provide reliable answers to the critical question—“Is the gang situation getting better or worse?”

Walter B. Miller, Ph.D.

Cambridge, MA
vii

Acknowledgments

The task of producing a Report that covers almost 30 years and requires specific information on close to 4,000

localities throughout the United States was a collective enterprise in the truest sense of the term. Thousands

of people contributed their skills and knowledge to the development of The Growth of Youth Gang Problems in the

United States: 1970–98, including the many officials and other observers who reported the existence of youth

gangs in their local communities and the many media writers who converted these reports into printed form.

Invaluable assistance was provided by my colleagues and fellow workers at the National Youth Gang Center

of the Institute for Intergovernmental Research in Tallahassee, FL. I am particularly indebted to Bruce

Buckley, John Moore, Dr. James Howell, and Gene Slade, whose wisdom, judgment, and critical skills were

generously and conscientiously made available to me. Bruce Buckley, in particular, displayed a remarkable

ability to detect and correct unclear, inaccurate, and misplaced elements in reviewing the many pages of this

Report. Special thanks are due to Dr. Howell, a long-time colleague, who generously provided the Introduction for this Report.

Other present and past staff members at the Institute for Intergovernmental Research—especially Trelles

D’Alemberte, Donna Lindquist, Clay Jester, Mike Caster, Craig Terrett, and Linda Vannoy—provided valuable assistance with a wide variety of tasks including graphics design, technical computer problems, compilation of statistical and demographic data, and general logistics. Eugene Pond’s extensive compilation of gang

member homicides reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation contributed significantly to the task of

identifying localities that experienced youth gang problems in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

I am most grateful to Emory Williams, Executive Vice President of the Institute for Intergovernmental

Research, for his consistent encouragement and moral support. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my fellow

consultants, Dr. David Curry and Dr. Cheryl Maxson, who shared with me the hard-won results of their extensive National Youth Gang Surveys. I also benefited from Dr. Curry’s sage advice in dealing with knotty

conceptual issues encountered in the Report.

Information derived from youth gang surveys conducted by other agencies was of great value. Two member

agencies of the Regional Information Sharing Systems Intelligence Centers, the Regional Organized Crime

Information Center (which gathers data for 15 Southern States) and the New England State Police Information Network (which gathers data for 6 New England States), provided detailed information on gangs in their

jurisdictions. I am particularly grateful to William M. Deyermond, of the New England State Police Information Network, who made sure that I received a steady flow of current information on the gang situation in

New England. James Scott, of the Gang Resistance Education and Training branch of the Federal Bureau of

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, provided important data on localities reporting youth gang problems in the

late 1990’s.
viii

The final form of this Report owes a great deal to the suggestions of three independent reviewers working for

the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention. Donna Lindquist of the National Youth Gang Center also did a superb job of synthesizing and

organizing the reactions and detailed comments of the reviewers.

Special thanks are also due to Dr. Hedy Bookin-Weiner, whose valuable assistance began in 1974, during the

implementation of the first National Youth Gang Survey, and continued almost a quarter-century later with

the completion of several parts of the present Report, including the references, table of contents, and endnotes.
ix

Executive Summary

For many decades, communities in the United States have been troubled by criminal activities, including serious violent crimes, committed by youth gangs. The prevalence and seriousness of gang problems have fluctuated over time, with gang activity escalating during some periods and diminishing during others. The last three

decades of the 20th century were characterized by a major escalation of youth gang problems throughout the

Nation, accompanied by a substantial increase in gang studies, surveys, and reports. These reports conveyed a

general impression that the number of localities experiencing gang problems had increased but failed to provide concrete, national-level information on the size of the increase, the localities involved, and their location.

This information gap is filled by the present Report, which presents detailed information on the numbers and

specific identities of gang problem localities, the size of these localities, rates of growth, and location by State

and region of the cities, towns, villages, and counties that reported gang problems between the 1970’s and late

1990’s. Trend and rate analyses over a three-decade period were made possible by the availability of baseline

data collected by the first national youth gang survey, conducted during the 1970’s. Major findings of the

Report are summarized below.

The number of localities reporting gang problems increased dramatically between the 1970’s and 1990’s. By

the late 1990’s, 3,700 identified localities in the United States—about 2,550 cities, towns, and villages and

1,150 counties, totaling the highest number ever reported—had reported the presence of gang problems.

These figures represent a nearly tenfold increase in the number of cities and an elevenfold increase in the

number of counties reporting gang problems during the study period.

In the 1970’s, 19 States reported gang problems; by the late 1990’s, all 50 States and the District of Columbia had reported gang problems. In the 1970’s, the combined population of all cities reporting gang problems was about 25 percent of the population of all cities, and the population of all counties reporting gang

problems was about 40 percent of the all-county population. By the late 1990’s, the population of gang cities

had risen to about 60 percent of all cities, and the gang-county population had risen to about 90 percent of

the all-county population.

The States with the largest number of gang-problem cities in 1998 were California (363), Illinois (261), Texas

(156), Florida (125), and Ohio (86). Of these, only two, California and Illinois, reported large numbers of

cities with gang problems in the 1970’s. The States with the largest number of gang counties in 1998 were

Texas (82), Georgia (61), California (50), Illinois (42), and Florida (40), in that order; the South replaced

the Northeast as the region with the most top-ranking States.

Nationwide, there was a substantial decrease in the concentration of gang cities in the higher ranking States as

gang problems continued to spread to new States. In the 1970’s, the top four States contained about threequarters of all gang cities; in the 1990’s, the percentage had fallen to about one-third. In the 1970’s, only 8

States reported 5 or more gang cities; in the 1990’s, all 50 States reported 5 or more. In the 1970’s, gang counties were concentrated in a relatively small number of States, principally California and Texas. By the 1990’s,

gang counties were spread widely throughout the Nation. In the 1970’s, only 6 States reported more than

5 gang counties; in 1998, 47 States reported more than 5. In 1998, gang-problem cities were concentrated in
x

a relatively small group of counties, with the top-ranking, high-concentration counties containing more than

40 percent of all gang cities. Cook County, IL, reported the largest number of gang cities, followed by Los

Angeles County, CA. Riverside and Orange Counties in California also reported high concentrations of gang

cities.

The regional location of gang cities changed radically during the three-decade period. In the 1970’s, the West

ranked highest in the reported number of gang cities, and the South ranked lowest. By 1998, the South ranked

second, with a 33-fold increase in gang cities since the 1970’s. Traditionally, gang problems have been a bigcity phenomenon, and this situation continued during the three decades prior to 2000. In the late 1990’s, there

were approximately 200 cities with populations of 100,000 or more, and every one of these large cities reported

youth gang problems. Comparison of the numbers and percentages of gang cities in designated population

categories in 1998 with the numbers and percentages of all U.S. cities shows that gang cities with more than

25,000 inhabitants (larger gang cities) made up 43 percent of all gang cities but contained 88 percent of their

population. These larger gang cities made up 77 percent of the number of all larger cities, but 86 percent of

their population, and 3 percent of the number of all U.S. cities, but 52 percent of their population.

Gang problems, however, were by no means confined to large cities. One of the best documented developments of this period was a striking increase in the growth of gang problems in the Nation’s smaller cities,

towns, and villages. The size of the average gang city population fell from 182,000 to 34,000, an 81-percent

decline. The number of gang cities with populations less than 25,000 rose from 35 percent of all gang cities to

57 percent, and the population of gang cities smaller than 25,000 rose from less than 1 percent of the total U.S.

city population to about 7 percent. The number of gang cities with 1,000 to 5,000 inhabitants increased more

than 27 times, and the number of gang cities with 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants increased more than 32 times.

Reasons for the striking increase in the number of gang-problem localities are discussed in this Report under

seven headings: drugs, immigration, gang names and alliances, migration, government policies, female-headed

households, and gang subculture and the media.

An analysis of projected growth rates of gang-problem cities provides a basis for predicting future trends in

the number of gang cities. The data provide considerable support for a prediction that the rate of growth that

prevailed during the later 1990’s will decrease in the early 2000’s and some support for a prediction that the

actual number of gang localities in the United States will decrease.
xi

Table of Contents

Foreword .............................................................................................................................................................. iii

Preface.................................................................................................................................................................... v

Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................................... vii

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................... ix

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1

An Explosion of Youth Gang Problems in the United States .......................................................... 3

Scope of the Report ......................................................................................................................................... 5

Terms and Definitions..................................................................................................................................... 5

Groups Not Counted as Youth Gangs ........................................................................................................... 5

Data Collection and Analysis: Problems and Limitations .......................................................................... 6

Definition Problems and Accuracy of Information .................................................................................. 7

More Gangs or More Information? .......................................................................................................... 8

Possible Explanations for Growth Trends ................................................................................................ 9

Data Sources .................................................................................................................................................. 10

Topics .............................................................................................................................................................. 10

Gang Localities in the United States: A Quarter-Century Summary ........................................... 11

Numbers and Populations of Gang Localities ............................................................................................ 11

Gang Locality Totals ..................................................................................................................................... 12

Changes in Numbers and Populations of Gang Localities ....................................................................... 13

Changes in Numbers of Gang Counties and Cities ................................................................................... 13

Changes in Numbers of Gang Cities ........................................................................................................... 14

Changes in Populations of Gang Cities....................................................................................................... 15

Changes in Populations of Gang Counties ................................................................................................. 16

Locality Increases Compared....................................................................................................................... 17

Cities That Reported Gang Problems in the 1970’s But Not in the 1990’s ............................................. 18
xii

Gang Cities .......................................................................................................................................................... 19

Number of Gang Cities: 1970’s Through 1995 ........................................................................................... 19

Trends in Number of Gang Cities: 1970’s Through 1995 .......................................................................... 19

Gang Counties ................................................................................................................................................... 23

Number of Gang Counties: 1970’s Through 1995 ...................................................................................... 23

Trends in Number of Gang Counties: 1970’s Through 1995 .................................................................... 25

Concentrations of Gang Counties ................................................................................................................ 26

Regional Trends in Gang Cities .................................................................................................................. 31

Gang Cities by Region: 1995 Standings ...................................................................................................... 31

Gang Cities by Region: Trends, 1970’s Through 1995 .............................................................................. 32

Gang Cities, by Division ............................................................................................................................... 33

Trends in Size of Gang Cities ...................................................................................................................... 35

Gang Cities, by Population Category.......................................................................................................... 35

Population Categories: Gang Cities Compared With All U.S. Cities ..................................................... 35

Summary and Explanations .......................................................................................................................... 41

Major Findings ............................................................................................................................................... 41

Explanations .................................................................................................................................................. 42

Drugs ........................................................................................................................................................ 43

Immigration .............................................................................................................................................. 43

Gang Names and Alliances ...................................................................................................................... 43

Migration .................................................................................................................................................. 44

Government Policies ................................................................................................................................ 44

Female-Headed Households .................................................................................................................... 45

Gang Subculture and the Media.............................................................................................................. 45

Research on Explanations and Causes ........................................................................................................ 46

Gang Locality Trends and Program Impact............................................................................................... 46

Trend Prospects for Gang Localities ....................................................................................................... 49

Predicted Growth Rate of Gang Cities ....................................................................................................... 50

Method Used for Predicting Growth ...................................................................................................... 51

Analysis of Prediction Data ..................................................................................................................... 52

Conclusions .............................................................................................................................................. 55

1998 Update of Selected Data .................................................................................................................. 57

Objectives of the 1998 Update ..................................................................................................................... 58

Relationship Between Findings in the Earlier Chapters and the 1998 Update ..................................... 58

Gang Locality Totals ..................................................................................................................................... 59
xiii

Gang Cities ..................................................................................................................................................... 60

Gang City Rankings ................................................................................................................................. 61

Decade Trends: Cities .............................................................................................................................. 61

Gang Counties ................................................................................................................................................ 62

Gang County Rankings ............................................................................................................................ 62

Decade Trends: Counties ......................................................................................................................... 62

Gang Cities, by Region ................................................................................................................................. 63

Trends in Size of Gang Cities ....................................................................................................................... 64

Major Findings ............................................................................................................................................... 67

Data-Collection Methods and the Growth of Gang Problems................................................................. 68

Yearly Rate of Printed Reports Listing Identified Gang Localities ....................................................... 69

Discovering Gang Cities Not Reported in the 1970’s and 1980’s .......................................................... 69

Sharp Increases in the Number of Gang Cities in Individual States ..................................................... 70

Summary......................................................................................................................................................... 71

Endnotes ............................................................................................................................................................. 73

References .......................................................................................................................................................... 79

Appendixes

Appendix A: Data Sources .........................................................................................................................A–1

Youth Gang Survey Reports ..................................................................................................................A–1

Media Reports ........................................................................................................................................A–6

Databases ..............................................................................................................................................A–15

Interviews .............................................................................................................................................A–17

Conferences ..........................................................................................................................................A–18

Routine Police Reports ........................................................................................................................A–18

Appendix B: Using the Decade as a Time Unit .......................................................................................B–1

Appendix C: The Growth of Youth Gang Problems in the United States: 1970–98 Report

and the National Youth Gang Center Surveys .........................................................................................C–1

Appendix D: U.S. Cities and Towns Reporting Youth Gang Problems at Any Time

Between 1970 and 1998 ............................................................................................................................. D–1

Appendix E: U.S. Counties Reporting Youth Gang Problems at Any Time Between

1970 and 1998 .............................................................................................................................................. E–1
xiv

List of Tables

Table 1 Counting Cities and Counties in Three Situations ..................................................................... 13

Table 2 Changes in Numbers and Percentages of Gang Counties Compared With All

U.S. Counties, 1970–95 ................................................................................................................ 14

Table 3 Changes in Numbers and Percentages of Gang Cities Compared With All U.S. Cities,

1970–95 ......................................................................................................................................... 15

Table 4 Changes in Populations of Gang Cities Compared With All U.S. Cities,

1970–95 ......................................................................................................................................... 16

Table 5 Changes in Populations of Gang Counties Compared With All U.S. Counties,

1970–95 ......................................................................................................................................... 16

Table 6 Types of Gang Locality, 1970’s Through 1995 ............................................................................ 17

Table 7 Cities Reporting Gang Problems in the 1970’s and Not in the 1990’s ....................................... 18

Table 8 New Gang Cities, 1970–95, by State ........................................................................................... 20

Table 9 Changes in Numbers of Gang Cities, 1970’s Through 1995 ...................................................... 22

Table 10 New Gang Counties, 1970–95, by State ..................................................................................... 24

Table 11 Changes in Numbers of Gang Counties in States With Gang Counties in the 1970’s .............. 26

Table 12 Counties With More Than Five Gang Cities in 1995, by Number of

Gang Cities per County................................................................................................................ 27

Table 13 Counties With More Than Five Gang Cities in 1995, by Rate of

Gang Cities per 1 Million Population.......................................................................................... 28

Table 14 Number of Gang Cities per Region in 1995................................................................................ 31

Table 15 Gang-City Trends, 1970’s Through 1995, by Region ................................................................. 32

Table 16 Gang-City Trends and Population, 1970’s Through 1995, by Region ....................................... 34

Table 17 Gang-City Trends, by Division .................................................................................................... 34

Table 18 Gang Cities in the 1970’s and 1995, by Population Category .................................................... 36

Table 19 Numbers and Percentages of Gang Cities With Populations Falling Below Designated

Population Levels in the 1970’s and 1995 ................................................................................... 36
xv

Table 20 Comparison of Numbers and Populations of Gang Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in

the 1970’s, by Population Category ............................................................................................. 37

Table 21 Comparison of Numbers and Populations of Gang Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in

the 1990’s, by Population Category ............................................................................................. 38

Table 22 Comparison of Numbers and Populations of the Available Pool of Gang-Free Cities

Versus All U.S. Cities in the 1990’s, by Population Category .................................................... 52

Table 23 Available Pool of Gang-Free Cities Compared With Cumulative Numbers and

Populations of All U.S. Cities in the 1990’s, by Population Category ....................................... 53

Table 24 Available Pool of Gang-Free Cities in 1995, by Population Category ...................................... 54

Table 25 Sources of Identified Gang Cities Not Reported Before 1996................................................... 57

Table 26 New Gang Cities, 1970–98, by State ........................................................................................... 60

Table 27 Decade Changes in Numbers, Percentages, and Magnitudes of Change of

New Gang Cities .......................................................................................................................... 61

Table 28 New Gang Counties, 1970–98, by State ..................................................................................... 63

Table 29 Gang-City Trends, 1970’s Through 1998, by Region ................................................................. 64

Table 30 Gang Cities in the 1970’s and 1998, by Population Category .................................................... 65

Table 31 Comparison of Numbers and Populations of Gang Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in 1998,

by Population Category ............................................................................................................... 66

Table 32 States With Highest Percentage Increases in Number of Gang Cities, 1996–98 ..................... 71

Table A–1 Data Sources, by Phase ............................................................................................................ A–1

Table A–2 Printed Reports Containing Lists of Names of Localities With Youth Gang Problems

(Unrestricted Circulation) ........................................................................................................ A–3

Table A–3 Printed Reports Containing Lists of Names of Localities With Youth Gang Problems

(Restricted Circulation) ............................................................................................................ A–5

Table A–4 Media Sources in the 1970’s...................................................................................................... A–7

Table A–5 Media Sources in the 1980’s...................................................................................................... A–9

Table A–6 Media Sources in the 1990’s.................................................................................................... A–11

Table A–7 Explanation of Locality Record Field Abbreviations ............................................................ A–17
xvi

List of Figures

Figure 1 U.S. Localities Reporting Gang Problems Any Time Between 1970 and 1995 ........................ 11

Figure 2 Populations of U.S. Localities Reporting Gang Problems Between 1970 and 1995 ................ 12

Figure 3 New Gang Counties in the United States in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990–95 .......................... 14

Figure 4 Cumulative Number of Gang Counties in the United States, 1970–95, by Decade ................. 14

Figure 5 New Gang Cities in the United States in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s ................................... 15

Figure 6 Cumulative Number of Gang Cities in the United States, 1970–95, by Decade ...................... 15

Figure 7 Comparison of the Magnitude of Change in Number of Gang Localities in

1970–95, by Category................................................................................................................... 18

Figure 8 Number of Gang Cities in 1995, by State ................................................................................... 21

Figure 9 Top 10 Gang-City States in 1995 ................................................................................................. 21

Figure 10 Top 10 Gang-City States, 1970’s Through 1995, by Magnitude of Change .............................. 21

Figure 11 Number of Gang Counties in 1995, by State .............................................................................. 25

Figure 12 Top 10 Gang-County States in 1995 ........................................................................................... 25

Figure 13 Top 10 Gang-County States, 1970’s Through 1995, by Magnitude of Change ........................ 25

Figure 14 Top 10 Gang-City Counties in 1995, by Number of Cities Reporting Gangs

in Each County ............................................................................................................................. 29

Figure 15 Regions and Divisions of the United States ................................................................................ 31

Figure 16 Number of Gang Cities in 1995, by Region ................................................................................ 32

Figure 17 Gang-City Trends, 1970’s Through 1995, by Region ................................................................. 33

Figure 18 Percentage of Gang Cities in the 1970’s and 1990’s, by Population Category .......................... 39

Figure 19 Magnitude of Change in the Number of Gang Cities, 1970’s Through 1995,

by Population Category ............................................................................................................... 39

Figure 20 New Gang Cities in the United States in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990–98 ............................... 61

Figure 21 New Gang Counties in the United States in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990–98 .......................... 64

Figure 22 Comparison of New Gang Counties in the United States in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s .... 64
1

Introduction

It is important to count the number of jurisdictions

reporting youth gangs because youth gang problems

are an significant but largely ignored public policy

issue for two main reasons. First, gang policy in the

United States does not make a distinction between

youth gangs and adult street gangs and ganglike

criminal organizations. Understandably, a distinction

would not need to be made if public policy were concerned only with apprehending and prosecuting persons who commit street crimes. The police mantra is

“Investigate the crime, not the culture.” However,

public crime policy has a broader aim—preventing

and reducing gang problems. To inform such a policy,

detailed information on youth gang problems is

needed (Miller, 1990). The lack of such detailed information has driven Miller’s 28-year compilation of

gang problem jurisdictions.

Second, the contribution of youth gangs and their

members to juvenile delinquency, especially violence, has not been incorporated into juvenile delinquency policy and program development. Studies of

large urban adolescent samples reported since 1995

show that gang members are responsible for a large

proportion of violent offenses committed by the entire sample. Rochester, NY, gang members (30 percent of the sample) self-reported committing 68

percent of all violent offenses (Thornberry, 1998).

Two-thirds of the chronic violent offenders in this

urban sample were gang members for a time

(Thornberry, Huizinga, and Loeber, 1995). In a

Seattle, WA, sample of adolescents, gang members

(15 percent of the sample) self-reported committing

85 percent of robberies perpetrated by the entire

sample (Battin et al., 1998). Youth gang members in

Denver, CO (14 percent of the sample) self-reported

committing 79 percent of all serious violent offenses

(Huizinga, 1997). The studies in Denver and Rochester were parts of OJJDP’s Program of Research

on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency. Until

1998, delinquency studies reported that the worst

influences on nondelinquents were delinquent

friends; a study in Seattle revealed that gang members were far worse influences (Battin et al., 1998).

This finding was replicated in the Rochester adolescent sample (Thornberry, 1998). The policy implication of these discoveries has been stated succinctly

by youth gang researchers: “Because gangs have

such a major effect on delinquent behavior, prevention efforts aimed at reducing delinquency and substance use should seek to prevent and reduce gang

involvement” (Battin-Pearson et al., 1998, p. 10).

This Report supports this policy recommendation.

Miller’s compilation of localities (States, cities, and

counties) affected by youth gangs documents the

urgency of incorporating this recommendation into

juvenile delinquency and crime policy in the United

States.

Miller’s method of compiling youth gang localities

adds to the great policy value of his Report. There

are three methods of tallying the number of youth

gang problem jurisdictions nationwide, all of which

have strengths and limitations. The first method, an

ethnographic (direct observation) census of every

jurisdiction in the United States, guided by one explicit definition, is cost prohibitive. Such a study

might not even be feasible because of lack of agreement on what constitutes a youth gang and because

youth gangs are amorphous and difficult to count.

The second method uses written questions to survey

a nationally representative sample of jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, this method was not used before the

National Youth Gang Center (NYGC) surveys conducted in 1996 (Moore and Terrett, 1998; NYGC,

1999), 1997 (Moore and Terrett, 1999; NYGC,

1999), 1998, and 1999. These are the first national
2

surveys of all large cities and suburban counties and

representative samples of small cities and towns and

rural counties. The survey method produces invaluable information on the existence, scope, and nature

of youth gang problems that can be generalized to

the Nation as a whole.

Because fully representative national surveys were

not conducted in earlier periods, Miller uses the

third method—examining historical trends in jurisdictions where youth gang problems have been reported in national surveys and other sources. His

baseline is the first national survey of youth gangs,

which he conducted in the 1970’s (Miller, 1982).

Most of the jurisdictions in his compilation were

respondents to the 1995 (Moore, 1997; NYGC,

1997), 1996, and 1997 NYGC surveys. He also

draws on other national surveys; Federal, State, and

city agency reports; and his own tabulation of youth

gang jurisdictions reported by local media and other

sources. Using this large database, Miller traces

developments in States, cities, and counties over a

28-year period. Thus, his Report provides a historical perspective on youth gang problems that informs

delinquency and youth crime policies. Only a few of

his findings (based on 1998 data) are highlighted

here to illustrate the policy implications of youth

gang problems; his Report contains many others.

◆ In the 1970’s, only 19 States reported youth gang

problems. By the late 1990’s, all 50 States and the

District of Columbia had reported gang problems.

◆ The number of cities reporting youth gang problems rose from 270 in the 1970’s to 2,547 in

1998—an increase of 843 percent.

◆ The number of counties reporting gang problems

rose from 101 in the 1970’s to 1,152 in 1998—an

increase of more than 1,000 percent.

◆ The regional location of gang cities changed substantially from the 1970’s to the 1990’s. In the

1970’s, the West led the Nation, while the South

ranked lowest. By 1998, the South had risen to

second place, with a 33-fold increase, while the

number of gang cities in the West had increased

only by a factor of 4.

◆ In the 1970’s, only about 27 percent of the population of all cities was affected by gang problems.

This proportion rose to about 60 percent of the

population of all cities by the late 1990’s.

Between the 1970’s and the 1990’s, the number of

smaller cities with gang problems increased much

more rapidly than that for larger cities. The number of gang cities with populations larger than

10,000 increased about 7 times, while the number

of gang cities with populations smaller than 10,000

increased almost 30 times. Later in this Report,

Miller (see p. 42) summarizes his findings in the

following manner:

Youth gang problems in the United States

grew dramatically between the 1970’s and the

1990’s, with the prevalence of gangs reaching

unprecedented levels. This growth was manifested by steep increases in the number of

cities, counties, and States reporting gang

problems. Increases in the number of gang

localities were paralleled by increases in the

proportions and populations of localities reporting gang problems. There was a shift in the

location of regions containing larger numbers

of gang cities, with the Old South showing the

most dramatic increases. The size of gangproblem localities also changed, with gang

problems spreading to cities, towns, villages,

and counties smaller in size than at any time

in the past.

When combined with youth gang research showing

the contribution of gang members to juvenile violence, Miller’s study makes a compelling case for

assigning higher priority to youth gangs in crime

and delinquency policy. Jurisdictions experiencing

youth gang problems cannot make significant

progress in preventing and reducing juvenile and

young adult violence without addressing youth

gang problems at the same time.

James C. Howell, Ph.D.

Pinehurst, NC
3

In the 1960’s, a wave of concern about violent crime

swept through the United States. Similar concerns

had troubled the Nation before. The Government

responded, as it had in the past, by appointing Federal commissions to study the nature, causes, and

treatment of crime. Three of these commissions were

The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement

and the Administration of Justice (1967), The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of

Violence (1969), and The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals

(1973). Each of these commissions produced a set of

multivolume reports containing comprehensive reviews of the character, causes, and proposed remedies for a wide range of crime problems. Among

other issues, the commissions devoted separate volumes to topics such as drunkenness, drug abuse, and

juvenile delinquency, but not one devoted a full volume to youth gangs or treated gangs as a significant

part of the national crime problem. Although gangs

were mentioned briefly in some of the reports, all

three commissions conveyed similar messages: youth

gangs are not now and should not become a major

object of concern; violence by youth gangs does not

pose a significant threat to the populace; what violence by gangs may exist or might develop can quite

easily be converted into constructive channels, primarily through social services provided by communitybased agencies. The role of law enforcement in gang

control was ignored.

In succeeding years, a radical change occurred. In the

1990’s, government officials at all levels and the public

at large became acutely aware of the reality of violent

youth gangs and youth gang crime. Gang activity was

perceived as pervasive, threatening, and increasing.

This heightened concern over youth gangs was manifested by a wide variety of developments. Hundreds

of local police departments established a gang officer

An Explosion of Youth Gang Problems in the

United States

or gang unit as part of their operations. Regional organizations of gang officers were established, met

regularly, and exchanged information. Major Federal

agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Drug Intelligence Center, and the

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, conducted

surveys and issued reports on youth gangs. The U.S.

Department of Justice established a National Youth

Gang Center, and several divisions of the Department

of Justice and other cabinet-level departments implemented gang programs. Regional law enforcement

organizations conducted periodic surveys of gang

problems in their jurisdictions. Several States organized commissions and conducted studies of gangs.

There was an enormous proliferation of efforts designed specifically or in part to curb gang crime.

Thousands of new or continuing projects, programs,

and procedures were carried out by city and county

law enforcement agencies; courts; prosecutors; corrections and probation departments; parole officers;

public and private social welfare agencies; clinical

and health agencies; city, county, State, and Federal

governments; churches; schools; and others. The

projects included:

◆ Recognition by the public health establishment that

gang homicide is a leading cause of death among

younger age groups, which resulted in responding

to gang violence as a public health problem.

◆ Cooperation between academic researchers and

Federal, State, and local agencies in conducting

studies and surveys of gang prevalence and

characteristics.

◆ Implementation of demonstration projects to test the

effectiveness of different gang control strategies.

◆ Establishment of an academic journal devoted

exclusively to gangs.
4

There can be little doubt that these developments

were responses to major increases in the number of

youth gangs and the seriousness of gang crime during the past 25 years. The perception that gangs

and gang violence were increasing was widespread

among both public officials and citizens. Unfortunately, this perception was based on impressions and

fragmentary information rather than concrete evidence. A vital element was lacking—accurate quantitative information on the magnitude and locations

of these increases. As of 1995, more than 700 academic studies and reports of youth gangs had been

published, but none provided systematic, quantitative, long-term, national-level data on changes in the

numbers and locations of gangs. A few studies included some trend data, but none provided a comprehensive long-term picture of national-level gang

trends.1

The major reason these kinds of trend data were

not presented was the absence of a body of quantitative information on youth gang characteristics

collected during a specific time period in the past

that could serve as a statistical baseline against

which to measure changes occurring in subsequent

periods. This information was provided by the first

national-level youth gang survey, conducted in the

1970’s under the auspices of the U.S. Department

of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).2

 Quantitative data

on the number of gang-problem cities and their

locations, number of gangs, number of gang members, number of homicides, and many other characteristics were provided for the period from 1970 to

1980. The trend data presented here use these statistics as a basis for measuring the scope and direction of subsequent developments.

This Report attempts to provide the missing evidence for one major aspect of the growth in gang

problems—the localities where gangs are found.

It addresses a series of questions about youth gang

localities:

◆ How many localities in the United States reported gang problems during the past 25 years?

◆ Which localities reported gang problems?

◆ Where are the localities?

◆ How large are the localities?

◆ Where have youth gang problems increased

during the past 25 years and where have they

decreased?

◆ How large have these increases or decreases

been?

◆ Which localities reported the presence of gang

problems during earlier years but not during later

years?

◆ How can these trends be explained?

◆ Which States, counties, cities, and regions had

the largest number of cities with youth gang

problems?

Viewed solely in the context of the academic study

of youth gangs, such information has limited value.

However, answers to the question “What can be done

to reduce the growth of gang problems and the massive social costs they entail?” are of far greater value

to society at large. The data presented here help

answer this more urgent question in several ways.

These findings will replace the general impression of

substantial increases in gang problems with concrete

numerical data on the specific magnitude of the increases. This information can serve a vital purpose

in establishing policy priorities. For example, it can

help determine what portion of limited crime control

resources should be allocated to the reduction of

gang violence compared with the portion allocated

to other pressing crime problems. These findings

can also assist in setting priorities within the enterprise of youth gang control by identifying the

“hotspots” of gang activity; the cities, counties,

States, or regions in which gangs are most heavily

concentrated; and the localities in which gang problems are increasing most rapidly.

Another use for these data is more directly related

to issues of gang control. Identifying U.S. localities

that report youth gang problems also identifies those

localities that do not report such problems and raises

the question of why they do not report them. As will

be discussed later in this Report, there are two logical answers: either problems are present but not

reported, or problems are absent. If the second
5

answer is valid, the identification of localities (cities,

counties, regions) with few or no gang problems

will help researchers recognize the characteristics of

localities without gang problems, compare them

with localities that do have such problems, and determine how some localities avoid such problems.

Scope of the Report

A comprehensive report on youth gang trends during the past 25 years would include findings on

changes in the number of youth gangs; the number

of gang members; the ethnic, racial, age, and gender

composition of gangs; the volume of gang crime,

including gang homicides; and other topics included

in the 18 general information categories examined in

the first national gang survey report.3

By contrast, the scope of the present Report is limited

to a single information category—localities. Four

types of locality units are distinguished—States, cities, counties, and regions. In some instances, locality

subtypes are distinguished. The reasons for limiting

the scope of this Report to localities are primarily

logistical, but this focus also has conceptual strengths.

The Growth of Youth Gang Problems in the United States:

1970–98 may be considered one of a series of updates

of the 1982 National Youth Gang Survey report.

Baseline data in that report allow analysis of trends

in the number of gangs, the number of gang members, the number of gang homicides, and other topics. Producing a volume that covered all of these

topics would be a formidable and lengthy task. The

present Report limits its coverage to the presentation of detailed information on 25-year trends in the

locations of gang problems with selected updates

provided in the final chapter. Viewed as a research

procedure, using the gang-problem locality as a

major data category is probably as efficient as, if

not more efficient than, using other categories such

as the number of gangs or gang members in developing a comprehensive picture of long-term trends in

youth gang problems.

Terms and Definitions

Before presenting the findings of this Report, it is

necessary to define and discuss some of the terms

used here. The major unit of analysis, as just noted, is

the “youth-gang-problem locality.” The term “locality”

refers to the major types of named place units found

in the United States and includes States, counties,

cities, towns, villages, boroughs, townships, regions,

and subregions. A youth-gang-problem locality is a

locality for which knowledgeable authorities have

reported the existence of one or more youth groups

that they are willing to designate as youth gangs and

that pose a recognized crime problem.

For purposes of brevity, several shorthand terms are

used in the tables and text. The terms “gang city”

and “gang-problem city” are used as shorthand for

“youth-gang-problem city,” “gang county” and “gangproblem county” for “youth-gang-problem county,”

and “gang locality” and “gang-problem locality” for

“youth-gang-problem locality.” Similar conventions

apply to States, regions, and other types of localities.

The terms “city,” “municipality,” or “municipal unit”

are sometimes used to refer not only to larger populated places but also to villages, towns, boroughs, and

townships. Similarly, the term “county” may refer to

parishes and boroughs, which fill the functions of

counties in some States. The term “gang” will sometimes be used as shorthand for “youth gang.” It is

important to keep in mind that when these shorthand

terms are used they actually refer to the more extended and accurate terms they replace.

The term “new” when applied to a locality incorporates

a time dimension. The 25-year span of the main part of

this Report is divided into three periods—two decades,

the 1970’s and 1980’s, and a 6-year period, 1990 to

1995. The final chapter updates selected data through

1998. For a designated period, a “new” gang locality is

one in which a gang problem is reported for the first

time during that period. This term is discussed further

in the second chapter entitled “Gang Localities in the

United States: A Quarter-Century Summary.”

Groups Not Counted as

Youth Gangs

Determining which of the many groups cited by the

various reporting sources could legitimately be considered youth gangs was a prerequisite to this study.

This issue is discussed in some detail in the next

section. In most instances, the author had no way of
6

knowing exactly how the reporters defined or conceived of the groups on which they reported and

could not assume that all citations of youth gangs

referred to similar units.

However, in examining the reporting documents, it

was usually quite clear which kinds of units would

not be counted as youth gangs. In conformity with

the usage adopted by a national survey conducted

by the National Youth Gang Center in 1995, several

groups designated as “gangs,” “street gangs,” or

“criminal street gangs” were not considered youth

gangs for purposes of this Report. These groups are

motorcycle gangs, including Hell’s Angels and Devils Disciples; hate or ideological gangs, including

Skinheads and Neo-Nazis; prison gangs, including

Nuestra Familia and the Black Guerilla Family; and

other types of adult gangs, including drug operations, syndicates, and organized crime gangs. A major objective was to maintain a distinction between

youth gangs (ages 12 to 24) and exclusively adult

gangs. The kind of unit sought and counted is the

traditional area-based adolescent and young adult

street gang whose violent activities include assaultive and predatory crimes. Excluding the many hate

gangs, prison gangs, and other adult gangs simplifies

the task of associating gangs with localities but at

the same time substantially reduces the total number

of gangs that are considered by this Report.

Data Collection and Analysis:

Problems and Limitations

Most readers of a Report on 25-year growth trends

of gang problems in U.S. localities are interested

primarily in the specific findings concerning the

numbers, locations, and characteristics of gangproblem localities and the ways in which they

have changed during the past 25 years.

A smaller group of readers are also particularly concerned with the precise details of how the data were

collected, compiled, and analyzed; the soundness of

the base data; the degree of comparability between

present data and the data of similar studies; and the

possibility of replicating the study in order to compare its results with findings from other localities

and times.

The target audience for this Report is the first group

of readers, and most of the Report deals with specific findings. However, the interests of the second

group are also addressed. The methods of the study

are presented in two places—a relatively brief, less

technical discussion in the present chapter and an

expanded treatment of more technical issues, details,

and procedures in three separate appendixes that

focus on research methods. Readers more interested

in specific findings than in methods can skim the

present section and skip appendixes A, B, and C.

The major objective of this study is to replace with

concrete information a general impression that gang

problems in the United States have been increasing

during some unknown period of time, at some unknown rate, for an unknown number of localities.

The data include answers to the kind of questions

listed on page 4, primarily in the form of numerical

charts, tables, and graphs. This objective entailed

some difficult data-gathering problems. Unlike

enterprises such as the U.S. Census, which periodically collects detailed information on U.S. citizens,

there is no centralized source of information on

youth gangs—their numbers, their locations, or

their criminal activities. Data on the location of

gangs are reported by many different sources in

many different places, with little uniformity in reporting methods.

Given this situation, the primary informationgathering challenge faced by this study was that of

constructing a reasonably accurate and comprehensive picture of the location of youth gang problems

nationwide, based on materials that were for the

most part scattered, incomplete, and hard to obtain.

Under these circumstances, conventional social research methods (such as the survey research techniques used in opinion polling, most sociological

surveys, and the collection of census data) could not

be used. Added to these difficulties were problems

arising from the long timespan to be examined in

ascertaining change trends during a 25-year period.

Sources of information such as local law enforcement agencies rarely maintain accurate 20- or 25-

year-old records that can be readily retrieved.

The inquiry, then, was unable to use the safe and

familiar research methods customarily employed

and required methods that would make it possible to
7

gather information from a wide range of diverse

sources that used different data-collection procedures. These methods required considerable improvisation and risk taking. Some of the problems

involved are discussed in the following sections.

Definition Problems and Accuracy

of Information

Any study that counts discrete entities needs a clear

conception of the unit to be counted. In conventional data-gathering operations such as the Federal

census, the nature of the primary unit of analysis—

the individual—is quite clear. In the present instance,

the nature of the primary unit is far from clear. Given

the present objective of measuring trends in the number of gang-problem localities over a 25-year period,

the designation and nature of the measurement unit

posed a major conceptual problem—What unit is to

be counted, and why? To achieve the purposes of

the study, the unit is defined here as a locality in

which problems with youth gangs have been reported by local authorities.

One may ask why gang localities are not counted

directly instead of by secondhand or relayed information, but it would be impractical and too expensive to

do so. One approach to counting gang localities directly would require the following tasks:

◆ Develop or adopt a definition of the term “youth

gang” that would identify and describe directly

comparable groups.

◆ Identify and count all localities in the United

States with a potential for experiencing youth

gang problems.

◆ Select from this universe a valid population or

statistically representative sample.4

◆ Dispatch field workers to all chosen localities to

perform the following tasks:

❖ Familiarize themselves with the locality.

❖ Locate all candidate groups through direct

observation or reliable information from local

authorities.

❖ Decide whether or not the identified groups

meet the agreed-on definition of youth gang.

❖ Ascertain whether the groups designated as

youth gangs are considered by local authorities

to pose a problem.

With approximately 37,000 cities, towns, and counties in the United States, the execution of these tasks

would require a massive organizational effort, a

large staff, and huge expenditures. Arranging for

such resources would in itself be an arduous, if not

impossible, task. Moreover, the series of tasks outlined above could not be executed without a successful completion of the first task—the development of

a widely accepted definition of youth gang—which

could pose a major obstacle.

The definition problem is not trivial. How to define

a youth gang is one of the most contentious issues

in the field of youth crime.5

 Policymakers, law enforcement personnel, social service agencies, researchers, and other groups have not been able to

reach consensus on this issue during the past 25

years, and current efforts to reach this goal have

thus far met with only limited success.6

There is little disagreement among those who study

or deal with gangs that the availability and widespread use of a uniform definition would be extremely

useful for a variety of important purposes, but few are

willing to relinquish and replace the definitions that

have become established within their agencies and are

intimately related to agency operations.

It would thus appear that postponing the collection

of data on the prevalence of gang problems until a

uniform definition of youth gang is developed and

widely adopted would preclude the acquisition of

vital data. This study, therefore, uses the locality for

which authorities report the presence of problems

with youth gangs as a surrogate unit.

Using this surrogate results in a significantly lower

degree of accuracy than would be achieved if a unit

based on a widely accepted uniform definition were

used. Nevertheless, the risk of receiving information

on a wide variety of disparate groups in answer to

the question “Does your locality have a youth gang

problem?” might be considerably less than it first

appears.

As part of the first major national survey of youth

gangs, conducted in the 1970’s (Miller, 1982), 309
8

respondents representing 121 agencies in 26 localities were asked for the criteria they considered

essential for designating a group as a youth gang.

Respondents represented a wide range of agencies

and groups, including police agencies, youth outreach services, courts (e.g., judges, prosecutors,

defenders), probation departments, parole operations, youth corrections and detention facilities,

school security officers, public school staff (e.g.,

teachers, principals, guidance personnel), government and legislative officials, and current and past

gang members. Respondents represented different

age groups, genders, regions, residential areas,

races, religions, and national backgrounds.7

Despite the diversity of the 300 respondents who

provided criteria they considered essential to the

definition of a youth gang, they showed a surprising degree of agreement. Six criteria were cited

most frequently. Ninety percent of the respondents

agreed on three of the six, and 85 percent on all

six.8

 Although 300 respondents generally agreed,

it has been difficult to get agreement among the

executives and policymakers who participated in

efforts to develop common definitions of youth

gangs. Most of these individuals held executive or

administrative positions in their respective organizations and were thus committed to supporting the

policies that were built into their organizational

operating procedures and, in most cases, that had

been followed for many years.

Definitional differences that would probably seem

trivial or insignificant to outsiders appear highly

significant to executives whose organizations have

a major investment in maintaining their conventions

and who would incur substantial costs if new and

different definitions were adopted. By contrast, most

of the individuals who provided information on gang

problems for the present study held lower level positions and thus resembled the 300 respondents in the

1970’s survey more closely than the higher level

individuals who thus far have been unable to

achieve agreement on gang-related definitions.

If one assumes that the 85–90 percent agreement

level shown by respondents in the 1970’s is close to

the level that existed among the approximately 1,500

individuals who reported gang problems in their

localities between 1970 and 1995 in the present

study, the groups they designated as youth gangs,

while obviously not identical, would be similar

enough to constitute comparable units for present

purposes. Insofar as this assumption is valid, it

serves to support the accuracy of the present findings, unless and until they are disproved by further

research.

More Gangs or More Information?

The substantial increase in the number of gangproblem localities during a period when the volume

of information on gangs was also increasing raises

the possibility that at least some part of the apparent

increase resulted from the increased volume of information rather than from an actual increase in the

number of gangs and gang localities. To what extent

the increases represent actual developments and to

what extent the increases represent more available

information cannot be determined definitively. One

can argue that the relationship between increased

information and the actual numbers was either insignificant or significant.

The “insignificant relationship” argument maintains

that when the number of gangs is relatively low, attention to gangs and the number of enterprises counting gangs are also low, leading to an undercount of

the true number of gangs. When the number of gangs

starts to rise, the attention level also rises, leading to

more and better quality data collection and thus more

accurate reporting of the true number of gangs. The

“significant relationship” argument maintains that

once the increase in number of gangs reaches a certain level, the increase in attention to gangs outpaces

the increase in number, in turn generating more attention and more gang counting, leading to exaggerated

figures on the number of gangs.

The dates of the principal data sources used in the

present study clearly document an increase in the

number of gang-prevalence studies. Three major

reports were issued between 1975 and 1980, 4 between 1981 and 1985, 6 between 1986 and 1990,

and 15 between 1991 and 1995. In addition to the

increasing number of large-scale surveys, other

factors that could contribute to an accelerated
9

production of gang-related information have been

suggested. These include:

◆ An expanded use of computers for recording and

disseminating criminal information, including

information on gangs.

◆ The greater geographical mobility of gangs, resulting in increased information sharing across

State lines and among agencies.

◆ An increase in the number of specialized gang

units and officers, generating an increased volume

of information in order to accommodate the needs

of the additional units.

However, several factors offset the possible impact

of the increasing number of studies and volume of

data on reported increases in the prevalence of gang

problems. First, looking at data sources other than

the major surveys, particularly media sources, reveals a more even flow of information over time. The

data collected by the National Youth Gang Center’s

1995 survey provide additional evidence that the

growth in the number of localities with youth gangs

was considerably more gradual than previous evidence had indicated (National Youth Gang Center,

1977). Second, several of the reports issued during

particular time periods report the existence of gangs

or gang problems during previous periods. A good

example is the supplementary homicide data of the

Uniform Crime Reports (Fox, 1994), which records

gang killings, and thus the presence of gangs, on a

yearly basis for each year between 1976 and 1992.

A third possible offset involves definition issues.

During periods when gangs are less prevalent and

less well defined, investigators in some localities may

be more likely to count as “gangs” youth groups such

as casual street corner assemblages elsewhere classified as “disruptive local groups” and not gangs (Miller, 1982, pp. 8–20). During periods when gangs are

more prevalent, more readily identifiable, and easier

to count, investigators are less likely to dip into the

pool of nongang groups to find true gangs. If one

thinks of a line dividing the many thousands of adolescent groups into gang and nongang categories, that

line tends to shift to include larger numbers of youth

groups in the gang category during times of lower

gang prevalence and to designate smaller numbers of

gangs during periods of higher prevalence.

Finally, the technical and situational factors that

accompanied an increase in the volume of recorded

gang information could be explained, as in the case

of other factors mentioned here, either as direct responses to actual increases in gang problems or as

new technologies or conditions that increased the

volume of gang information relatively independent

of actual increases in gang problems.

Despite these offsetting factors and arguments, the

possibility remains that recorded increases in gang

localities reflect, at least in part, an increase in gang

reporting activity. This issue is discussed further

under “Data-Collection Methods and the Growth

of Gang Problems,” beginning on page 68.

Possible Explanations for Growth Trends

The data presented here document an explosive

growth in the number of U.S. localities reporting

problems with youth gangs between 1970 and 1995.

Clear evidence of so large an increase in the number

of localities reporting youth gangs—a sign of commensurate growth in serious problems of gang crime

and violence—leads to questions about how the

growth can be explained and what can be done

about it. Unfortunately, the scope of this study and

the resources allotted to it make it impossible to

present solidly grounded answers to either of these

vital questions. To do so would require large-scale

research enterprises—each with data collection and

analytic methods geared specifically to the question

at issue, with sizable expenditures for personnel and

research resources.

Given these circumstances, one possible course of

action would be simply to note the importance of

these questions and exclude them from discussion

on the grounds that they fall outside the scope of

this study. This course of action was followed with

respect to the question of what can be done about

the youth gang problem. No explanation of how

gang problems might be prevented or controlled is

provided. However, as to the question of how the

growth of gang problems might be explained, a
10

decision was made to include a relatively brief exposition. A discussion of seven possible reasons for the

growth of gang problems appears in the “Summaries

and Explanations” chapter.

There are several reasons to attempt to explain the

growth of gang problems. First, evidence that such

large increases have occurred leads to the need to explain the increases. Second, finding effective methods

of amelioration requires a solid understanding of the

causes of the problems.

Explaining the growth of the youth gang problem

involves a number of risks. The first concerns the

character and quality of the supporting evidence.

The explanations presented here represent a set of

tentative hypotheses, based on the author’s knowledge of relevant studies and his long personal experience with these issues.

A second risk involves the highly sensitive and controversial nature of the youth gang problem. It involves issues such as race, ethnic status, family

structure, and social class—the consideration of

which is significantly influenced by one’s ideological

orientation (Miller, 1973). Given the intensity of

ideological orientations, any proposed set of explanations may be met with disagreement or rejection

by some readers. Strongly held ideological convictions make it virtually certain that no body of supporting evidence, however detailed, specific, and

voluminous, would have the power to ensure a reasonable degree of agreement (see Miller, 1973).

There are, however, also benefits to presenting a

particular set of explanations. Disagreement, if sufficiently intense, can serve as a useful impetus for

undertaking further research that would produce a

better grounded and more reliable framework for

explaining the growth of gang problems.

Data Sources

An extensive and detailed description of the study’s

data-collection methods is presented in appendix A of

this Report. However, it is useful, before presenting

specific findings, to include a brief outline of these

methods to better understand the relationship between

the data-collection methods and findings of the study.

Information on gang-problem localities was obtained

from six types of data sources: National Youth Gang

Survey reports, media sources, databases, interviews, conferences, and routine police reports.

Three phases of data collection were distinguished:

mid- to late 1970’s, 1980’s to mid-1990’s, and midto late 1990’s. Different combinations of sources

were used during each of these periods.

Data were entered into a youth gang database starting with the year 1970 and were entered continually

through 1995. Gang reports available over a multidecade period made it possible to develop the longterm trend findings reported here. In its final form,

the database included about 10,000 records, making

the use of a wide variety of sorting, categorizing,

and analytic methods possible.

Topics

This Report describes 25-year trends in youth

gang problem localities in the following substantive

chapters: “Gang Localities in the United States:

A Quarter-Century Summary,” “Gang Cities,”

“Gang Counties,” “Regional Trends in Gang Cities,” “Trends in Size of Gang Cities,” “Summary

and Explanations,” and “Trend Prospects for Gang

Localities.”
11

A major purpose of this Report is to present information on the numbers, types, and locations of

youth gang localities in the United States and to

trace developments in these localities over a 25-year

period. However, before presenting detailed information on specific localities and change trends, it

will be useful to summarize the gang problem situation as of the end of 1995.

Numbers and Populations of

Gang Localities

Figure 1 shows the numbers and percentages of

localities that reported youth gang problems at any

point during the period from 1970 through 1995 for

each of three types of localities—States, counties,

and cities. By 1995, all 50 States and the District of

Columbia had reported youth gang problems in one

or more of their cities, towns, or counties.

The last of the 50 States to report the emergence of

gang problems was Vermont, which reported youth

gangs in Rutland, Burlington, and Brattleboro in

late 1994.

Figure 1 shows that, as of the end of 1995, there

were 3,043 counties in the United States, of which

706, or 23.2 percent, had reported gang problems.

There were 35,935 cities and towns, of which 1,487,

or 4.1 percent, had reported gang problems.9

What do these data tell us about the extent and seriousness of youth gang problems in the mid-1990’s?

The fact that 50 States, more than 700 counties, and

almost 1,500 cities and towns reported problems with

youth gangs (the highest numbers in history) appeared to indicate a serious and growing domestic

crime problem. However, the percentage figures for

counties, cities, and towns seem to weaken this conclusion. With only about 4 percent of all cities and

about 23 percent of all counties in the United States

reporting gangs, the number of gang cities and counties as of 1995 was quite small compared with the

total number of cities and counties in the country. The

fact that about 95 percent of the cities and more than

70 percent of the counties did not report gang problems during a period when the number of known

gang localities was approaching a record high provides little support to a contention that gangs posed

a widespread crime problem in the mid-1990’s.

However, considering only the numbers and percentages of gang cities and counties provides an

inadequate basis for judging the seriousness of the

problem. What is needed are data on the population

of the gang localities compared with the population

of all cities. Looking at the population figures for

U.S. cities and counties produces a very different

picture.

Gang Localities in the United States:

A Quarter-Century Summary

Figure 1: U.S. Localities Reporting

Gang Problems Any Time

Between 1970 and 1995

Note: Localities reporting gang problems included all 50 States, 706 of

3,043 counties, and 1,487 of 35,935 cities.

0 20 40 60 80 100

States 100.0

Counties

Cities

76.8

23.2

95.9

4.1

No gang problems Gang problems

Percentage

Locality
12

Figure 2 shows the same three types of localities as

figure 1, but displays their total populations rather than

the number with youth gangs. In 1990, the total population of the United States was about 250 million, and

because all States reported gang problems, residents of

gang States accounted for 100 percent of the Nation’s

population. The population of the Nation’s gang cities

and towns was about 103 million, about 50 percent of

the total city population. The county figures show a

substantially higher percentage.

◆ Number of counties reporting gang problems,

no cities specified (county sources)—42.

◆ Number of counties reporting specified gang

cities (city or county sources)—664.

◆ Total number of gang counties—706.

◆ Total number of discrete gang cities and

counties—1,529.

◆ Total number of gang cities and counties (city and

county sources)—2,193.

Upon initial consideration, it would seem reasonable

simply to add the number of gang cities and gang

counties to get a figure of 2,193 for the total numbers of cities and counties reporting youth gang

problems as of the end of 1995. However, the county

figure incorporates several components and was

derived through a counting process that requires

explanation.

The data above show that 42 of the counties were

reported by county agencies, without reference to

any specific cities or towns. There is no problem in

adding these to the 1,487 cities to produce a total of

1,529 discrete gang problem localities. The remaining 664 counties were originally listed because they

contained one or more gang cities. It is logical to

assume that if a county contains cities with gang

problems, the county, too, has gang problems. These

counties were counted on the basis of the counting

rules set forth in table 1.10

The figure of 2,193 for the total number of gang

cities and counties in the United States represents

2,193 named localities. However, as indicated by the

counting rules, when a county was listed because it

contained a gang city reported by a city agency, the

city report became the basis for adding two localities—a city and a county—to the total number, raising the possibility of an overlap of cities and

counties.

The 664 counties containing specified gang cities

were originally included as discrete localities on the

basis of the second counting rule, where city agencies

were the source of information. If, however, these

counties were also reported as gang-problem counties

by county agencies separate from and independent of

The population of the Nation’s gang counties was

about 175 million in 1995, almost 80 percent of the

total county population. With gang localities representing more than one-half of the total city population, over

three-quarters of the total county population, and 100

percent of the total State population, these data provide strong support for the conclusion that youth gang

problems in the United States posed a domestic crime

problem of the first magnitude.

Gang Locality Totals

The following list presents data for 1,487 gang cities

and 706 gang counties reporting youth gang problems, 1970 through 1995:

◆ Total number of gang cities, towns, and villages—

1,487.

Note: The total population of States was 248.7 million; counties,

224.9 million; and cities, 207.1 million.

* See table 5, footnote.

Figure 2: Populations of U.S. Localities

Reporting Gang Problems

Between 1970 and 1995

0 50 100 150 200 250

248.7

175.2

49.7

103.2

103.9

States

Counties*

Cities

No gang problems Gang problems

Population (millions)

Locality
13

city agencies, the possibility of overlap counting

would be eliminated. Subsequent to the data collection phase for the present Report, results from

the 1995 National Youth Gang Survey became

available (National Youth Gang Center, 1997).

Three hundred and fifteen counties, slightly less

than half the number of counties containing specified gang cities, were independently reported by

county agencies as having gang problems.

The remaining counties either were not reported as

gang counties by the 1995 survey or the survey did

not receive information from county agencies. There

is no logical reason to suppose that these counties

would differ from those that did have county reports, making it very likely that county agencies in

some or all of these counties would have reported

county gang problems if they had been queried. The

independent reporting of gang problems by half of

the county agencies and the likelihood that there

could have been similar reporting by the other half

significantly strengthen the method that produced

the figure of 2,193 for the total number of gang localities and virtually eliminates the possibility of

overlap counting.

Changes in Numbers and

Populations of Gang Localities

Data showing the numbers and populations of gang

localities as of 1995 are useful in evaluating the seriousness of gang problems. However, they do not

address the major focus of this Report—the trends

and changes during the past 25 years in the prevalence and locations of gang-problem localities. The

following sections present 25-year changes in the

numbers and populations of gang localities.

Changes in Numbers of Gang

Counties and Cities

Figure 3 shows the number of counties reporting

gang problems during the 1970’s, 1980’s, and the first

half of the 1990’s. As explained in the first chapter,

the numbers represent “new” gang counties that reported gang problems for the first time during any

year in the indicated decade. For example, a county

that first reported gang problems in any year between

1970 and 1979 is considered a new gang county for

the 1970’s. Seventy-three counties reported gang

problems in the 1970’s, 174 in the 1980’s, and 459 in

the 1990’s. Figure 4 shows the cumulative number of

gang counties. The cumulative figures are obtained

by adding the number of new counties in each of the

two later decades to the number in the previous decade. In this instance, 73 (1970’s) is added to 174

(1980’s) to get 247, and 247 is added to 459 (1990’s)

to get the cumulative figure of 706—the total number

of counties that reported gang problems between

1970 and 1995. This does not mean that there were in

fact 706 gang counties in 1995. It is possible, although

rather unlikely, that in some counties gang problems

were present in the 1970’s or 1980’s and absent in

1995. In some cases, problems may have come and

gone several times during the 25-year period. The

cumulative figure of 706 in figure 4 represents the

number of counties that experienced gang problems

at any time during this period; however, trend calculations reported here are based on an assumption that

cumulative figures and actual figures for designated

years are equal.

Situation Counts As

County reports gang 1 new county

problem, no cities or

towns specified, county

not previously counted.

City reports gang problem, 1 new county

only one city in county 1 new city

reporting, neither city

nor county previously

counted.

More than one city in 1 new county

county reports gang n new cities

problem, cities and

county not previously

counted.

Table 1: Counting Cities and Counties in

Three Situations
14

Table 2 uses the trend data in figure 4 to show the

percent change in the number of gang counties and

compares this with the Nation as a whole. While the

number of counties remained essentially unchanged

between 1970 and 1995, the number of counties

reporting gang problems increased by 633—from

73 to 706—an increase of 867 percent. In the 1970’s,

gang counties constituted about 2.5 percent of all

U.S. counties, compared with about 23 percent in

1995—a difference of about 21 percent. Thus, almost one U.S. county in five reported youth gang

problems in 1995.

Changes in Numbers

of Gang Cities

Figures 5 and 6 and table 3 show similar sets of figures for cities and towns. New gang problems were

reported by 201 cities and towns in the 1970’s, 267

in the 1980’s, and 1,019 in the 1990’s. Cumulative

figures show a total of 468 gang cities by the 1980’s

and a total of 1,487 gang cities by 1995.

Table 3 uses the trend data in figure 6 to show the

percent change in the number of gang cities and

compares this change with that of the Nation as

a whole. The number of cities reporting gang

Table 2: Changes in Numbers and Percentages of Gang Counties Compared With All U.S.

Counties, 1970–95

Total Number of Gang Counties

Year U.S. Counties Number Percentage of Total

1970 3,044 73 2.4%

1995 3,042 706 23.2

Difference –2 633 20.8

Percent Change 0% 867.1%

Note: “Counties” in this table includes U.S. county units with county governments. Numbers of counties are as of January 1972 and January 1992.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262); and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,

in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.

Figure 4: Cumulative Number of Gang

Counties in the United

States, 1970–95, by Decade

Number of

Gang Counties

0

200

400

600

800

Period

706

247

73

1970’s 1980’s 1990–95

Figure 3: New Gang Counties in the

United States in the 1970’s,

1980’s, and 1990–95

0 100 200 300 400 500

1990–95

1980’s

1970’s

Number of New Gang Counties

Period

459

174

73
15

problems between 1970 and 1995 rose by 1,286—an

increase of 640 percent. The number of gang cities

in the 1970’s represented less than 1 percent of all

cities, rising to about 4 percent in 1996.

Thus, although the number of counties and cities

in the United States remained virtually unchanged

during the 25-year period, the number of gang cities

increased by 640 percent and the number of gang

counties increased by 867 percent.

Changes in Populations

of Gang Cities

Changes in the numbers of gang localities were accompanied by changes in their populations. Table 4

compares the populations of gang cities in 1970 with

those of 1995 and with city populations in the

Nation as a whole. While the population of all U.S.

cities increased 16 percent, from 178 to 207 million

over the 25-year period, the population of gang cities increased by 65.9 million, or 177 percent. In addition, between 1970 and 1995, the population of

gang cities rose from about 21 percent of all U.S.

cities to almost 50 percent.

The finding that the gang city population in 1995

rose from one-fifth to almost one-half of the all-city

Table 3: Changes in Numbers and Percentages of Gang Cities Compared With All

U.S. Cities, 1970–95

Total Number of Gang Cities

Year U.S. Cities Number Percentage of Total

1970 35,508 201 0.6%

1995 35,953 1,487 4.1

Difference 445 1,286 3.5

Percent change 0.1% 640%

Note: “Cities” in this table includes U.S. cities and towns with municipal or township governments.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262); and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,

in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.

Figure 5: New Gang Cities in the

United States in the 1970’s,

1980’s, and 1990’s

Period

0

300

600

900

1200

1970’s 1980’s 1990–95

Number of 

New Gang Cities

1,019

267 201

Figure 6: Cumulative Number of Gang

Cities in the United States,

1970–95, by Decade

Period

0

300

600

900

1200

1500

1970’s 1980’s 1990–95

Number of 

Gang Cities

468

201

1,487
16

population documents a substantial increase in the

proportion of the urban population experiencing

youth gang problems.

Changes in Populations

of Gang Counties

Table 5 shows that the population of all U.S. counties

increased by 45 million (25 percent), between 1970

and 1995, while the population of gang counties rose

by 111 million, (174 percent).11 The change in the

Note: “Cities” in this table includes U.S. cities and towns with municipal or township governments.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262), and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,

in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.

Table 4: Changes in Populations of Gang Cities Compared With All U.S. Cities, 1970–95

Population of All Gang Cities

Year U.S. Cities (millions) Population (millions) Percentage of Total Population

1970 178.0 37.3 20.9%

1995 207.1 103.2 49.8

Difference 28.9 65.9 29.1

Percent change 16.2% 176.7%

Table 5: Changes in Populations of Gang Counties Compared With All U.S. Counties,

1970–95

Note: “Counties” in this table includes U.S. county units with county governments. Numbers of counties are as of January 1972 and January 1992;

populations are as of April 1970 and April 1990.

* County population figures based on governmental units are about 10 percent lower than the total county population reported by the U.S. Census.

The census counts consolidated city-county governments as municipal rather than county governments.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262), and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,

in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.

Population of All Gang Counties

Year U.S. Counties (millions)* Population (millions) Percentage of Total Population

1970 179.7 64.0 35.6%

1995 224.9 175.2 77.9

Difference 45.2 111.2 42.3

Percent change 25.1% 173.7%
17

percentage of the U.S. county population reporting

gang problems is even greater. In 1970, the population of gang counties included about 36 percent of the

all-county population; by 1995, this figure had risen

to 78 percent, a difference of 42 percent. This increase means that counties comprising about fourfifths of the total county population had reported

gang problems by the end of 1995. The population

affected by gang problems grew by about 175 percent for both cities and counties between the 1970’s

and the mid-1990’s.

Locality Increases Compared

How does one evaluate the magnitude of the increases in gang localities? On the face of it, many

of the changes seem very substantial, but a sounder

method of evaluation needs comparable trend data

against which presently reported trends can be

measured. Unfortunately, few directly comparable

sets of data are available. No studies of population

trends for gang localities, either for cities or counties, have been reported. With respect to numbers

of localities, no studies of counties based on national

coverage have been reported.12 Several studies have

reported data on changes in number of gang cities,

although none is directly comparable to those reported here.13 One study by Malcolm Klein (1995)

uses methods that are sufficiently similar to provide

a limited basis of comparison.

Klein uses four time periods, the latest ending in

1991, to measure changes in the number of gang

cities. He reports 54 gang cities before 1961, 94 by

1970, 172 by 1980, and a cumulative total of 766

gang cities by the end of 1991. Cumulative percentage increases were 74 percent by 1970, 83 percent

by 1980, and 345 percent by 1991 (Klein, 1995,

pp. 90–91). These numbers compare with figures in

this Report, showing 201 gang cities in the 1970’s,

468 in the 1980’s, and a cumulative total of 1,487

gang cities by the end of 1995. Cumulative percentage increases were 133 percent between the 1970’s

and 1980’s, 218 percent between the 1980’s and

1990’s, and 640 percent during the 25-year period.

Another way of evaluating the magnitude of change

is to compare the locality change trends reported in

the present study with one another, as shown in

table 6. This table displays two measures of change:

the conventional “percent change” statistic (a–b)÷a

and a second measure designated here as “magnitude of change.” The second measure is based on the

simple notion of “number of times,” as in “the number of people sentenced to prison grew three times

faster than the number of available prison cells.”

This figure is called “magnitude of change” or “magnitude of increase” in subsequent tables and figures.

It is calculated simply by dividing the later figure by

the earlier one. For example, since the number of

gang States in the 1970’s was 20 and rose to 50 in

1995, 50 is divided by 20 to produce the statement

that the number of gang States increased 2.5 times.

Table 6 shows both the percentage of change and

the magnitude of change for each of eight locality

categories. Tables 3 and 4 show that the number of

gang cities increased 7.5 times and the number of

gang counties increased 10 times during the 25-year

period. These increases are sizable, but gang city

increases in the Midwest, South, and South Atlantic

regions are even larger.

The largest increase is shown by cities in the seven

States of the South Atlantic region (see figure 15,

Table 6: Types of Gang Locality,

1970’s Through 1995

Percent Magnitude

Locality Change of Change*

South Atlantic cities 4,300.0% 44.0

Southern cities 3,053.8 31.6

Midwestern cities 96.1 25.9

Counties 867.1 9.7

All cities 639.8 7.4

Northeastern cities 461.2 5.6

Western cities 324.8 3.2

States 168.4 2.5

* The types of gang locality are ranked by magnitude of change, which

is the number of gang localities in 1995 divided by the number of gang

localities in the 1970’s.
18

page 31), with a phenomenal increase of 44 times

over the 25-year period. This reflects the emergence

of the Old South as the region with the most rapid

growth of youth gang localities, a phenomenon discussed further in the chapter entitled “Regional

Trends in Gang Cities.”

Figure 7 displays these results in graphic form, with

the degree of change indicated by the “magnitude of

change” statistic.

Cities That Reported Gang

Problems in the 1970’s But

Not in the 1990’s

Given the fact that localities with gang problems

showed continuous and substantial growth in most

U.S. localities between 1970 and the mid-1990’s, it is

noteworthy that a small minority—7 percent—of the

cities that reported gang problems in the 1970’s reported the absence of such problems 25 years later.

Table 7 lists these 13 cities, located in 5 States. This

small group of cities has unusual value because it

provides an opportunity to explore the reasons for

the absence of gang problems in localities that had

previously reported their presence. This issue is

discussed further in the “Summaries and Explanations” chapter.

Figure 7: Comparison of the Magnitude

of Change in Number of

Gang Localities in 1970–95,

by Category

* The magnitude of change is the number of gang localities in 1995

divided by the number of gang localities in 1970.

States

Western cities

Northeastern cities

2.5

3.2

All cities

Counties

Midwestern cities

Southern cities

South Atlantic cities

0 10 20 30 40 50

Magnitude of Change*

5.6

7.4

9.7

25.9

31.6

44.0

Locality

Table 7: Cities Reporting Gang

Problems in the 1970’s and

Not in the 1990’s

City

Population

City and State County (thousands)

Camarillo, CA Ventura 52.3

Castroville, CA Monterey 5.3

Manteca, CA San Joaquin 40.8

South Pasadena,

CA Los Angeles 23.9

Lake Bluff, IL Lake 5.5

Belmont, MA Middlesex 24.7

Milton, MA Norfolk 25.7

Winthrop, MA Suffolk 18.1

Cheltenham, PA Cheltenham 35.5

Bristol Township,

PA (Levittown) Bucks 10.4

Norristown, PA Montgomery 30.7

West Chester, PA Chester 18.0

Charleston, SC Charleston 80.4

Note: Data for the 1990’s cover the period 1990–95.
19

Gang Cities

During most of the 20th century, youth gangs were

accurately seen as a predominantly urban phenomenon. In many U.S. cities, the issue of whether

gangs were present or absent was highly controversial, with different local agencies, organizations, and

interest groups forwarding conflicting claims. Traditionally, police departments and city governments

tended to deny the existence of gangs, while citizens’

groups and social service agencies were more likely

to claim gang problems.

In the 1990’s, these disagreements continued in some

cities, but many city officials and police departments

became less reluctant to report gang problems. In

the 1970’s, as shown in table 8, youth gangs were

reported in 19 States; by 1995, all 50 States and the

District of Columbia had reported gang problems in

one or more of their cities.

Number of Gang Cities: 1970’s

Through 1995

Table 8 lists the number of new gang cities reported

for each State during the 1970’s, 1980’s, and early

1990’s and ranks the 50 States and the District of

Columbia according to the total number of gang

cities reported in each by 1995. Continuing a 25-

year tradition, California led the Nation in the number of gang cities, reporting gangs for almost 300 of

its 876 cities, towns, and both incorporated and unincorporated places. Illinois ranked second, with 232

cities reporting gangs. These were the only States

with more than 200 gang cities. Three States, Texas,

Florida, and New Jersey, reported between 50 and

100 cities. Twenty States reported between 20 and

50 gang cities, 10 reported between 10 and 19, and

16 reported fewer than 10. The lowest ranking

States, Alaska, North Dakota, Maine, Hawaii,

and Vermont, each reported fewer than five gang

problem cities, and the District of Columbia, comprising only one city, reported one.

Figure 8, a map of the lower 48 States, uses the data

presented in table 8 to represent the geographical

distribution of the States according to the number of

gang cities. The States are divided into 6 categories,

ranging from 16 States with fewer than 10 gang cities

in the lowest category to 1 State with more than 250

cities in the highest. California, with almost 300 gang

cities, and Illinois, with 232, occupy the top two

categories. Texas, Florida, and New Jersey share

the 50- to 100-city category. The block of seven contiguous States in the West North Central and Mountain subregions, bounded by Montana, North

Dakota, Nebraska, and Nevada—all of which fell

into the lowest category with nine or fewer gang

cities—is of special interest. In 1995, this area represented the largest region of the country with low

numbers of gang cities. A second region with low

numbers of gang cities consisted of three New England States—Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

States with 10 to 20 and 21 to 50 gang cities were

distributed fairly evenly throughout the country.

Figure 9 uses the data in table 8 to display the 10

States with the largest number of gang cities in

1995. The top 5 States contained about half of all

U.S. cities, and the top 10 States contained about

60 percent of U.S. cities. States ranking 6th to 10th

in number of gang cities reported similar numbers,

ranging from 31 to 39 cities.

Trends in Number of Gang Cities:

1970’s Through 1995

Table 8, which ranks the States by their cumulative

number of gang cities as of 1995, does not indicate

the magnitude of change on a State-by-State basis
20

Table 8: New Gang Cities, 1970–95, by State

Period

State 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 Total

California 131 58 104 293

Illinois 11 35 186 232

Texas 7 35 53 95

Florida 2 16 49 67

New Jersey 4 3 48 55

Massachusetts 14 7 18 39

Michigan 3 5 27 35

Ohio 2 4 29 35

Oklahoma 0 3 30 33

Washington 1 5 25 31

Connecticut 5 2 22 29

Missouri 0 3 23 26

Georgia 0 4 21 25

Louisiana 0 7 18 25

Pennsylvania 8 2 15 25

Minnesota 0 3 20 23

Indiana 1 4 17 22

North Carolina 0 3 19 22

Alabama 2 5 15 22

Mississippi 0 1 20 21

New Mexico 1 8 12 21

New York 3 0 18 21

Wisconsin 0 6 15 21

Arizona 3 2 15 20

Colorado 0 6 14 20

Virginia 0 5 14 19

Period

State 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 Total

Arkansas 0 5 13 18

South Carolina 1 3 13 17

Oregon 0 3 13 16

Tennessee 0 4 12 16

Kansas 0 2 14 16

Iowa 0 3 11 14

Maryland 0 2 10 12

Rhode Island 0 1 10 11

Utah 0 1 9 10

West Virginia 0 1 7 8

Nevada 1 2 5 8

Kentucky 0 3 3 6

Montana 0 0 6 6

New Hampshire 0 0 6 6

Idaho 0 0 6 6

Wyoming 0 0 6 6

South Dakota 0 1 4 5

Nebraska 0 2 3 5

Delaware 1 0 4 5

Alaska 0 0 4 4

North Dakota 0 0 4 4

Maine 0 0 4 4

Hawaii 0 1 2 3

Vermont 0 0 3 3

District of

Columbia 0 1 0 1

 All States 201 267 1,019 1,487

Note: The States are ranked by the cumulative number of gang cities per State in 1995.

during the 25-year period because 31 States did not

report gangs in the 1970’s. The 19 States that did report gang problems during the baseline decade provide

the basis for a trend analysis. Table 9 lists these States,

ranked by the magnitude of increase in the number of

gang cities between the 1970’s and 1995.

Table 9 shows that 201 cities in 19 States reported

gang problems in the 1970’s; by 1995, the number

had risen to 1,072, an increase of 871, more than 5

times the 1970’s number, or about a 433-percent

increase. Of the 19 States that reported gang problems in the 1970’s, the largest magnitude of increase
21

was shown by Florida, which reported 2 gang cities

in the 1970’s and a cumulative figure of 67 in 1995,

an increase of more than 33 times.

The State of Washington ranked second with 30

new gang cities in 1995, an increase of 31 times from

the 1970’s. Increases on the order of 20 times were

shown by Indiana, Illinois, and New Mexico. In

most cases, as would be expected, the States with the

highest percentage increases were those that reported

fewer gang cities in the 1970’s. However, Illinois was

an exception, because it ranked second in the number

of gang cities in the 1970’s but showed the fourth

largest magnitude of increase between the 1970’s and

1995. Texas also showed a relatively large increase

from a higher-than-average baseline; its increase of

88 gang cities was more than 13 times larger than its

number in the 1970’s. In general, the States with

higher numbers in the 1970’s—Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and California, which reported more than

three-quarters of all gang cities in the 1970’s—

showed the lowest increases, because they had a

smaller pool of available gang-free cities than States

that reported fewer gang cities in the 1970’s.

Figure 10 displays the magnitude of change for the

top 10 gang-city States in table 9. The figure clearly

shows the dominant position of Florida and Washington, with more than thirtyfold increases in gang

cities. Indiana, Illinois, and New Mexico form a

second tier, with more than twentyfold increases.

Figure 8: Number of Gang Cities in

1995, by State

1–9 10–20 21–50

51–100 101–250 251–300

Figure 9: Top 10 Gang-City States

in 1995

Note: The top 10 gang-city States are ranked by number of gang cities

in 1995.

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

California

Illinois

Texas

Florida

New Jersey

Massachusetts

Ohio

Oklahoma

Washington

Michigan

Number of Gang Cities

293

232

67

55

31

95

39

35

35

33

Figure 10: Top 10 Gang-City States,

1970’s Through 1995, by

Magnitude of Change

Note: The top 10 gang-city States are ranked by magnitude of change

in the number of gang cities, 1970’s through 1995. The magnitude of

change is the number of gang cities in 1995 divided by the number of

gang cities in the 1970’s.

New Jersey

Indiana

Texas

Florida

New Mexico

S. Carolina

Ohio

Washington

Michigan

Magnitude of Change

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

33.5

Illinois

31.0

22.0

21.1

21.0

17.5

17.0

13.8

13.6

11.7
22

Table 9: Changes in Numbers of Gang Cities, 1970’s Through 1995

Cumulative Number Increase in Magnitude

State of Gang Cities in 1995 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 Number of Cities of Increase*

Florida 67 2 16 49 65 33.5

Washington 31 1 5 25 30 31.0

Indiana 22 1 4 17 21 22.0

Illinois 232 11 35 186 221 21.1

New Mexico 21 1 8 12 20 21.0

Ohio 35 2 4 29 33 17.5

South Carolina 17 1 3 13 16 17.0

New Jersey 55 4 3 48 51 13.8

Texas 95 7 35 53 88 13.6

Michigan 35 3 5 27 32 11.7

Alabama 22 2 5 15 20 11.0

Nevada 8 1 2 5 7 8.0

New York 21 3 0 18 18 7.0

Arizona 20 3 2 15 17 6.7

Connecticut 29 5 2 22 24 5.8

Delaware 5 1 0 4 4 5.0

Pennsylvania 25 8 2 15 17 3.1

Massachusetts 39 14 7 18 25 2.8

California 293 131 58 104 162 2.2

 All States 1,072 201 196 675 871 5.3

* The States are ranked by magnitude of increase, which is the cumulative number of gang cities in 1995 divided by the number of new gang-problem

cities in the 1970’s; see the chapter entitled “Gang Localities in the United States: A Quarter-Century Summary.”

Number of New Gang-Problem Cities
23

Gang Counties

In 1995, as shown in tables 2 and 3, there were approximately 3,000 counties in the United States and

about 36,000 cities, towns, and villages. To collect

information on gang problems for all 36,000 jurisdictions in the latter group would pose difficult logistical, practical, and financial problems. The number of

counties, on the other hand, is sufficiently small that

total coverage of all units is feasible and not prohibitively expensive. Despite this, few systematic efforts

to collect gang-problem information for all counties

have been reported,14 in part because of the nature

of sources of gang information.

Traditionally, city police departments have been

the primary source of information on gangs. They

yielded fairly satisfactory results when gangs were

primarily a large-city phenomenon, but in recent

years gangs have spread to smaller and smaller localities, posing problems for an increasing number

of towns, villages, and rural areas that do not have

their own police departments. By law or contract,

law enforcement services for many of these localities

are provided by units such as States or counties,

whose law enforcement agencies then become the

repositories of information about gangs in the localities they police. In such cases, county sheriffs rather

than city police officials often become the primary

source of gang information.

Number of Gang Counties:

1970’s Through 1995

Table 10 lists the number of gang counties in each

of the 50 States and the District of Columbia during

three periods—the 1970’s, the 1980’s, and the first

half of the 1990’s. New gang problems were reported for 73 counties in the 1970’s, 174 in the

1980’s, and 459 between 1990 and 1995. By 1995,

706 counties had reported gang problems in one or

more cities, towns, or villages within their borders

(see table 2). This number represents about onequarter of all U.S. counties, with a population

accounting for more than three-quarters of the

national population (tables 2 and 5).

Figure 11, a map of gang counties by State, like its

companion map of gang cities by State (figure 8),

divides the lower 48 States into 6 categories according to the number of gang counties in each State.

Based on these categories, the 4 States in the highest

category (more than 25 gang counties) are all located in the West or Midwest and form a rough

triangle, with California at the left or west, Illinois

at the right or east, and Texas and Oklahoma at the

bottom or south. The highest category differs from

the highest category in the gang city map, which

contains only California. The solid block of seven

contiguous States in the West North Central and

Mountain subregions15 seen in the gang-city map

is broken in the county map by Kansas and Utah,

which appear in the next highest category. In general, the county map has more of a patchwork quality than the city map, which contains more solid

blocks of contiguous States in the same gang-locality

category.

The ranking of counties by State resembles that of

the cities for the most part, but there are some notable differences. Figure 12 uses the data in table 10

to display the 10 States with the largest number of

gang counties. Comparing the rankings in this graph

with those in figure 9, which ranks the top 10 gangcity States, shows both similarities and differences.

The top three States in both rankings are California,

Illinois, and Texas, but in the city rankings, California leads the Nation, while Texas ranks first in the
24

Table 10: New Gang Counties, 1970–95, by State

Period

State 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 Total

Texas 7 27 22 56

California 23 6 13 42

Illinois 2 9 20 31

Oklahoma 0 6 20 26

Georgia 0 7 17 24

Mississippi 0 1 23 24

Florida 1 9 13 23

Alabama 2 3 18 23

Ohio 2 4 16 22

Indiana 1 6 12 19

Louisiana 0 6 12 18

Missouri 0 6 12 18

Virginia 0 6 11 17

North Carolina 0 3 14 17

Kansas 0 2 15 17

Pennsylvania 6 2 9 17

Michigan 3 3 11 17

Wisconsin 0 6 10 16

Arkansas 0 5 11 16

Oregon 0 6 10 16

Washington 1 3 12 16

New Mexico 1 8 7 16

New Jersey 4 3 9 16

New York 6 0 9 15

South Carolina 1 2 12 15

Colorado 0 6 7 13

Period

State 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 Total

Minnesota 0 2 11 13

Iowa 0 2 11 13

West Virginia 0 2 10 12

Tennessee 0 4 7 11

Arizona 2 2 7 11

Massachusetts 5 3 1 9

Kentucky 1 4 3 8

Maryland 0 2 5 7

Connecticut 3 1 3 7

South Dakota 0 1 5 6

Utah 0 1 5 6

North Dakota 0 0 5 5

Nebraska 0 2 3 5

Wyoming 0 0 5 5

New Hampshire 0 0 5 5

Rhode Island 0 1 4 5

Montana 0 0 5 5

Alaska 0 0 4 4

Nevada 1 1 2 4

Delaware 1 0 2 3

Maine 0 0 3 3

Vermont 0 0 3 3

Idaho 0 0 3 3

Hawaii 0 1 1 2

District of 0 0 1 1

 Columbia

 All States 73 174 459 706

Note: The States are ranked by cumulative number of counties per State in 1995.

number of gang counties. Of the remaining seven

States, three (Florida, Ohio, and Oklahoma) appear

in both lists, and eight in only one list (New Jersey,

Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington are only

in the city list; Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and

Indiana are only in the county list). These data show

some tendency for the northern industrial States to

rank higher in gang cities and southern States to

rank higher in gang counties.
25

1–5 6–10 11–15

16–20 21–25 More than 25

Figure 11: Number of Gang Counties

in 1995, by State

Figure 12: Top 10 Gang-County States

in 1995

Note: The top 10 gang-county States are ranked by number of gang

counties in 1995.

Alabama

Indiana

Texas

Florida

Oklahoma

Georgia

Ohio

California

Mississippi

Number of Gang Counties

Illinois

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

56

42

31

26

24

24

23

23

22

19

Trends in Number of Gang

Counties: 1970’s Through 1995

Table 11 uses the same procedure as table 9 to calculate 25-year trends in the number of gang counties.

Twenty States reported county gang problems in the

1970’s. The table shows that the number of gang

counties rose from 73 in the 1970’s to a cumulative

370 in 1995—an increase of more than 5 times. The

magnitude of increase for counties (5.1) is close to

that for cities (5.3).

For individual States, the magnitude of increase in

the number of gang counties during the 25-year period is smaller than the increase in cities, primarily

because the number of counties is one-sixth the number of cities. Consequently, the available pool of gangfree counties diminished more rapidly during the later

years of the 25-year period. However, the ranking of

the gang counties closely resembles that of the cities.

As was done for cities (see figure 10 and table 9),

figure 13 uses the data of table 11 to display the 10

States that showed the largest increases in gang

counties during the 25-year period. The State with

the largest magnitude of increase is Florida, which

had a 23-fold increase in the number of gang counties during the 25-year period. Indiana is second

with a nineteenfold increase. The next four States,

New Mexico, Washington, Illinois, and South Carolina, had fifteen- to sixteenfold increases. Alabama

Figure 13: Top 10 Gang-County States,

1970’s Through 1995, by

Magnitude of Change

Note: The top 10 gang-county States are ranked by magnitude of

change, 1970’s through 1995. The magnitude of change is the number

of gang counties in 1995 divided by the number of gang counties in the

1970’s.

Alabama

Indiana

Texas

Florida

Washington

Kentucky

Ohio

S. Carolina

New Mexico

Magnitude of Change

Illinois

0 5 10 15 20 25

23.0

19.0

16.0

16.0

15.5

15.0

11.5

11.0

8.0

8.0
26

and Ohio had elevenfold increases. The eightfold

increase in Texas was sufficient to propel the State

to the top position in the 1995 ranking of gang counties by State, as shown in table 10.

Concentrations of Gang Counties

Despite the tenfold increase in the number of gang

counties in the past 25 years (table 10), approximately

four out of five U.S. counties had not experienced gang

problems by 1995. The increase was not spread evenly

over the approximately 3,000 U.S. counties but was

concentrated in a relatively small number of counties.

Pinpointing the high-concentration counties (counties

that contained the highest numbers of gang cities) is

useful for developing priorities for gang prevention

and control efforts.

Tables 12 and 13 list the U.S. counties that contained more than five gang cities in 1995. Table 12

ranks the counties by the number of gang cities per

county, and table 13 shows the rate of gang cities

Cumulative

Number of New Increase

 Gang Counties in Number Magnitude of

State in 1995 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 of Counties Increase*

Florida 23 1 9 13 22 23.0

Indiana 19 1 6 12 18 19.0

New Mexico 16 1 8 7 15 16.0

Washington 16 1 3 12 15 16.0

Illinois 31 2 9 20 29 15.5

South Carolina 15 1 2 12 14 15.0

Alabama 23 2 3 18 21 11.5

Ohio 22 2 4 16 20 11.0

Kentucky† 8 1 4 3 7 8.0

Texas 56 7 27 22 49 8.0

Michigan 17 3 3 11 14 5.7

Arizona 11 2 2 7 9 5.5

Nevada 4 1 1 2 3 4.0

New Jersey 16 4 3 9 12 4.0

Delaware 3 1 0 2 2 3.0

Pennsylvania 17 6 2 9 11 2.8

New York 15 6 0 9 9 2.5

Connecticut 7 3 1 3 4 2.3

Massachusetts 9 5 3 1 5 2.3

California 42 23 6 13 19 1.8

All States 370 73 96 201 298 5.1

Table 11: Changes in Numbers of Gang Counties in States With Gang Counties in the 1970’s

Number of New Gang Counties

* The States are ranked by magnitude of increase, which is the cumulative number of new gang counties in 1995 divided by the number of new gang

counties in the 1970’s.

† Gang problems were reported for counties only.
27

per 1 million population. Table 12 lists 38 counties

with more than 5 gang cities. These 38 counties contain 605 gang cities, or about 41 percent of all gang

cities in the United States. The 38 counties are located in 14 of the 50 States, an average of about 3

counties per State. Counting the number of States

with high-concentration counties provides clear

evidence of the uneven distribution of these

counties. Three States—California, Illinois, and

Florida—contain more than half of the high gangcity counties. California leads the country with 12,

followed by Illinois with 6, Florida with 4, Massachusetts and Connecticut with 2, and the remaining

9 States with 1 county each.

* The counties are ranked by the number of gang cities per county.

Table 12: Counties With More Than Five Gang Cities in 1995, by Number of

Gang Cities per County

Number of Percentage of All Number of Percentage of All

County* and State Gang Cities U.S. Gang Cities County and State Gang Cities U.S. Gang Cities

Cook, IL 118 7.9% Fresno, CA 9 0.6%

Los Angeles, CA 88 5.9 McHenry, IL 9 0.6

Du Page, IL 27 1.8 Bergen, NJ 8 0.6

Orange, CA 27 1.8 Fairfield, CT 8 0.5

Lake, IL 23 1.5 San Mateo, CA 8 0.5

Riverside, CA 18 1.2 Cuyahoga, OH 8 0.5

Dallas, TX 18 1.2 Maricopa, AZ 8 0.5

San Bernardino, CA 18 1.2 Dade, FL 8 0.5

Will, IL 16 1.1 Wayne, MI 8 0.5

Broward, FL 15 1.0 Jefferson Parish, LA 7 0.5

San Diego, CA 14 0.9 Hennepin, MN 7 0.5

Middlesex, MA 11 0.7 Kern, CA 6 0.4

Palm Beach, FL 11 0.7 Worcester, MA 6 0.4

Contra Costa, CA 11 0.7 Orange, FL 6 0.4

Alameda, CA 11 0.7 Norfolk, MA 6 0.4

Ventura, CA 10 0.7 Santa Barbara, CA 6 0.4

Hartford, CT 10 0.7 Kane, IL 6 0.4

Monmouth, NJ 10 0.7 St. Louis, MO 6 0.4

King, WA 10 0.7 Total 605 40.7

Tarrant, TX 9 0.6

Figure 14 uses the data in table 12 to rank the 10

U.S. counties with the largest number of gang cities.

The 10 top gang counties contain about one-fifth of

all gang cities. Los Angeles County, CA, after many

years of reporting the highest number of gang cities,

was ousted from first place by Cook County, IL,

whose 118 gang cities outnumbered those of Los

Angeles County by 30. Following Cook and Los

Angeles among counties with 15 or more gang cities

were Du Page County, IL (27); Orange County, CA

(27); Lake County, IL (23); Riverside County, CA

(18); Dallas County, TX (18); San Bernardino

County, CA (18); Will County, IL (16); and

Broward County, FL (15).
28

Table 13: Counties With More Than Five Gang Cities in 1995, by Rate of Gang Cities per

1 Million Population

Number of County Population Rate of Gang Cities per

County* and State Gang Cities (thousands) 1 Million Population

McHenry, IL 9 183 49.2

Will, IL 16 357 44.8

Lake, IL 23 516 44.6

Maricopa, AZ 8 212 37.7

Du Page, IL 27 782 34.5

St. Louis, MO 6 198 30.3

Cook, IL 118 5,105 23.1

Kane, IL 6 317 18.9

Monmouth, NJ 10 553 18.1

Santa Barbara, CA 6 370 16.2

Jefferson Parish, CA 7 448 15.6

Riverside, CA 18 1,170 15.4

Ventura, CA 10 669 14.9

Contra Costa, CA 11 804 13.7

Fresno, CA 9 668 13.5

Palm Beach, FL 11 864 12.7

San Bernardino, CA 18 1,418 12.7

San Mateo, CA 8 650 12.3

Broward, FL 15 1,255 12.0

Hartford, CT 10 852 11.7

Orange, CA 27 2,410 11.2

Kern, CA 6 544 11.0

Los Angeles, CA 88 8,863 9.9

Dallas, TX 18 1,853 9.7

Bergen, NJ 8 825 9.7

Fairfield, CT 8 828 9.7

Norfolk, MA 6 616 9.7

Orange, FL 6 677 8.9

Alameda, CA 11 1,279 8.6

Worcester, MA 6 710 8.5

Middlesex, MA 11 1,398 7.9

Tarrant, TX 9 1,170 7.7

Hennepin, MN 7 1,032 6.8

King, WA 10 1,507 6.6

Cuyahoga, OH 8 1,412 5.7

San Diego, CA 14 2,498 5.6

Dade, FL 8 1,937 4.1

Total 605 46,752 12.9

* The counties are ranked by the rate of gang cities with more than five gangs per 1 million population. The rate equals the number of gang cities in

each county divided by the total population of each county, per 1 million persons.
29

Figure 14: Top 10 Gang-City Counties in

1995, by Number of Cities

Reporting Gangs in Each

County

Will

16

California Texas Florida

Dallas

18

Los Angeles

88

Riverside

18

Orange

27

San Bernardino

18

Illinois

Broward

15

Cook

118

Du Page

27

Lake

23

Table 13 takes county size into account in a second

ranking of the counties with more than five gang

cities. Rankings based on population rates differ considerably from those based on the number of cities.

Table 13 ranks the counties according to the rate of

cities with more than five gangs per 1 million county

inhabitants. For example, Cook County, IL, with a

population of 5.1 million, had 118 gang cities—a rate

of 23.1 gang cities per 1 million population.

The total population of the 38 counties containing

more than 5 gang cities is almost 47 million, about

27 percent of the population of all gang counties and

21 percent of all counties in the Nation. Based on

rates of gang cities per county population, the topranking county is McHenry, IL, with a rate of 49.2

gang cities per million population. Of the five top

counties, all but one (Maricopa County, AZ) are in

Illinois. The high-ranking status of Illinois is also

reflected in table 12, which shows that three of the

top five counties were in the State. The other two

counties, Los Angeles and Orange, are in California.

These data strengthen findings reported in the previous section by showing that between the 1970’s

and 1995, the major concentration of gang counties

in the United States had shifted from California to

Illinois.
31

Regional Trends in Gang Cities

Among the most dramatic changes in the location

of gang cities during the latter part of the 20th century were those affecting the regions of the United

States. Figure 15 displays these regions as defined

by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of

the Census. The figure designates four major regions

(Midwest, Northeast, South, West) and nine subregions, called divisions (East North Central,

East South Central, Middle Atlantic, Mountain,

New England, Pacific, South Atlantic, West North

Central, West South Central).

Gang Cities by Region:

1995 Standings

Table 14 displays the cumulative number of gang

cities in each of the four major regions as of 1995.

In descending order of the number of gang cities,

the four regions rank as follows: West, Midwest,

South, and Northeast. The West, Midwest, and

South reported similar numbers of gang cities, ranging from 411 (South) to 445 (West), with only 34

cities separating them.

The lowest ranking region, the Northeast, had approximately half as many gang cities as each of the

other regions. Because the populations of the four

regions varied substantially—from 51 million

(Northeast) to 88 million (South)—the table also

displays population-adjusted rates, obtained by dividing the number of gang cities by the total regional

population in each region, per 1 million persons.

Comparing the rate-based with the number-based

Table 14: Number of Gang Cities per

Region in 1995

Regional Rate of

Population Gang Cities

Number of in 1992 per 1 Million

Region Gang Cities (millions) Population

West 445 55.1 8.1

Midwest 438 60.7 7.2

South 411 88.1 4.7

Northeast 193 51.1 3.8

Total 1,487 255.0 5.8

Note: The gang cities per region are ranked by rate of gang cities per 1

million regional population. The rate equals the number of gang cities in

each region, divided by the total population of each region, per 1 million

persons.

Source: From Statistical Abstract of the United States, table 31, “Resident

Population—States: 1970 to 1992,” U.S. Department of Commerce,

Bureau of the Census, 1993, p. 28.

Figure 15: Regions and Divisions of

the United States

South

New

England

Middle

Atlantic

South

Atlantic

West South

Central

East South

Central

West

Pacific

Midwest

West North

Central

Northeast

East North

Central

Mountain
32

rankings shows that the population-adjusted ranking

is the same as the numerical ranking.

Figure 16 displays data from table 14 in graphic

form to show the similarity in the number of gang

cities in the West, Midwest, and South.

Gang Cities by Region: Trends,

1970’s Through 1995

Prior to the 1970’s, youth gang problems were associated primarily with the large cities of the rust belt

regions of the Northeast and Midwest, including,

from east to west, New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA;

Chicago, IL; and neighboring cities. By the 1970’s,

the West had become the region with the most gang

cities, due almost entirely to a marked increase in one

western State. Of the 137 gang cities in the 13 western States in the 1970’s, 131 (96 percent of all gang

cities in the region) were found in California.

Between the 1970’s and middle 1990’s, a radical shift

occurred in the regional location of gang-problem

cities. Prior to this period, one of the few conclusions

accepted without dispute by most students of youth

gangs was that the Old South was essentially free of

gang problems. Among the explanations for this situation were the strict policies and procedures of law

enforcement agencies. By 1995, however, the gang

situation in the South had undergone major changes.

Table 15 displays 25-year trends in the four major

regions and ranks the regions by the magnitude of

increase in the number of gang cities between the

1970’s and 1995. For all four regions combined, the

number of gang cities increased by about 7.4 times

during the 25-year period.

The largest magnitude of increase occurred in the

South, where the number of gang cities rose 31.6

times, followed by the Midwest, with an increase of

nearly 26 times. The Northeast and West showed

smaller increases of 5.7 and 3.2 times, respectively.

Figure 16: Number of Gang Cities in

1995, by Region

Rate per 1 Million Population

West Midwest South Northeast

445 438

411

193

South

West Midwest

Northeast

8.1 7.2 4.7 3.8

Table 15: Gang-City Trends, 1970’s Through 1995, by Region

Number of

Gang Cities Increase

Number in All States in Number Magnitude of

Region of States in 1995 1970’s 1980’s 1990–95 of Cities Increase*

South† 17 411 13 97 301 398 31.6

Midwest 12 438 17 68 353 421 25.8

Northeast 9 193 34 15 144 159 5.7

West 13 445 137 87 221 308 3.2

Total 51 1,487 201 267 1,019 1,286 7.4

* The regions are ranked by the magnitude of increase, which is the number of gang cities in all States in 1995 divided by the number of new gang cities in

the 1970’s.

†

 Includes the District of Columbia.

Number of New Gang Cities
33

The character of changes in the regional locations of

gang cities can be illustrated by comparing two

regions—the West and the South. In 1970, the lowest

ranking South reported 13 gang cities, while the highest ranking West reported 137, more than 10 times the

number of gang cities reported in the South. By 1995,

the West, with 445 gang cities, still ranked first, but the

South counted 411 gang cities, only about 7 percent

fewer than the West. The number of gang cities in the

South had increased by almost 32 times, compared

with an increase of about 3 times in the West.

Figure 17 uses the data in table 15 to display the

magnitude of change for each of the four major regions. The graph displays contrasting trends for the

South and Midwest on the one hand, with increases

on the order of 26 and 32 times, and theWest and

Northeast on the other, with increases ranging from

3 to 6 times. This disparity is discussed below.

The radical increase in the number of gang cities

in the South raises the possibility that population

changes may have influenced the increase. Tables

16 and 17 add population statistics to the standings

shown in table 14.

The figures for percentage of change in table 16

show that while the population of all regions increased by about 25 percent, the number of gang

cities increased by about 640 percent.

There was an increase of more than 40 percent in

the population of the South during a period when

the number of gang cities increased by more than

3,000 percent, which suggests a relationship between the growth of gang cities and population

increases. However, the West showed an even

greater percentage increase in population—58

percent—at the same time as it showed the lowest

increase—224 percent—in the number of gang

cities. This makes it difficult to claim any direct

relation between increases in gang cities and increases in population. Such a relationship may

exist, but the fact that the region with the highest

population increase had the lowest increase in the

number of gang cities shows that factors other

than population growth are needed to explain the

increase in the number of gang cities.

Gang Cities, by Division

As shown in figure 15, the Bureau of the Census

divides the four major regions of the United States

into subregions called “divisions.” There are two

divisions each in the Northeast, Midwest, and West

and three in the South. Examining gang cities in

these nine divisions makes it possible to produce a

more precise picture of regional locations and

trends. Table 17 presents divisional numbers and

trends for the period from 1970 to 1995.

Since the West North Central division, encompassing

Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North

Dakota, and South Dakota, reported no gang cities in

the 1970’s, the magnitude of increase cannot be calculated. However, this division’s increase from no cities

in the 1970’s to 93 in 1995 places it in the top rank

among the nine divisions. The highest ranking division

in calculated magnitude of increase is the South Atlantic, which includes the Old South States of Georgia,

North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

The eight States and the District of Columbia in

the South Atlantic division reported four gang cities

in the 1970’s and 176 in 1995, an increase of 44.0

times. In the 1970’s, two of the four cities were in

southern Florida, one was in Delaware, and only

one, Charleston, SC, was in the Old South. Ranking

directly below the South Atlantic division are two

more southern divisions, East South Central and

Figure 17: Gang-City Trends, 1970’s

Through 1995, by Region

Note: The gang-city trends are ranked by magnitude of change, which

is the number of gang cities in 1995 divided by the number of gang

cities in the 1970’s.

3.2 25.8

31.6

5.7

South

Northeast

Midwest

West
34

Table 17: Gang-City Trends, by Division

Number of

Gang Cities in Increase

Number All Divisions in Number Magnitude of

Division of States in 1995 1970’s 1980’s 1995 of Cities Increase*

West North

Central 7 93 0 14 79 93

South Atlantic† 9 176 4 35 137 172 44.0

East South

Central 4 64 2 12 50 62 32.0

West South

Central 4 171 7 50 114 164 24.4

East North

Central 5 345 17 54 274 328 20.3

Mountain 8 97 5 19 73 92 19.4

Middle Atlantic 3 101 15 5 81 86 6.7

New England 6 92 19 10 63 73 4.8

Pacific 5 348 132 68 148 216 2.6

Total 51 1,487 201 267 1,019 1,286

Number of New Gang Cities

* The divisions are ranked by magnitude of increase, which is the number of gang cities in all divisions in 1995 divided by the number of new gang cities

in the 1970’s.

† Includes the District of Columbia.

Percent

Percent Change in

Change in Number of

Region 1970’s 1995 1970 1992 Population Gang Cities

South* 13 411 62.8 88.1 40.3% 3,061.5%

Midwest 17 438 56.6 60.7 7.3 2,488.2

Northeast 34 193 49.1 51.1 4.2 464.7

West 137 445 34.8 55.1 58.2 224.1

Totals 201 1,487 203.3 255.0 25.5 639.8

Table 16: Gang-City Trends and Population, 1970’s Through 1995, by Region

* Includes the District of Columbia.

Number of Gang Cities Population (millions)

West South Central, with gang-city increases

of 32.0 and 24.4 times, respectively. The New

England and Pacific divisions had the lowest

magnitudes of increase.
35

Trends in Size of Gang Cities

Since the early decades of the 20th century, localities

with youth gang problems have shared a set of distinctive characteristics. Some of these characteristics, as shown in previous chapters, were affected by

major changes between 1970 and 1995. One important change involves the size of gang-problem cities.

Prior to the 1970’s, gangs were most likely to be

found in the largest cities and were generally absent

in cities with populations of less than 100,000. This

chapter explores 25-year changes in the size of gang

cities.

Most gang surveys have limited their coverage to

the Nation’s larger cities. To achieve the greatest

possible coverage for both earlier and later decades,

this chapter uses the definition of “city” developed

by the Municipal and Township Governments section of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau

of the Census, which counts those municipal and

township units that have local governments. Data

for governmental units by population categories are

available both for the 1970’s (about 35,500 municipal and township units) and 1990’s (about 40,000

units). Using this definition ensures that cities and

towns will not be ignored if they are small, and indeed subsequent tables show that towns with populations of less than 1,000 constituted more than half

of all municipal and township units in both the

1970’s and 1990’s.16

Gang Cities, by Population

Category

Table 18 assigns the gang cities of the 1970’s and

early 1990’s to 11 population categories, but the

peaks of the curve fall in different places in the two

periods.17 In the 1970’s, the population category

with the highest percentage of gang cities—about

25 percent—was the 50,000 to 99,000 category. By

1995, the peak category had fallen to smaller cities,

those in the 25,000 to 49,000 level, with about 27

percent of all cities this population range. This reflects an increase in the number of smaller cities

reporting gang problems—a major trend illustrated

more clearly in table 19.

Table 19 addresses the question “What percentage of

gang cities fell below designated population levels in

the 1970’s and 1995?” Ten levels are distinguished,

ranging from 500 to 1 million. For example, in the

1970’s, 188 of 201 cities, or 94 percent, had populations smaller than 500,000 while in 1995, 1,456 out

of 1,479 cities, or 98 percent, had populations below

500,000. The percentage of gang cities at each population level was lower in the 1970’s than in 1995, but

the major differences were found at the 25,000 level

and below. At the 25,000 level, percentages for the

1970’s and 1995 stood at about 29 and 42 percent,

respectively. For cities with populations smaller than

10,000, the percentage was about 6 percent in the

1970’s compared with about 20 percent in 1995, and

at the 5,000 level, 2 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Thus, by 1995, almost 1 in 5 gang cities had a

population of 10,000 or less, compared with about 1

in 15 in the 1970’s; and almost 1 in 10 had populations of less than 5,000, compared with about 1 in

50 in the 1970’s.18

Population Categories:

Gang Cities Compared With All

U.S. Cities

In addition to gathering information on the numbers

and percentages of gang cities in different population categories, it is important to compare the figures

for gang cities with the figures for all U.S. cities and
36

Table 18: Gang Cities in the 1970’s and 1995, by Population Category

Population Category Percentage Percentage

(thousands) Number of Total Number of Total

More than 1,000 5 2.5% 8 0.5%

500 to 1,000 8 4.0 15 1.0

250 to 499 13 6.5 40 2.7

100 to 249 23 11.4 134 9.1

50 to 99 49 24.4 271 18.3

25 to 49 45 22.3 393 26.6

10 to 24 45 22.4 326 22.0

5 to 9 8 4.0 159 10.8

1 to 4 3 1.5 117 7.9

0.5 to 0.9 2 1.0 12 0.8

Less than 0.5 0 0 4 0.3

 Total 201 100.0 1,479* 100.0

* Populations were not available for eight cities.

Gang Cities, 1970’s Gang Cities, 1995

Table 19: Numbers and Percentages of Gang Cities With Populations Falling Below

Designated Population Levels in the 1970’s and 1995

Population Level Percentage Percentage

(thousands) Number* of Total Number† of Total

1,000 196 97.5% 1,471 99.4%

500 188 93.5 1,456 98.4

250 175 87.5 1,416 95.7

100 152 75.6 1,282 86.7

50 103 51.2 1,011 68.4

25 58 28.6 618 41.8

10 13 6.5 292 19.7

5 5 2.1 133 9.0

1 2 1.0 16 1.1

0.5 0 0 4 0.3

Gang Cities, 1970’s Gang Cities, 1995

* Total number of gang cities=201.

†

 Total number of gang cities=1,479 (populations were not available for eight cities).
37

to trace the changes in each population category

during the 25-year study period. Tables 20 and 21

compare the numbers and populations of gang cities

in the 1970’s and 1990’s with the numbers and populations of all cities.

As shown in the chapter entitled “Gang Localities in

the United States: A Quarter-Century Summary,”

less than 1 percent of all cities, or about 200 out of

35,000, reported gang problems in the 1970’s. Table

20 breaks down the all-city totals for the 1970’s into

separate population categories to show that the percentage of gang cities at specific population levels

differed substantially. Almost 28 percent of the

180 cities with populations of more than 100,000

reported gang problems, about 16 percent for

populations of 50,000 to 100,000, and 7 percent

for populations of 25,000 to 49,000.

Comparing the number-based with the populationbased totals shows that cities constituting 21 percent

of the all-city population reported gang problems,

compared with the number-based figure of less

than 1 percent. Most of this difference, however,

was accounted for by gang cities with populations

of 100,000 or more, where cities constituting 51

percent of the national city population reported

gang problems, compared with 28 percent for the

number-based figure.

Table 21 displays the same kind of information for the

1990’s as table 20 presents for the 1970’s. The differences between the two time periods are striking. Data

in table 20 indicate that in the 1970’s, cities with populations of 10,000 or more accounted for 94 percent of

all gang cities; by the 1990’s, as shown in table 21,

data indicate that this figure had fallen to 79 percent.

In the 1970’s, as shown in “Gang Localities in the

United States: A Quarter-Century Summary,” the

population of cities reporting gang problems was

about one-fifth of the all-city population; by the

1990’s, the population of gang cities had risen to more

than one-half of the Nation’s all-city population.

Gang City

Population as

Gang Cities as a Percentage

Population Number of a Percentage Population Population of of the

Category Number of Cities in the of All of Gang Cities All U.S. Cities Population of

(thousands) Gang Cities United States U.S. Cities (thousands) (thousands) All U.S. Cities

More than

100 50 180 27.8% 31,355.4 61,761 50.8%

50 to 100 49 298 16.4 3,517.4 20,735 17.0

25 to 49 45 638 7.0 1,571.1 21,975 7.1

10 to 24 45 1,755 2.6 764.8 27,090 2.8

5 to 9 8 2,214 0.4 57.9 15,563 0.4

2.5 to 4 2 3,365 0.06 6.3 11,777 0.05

1 to 2.4 1 7,148 0.01 1.2 11,389 0.01

Less than 1 1 19,910 0.005 0.8 7,902 0.01

Total 201 35,508 0.6 37,274.9 178,192 20.9

Table 20: Comparison of Numbers and Populations of Gang Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in

the 1970’s, by Population Category

Note: “Cities” in this table includes U.S. cities and towns with municipal or township governments.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262); and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the

Census, in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.
38

The highest percentage figure in the 1970’s table is

50.8 percent—the gang-city population as a percentage of the all-city population—while the equivalent

figure for the 1990’s is 92 percent. The numberbased percentages for the top three population

categories of gang cities as a percentage of all U.S.

cities in the 1970’s range from about 7 to 28 percent,

compared with a range of 49 to 86 percent in the

1990’s. The population-based figures for the top

three categories—the total gang-city population as

a percentage of the all-city population—range from

7 to 51 percent in the 1970’s (table 20) compared

with a range of 50 to 92 percent for the 1990’s.

Figures 18 and 19 display the number-based data in

tables 20 and 21 to compare the prevalence of gang

cities in the 1970’s and the early 1990’s. The two

figures use different measures to focus first on larger

and second on smaller cities.

Figure 18 displays the percentage of cities in each

of the eight population categories that reported gang

problems in the 1970’s and 1990’s. For example, for

cities with populations of 100,000 or more, 28 percent reported gang problems in the 1970’s compared

with 86 percent in the 1990’s. For cities with populations between 10,000 and 24,000, 3 percent reported

gang problems in the 1970’s compared with 16 percent in the 1990’s. The graph shows that while increases in gang problems occurred at all population

levels, the most obvious increases appeared in the

top four population categories. In these four categories, the larger the city, the greater the increase.

Subtracting the 1970 percentages from the 1990

percentages shows an increase of 58 percentage

points for cities with populations greater than

100,000; 54 points for populations between 50,000

and 100,000; 42 points for populations between

Gang City

Population as

Gang Cities as a Percentage

Population Number of a Percentage Population Population of of the

Category Number of Cities in the of All of Gang Cities All U.S. Cities Population of

(thousands) Gang Cities United States U.S. Cities (thousands) (thousands) All U.S. Cities

More than

100 195 227 85.9% 64,224 69,893 92%

50 to 100 271 387 70.0 18,611 26,496 70.2

25 to 49 395 815 48.5 14,087 28,338 49.7

10 to 24 327 2,018 16.2 5,554 31,549 17.6

5 to 9 158 2,585 6.1 1,156 18,247 6.3

2.5 to 4 77 3,836 2.0 298 13,539 2.2

1 to 2.4 41 7,296 0.5 62 11,690 0.5

Less than 1 15 18,770 0.1 10 7,125 0.14

Total 1,479* 35,935 4.1 104,002 206,877 50.3

Table 21: Comparison of Numbers and Populations of Gang Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in

the 1990’s, by Population Category

Note: Data for the 1990’s cover the period 1990–95. “Cities” in this table include U.S. cities and towns with municipal or township governments.

* Populations were not available for eight cities.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262); and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,

in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.
39

25,000 and 49,000; and 13 points for populations

between 10,000 and 24,000. The scale of the graph

obscures the magnitude of change for populations of

less than 10,000 because their numbers are too small

to affect observable comparisons.

Figure 19 clarifies the nature of growth among the

smaller cities as measured by the magnitude of

change statistic used frequently in earlier chapters.

The graph shows how many times the number of

gang cities increased between 1970 and 1995 in each

of eight population categories.

For example, in the “more than 100,000” category,

the number of gang cities increased from 50 to 195,

or about 4 times (see tables 20 and 21); in the 5,000

to 9,000 category, the number of gang cities increased from 8 to 158, or about 20 times. The graph

shows clear differences between cities in the larger

and smaller categories. Between the 1970’s and

1995, cities in the four higher categories (populations 10,000 or greater) show increases ranging from

4 to 9 times; cities in the four lower categories (less

than 10,000) show increases of 15 to 41 times. The

41-fold increase shown by cities in the 1,000 to

2,400 category makes this change higher than all the

changes shown in figure 7 (see page 18) except one,

falling just below South Atlantic cities in the ranking

of localities by magnitude of change. One reason

for the higher magnitude of change for the smaller

cities is essentially statistical; the fact that there were

relatively few smaller cities in the 1970’s produced

larger change figures than if there had been more

smaller cities.

In summary, data show that the numbers, populations, and long-term trends of gang cities varied

significantly according to size of population categories. Both large and small gang cities showed substantial increases between the 1970’s and 1990’s,

with growth trends of larger cities most prominent

when differences between percentages were measured and growth trends of smaller cities most

prominent when the magnitude of change measure

was used.

Figure 18: Percentage of Gang Cities

in the 1970’s and 1990’s,

by Population Category

Note: Data for the 1990’s cover the period 1990–95.

Gang cities as a

percentage of all

U.S. cities in the

1970’s

Gang cities as a

percentage of all

U.S. cities in the

1990’s

Percent

2.6

0.4

0.06

2.0

0.5

0.01

0.1

0.005

0 20 40 60 80 100

More than

100,000

50,000–100,000

25,000–49,000

10,000–24,000

5,000–9,000

2,500–4,000

1,000–2,400

Less than 1,000

48.5

70.0

85.9

27.8

16.4

7.0

16.2

Population

6.1

Figure 19: Magnitude of Change in

the Number of Gang Cities,

1970’s Through 1995, by

Population Category

* The magnitude of change is the number of gang cities in 1995 divided

by the number of gang cities in the 1970’s.

Magnitude of Change*

More than

100,000

50,000–100,000

25,000–49,000

10,000–24,000

5,000–9,000

2,500–4,000

1,000–2,400

Less than 1,000

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

5.5

19.8

15.0

3.8

8.8

7.3

38.5

41.0

Population
41

Summary and Explanations

The primary objective of this Report is to provide

statistical information on the growth of youth gang

problems in the United States during the quarter

century preceding December 1995 by examining

changes in the numbers, types, and locations of

localities reporting the presence of gang problems.

The findings, based on 1995 data, can be summarized as follows:

Major Findings

◆ As of 1995, gang problems had been reported for

all 50 States and the District of Columbia, for

about 700 counties, and for about 1,500 cities and

towns.

◆ States accounting for 100 percent of the population of the United States, cities and towns accounting for 50 percent of the total municipal

population, and counties accounting for almost

80 percent of the all-county population reported

the existence of youth gang problems.

◆ The number of cities reporting gang problems

rose from 201 in the 1970’s to 1,487 in 1995, an

increase of 640 percent.

◆ The population of gang-problem cities rose from

36.5 million in the 1970’s to 131.5 million in 1995—

an increase of 95 million, or approximately 260

percent.

◆ In the 1970’s, the population of gang-problem

cities equaled about one-fifth of the population of

all U.S. cities; by 1995, the population of gang

cities had risen to more than half of the all-city

population.

◆ The number of counties reporting gang problems

rose from 73 in the 1970’s to 706 in 1995, an increase of almost 870 percent.

◆ The population of gang-problem counties rose

from 64 million in the 1970’s to 175.4 million in

1995, an increase of 174 percent.

◆ In the 1970’s, the population of gang counties

equaled about one-third of the population of all

U.S. counties; by 1995, the percentage had risen

to more than three-quarters.

◆ Between 1970 and 1995, the number of States

reporting gang problems tripled; the number of

cities increased 7 times; the number of counties

increased 10 times; and the number of gang cities

in the South Atlantic region increased 44 times.

◆ In 1995, the State of California ranked first in the

Nation in the number of gang cities, with about

300. The top five States—California, Illinois,

Texas, Florida, and New Jersey—contained

approximately half of the Nation’s gang cities.

◆ The number of gang cities in the States that

reported gang problems in both the 1970’s and

1990’s increased by a factor of 5 during the 25-

year period, and the number of gang cities in

Florida, the State with the largest gain, increased

more than 33 times.

◆ Texas, California, and Illinois led the Nation in

the number of counties with gang cities in 1995.

Gang counties were distributed more evenly

throughout the Nation than gang cities. In 1995,

one-half of all gang cities were concentrated in

the top five gang-city States, but only about onequarter of all gang counties were found in the top

five gang-county States.

◆ The number of gang counties in States that

reported gang problems in both the 1970’s and

1990’s increased more than 5 times during the
42

25-year period, and the number of gang counties

in Florida, the State with the largest increase,

rose 23 times.

◆ In 1995, 38 gang counties reported 6 or more

gang cities. These counties contained more than

40 percent of all gang cities, and the top 10 highconcentration counties contained about 25 percent of all gang cities. The highest ranking

counties were Cook (IL) with 118 gang cities

and Los Angeles (CA) with 88.

◆ When county population is taken into account,

the ranking of counties by gang-city concentration

differs substantially from that based on the number

of cities per county. Adjusted for population, the

counties with the highest concentration of gangs

were McHenry and Will, IL, and the lowest ranking were San Diego, CA, and Dade, FL.

◆ The regional locations of gang cities changed substantially during the 25-year period. In the 1970’s,

the West led the Nation with 137 gang cities, while

the South, with 13, ranked lowest. By 1995, the

South had risen to second place, with 411 gang

cities—a 32-fold increase—while the number of gang

cities in the West had increased by a factor of 3.

◆ Of the nine subregions (divisions) in the United

States, the West North Central division showed

the largest magnitude of increase in gang cities—

from no gang cities in the 1970’s to 93 in 1995.

The largest calculated magnitude of increase occurred in the South Atlantic division—a 44-fold

increase, the largest quantitative increase of any

U.S. locality. Gang cities in the Pacific division

and New England reported the smallest increases

of three to five times.

◆ Between the 1970’s and 1995, the size of the average gang city fell from 182,000 to 70,000—a 61.5-

percent decline—and the size of the average gang

county fell from 876,000 to 248,000—a 72-percent

decline. The number of gang cities with populations smaller than 25,000 rose from 29 to 42 percent of all gang cities, and the number of gang

counties with populations smaller than 5,000 rose

from 2 to 9 percent.

◆ Between the 1970’s and 1990’s, the number of

smaller gang cities increased much more rapidly

than the larger cities. The number of gang cities

with populations larger than 10,000 increased by

4 to 9 times, while the number of gang cities with

populations smaller than 10,000 increased by 15

to 39 times.

These findings can be condensed and reformulated

in nonnumerical terms as follows:

Youth gang problems in the United States grew dramatically between the 1970’s and the 1990’s, with the

prevalence of gangs reaching unprecedented levels.

This growth was manifested by steep increases in the

number of cities, counties, and States reporting gang

problems. Increases in the number of gang localities

were paralleled by increases in the proportions and

populations of localities reporting gang problems.

There was a shift in regions containing larger numbers of gang cities, with the Old South showing the

most dramatic increase. The size of gang-problem

localities also changed, with gang problems spreading

to cities, towns, villages, and counties smaller in size

than at any time in the past.

As noted in the chapter “An Explosion of Youth

Gang Problems in the United States,” these conclusions provide a basis for posing two important questions: “How does one explain these remarkable rates

of growth?” and “What are the implications of these

findings for current methods of reducing gang problems and for evaluating the effectiveness of current

programs?” The same chapter considers both the

risks and benefits of discussing reasons for the

dramatic growth in the number of gang-problem

localities and concludes that, despite the risks, the

presentation of a set of explanations is of sufficient

value to merit its inclusion in this Report.

Explanations

There is little consensus as to what has caused the

striking growth in reported youth gang problems during the past 25 years. It is unlikely that a single cause

played a dominant role; it is more likely that the

growth was the product of a number of interacting

influences. The following sections briefly discuss the

possible role of seven factors that have been analyzed:

drugs, immigration, gang names and alliances, migration, government policies, female-headed households,

and gang subculture and the media.19
43

Drugs

The most common explanation for the increase in

youth gang problems, and one particularly favored by

law enforcement personnel, centers on the growth of

the drug trade. Historically, youth gangs have engaged in a variety of illegal income-producing activities, including extortion, robbery, and larceny. In the

1980’s, according to this argument, the increasing

availability and widening market for illegal drugs,

particularly crack cocaine, provided new sources

of income.20 The relative ease with which large sums

of money could be obtained by drug trafficking provided a solid financial underpinning for gangs, increased the solidarity of existing gangs, and offered

strong incentives for the development of new ones.

As gangs fought one another over control of the

drug trade in local areas, the level of intergang

violence rose and, in the process, increased gang

cohesion and incentives to form alliances with other

gangs. These developments, along with market requirements, resulted in widespread networks of

drug-dealing gangs. The clear model here is that of

organized crime during Prohibition, with rival mobs

fighting over markets and forming alliances and

rivalries with other mobs.

This argument appears to have considerable power

in accounting for the growth of gangs, and there is

little doubt that the drug trade was one important

factor in that growth. However, research studies on

gangs and drugs have produced considerable evidence that the number of gangs directly involved in

the drug trade is much smaller than claimed by the

proponents of this position, that many gangs are

involved only minimally with drugs, and that the

development of cross-locality alliances and centralized control is much less in evidence than has been

claimed.21

Immigration

Most people who study gangs agree that immigration has played a major role in the formation and

spread of gangs for more than a century. Gangs in

the 1800’s were composed largely of recently immigrated Irish, Jewish, Slavic, and other ethnic populations. Major waves of immigration during the past

25 years have brought in a many groups of Asians

(Cambodians, Filipinos, Koreans, Samoans, Thais,

Vietnamese, and others) and Latin Americans

(Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, Ecuadorians,

Mexicans, Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, and others)

whose offspring have formed gangs in the classic

immigrant gang tradition. Asian gangs, in particular,

have engaged in characteristic gang crimes, often

victimizing members of their own ethnic groups and

have come to pose a major problem for law enforcement throughout the Nation. There can be little doubt

that the new immigrants have contributed to the

growth of gangs. However, equal or greater growth

has occurred in gangs of American-born Asians,

African Americans, and Hispanics—increases that

cannot be attributed to immigration.

Gang Names and Alliances

During much of the past century, most gangs were

locality-based groups, often taking their names from

the neighborhoods where they assembled and carried on their activities (e.g., Southside Raiders,

Twelfth Street Locos, Jackson Park Boys). Many

other gangs adopted non-locality-based names of

their own choosing (e.g., Cobras, Warriors, Los

Diablos, Mafia Emperors). Most gangs were autonomous and independently named. During the

1960’s, a pattern of gang branches became popular in

some cities, whereby a number of gangs adopted a

variant of a common gang name. In Chicago in the

1960’s, the Vicelord name was used by about 10 local

gangs, including the California Lords, War Lords,

Fifth Avenue Lords, and Maniac Lords. These gangs

claimed to be part of a common organization—the

Vicelord Nation—related to one another by ties

of alliance and capable of engaging in centrally

directed activity (Keiser, 1969).

In the 1980’s, the pattern of adopting a common

name and claiming a federated relationship with

other gangs expanded enormously. The most prominent of these were the Crips and Bloods—two rival

gangs originally formed in Los Angeles—with locality designations reflecting neighborhoods in that city

(e.g., Hoover Crips, East Side 40th Street Gangster

Crips, Hacienda Village Bloods, and 42nd Street

Piru Bloods). Many of the Bloods and Crips gangs

or “sets” regarded one another as mortal enemies

and engaged in a continuing blood feud. In succeeding years, hundreds of gangs adopted the names.
44

A 1994 survey counted more than 1,100 gangs in

115 cities throughout the Nation with Bloods or

Crips in their names. Another gang name widely used

throughout the Nation was the Latin Kings—a name

originally used in Chicago in the 1940’s. Another development during the late 1900’s was the practice by

gangs by identifying themselves with named alliances

or federations that had become nationally, rather than

locally or regionally, prevalent, often as paired antagonists (i.e., traditional rivals). Prominent among

these “families” or “nations” were the “People” and

“Folks.”

The increasing public awareness of these gang names

through media publicity and other types of communication, and the accompanying sense of belonging to a

larger and more powerful gang federation, provided

models and incentives for the formation of new gangs.

Whether the affiliation claimed by different gangs

bearing a common name actually involved coordinated interlocality activities is in dispute. Many law

enforcement agencies accepted the idea of centrally

controlled, multigang coordination, while others saw

the gang nations largely as an attempt by gang members to create the impression of large and powerful

organizations, when actual coordination, or even

contact, among the various sets of a major gang

name may have been quite limited or even absent.

Migration

Explanations based on drugs, immigration, gang

names, and alliances are all related to another popular

explanation for the increase in youth gang localities—

the migration of local gangs to other areas. Attributing the spread of gangs to migration is particularly

favored by those who also support the drug-trade

explanation. According to this interpretation, gangs

that exhausted the drug market or faced increasing

and often violent competition from other local drugdealing gangs in a particular area simply left that area

and transferred their operations to new markets not

yet exploited by drug gangs or to areas where competition by local gangs was less intense. This reasoning

was also popular because it was consonant with one

of the classic explanations for local troubles—that

newly arrived outsiders are responsible for crime and

other local problems.

As in the case of the drug trade explanation, much

of the support for this position was based on

anecdotal and impressionistic evidence. The first

comprehensive empirical study of migration was

conducted by Cheryl Maxson and her colleagues

(1996). Maxson’s study concludes that while intercity migration is quite common, “cities where migration provides the catalyst for indigenous gang

formation are the exception rather than the rule.”

Migration was not the original cause of gang problems in about two-thirds of the 800 cities surveyed

by Maxson. Like the drug trade explanation, evidence for the existence of the phenomenon is clear,

but the weight of its influence, especially when

viewed in the context of the other explanations

discussed here, has been substantially exaggerated.

Government Policies

Events accompanying the civil rights movement and

the urban riots of the 1960’s had a profound impact

on government policymakers and the residents of

the slums, ghettos, and barrios of the United States.

Many officials, in part through a conscientious effort

to improve the living conditions of low-income

populations and in part because of a fear of continued violence, adopted a more permissive stance and,

in some cases, a supportive stance toward many of

the customary practices of inner-city communities.

As a result, customs including language patterns,

family arrangements, child-rearing practices, and

housing patterns that had been stigmatized by the

larger society gained increased legitimacy. Among

these customs was the prevalent practice by youth

of forming street gangs and engaging in a variety of

gang activities.

Urban youth gangs were seen by some policymakers

as a major vehicle for bettering the life of ghetto and

barrio residents; they were indigenous, rooted in the

community, and represented an untapped reservoir

of potential leadership that could enhance the dignity of low-income youth and play a leading role in

the general improvement of low-income communities. These officials advocated recognizing gangs as

legitimate community groups that could serve as the

cutting edge of social reform if granted adequate

support and financing. A secondary and less explicit

motive for supporting the gangs was the hope that
45

grants of Federal funds would reduce gang participation in burning and looting during riots.22

In fact, well over a million dollars in Federal funds

was allocated to gangs in New York City and Chicago by the Office of Economic Opportunity

(O.E.O.), the central agency established by the U.S.

Congress to conduct a Federal War on Poverty.

O.E.O. officials hoped that the gang members

would abandon illegal practices, “go legit,” and serve

the purposes of community betterment.23 These efforts were largely unsuccessful, but many residents

of low-income communities took the government

support as a signal of increased acceptability of

gangs and their lifestyle. Many of the youth who

participated in the massive expansion of gangs in

the 1980’s were the children of those who had experienced the dramatic events of the 1960’s and

had received the message that gangs and the gang

lifestyle were regarded with tolerance, if not approval, by powerful politicians. When the youth of

the 1960’s became parents, many opposed gang

membership for their children, but the message of

an increased acceptability of gang life had already

become part of the community subculture and provided an incentive to form and join gangs.

Another consequence of the 1960’s riots was a major

exodus of better educated and more prosperous residents from many ghetto communities. This resulted in

higher concentrations of less educated and less prosperous residents and a reduction in the antigang influences the previous residents had provided.

Female-Headed Households

“The gang is a product of the broken home” was a

popular saying among those who worked with gangs

in the 1950’s. Research during and after this period

appeared to grant considerable support to this belief,

although the language was altered somewhat to fit

the terminology of the times. The research suggested

a causal link between youth gangs and males reared

in fatherless households. The argument, in brief, was

that the absence of a stable male role model in many

low-income households created identity problems

for males and that the gangs, with their emphasis on

tough masculinity, male bonding, and macho values,

in essence took the place of fathers in providing a

model of male identity for boys raised primarily by

women. Gang membership played a vital role in

learning and practicing the characteristics and attitudes of male adulthood.24

Insofar as the proposed link between gangs and

fatherless families is valid, one would expect that

communities with gangs would have more femaleheaded households than other communities and that

an increase in the number of female-headed households would lead to an increase in the number of

gangs.25 Available data support both assumptions.

Between 1970 and 1995, the population of gang

cities in the United States increased from 21 percent

to 50 percent of the city population (see table 4).

Statistics for the periods from 1970 through 1993

and 1970 through 1990 show that the number

of households with children under 18 living with

“mother only” increased from 11 percent to 23 percent for the general population and from 30 percent

to 54 percent for African Americans.26 A substantial

majority of the African American households were

located in the inner-city areas where gangs traditionally have been found.27 While the increase in the

number of children raised in female-headed households is smaller than the increase in gang-city populations, both the direction and general magnitude

of the changes are similar. The increase in femaleheaded households would thus appear to be related

to the increase in gangs.

Gang Subculture and the Media

Has the media contributed to the growth of gang

problems? The influence of the media on the behavior of youth has long been a contentious issue. In

recent years, increasing consensus has developed in

support of the position that media images do have a

significant influence, particularly on more susceptible youth. In the case of youth gangs, this contention would not be difficult to sustain. The lifestyle

and subculture of gangs are sufficiently colorful and

dramatic to provide a basis for well-developed media

images. For example, the Bloods/Crips feud, noted

earlier, caught the attention of media reporters in

the early 1990’s and was widely publicized. Gang

images have served for many decades as a marketable media product—in movies, novels, news features, and television drama—but the 1980’s saw a

significant change in how they were presented.
46

In the 1950’s, the musical drama West Side Story portrayed gang life as seen through the eyes of adult

middle-class writers and presented themes of honor,

romantic love, and mild rebellion consistent with the

values and perspectives of these writers. In the

1990’s, the substance of gang life was communicated

to national audiences through a new medium known

as gangsta rap. For the first time, this lifestyle was

portrayed by youthful insiders, not adult outsiders.

The character and values of gang life described by

the rappers differed radically from the images of

West Side Story. Language was rough and insistently

obscene; women were prostitutes (“bitches,” “ho’s,”

and “sluts”) to be used, beaten, and thrown away;

and extreme violence and cruelty, the gang lifestyle,

and craziness or insanity were glorified. Among the

rappers’ targets of hatred, scorn, and murder threats

were police, especially black police (referred to as

“house slaves” and “field hands”); other races and

ethnic groups; society as a whole; and members of

rival gangs.

The target audience for gangsta rap was adolescents

at all social levels, with middle-class suburban youth

constituting a substantial proportion of the market

for rap recordings. The medium had its most direct

appeal, however, for children and youth in ghetto

and barrio communities, for whom it identified and

clarified a set of values, sentiments, and attitudes

about life conditions that were familiar to them. The

obscene and bitterly iconoclastic gangsta rappers

assumed heroic stature for thousands of potential

gang members, replacing the drug dealer as a role

model for many. Gangsta rap strengthened the desire of these youth to become part of a gang subculture that was portrayed by the rappers as a

glamorous and rewarding lifestyle.

Research on Explanations

and Causes

Another possible approach to explaining the growth

of youth gang problems is suggested by the findings

on the presence or absence of gang problems in the

various localities. As noted earlier, the process of

identifying localities with gang problems at the same

time identifies those that do not report such problems. Tables 2 and 3 show that, as of 1995, more

than 34,000 cities, towns, and villages and over

2,300 counties did not report gang problems. This

finding provides the basis for research designed to

identify those factors or circumstances associated

with the presence or absence of gang problems. The

research would select a sample of gang localities and

a sample of nongang localities matched as closely as

possible by size, population characteristics, regional

location, and other variables. The two samples

would be compared with respect to standard demographic measures such as income levels, population

density, employment rates, educational levels, number of police per capita, and ethnic, racial, and religious composition—variables potentially associated

with the presence or absence of youth gangs.

Another approach to identifying correlates of gang

presence or absence would use the data on cities

reporting gang problems in the 1970’s but not in the

1990’s (see table 7). Since their number is fairly

small, it would be feasible to conduct an indepth

study of each of these cities or a subset, if preferred,

to identify the developments, experiences, policies,

programs, and other factors that contributed to the

termination of gang problems. Such factors, if detected, could be the basis for devising prevention

and control programs for other localities. In addition, the size of this relatively small group of cities

could be augmented by additional localities shown

by future research to have reported that earlier gang

problems were no longer present.28

Gang Locality Trends and

Program Impact

The first chapter refers to the thousands of projects

and programs that were established or continued

during the 1980’s and 1990’s in an attempt to prevent,

control, and reduce youth gang problems. The central

question is that of program impact: “Were any known

programs measurably effective in reducing the scope

or seriousness of gang problems?” Careful evaluation

studies of prevention and control programs are rare,

but given the large number of efforts that were made,

it is quite probable that some were successful. Hard

evidence of that success is needed.

The data presented here cannot gauge the impact of

any individual program or all programs in any specific locality (e.g., city, county, State). However,
47

they can support a conclusion with respect to the

impact of national program efforts taken as a whole.

The major finding of this report—that youth gang

problems increased substantially in all States in the

Nation between 1970 and 1995—makes it impossible to claim success for the totality of antigang

efforts; in fact, these efforts were clearly ineffective

in slowing the national growth of gang problems.

Although present findings cannot provide direct

evidence of program impact, they can provide data

relevant to an important component of impact evaluation. Assessment of specific projects or programs

requires answers to two questions: Was there any

measurable reduction in the scope or seriousness of

gang problems addressed by the program? To what

degree could observed reductions be attributed to

the efforts of the program rather than to other factors? Present data provide evidence with respect to

the first question.

Although the great bulk of evidence presented here

documents very substantial increases in gang problems during the past 25 years, the data presented in

tables 7, 8, and 10 provide evidence of decreases in

the number of gang cities and counties in a few

States during particular time periods.

The States and time periods are as follows:

◆ Five States, California, Illinois, Massachusetts,

Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, contain cities

that reported gang problems in the 1970’s but not

in the 1990’s.

◆ Eight States, Arizona, California, Connecticut,

Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New

York, and Pennsylvania, reported fewer new

gang cities in the 1980’s than in the 1970’s.

◆ Seven States, California, Connecticut, Delaware,

Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and

Pennsylvania, reported fewer new gang counties

in the 1980’s than in the 1970’s.

◆ Four States, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New

Mexico, and Texas, reported fewer new gang

counties in the 1990’s than in the 1980’s.

◆ California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania

appear in three of the four lists; Massachusetts

appears in all four.

As noted above, these findings provide no evidence

that decreases in these States were the result of successful programs rather than other possible factors,

but given these findings, the possibility of program

impact remains open. Identification of States that

reported decreases in gang localities during times

when the great majority of States were reporting

increases provides a basis for further investigation

into possible programs or policies that may have

played a part in bringing about these results.
49

Trend Prospects for Gang Localities

Forecasting is always risky, but a study that reviews

trends in gang problems prior to 1996 should not

conclude without considering possible developments

subsequent to that period. Very little available research bears directly on future trends in the prevalence of gang localities, but a good deal of attention

has been paid to the future of crime in general. Most

relevant to gang trends are those studies that deal

specifically with violent crime and more specifically

with violent youth crime. Although youth gang crime

accounts for only a part of violent youth crime, that

part is significant, so trends in violent youth crime

bear a logical relationship to trends in gang activity.

A major development of the 1990’s was the emergence of two conflicting schools of thought on the

future of crime. One school contended that serious

crime had decreased significantly in recent years and

would continue to decrease; the other foresaw substantial, even catastrophic, growth in the next decade and beyond.

Proponents of the “violent crime is decreasing” position based their case on statistics issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and city police

departments showing decreases in arrests for violent

crimes in the 1990’s. Data in the FBI’s Uniform Crime

Reports indicated that violent crime decreased by 2.2

percent nationwide between 1990 and 1994. Larger

decreases were reported for some of the Nation’s

largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles,

Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego, and

Detroit. New York reported a 27-percent reduction

in major crimes and a 39-percent decline in homicides between 1993 and 1995; Houston reported a

31-percent decrease in major crimes and a 52-

percent decrease in homicides between 1991 and

1995. Developments in New York City were particularly widely publicized.

Arrest statistics for 1995 were reported by the New

York Times under the headline “New York Sees

Sharpest Decline in Violent Crime Rate Since ’72:

Analysts Begin To Credit New Police Strategies”

(Kraus, 1995). The general thrust of this and other

accounts was that new police tactics—primarily

community policing in conjunction with new technologies and greatly increased community participation in anticrime efforts—were the primary reasons

for the decline in violent crime in major cities. In

New York, major credit for the success of these policies was claimed by the police commissioner, who

predicted “the end of crime as we know it.”29 Similar

claims were made by police in Boston when 1995

statistics reported a decline in serious crime for the

sixth consecutive year. A local criminologist, while

agreeing that police policies had contributed to the

decline, said that the roots of success ran deeper

than police work and credited “a cultural revolution” in attitudes toward violence: “There is a campaign against violence in this country that I’ve

never seen before; we are profoundly concerned

with and disturbed by violence, and we’re addressing this issue for the first time, and that is making

a big difference.”30

Those who predicted an increase in violent crime

based their case primarily on the traditional concept of the crime-prone age group or age cohort.

Most criminologists agree that the most serious violent crime is committed by adolescent and young

adult males.31 When the size of this group increases, violent crime increases; when it decreases,

violent crime decreases. Those who predicted that

crime would increase based their predictions on a

projected increase in the size of this age group during the next 10 or 15 years. One study predicted

that the 14–17 age group would increase 23 percent by 2005; another predicted that the male
50

population ages 15–19 would grow at double the

total population rate between 1995 and 2010

(Butterfield, 1996; Duke, 1996).

Some proponents of the “more youth, more crime”

position added the concept, also traditional, of the

psychopathic or sociopathic killer. This notion was

popular in the 1950’s and 1970’s and provided the

basis of a popular novel and movie, A Clockwork Orange (Burgess, 1962). One backer of this position

predicted the coming of the “superpredators” (teenage boys who routinely carry guns), who “have absolutely no respect for human life” and who “kill and

maim on impulse without any intelligible motive.”32

Advocates of this position countered the opposing

school by pointing out that while crime in general

had been falling, juvenile or youth crime had been

rising. One study showed that the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes increased by 50

percent, to more than 150,000, between 1984 and

1994 and that the number of murders by juveniles

had tripled during the same period. Relevant to gang

predictions, this study found that the proportion of

juveniles who killed in groups rose from 43 percent

in 1980 to 55 percent in 1994 (Snyder, Sickmund,

and Poe-Yamagata, 1996).

Combining the “more youth, more violence” thesis

with the psychopathic killers concept produced a

series of predictions of near-apocalyptic proportions.

One eminent criminologist predicted “a bloodbath of

teenaged violence that will make 1995 look like the

good old days.”33 Estimating that teenagers now

commit 4,000 homicides per year, the criminologist

predicted that this number would increase to 5,000

as the adolescent population grew. A Yale University law professor, citing an “enormous growth in

criminal propensities,” predicted that “a crime explosion is ready for detonation” (Duke, 1996).

It would appear that accepting the “crime is decreasing” position would support a prediction that youth

gang problems would diminish and accepting the

“crime is increasing” position would support a prediction of increases in gang problems. The conflicting nature of these two positions and the convincing

quality of the supporting evidence for each make the

task of predicting gang trends especially difficult.

Although none of the numerical data presented in

this Report focuses directly on future growth trends

in gang prevalence, some of the data do provide a

basis for hypothetical projections. As noted, all projections involve risk and unprovable assumptions,

but planning for effective gang policies requires

some conception, however speculative, of developments in the gang situation during coming years.

The concluding section of this Report will attempt

to predict future trends in the growth rate of gangproblem cities.

Predicted Growth Rate of

Gang Cities

Data presented in this Report show that there have

been very substantial increases in the numbers and

populations of gang localities over the past quartercentury. Figure 7 shows growth rates ranging from

2.5 times for all U.S. States to 44 times for South

Atlantic cities. What rates can be expected in the

future? In contrast to the prediction in the 1982

National Youth Gang Survey report that gang

problems would worsen in coming years, the

present analysis concludes that the rate of growth

in the numbers of gang cities will decrease, possibly accompanied by a reduction in the scope of

national youth gang problems.34

This analysis does not attempt to calculate the impact of the many past and present social and law

enforcement programs for preventing and controlling youth gang problems or to predict possible

changes in the social developments discussed in the

sections on explanations. Instead, it uses a set of

mathematical calculations based on the notion of a

“pool of available gang-free cities,” cities that had

not reported gang problems by the end of 1995 and

were thus in a position to develop gang problems in

subsequent years. It assumes that future growth

rates are limited by the amount of room to grow

afforded by the amount of past growth.

The development of a full and comprehensive research design to test this prediction would be very

complex and much too extensive for present purposes. But since effective planning requires some

notion of the future scope of gang problems, the
51

concluding section of this Report presents a relatively simple and statistically unsophisticated attempt to support the prediction of slowed growth.

Method Used for Predicting Growth

The basic method used here for predicting future

trends is extrapolation from past growth rates to

possible future rates. The trend data presented in

earlier chapters cannot produce a single trend projection because the data deal with different time

periods and different kinds of localities. The analysis

will present a limited number of trend calculations,

selected on the basis of their predictive potential and

relevance to the growth slowdown prediction. Trend

projections are based on different kinds of assumptions, ranging from more to less conservative.

The first projection is based on the conservative

assumption that future growth will continue on a

straight-line basis for the 25 years after 1995 at the

same rate as during the previous 25. The data are

taken from table 6 and figure 7, which show that

the number of gang cities increased 7.4 times in 25

years. Multiplying the number of gang cities in 1995

by 7.4 and assuming that the number of gang cities

will also increase by 7.4 times in the 25 years following 1995 produce a predicted total of 2,201 new

gang cities by 2000 and 4,442 cities by 2005.

A second prediction uses the same assumption but

modifies the projected rate of growth by using data

presented by Malcolm Klein (1995), who found 94

gang cities in 1970.35 These calculations produce a

figure of 4,131 new gang cities by 2000 and 8,282

by 2005.

A third projection uses the data in figure 6 to make a

less conservative prediction based on the assumption

that the rate of growth in the number of gang cities

that occurred between 1990 and 1995 would continue at the same rate for succeeding 5-year periods.

This projection produces a prediction of 4,714 new

gang cities by the year 2000 and 9,428 by 2005—

figures in the same general range as those in the

second prediction.

An additional set of projections is based on the 25-

year growth trends calculated for cities in different

population categories. These will be useful for

comparison with the number of available gang-free

cities in different population categories, to be presented shortly. Like the first and second projections,

these projections are based on the assumption of

straight-line growth for 25 years. For example, for

cities with populations between 25,000 and 49,000,

695 new gang cities are projected for the year 2000

and 1,890 for 2005; for cities with populations between 10,000 and 24,000, the projected numbers are

473 and 946; and for cities with populations between

5,000 and 9,000, the projected numbers are 615

and 1,230.

To make the distinctions necessary for this analysis,

researchers used the U.S. Department of Commerce,

Bureau of the Census’ “incorporated place” definition

of city units rather than the “units with municipal and

township governments” definition, also used by the

Bureau of the Census. The latter definition was used

in several previous tables (for example, see tables 4, 20,

and 21). The reason for using the incorporated place

definition is that available census tabulations based on

the municipal government definition lump all cities

with populations larger than 200,000 into a single category and thus fail to distinguish population subcategories for the Nation’s largest cities. This distinction

provides an essential component of the slower growth

argument—calculations of the numbers and sizes of

cities in the four largest population categories.36

The principal body of data used here to support the

prediction of a reduced growth rate is a set of calculations on the size of the pool of available gang-free

cities. Table 22 displays the numbers and populations of all cities in the United States, the numbers

and populations of gang-free cities, and the populations of gang-free cities as a percentage of the allcity population.

One purpose of table 22 is to serve as the basis for

table 23, which displays cumulative instead of

category-specific figures. The cumulative tabulation

makes possible a progressive series of statements

on the size of the available pool of gang-free cities,

wherein each subsequent statement incorporates the

data presented in previous statements. The cumulative figures in table 23 were obtained by adding each

successive number to the previous number—the same

procedure used in figures 4 and 6.
52

Data in each row of table 23 provide the basis for

statements on the size of the pool of available gangfree cities in each population category.

In the four population categories above 100,000,

there are 195 cities with a total population of 63.4

million—41.4 percent of the population of all U.S.

cities. In each of the four categories, the total number

of available gang-free cities is 0—that is, there are no

available gang-free cities in any of these categories.

In the “more than 50,000” category, there are 504

cities with a total population of 84.6 million, 55.3

percent of the population of all cities. The number

of gang-free cities is 38 with a population of 2.6

million, 1.7 percent of the population of all cities.

In the “more than 25,000” category, there are 1,071

cities with a total population of 104.6 million, 68.4

percent of the population of all cities. The number of

gang-free cities is 210 with a population of 8.5 million, 5.5 percent of the population of all cities.

In the “more than 10,000” category, there are 2,361

cities with a total population of 124.9 million, 81.6

percent of all cities. The number of gang-free cities

is 1,174, with a population of 23.3 million, 15.1 percent of the all-city population.

In all population categories, there are 19,290 cities

with a population of 153.1 million, 100 percent of

the population of all cities. The number of gang-free

cities is 17,811, with a population of 50.0 million,

32.6 percent of the all-city population. These results

are condensed and summarized in table 24.

Analysis of Prediction Data

How do these data bear on the prediction that the

rate of increase of gang cities will slow down? Two

conclusions are initially evident. First, there is little

risk in predicting that rates of increase for cities

with populations larger than 100,000, containing

41 percent of the Nation’s urban population, will

not only slow down but will maintain a 0-percent

Population of

Gang-Free Cities

Population as a Percentage

Category Population Population of the Population

(thousands) Number (millions) Number (millions) of All U.S. Cities

More than 1,000 8 20.0 0 0

500 to 1,000 15 10.1 0 0

250 to 499 41 14.2 0 0

100 to 249 131 19.1 0 0

50 to 99 309 21.2 38 2.6 1.7

25 to 49 567 20.0 172 5.9 3.8

10 to 24 1,290 20.3 964 14.8 9.7

Less than 10 16,929 28.2 16,637 26.7 17.4

Total 19,290 153.1 17,811 50.0 32.6

Table 22: Comparison of Numbers and Populations of the Available Pool of Gang-Free

Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in the 1990’s, by Population Category

Note: Data for the 1990’s cover the period 1990–95. “Cities” in this table is “incorporated places.”

Source: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, table 45, “Incorporated Places, by Population Size: 1960 to

1990,” U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Economics and Statistics Administration, 1993, p. 24.

U.S. Cities Available Gang-Free Cities
53

growth rate. This could change only if future population growth increases the number of cities in the

top categories. Even if the year 2000 census adds a

few more cities larger than 100,000, however, the

number of additional new gang-free cities would

be negligible or, more likely, remain at zero. It is

almost certain that any city added to the large size

categories would already have developed gang

problems.

Second, as shown in table 24, as of 1995, cities containing only about one-third of the total urban population were available to become new gang cities.

Conversely, cities containing over two-thirds of the

urban population had already reached their growth

limit, making future growth unlikely or impossible.

Additional evidence with respect to the slower

growth prediction is obtained by comparing the

growth projections presented earlier with the size

of the available pool of gang-free cities—first for

cities in selected population categories and second

for the total urban population. For cities in the

25,000 to 49,000 category, the predicted number of

new gang cities by the year 2000 is 695. Because in

the 1990’s only 172 cities were available to become

new gang cities (table 22), reaching the predicted

growth level would be impossible, unless 485 additional cities joined this population category by the

year 2000. For cities in the 10,000 to 24,000 category, an increase of 523 new gang cities was projected by 2000 and an increase of 946 by 2005.

The number of gang-free cities in this category is

964—18 more cities than the 10-year projection. It is

thus theoretically possible for growth in this category to continue at the same rate for a few years

after 2005 before exhausting the pool of gang-free

cities. However, as discussed below, such continuation is unlikely.

The third and less conservative projection described

on page 51 predicts that there will be about 4,700

Population of

City Population Gang-Free

as a Cities as a

Percentage Percentage of

Population of the the

Category Population Population Population Population

(thousands) Number (millions) of All U.S. Cities Number (millions) of All U.S. Cities

More than

1,000 8 20.0 13.1% 0 0 0.0%

More than 500 23 30.1 19.7 0 0 0.0

More than 250 64 44.3 28.9 0 0 0.0

More than 100 195 63.4 41.4 0 0 0.0

More than 50 504 84.6 55.3 38 2.6 1.7

More than 25 1,071 104.6 68.4 210 8.5 5.5

More than 10 2,361 124.9 81.6 1,174 23.3 15.1

More than 0 19,290 153.1 100.0 17,811 50.0 32.6

Table 23: Available Pool of Gang-Free Cities Compared With Cumulative Numbers and

Populations of All U.S. Cities in the 1990’s, by Population Category

Note: “Cities” in this table is “incorporated places.”

Source: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, table 45, “Incorporated Places, by Population Size: 1960 to 1990,”

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Economics and Statistics Administration, 1993, p. 24.

U.S. Cities Available Gang-Free Cities
54

new gang cities in the United States by the year 2000.

However, the number of available gang-free cities in

1995, for all cities except those smaller than 10,000, is

only 1,174, about one-quarter of the number of cities

needed to meet the prediction. These figures not only

support the prediction of slowed growth in the number of localities with gang problems but suggest a

future with no growth in the number of gang localities for some population categories.

If, however, cities with populations less than 10,000

are included in the calculations, the number of available gang cities in 1995—about 17,800—is almost

twice as large as the number of gang cities predicted

for 2005. If growth in the less than 10,000 category

were to continue on a straight-line basis after 1995,

it would be 2014 before all available gang-free cities

were converted to gang cities. The fact that the projected number of new gang cities is substantially

larger than the number of available gang-free cities,

when all categories except the smallest are taken

into account, highlights the role played by cities

smaller than 10,000 in the present analysis. Two

characteristics of this group of cities are especially

relevant.

First, as shown clearly in table 22, the number of

cities, towns, and villages in the less than 10,000

category in 1990 was by far the largest of any of the

population categories. It included 88 percent of all

U.S. cities and exceeded the next-largest category

by a factor of 13. Not surprisingly, this category also

contained the largest number of gang-free cities. It

included 93 percent of all gang-free cities and exceeded the next largest category by a factor of 17.

The second characteristic concerns the gang city

growth rate in the less than 10,000 category. As

shown in figure 19 (see page 39), the growth rate

of these small cities and towns between the 1970’s

and 1990’s was substantially greater than that of the

larger cities, showing a 22-fold increase compared

with a 6-fold increase for cities larger than 10,000.

The fact that the under 10,000 category had both

the largest number of gang-free cities and the highest growth rate makes it a good candidate for the

category with the best growth potential.

The major question then becomes, “Is it possible

that continued growth in the number of gang cities

among the Nation’s smallest cities would be sufficiently likely and sufficiently large to offset a slowdown or stoppage of gang city growth among the

larger cities?” Several considerations suggest that

no such offset is likely. First, calculations based on

population show that cities with populations less

than 10,000 constituted only 17 percent of the total

urban population, compared with the number-based

figure of 88 percent. Gang-free cities made up about

half of the population of all cities compared with

more than 90 percent on the basis of numbers. It is

most unlikely that trends affecting small U.S. cities

with a total population of 28 million would outweigh

gang-city growth trends affecting larger cities with a

total population of 125 million.

A second consideration concerns the size and location of cities with populations smaller than 10,000.

The average population of these units in the 1990’s

was about 1,600. Partial analysis indicates that only

about one-third of these communities were located

in major metropolitan areas or within 20 miles of

larger cities with gang problems.37 The other twothirds were very small towns and villages, mostly in

rural areas, with living conditions characteristic of

small towns. This means, first of all, that youth in

this kind of community are not subject to the innercity conditions associated with the formation and

perpetuation of youth gangs. Second, because of

Population of

Gang-Free

City Population Cities as a

as a Percentage Percentage

Population of the of the

Category Population of Population of

(thousands) All U.S. Cities All U.S. Cities

More than 100 41.4% 0%

More than 50 55.3 1.7

More than 25 68.4 5.5

More than 10 81.6 15.1

More than 0 100.0 32.6

Table 24: Available Pool of Gang-Free

Cities in 1995, by Population

Category
55

their location, these cities are less susceptible to the

influence of larger cities that maintain and sustain a

youth gang subculture and less likely to experience

migration of outside gangs. Third, the number of

youth in the age categories that provide the recruitment pool for gangs is small relative to the numbers

of youth in larger cities. Fourth, in most communities of this size, local law enforcement officials are

familiar with most gang-age youth, have identified

and dealt with the town troublemakers, and are in a

position to impede or prevent the formation of local

gangs. The degree of secrecy and concealment

needed for the formation of local gangs or immigration of outside gangs is hard to maintain in small

communities where residents know each other well.

A final consideration concerns the possible effects of

research findings on efforts to prevent or inhibit the

growth of gang problems in small communities. The

finding that smaller towns and villages are more likely

to develop gang problems than larger cities could, if

widely disseminated, serve to alert local officials to

the possibility of an increased risk of gang problems.

This could lead to increased vigilance, more active

attention to signs of gang emergence, and adoption of

procedures designed to prevent local youth groups

from adopting the characteristics of criminal gangs.

Such activity, if undertaken, could reduce the potential for growth in smalltown gang problems.

Conclusions

The data presented here on prospects for future

growth of gang cities may be summarized by two

conclusions. First, for all U.S. cities with populations larger than 10,000, the pool of available gangfree cities is smaller than the number of new gang

cities projected for the decade following 1995. This

suggests that the rate of gang-city growth will

decrease and, possibly, for some population categories, will reach zero. Second, the analysis of cities

with populations smaller than 10,000, which apparently have the greatest potential for developing gang

problems, concludes that the possibility of major

growth is limited and that growth rates in these cities would not be sufficient to offset the slowdown

predicted for the larger cities. Thus, although the

evidence for slowed growth is not conclusive, it provides considerable support for the proposition that

an overall increase in the growth rate of gang cities

is most unlikely and some support for the proposition that the growth rate will in fact decrease over

the next 5 to 10 years.

In conclusion, the prediction of a decreased growth

rate is limited to that portion of the gang problem

produced by rising growth rates in the number of

cities with gang problems. It does not apply directly to other components of the gang problem—

principally, the number of gangs, the number of

gang members, and the number of gang member

crimes. It is theoretically possible, although unlikely, that even if growth in the number of new

gang cities were to decrease, the number of gangs,

gang members, and gang crimes could increase.

However, if the prediction of a slowdown in the rate

of growth of new gang cities proves accurate, the

ramifications of this development could affect other

components of the gang problem. If the growth of

gang cities slows or stops, there could be a concomitant nationwide slowdown in the number of new

gangs, gang members, and gang crimes. The slowed

growth forecast thus suggests, but does not predict,

the possibility of a reduction in the overall scope and

seriousness of youth gang problems in the United

States.38
57

1998 Update of Selected Data

The preceding chapters cover the period between

1970 and the end of 1995. Tables, figures, and text

discussions are based on prevalence figures and trend

calculations derived from data collected during this

25-year timespan. During the time required for

reviewing, revising, and editing the Report, new

information on gang localities became available.

Three national-level reports and a larger number of

local reports were published either in printed form or

as Internet documents. Cities, towns, villages, and

counties not previously reported were added to the

study’s database as the new information became available. This chapter presents a selected set of tables

and figures incorporating 1998 data and using the

expanded time period—28 years—made possible by

these data. By mid-1998, approximately 1,060 new

gang cities and 450 new gang counties had been

tabulated, coded, and added to the master list of gang

localities shown in appendixes D and E. Table 25

specifies the sources of information for the gangproblem cities, towns, and villages newly reported

during 1996, 1997, and 1998.

Table 25 shows clearly that State and national surveys provided the names of most of the gang cities—

approximately 87 percent—reported after 1995.

Results of four national surveys were reported—

two by the National Youth Gang Center (1997,

1999) for OJJDP and one each by the National

Drug Intelligence Center (1996) and the Gang

Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.)

Branch of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and

Firearms (1998). Of these four surveys, a clear majority of the data (94 percent) were provided by the

two national surveys conducted by NYGC in 1995

and 1996. The 865 gang cities identified by these

surveys accounted for about 80 percent of all gang

cities reported after 1995. Information supplied by

police departments and sheriff’s offices provided

about 10 percent of the post-1995 gang-city reports,

the second largest source. State surveys conducted

in Florida, Georgia, and Utah contributed another

60 gang cities.

This chapter examines some of the effects of adding

approximately 1,500 new gang-problem localities

(1,000 cities and 500 counties) to the major dataset of

the study. A selected set of tables and figures from the

first eight chapters are updated below, using gang

locality data reported subsequent to 1995. This chapter consists of a limited set of selected tables and figures that document major findings.

Number of New

Source Categories Gang Cities Cited

National surveys 865

State surveys 60

Other surveys 2

Police departments, sheriff’s

offices reports 109

Prosecutor’s offices reports 11

Court case transcripts 4

Gang task force reports 7

Commission reports 3

Other reports

(media, Internet) 4

Total cities not reported

before 1996 1,065

Table 25: Sources of Identified Gang

Cities Not Reported Before

1996
58

Before presenting the new findings, it will be useful

to clarify their context. Two issues will be discussed:

the major objectives of the 1998 update and the relation of the updated findings to those in the rest of

the Report.

Objectives of the 1998 Update

This chapter has three major objectives: first, to

update selected findings on the standings of gang

localities as of 1998 (e.g., the numbers and populations of localities reporting gang problems as of 1998

and their regional locations); second, to update the

trend analyses (e.g., changes in the numbers and

populations of reported gang localities between the

1970’s and 1998 and changes in the numbers of gang

localities in different population categories); and

third, to readdress, in the light of new data, the

“more gangs or more information” issue discussed

in the chapter entitled “An Explosion of Youth

Gang Problems in the United States.”

Findings with respect to standings reflect the addition of the 1,500 previously unreported gang localities to the totals reported prior to 1996. Updating

the trend analyses raises the issue of what baseline

time period should be used. Baseline data for the

1970’s derived from figures available in 1995 are less

complete than those available in 1998, and all subsequent trend analyses will use 1970’s figures based on

1998 data as a baseline, unless otherwise specified.

The third objective is to answer the difficult questions posed early in this Report, including to what

extent increases over time in the numbers and populations of gang localities are a product of actual developments and to what extent the increases are

products of increased availability of information.

The discussion in “An Explosion of Youth Gang

Problems in the United States” concluded that a

definitive answer was not possible given the information available at the time. Although it is still not

possible to provide a completely accurate and incontrovertible answer, the uncertainty associated with

this issue can be substantially decreased by incorporating new information obtained after 1995. The

new data make it possible to identify sources of information more accurately, obtain fuller details on

data-gathering methods, and track the procedures

used in reporting new gang localities with greater

precision than was previously possible.

Relationship Between Findings

inthe Earlier Chapters and the

1998 Update

The addition of about 1,500 new gang-problem localities to the dataset that provided the basis for the

analyses in the earlier chapters obviously changes

the size of the dataset, enlarging it by about 70 percent. It follows that the numerical totals in the tables

and figures in this chapter are significantly larger

than the totals in the corresponding figures and

tables in the rest of the Report. This raises a question of comparability—How does the use of the

larger numerical set affect the findings presented in

the Report? The simple answer is “not very much.”

Comparing the major findings derived from 1995

data with those derived from 1998 data reveals

many differences in the figures supporting the

general conclusions but few differences in the substance of the conclusions themselves. For example,

the major finding earlier in the Report on changes

in the number of gang cities between the 1970’s and

1990’s shows an increase of about 7.5 times (640

percent), while the corresponding finding in this

chapter shows an increase of 9.5 times (840 percent). The specific numbers used to document the

finding are less important than its basic thrust—

that there was a very substantial increase in the

number of gang cities between the 1970’s and 1990’s.

Similarly, the major Report finding on changes in

the populations of gang cities shows a three-decade

increase of about 3.5 times, while the corresponding

figure in this chapter is 2.5 times. The general magnitude of these figures falls within a similar numerical range.

Another good example of the similarities between

findings earlier in the Report and in this chapter is

found in the analysis of the regional distribution of

gang cities, where, despite a difference of more than

1,000 cities between the rest of the Report and this

chapter in the total number of gang cities in U.S.

regions, the regional rankings and trend findings are

almost identical. Perhaps the best evidence of the

high-level degree of correspondence between the
59

findings is that none of the numerous analyses developed in this chapter required the change of a single

word in the one-paragraph summaries of the major

findings presented on pages 41–42.

The basic similarity between findings in the earlier

chapters and in this chapter confirms and strengthens

all of the findings. Because this chapter’s dataset

substantially enlarges the information base of the

rest of the Report without significantly altering its

conclusions, it enhances the depth and accuracy of

the analysis. Readers should also remember that the

first 8 chapters are far more comprehensive than this

chapter; they are 5 times as long and contain 50

tables and figures, compared with 11 in the present

chapter. The other chapters specify the central problem of the study and cover many topics not included

here. The rest of the Report also includes extensive

materials on data gathering and analytic methods

both in the text and in a separate appendix and provides definitions for the major terms and concepts of

the study. This chapter provides updated materials,

corroborative evidence, and some important new

findings, but the other chapters provide the major

contribution of the study.

To facilitate comparability with the pre-1996 findings,

updated tables and figures will include notes that refer

readers to the original versions in earlier chapters.

Gang Locality Totals

The following list displays the total number of new

gang-problem localities reported at any time during the

period between January 1970 and June 1999, using

the same format as the list in the chapter entitled

“Gang Localities in the United States: A QuarterCentury Summary” (see page 12).

◆ Total number of identified gang cities, towns, and

villages—2,547.

◆ Counties reporting gang problems, no cities

specified (county sources)—42.

◆ Counties containing specified gang cities (city or

county sources)—1,110.

◆ Total number of identified gang counties—1,152.

◆ Total number of discrete gang cities and

counties—2,589.

◆ Total number of identified gang cities and

counties (city and county sources)—3,699.

Local authorities in about 2,550 identified cities,

towns, and villages and about 1,150 identified counties in the United States reported problems with

youth gangs at some point between 1970 and mid1998. These numbers represent about 7 percent of

the number of U.S. municipalities in 1990 and about

38 percent of all counties. The total number of identified gang cities and counties was approximately

3,700. These prevalence figures are substantially

higher than figures reported in any currently available survey and represent the largest number of

identified youth gang localities ever reported in the

United States.39

Comparing the 1998 data with the corresponding

1995 data (see page 12) shows that the total number

of gang cities in 1998 was 71 percent larger than the

number in 1995, the number of gang counties was

63 percent larger, and the combined city-county

total was 69 percent larger. The 7 percent figure for

the number of gang cities, while higher than the 4

percent reported at the end of 1995, still represents

a small proportion of all municipal localities in the

United States. As noted in the second chapter of this

Report, a much more meaningful measure of the

prevalence of gang problems is the percentage of the

urban population affected rather than the number

of cities. At the end of 1995, the population of gang

cities was about 103 million, or about 50 percent of

the total city population (see figure 2); the 1998 data

reported this figure to be about 122 million, about

60 percent of the total city population. Thus, in

1998, the population of cities, towns, and villages

reporting youth gang problems represented a substantial majority of the total urban population.

The new gang counties reported in 1996, 1997, and

1998 constitute a total of 1,152 counties with a combined population of approximately 200 million—

about 90 percent of the total county population. This

number is about 10 percent higher than the equivalent figure for 1995 and indicates that only about 10

percent of the Nation’s county population was free

of youth gang problems in 1998.
60

Gang Cities

Table 26 is the updated version of table 8. Table 26

lists the number of new gang-problem cities reported for each State during the 1970’s, 1980’s, and

most of the 1990’s and ranks the 50 States and the

District of Columbia according to the total number

of gang cities reported for each by the middle of

1998.

Table 26 shows a cumulative total of 2,547 gang

cities reported for the three-decade period—an increase of 9.4 times (843 percent) over the 270 cities

reported for the 1970’s. Figures in table 8, based on

Table 26: New Gang Cities, 1970–98, by State

State 1970’s 1980’s 1998 Total

California 158 97 108 363

Illinois 20 89 152 261

Texas 11 46 99 156

Florida 2 34 89 125

Ohio 4 12 70 86

Washington 3 26 55 84

Massachusetts 14 9 51 74

New Jersey 7 17 49 73

Oregon 0 19 49 68

Michigan 4 16 47 67

Georgia 1 12 54 67

Minnesota 0 9 44 53

Missouri 1 12 39 52

Arizona 10 4 37 51

Pennsylvania 10 6 34 50

Connecticut 6 8 33 47

Indiana 2 12 31 45

Oklahoma 0 10 35 45

Wisconsin 0 8 37 45

Colorado 1 17 25 43

Alabama 2 18 23 43

New York 3 2 36 41

North Carolina 0 11 30 41

Iowa 1 12 25 38

New Mexico 1 14 23 38

Utah 0 7 30 37

State 1970’s 1980’s 1998 Total

Virginia 1 8 28 37

Louisiana 0 15 19 34

Tennessee 0 5 28 33

Kansas 0 4 28 32

Arkansas 0 15 15 30

Kentucky 0 6 23 29

Mississippi 0 12 17 29

Idaho 0 9 19 28

South Carolina 1 8 13 22

Maryland 1 7 13 21

Nebraska 0 5 16 21

New Hampshire 1 2 15 18

Rhode Island 0 2 12 14

Maine 0 5 8 13

Montana 1 1 11 13

West Virginia 1 2 9 12

Nevada 1 3 7 11

Vermont 0 0 11 11

Wyoming 0 0 9 9

Alaska 0 1 8 9

South Dakota 0 2 7 9

North Dakota 0 0 8 8

Delaware 1 0 4 5

Hawaii 0 1 4 5

District of

Columbia 1 0 0 1

All States 270 640 1,637 2,547

Note: The States are ranked by the cumulative number of new gang cities per State in 1998. Figures for 1998 represent only the 5 months between

January and May. For corresponding 1995 data, see table 8. In a few instances, the number of cities tabulated in table 26 does not correspond exactly to

the number of cities listed in appendix D because of changes in the number of localities reported subsequent to the completion of the final analyses.
61

1995 data, showed a cumulative total of 1,487 gang

cities for the three-decade period—an increase of

7.4 times (640 percent) over the 201 cities reported

for the 1970’s. Thus, the more complete data available by 1998 show a larger rate of increase—9.4

times compared with 7.4 times—than the rate shown

by the 1995 data. Additional information on changes

in the numbers and percentages of gang cities between the 1970’s and 1998 is provided in “Trends in

Size of Gang Cities” on page 64.

Gang City Rankings

In the 1970’s, the States occupying the top six ranks

in the number of reported gang cities were California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania,

and Arizona. The 1998 rankings list the top six

States as California, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Ohio,

and Washington. Note that in the 1970’s, two of the

top six were eastern States; in 1998, none were eastern. The table also indicates a major change in the

concentration of gang cities. In the 1970’s, gang cities in the top 10 States accounted for 90 percent of

all gang cities but only 47 percent by 1998. This 43-

percentage-point difference shows that in the 1970’s,

gang cities were heavily concentrated in the top 10

States, while in 1998, they were spread much more

evenly throughout the Nation. In the 1970’s, only

6 States reported 10 or more gang cities, while in

1998, 41 States reported 10 or more.

Decade Trends: Cities

Findings based on 1995 data show that there was

relatively little growth between the 1970’s and 1980’s

in the number of new gang cities, followed by a

sharp increase between the 1980’s and 1990’s (see

figure 5). These data support a widely held notion

that gang-city growth accelerated suddenly and rapidly in the 1990’s, following relatively little growth

during the previous two decades. Findings based on

1998 data, which are more comprehensive and thus

more accurate, challenge this picture of the threedecade growth curve.

Figure 20 (1998 data) shows the number of new

gang cities reported for the three decades between

the 1970’s and 1990’s, and table 27 compares these

numbers with those shown in figure 5 (1995 data).

1995 Data 1998 Data

Number Change Number Change

of New From of New From

Gang Previous Percent Magnitude Gang Previous Percent Magnitude

Decade Cities Decade Change of Change* Cities Decade Change of Change*

1970’s 201 270

1980’s 267 66 32.8% 1.3 640 370 137.0% 2.4

1990’s 1,019 752 281.6 3.8 1,637 997 155.8 2.6

Difference 248.8 2.5 18.8 0.2

Table 27: Decade Changes in Numbers, Percentages, and Magnitudes of Change of

New Gang Cities

* The magnitude of change is the number of new gang cities in the later decade divided by the number of new gang cities in the earlier decade.

Figure 20: New Gang Cities in the

United States in the 1970’s,

1980’s, and 1990–98

0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000

1990–98

1980’s

1970’s

Number of New Gang Cities

270

640

1,637

Period
62

Instead of gradual growth between the 1970’s and

1980’s, followed by a sharp spurt between the 1980’s

and 1990’s, these data show a much steadier and more

gradual rate of growth over the three decades. The

1995 data show a 33-percent increase in the number

of new gang cities between the 1970’s and 1980’s

and a 282-percent increase between the 1980’s and

1990’s—a difference of 249 percent. By contrast, the

1998 data show a 137-percent increase between the

1970’s and 1980’s and a 156-percent increase between

the 1980’s and 1990’s—a difference of only 19 percent. These differences are shown even more clearly

by the magnitude of change figures; the 1995 data put

the difference between the two decades at 2.5 times,

whereas the difference shown by the 1998 figures is

only 0.2 times. This difference between the finding

based on 1995 data and the present finding is one of

the exceptions to the pattern of similarity between

findings in the rest of the Report and this chapter.

Gang Counties

Table 28, like its counterpart, table 10, lists the number of counties reporting gang problems for each of

the 50 States and the District of Columbia and ranks

the States according to the cumulative number of

gang counties in each State as of 1998. The cumulative number of gang counties reported during the

three-decade period (1,152) includes about 40 percent of all the counties in the United States. These

1,152 counties represent an increase of about 11.4

times over the 101 counties reported for the 1970’s.

The equivalent figures in table 10 (1995 data) are

73 counties in the 1970’s and 706 in the 1990’s—an

increase of about 9.7 times. The gang county increase shown by the 1998 data was thus somewhat

larger than the increase shown by the 1995 data.

These data are consistent with the finding that the

geographic concentration of gang localities lessened

considerably between the 1970’s and 1990’s. In the

1970’s, counties with larger numbers of gang cities

were concentrated in a relatively small number of

States—principally Los Angeles and Orange Counties in California, Cook and Du Page Counties in

Illinois, Middlesex County in Massachusetts, and

Dallas County in Texas. The 1998 data show gang

counties spread more widely throughout the States.

Gang County Rankings

In the 1970’s, the States of California, Texas, New

Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York occupied the

top five ranks among States reporting gang counties. It is noteworthy that three of these five were

northeastern States. In 1998, the top States were

Texas, Georgia, California, Illinois, Florida, and

Ohio. Three of these are southern States, and none

are northeastern. The county data add further support to findings on the concentration of gang localities. In the 1970’s, the number of gang counties in

the top 10 States included more than 70 percent of

all gang counties; in 1998, the top 10 States included less than 40 percent. In the 1970’s, only 7

States reported 5 or more gang counties; by 1998,

48 States reported 5 or more. As noted above, gang

counties, like gang cities, were spread much more

widely throughout the Nation during the later

years.

Decade Trends: Counties

Figure 21 displays the number of new gang counties

reported during the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. The

figure shows that 101 new gang counties were reported in the 1970’s, 356 in the 1980’s, and 695 between 1990 and 1998. The equivalent figures based

on 1995 data were 73, 174, and 495.

Three-decade trends in the number of gang counties resemble those of the gang cities. Figure 22

compares the three-decade trend line derived from

1998 data with the equivalent line derived from

1995 data. As in the case of the gang cities, the

1995 data show a gradual increase between the

1970’s and 1980’s and a somewhat steeper increase

between the 1980’s and 1990’s. The trend line

based on 1998 data, by contrast, is almost completely straight, showing that the magnitude of

increase from the 1970’s to 1980’s was almost the

same as that of the increase from the 1980’s to the

1990’s. These data strengthen the finding that the

growth of gang localities over the three-decade

period was relatively even, instead of showing

a gradual increase between the first and second

decade and a sharp spurt between the second

and third.
63

Table 28: New Gang Counties, 1970–98, by State

State 1970’s 1980’s 1990–98 Total

Texas 10 31 41 82

Georgia 1 15 45 61

California 25 17 8 50

Illinois 5 16 21 42

Florida 1 14 25 40

Ohio 4 8 28 40

Oklahoma 0 11 23 34

Alabama 2 14 17 33

North Carolina 0 12 21 33

Wisconsin 0 9 24 33

Missouri 1 9 22 32

Iowa 1 9 21 31

Indiana 2 11 17 30

Mississippi 0 9 20 29

Kansas 0 4 24 28

New York 6 3 18 27

Virginia 1 8 18 27

Washington 2 12 13 27

Kentucky 1 6 19 26

Minnesota 0 6 20 26

Tennessee 0 5 21 26

Oregon 0 13 12 25

Pennsylvania 6 4 15 25

Louisiana 0 13 11 24

New Mexico 1 13 10 24

Arkansas 0 10 13 23

State 1970’s 1980’s 1990–98 Total

Colorado 1 11 10 22

Michigan 4 10 8 22

Idaho 0 9 11 20

Nebraska 0 5 14 19

South Carolina 1 6 11 18

New Jersey 7 3 6 16

West Virginia 1 3 10 14

Arizona 3 2 8 13

Utah 0 4 9 13

Massachusetts 5 5 2 12

Montana 1 1 10 12

South Dakota 0 2 9 11

Alaska 0 1 8 9

New Hampshire 1 0 8 9

Connecticut 3 2 3 8

Maryland 1 4 3 8

North Dakota 0 0 8 8

Vermont 0 0 8 8

Wyoming 0 0 8 8

Nevada 1 1 5 7

Maine 0 3 3 6

Rhode Island 0 2 3 5

Delaware 1 0 2 3

Hawaii 1 0 1 2

District of

Columbia 1 0 0 1

All States 101 356 695 1,152

Note: The States are ranked by the cumulative number of new gang counties per State in 1998. Figures for 1998 represent only the 5 months between

January and May. For corresponding 1995 data, see table 10. In a few instances, the number of cities tabulated in table 28 does not correspond exactly

to the number of cities listed in appendix D because of the change in the number of localities reported subsequent to the completion of the final analyses.

Gang Cities, by Region

Table 29, an update of table 15, displays the four

major regions of the United States, the Northeast,

Midwest, South, and West, ranked by the magnitude of change between the 1970’s and 1998.

The most noteworthy feature of table 29 is how

closely the general trends it portrays parallel those
64

of table 15, although the 1998 analysis includes more

than 1,000 additional cities. The ranks for 1970’s

cities are identical in the two tables, and the “magnitude of increase” rankings are also identical. Even

the magnitude of change figures in tables 15 and 31

fall within the same general range (1995 data):

South, 31.6; Midwest, 25.9; Northeast, 5.6; West,

3.2; and all regions, 7.4. Based on 1998 data, the

corresponding figures are South, 33.2; Midwest,

22.4; Northeast, 8.3; West, 4.3; and all regions, 9.4.

The only difference in ranking between the two

tables is found in the rankings for 1998 where the

South and Midwest exchange places. This similarity

of results, despite differences in the specific numbers

derived from 1995 and 1998 data, documents how

the findings in the rest of the Report and in this

chapter reinforce one another.

Trends in Size of Gang Cities

Efforts to prevent the further spread of youth gang

crime require as much information as possible on the

characteristics of those localities where youth gang

problems are most likely to be found. Information

on the size of localities that have youth gang problems or are likely to develop or sustain gang problems is particularly valuable. Data collected between

1996 and 1998 strengthen and expand findings on

gang locality sizes and population trends presented

in the “Trends in Size of Gang Cities” chapter of this

Report.

Figure 22: Comparison of New Gang

Counties in the United States in

the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s

Figure 21: New Gang Counties in the

United States in the 1970’s,

1980’s, and 1990–98

0 200 400 600 800

1990–98

1980’s

1970’s

Number of New Gang Counties

101

356

695

Period

Table 29: Gang-City Trends, 1970’s Through 1998, by Region

Cumulative

Number of Number of

Gang Cities Gang Cities Increase in

Number in All in All Number of Magnitude

Region of States States, 1970’s States, 1998 Cities of Increase*

South† 17 22 730 708 33.2

Midwest 12 32 717 685 22.4

Northeast 9 41 341 300 8.3

West 13 175 759 584 4.3

 Total 51 270 2,547 2,277 9.4

* The regions are ranked by magnitude of increase, which is the number of gang cities in 1998 divided by the number of gang cities in the 1970’s.

†

 Includes the District of Columbia.

1970’s 1980’s 1990’s

Decade

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

1995 data 1998 data

101

356

695

459

174

73

Number of New 

Gang Counties
65

Table 30 updates and amplifies table 18, using 1998

data. It assigns numbers and percentages of gang

cities in the 1970’s and 1998 to 11 population categories, displays the magnitude and percentage increases between the 1970’s and 1998, and shows the

differences between 1970’s and 1998 percentages.

As noted earlier, the average increase in the number

of gang cities in all population categories between the

1970’s and 1998 was 9.4 times (840 percent). Increases for all cities with populations larger than

50,000 fell below this average; cities smaller than

50,000 fell above the average. Cities with populations

between 1,000 and 10,000 showed the largest numerical increases; the number of cities with populations of

5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants increased 27.4 times

(2,643 percent), and the number of cities with populations between 1,000 and 5,000 increased 32.3 times

(3,125 percent).

The largest percentage increase occurred in the

1,000 to 4,000 category. In the 1970’s, this category

contained 4.4 percent of all gang cities; by 1998, the

percentage had risen to 15.2, a difference of 10.8

percentage points. The second largest increase occurred in the 5,000 to 9,000 category, which had

5.2 percent of all gang cities in the 1970’s and 15.1

percent in 1998, an increase of 9.9 percentage

points. The largest decrease occurred in the 50,000

to 99,000 category, where the percentage fell from

22.2 percent in the 1970’s to 13.0 percent in 1998, a

drop of 9.2 percentage points.

The data in table 30 confirm and amplify the findings in the “Trends in Size of Gang Cities” chapter

that show the numbers and percentages of gang

cities in smaller size cities and towns increased much

more substantially during the three-decade period

than those for the larger cities, particularly in the

population categories between 10,000 and 50,000. In

these population categories, measures to inhibit further growth of gang problems assume the greatest

urgency.

Gang Cities, 1970’s Gang Cities, 1998

Population Percentage Percentage Magnitude in Percentages:

Category of of of Percent 1970’s Through

(thousands) Number Total Number Total Increase* Increase 1998

More than 1,000 5 1.9% 8 0.3% 1.6 60.0% –1.6%

500 to 1,000 10 3.7 15 0.6 1.5 50.0 –3.1

250 to 499 15 5.6 40 1.6 2.7 166.7 –4.0

100 to 249 27 10.0 139 5.5 5.1 414.8 –4.5

50 to 99 60 22.2 331 13.0 5.5 451.7 –9.2

25 to 49 59 21.9 568 22.4 9.6 862.7 0.5

10 to 24 66 24.4 631 24.9 9.6 856.1 0.5

5 to 9 14 5.2 384 15.1 27.4 2,642.9 9.9

1 to 4 12 4.4 387 15.2 32.3 3,125.0 10.8

0.5 to 9 2 0.7 26 1.0 13.0 1,200.0 0.3

Less than 0.5 0 0.0 10 0.4 0.4

Total 270 100.0 2,539† 100.0 9.4 840.4

Table 30: Gang Cities in the 1970’s and 1998, by Population Category

Note: For corresponding 1995 data, see table 18.

* The magnitude of increase is the number of gang cities in 1998 divided by the number of gang cities in the 1970’s.

†

 Populations were not available for eight cities.

Difference
66

Data presented thus far have dealt primarily with

various categories of gang cities in the context of the

numbers and populations of those cities reporting

gang problems. Table 31 examines both the numbers

and populations of gang cities in the context of all

U.S. cities. The table compares numbers and populations of gang cities with those of all cities in eight

population categories as of 1998.

Previous analyses have focused on increases in the

prevalence of gang problems in smaller cities; the data

of table 31 focus on the gang-problem situation of

larger cities. In the present analysis, cities with populations larger than 25,000 are considered “larger” cities

and cities under 25,000 are considered “smaller.”

Looking first at the numerical prevalence of the

larger cities shows that, in 1998, larger gang cities

constituted only 3 percent of all U.S. cities of any

size but 77 percent of all larger U.S. cities. Population figures, as would be expected, show considerably higher numbers and percentages. The total

population of the larger gang cities accounted for 88

percent of the population of all gang cities, 86 percent of the population of larger U.S. cities, and 52

percent of the population of all U.S. cities.

Summarizing numbers and populations of gang cities shows that larger cities made up 43 percent of

the number of all gang cities but 88 percent of their

population; 77 percent of the number of cities with

populations greater than 25,000 but 86 percent of

their population; and 3 percent of the number of all

U.S. cities but 52 percent of their population. Thus,

despite the impressive increases in the prevalence

of gang problems in smaller cities during the threedecade study period, gang problems remained

primarily a big-city phenomenon.

Gang-City

Population

Gang Cities as a

Number as a Population Population Percentage

Population Number of Cities Percentage of Gang of All U.S. of the

Category of Gang in the of All U.S. Cities Cities Population of

(thousands) Cities United States Cities (thousands) (thousands) All U.S. Cities

More than

100 202 227 89.0% 64,752 69,893 92.6%

50 to 100 331 387 85.5 22,424 26,496 84.6

25 to 50 568 815 69.7 20,053 28,338 70.8

10 to 25 631 2,018 31.3 10,593 31,549 33.6

5 to 10 384 2,585 14.9 2,863 18,247 15.7

2.5 to 5 259 3,836 6.8 991 13,539 7.3

1 to 2.5 128 7,296 1.8 226 11,690 1.9

Less than 1 36 18,770 0.2 20 7,125 0.4

Total 2,539* 35,934 7.1 121,922 206,877 58.9

Table 31: Comparison of Numbers and Populations of Gang Cities Versus All U.S. Cities in

1998, by Population Category

Note: For corresponding 1995 data, see table 21. “Cities” in this table includes U.S. cities and towns with municipal or township governments.

* Populations were not available for eight cities.

Sources: Data on numbers and populations are from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974, table 420, “County, Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (p. 262); and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 473, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1992” (p. 298). Both documents were published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,

in Census of Governments, Vol. 1, Governmental Organization.
67

Major Findings

The substance of the data presented in the main Report

was summarized in 19 major findings. The present section presents 16 additional findings. Findings that correspond to those based on 1995 data are updated using

new data that became available after 1995.

◆ Between 1970 and 1998, problems with youth

gangs were reported for 3,700 localities in the

United States. These included about 2,550 identified cities, towns, and villages and about 1,150

identified counties. These gang locality figures are

the highest ever reported in the Nation’s history.

◆ During the 1970’s, 270 gang cities, about 1 percent

of all U.S. cities, reported gang problems. By 1998,

the number of identified gang cities had risen to

2,547—about 7 percent of all U.S. cities—an increase of about 9.5 times, or 843 percent.

◆ In the 1970’s, gang problems were reported by

municipal units with a combined population of

48.6 million, or 27 percent of the total city population. By 1998, the combined population of all

gang cities had risen to 122 million, about 60 percent of the all-city population. The magnitude of

the increase was about 2.5 times, or 150 percent.

◆ The number of counties reporting gang problems

rose from 101 in the 1970’s, about 3 percent of all

U.S. counties, to 1,152 in 1998, about 38 percent

of all counties, an increase of about 11.5 times.

In the 1970’s, three of the five States reporting

the most gang counties were in the Northeast; in

the 1990’s, none of the top-ranking States were

in the Northeast.

◆ The population of gang counties rose from about

86 million in the 1970’s, about 38 percent of the

population of all counties, to about 200 million

in 1998, about 90 percent of the all-county

population—an increase of about 2.3 times, or

133 percent.

◆ Between the end of 1995 and mid-1998, about

1,550 previously unreported gang localities—about

1,100 cities and 450 counties—were reported by

national surveys and other sources. The number of

localities reported in this 2.5-year period was equal

to approximately 70 percent of the gang localities

reported during the 25-year period between 1970

and 1995.

◆ States reporting the largest number of gang cities

in 1998 were California, Illinois, Texas, Florida,

and Ohio. In the 1970’s, eastern States occupied

two of the top ranks; in 1998, none of the topranked cities were located in the East.

◆ Nationwide, there was a substantial decrease in

the concentration of gang cities in the higher

ranking States. In the 1970’s, the top four States

contained more than three-quarters of all gang

cities; in the 1990’s, the top four States contained

about one-third. In the 1970’s, only 8 States reported 5 or more gang cities; in the 1990’s, all 50

States did so.

◆ In the 1970’s, California, Texas, New Jersey,

Pennsylvania, and New York ranked highest in

the number of gang counties—with three of these

five States in the Northeast. In 1998, the topranking States were Texas, Georgia, California,

Illinois, and Florida, with southern replacing

northeastern States as the majority among the

top-ranking States.

◆ In the 1970’s, gang counties were concentrated

in a relatively small number of States, principally

California and Texas. By 1998, gang counties

were spread widely throughout the Nation. In the

1970’s, only 5 States reported more than 5 gang

counties; in 1998, 47 States did so. Gang counties

were distributed more evenly than gang cities

throughout the Nation. In 1998, about 40 percent

of all gang cities were located in the top five gangcity States, while less than 25 percent of all gang

counties were located in the top five States.

◆ The trend line showing the rate of increase in the

number of gang cities between the 1970’s and

1990’s was significantly altered by the addition

of the 1998 data. On the basis of 1995 data, the

number of gang cities showed a relatively small

increase (30 percent) between the 1970’s and

1980’s, followed by a sharp increase (281 percent)

between the 1980’s and 1990’s. The trend derived

from 1998 data is more balanced; instead of a

rapid acceleration in the number of gang cities

starting in the 1990’s, the data show that the
68

acceleration started during the 1980’s and continued fairly steadily through the 1990’s.

◆ The impact of the post-1995 data on the gang locality growth rate was even more pronounced in the

case of the gang counties. The trend line representing the growth of gang counties between the 1970’s

and 1990’s is almost completely straight, strengthening the finding that gang locality growth over

the three decades was relatively gradual rather

than abrupt. The magnitude of increase between

the 1980’s and 1990’s was almost equal to that of

the increase between the 1970’s and 1980’s.

◆ In the 1970’s, the western region of the United

States contained the largest number of gang cities,

and the southern region contained the fewest. By

1998, the South had moved to second place with

the largest regional growth in the number of gang

cities—an increase of 33 times—while the number

of gang cities in the West increased only 4 times.

◆ A major development during the study period was

a substantial and progressive increase in the numbers and proportions of smaller gang cities. The

average increase in the number of gang cities in

all population categories between the 1970’s and

1998 was 9.4 times (840 percent). Increases for

all cities larger than 50,000 fell below this average; cities smaller than 50,000 fell above the

average. Cities with 1,000 to 10,000 inhabitants

showed the largest numerical increases; the number of cities with 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants increased 27.4 times (2,643 percent); and the

number of cities with 1,000 to 5,000 increased

32.5 times (3,125 percent).

◆ Between the 1970’s and 1998, the size of the

average gang city fell from 182,000 to 34,000,

an 81-percent decline. The number of gang cities

smaller than 25,000 rose from 35 to 57 percent of

all gang cities, a difference of 22 percent, and the

number of gang cities smaller than 10,000 rose

from 9 to 32 percent, a difference of 23 percent.

In 1998, more than one-half of the gang cities in

the United States had populations of 25,000 or

less, compared with about one-third in the 1970’s.

Of the 1,064 cities reported after 1995, almost 80

percent were smaller than 25,000.

◆ Despite striking increases in the numbers and

populations of smaller gang cities, gang problems

in the 1990’s, as in the past, remained primarily a

big-city phenomenon. Comparing the numbers

and percentages of gang cities in designated

population categories in 1998 with the numbers

and percentages of all U.S. cities shows that cities

with more than 25,000 inhabitants (larger cities)

made up 43 percent of the number of all gang

cities but 88 percent of their population; 77 percent of the number of the larger cities but 86 percent of their population; and 3 percent of the

number of all U.S. cities but 52 percent of their

population.

Data-Collection Methods and the

Growth of Gang Problems

Data presented in this chapter, strengthening and

amplifying the findings of the rest of the Report,

paint an alarming picture of the extent, location, and

growth rate of youth gang problems in the United

States. The major findings just presented include

statements that by 1998, 3,700 identified cities and

counties had reported gang problems—the largest

number ever reported; that the total population of all

gang-problem cities included 60 percent of the total

municipal population and the population of gang

counties included 90 percent of the total county

population; and that the number of gang cities with

populations of 5,000 and 10,000 increased 32.5

times, or 3,125 percent, between 1970 and 1998.

How can one account for these unprecedented increases in the numbers and growth rates of gangproblem localities? The other eight chapters of the

Report address this question on two levels; first, a

set of explanations based primarily on social and

cultural developments, and second, a discussion of

the relationship between prevalence data and datacollection methods, under the heading “More Gangs

or More Information?” This discussion concluded

that in the absence of adequate supportive evidence,

a definitive answer was not possible.

The availability of new information obtained during

the post-1995 period created a new situation with

respect to evidence on gang locality increases and
69

data collection. Information acquired during the relatively short 2.5-year period made it possible to identify sources of information more accurately, to obtain

more details on data-gathering methods, and to track

the procedures used in reporting new gang localities

more precisely than was previously possible.

This new information provides a basis for recasting

the “more gangs or more information” issue. The central question addressed in the present section is, What

is the relationship between the unprecedented growth

in gang-problem localities during the past several

decades and the methods used to obtain information

on these localities? This revised formulation is more

likely to engender concrete conclusions than the formulation in the “More Gangs or More Information?”

section, and it also dovetails more closely with the

nature of the new evidence.

The first major clue to understanding the relationship between information on gang-problem localities

and data-collection methods may be found by dividing the decade of the 1990’s into two periods—

January 1, 1990, through December 31, 1995 (the

last day of data gathering for the first eight chapters), and January 1, 1996, through May 31, 1998

(the reporting period for this chapter). During the

first period, an average of 14.2 new gang cities per

month were reported; during the second, the average was 36.5 per month, more than 2.5 times the

number reported during the first period. Clearly,

new gang cities were being reported at a disproportionately rapid rate during the post-1995 period.

What lay behind this striking development? Data

collected during this period provide a body of evidence that helps to explain this phenomenon. Subsequent sections discuss this evidence under three

headings: “Yearly Rate of Printed Reports Listing

Identified Gang Localities,” “Discovering Gang

Cities Not Reported in the 1970’s and 1980’s,” and

“Sharp Increases in the Number of Gang Cities in

Individual States.”

Yearly Rate of Printed Reports Listing

Identified Gang Localities

Between 1970 and 1998, approximately 50 reports

listing identified gang localities were produced by

various agencies and obtained by the present study.

The average yearly frequency of these reports reveals a clear pattern. Between 1970 and 1990, four

reports were issued, an average of 0.2 reports per

year. During the period from 1970 to 1995, 26 reports were issued, raising the average to 1 per year.

During the period from 1990 through 1995, an

additional 22 reports were issued, an average of 3.7

per year. For the period covered by this chapter—

January 1996 through May 1998—25 new reports

were issued, an average of 10.4 per year.

The identities or types of these reports are presented

in tables A–2 and A–3 in appendix A and in table 25.

The numbers and types of agencies reporting gang

localities during the most recent period were four

national surveys, three State surveys, seven regional

surveys, five task force reports, three commission

reports, and three university-sponsored surveys.

Paralleling previously reported trends, the number

of reports produced between January 1996 and

May 1998 was disproportionately high compared

with the other periods. Rates for this period were 13

times higher than those for the 1970–90 period and

almost 3 times higher than rates during the first half

of the 1990’s. It is unlikely that the number of authentically new gang cities could have increased as

rapidly as the number of new reports. The evidence

presented here provides a reasonable basis for concluding that during the time periods examined in

this Report, the more frequent the issuance of new

reports, the higher the likelihood of reported increases in the number of gang localities.40

Discovering Gang Cities Not Reported in

the 1970’s and 1980’s

As noted earlier, there was a substantial difference

between the 1995 and 1998 data in the number of

cities reporting gang problems in the 1970’s and

1980’s. For the 1970’s, 1995 data recorded a cumulative total of 201 gang cities, while 1998 data showed a

total of 270—an increase of 69, or about 34 percent.

For the 1980’s, 1995 data showed a figure of 267 gang

cities compared with the 1998 figure of 640—an increase of 373, or about 140 percent. Again raising the

question of the extent to which these increases were a

result of actual increases in new gang cities or a result

of expanded and improved data-gathering activity, it
70

is logically impossible that previously unknown gangproblem cities had somehow come into being during

the 15 to 25 years preceding the preparation of this

Report, since their designation as gang cities was

based on information obtained subsequent to the

1970’s. The actual number of named cities under consideration did not change after the 1970’s; only their

designation as gang cities was changed. It follows that

these increases had to be related to data collection

activity and practices. What is involved here is a process of retrieving information on previously undetected gang-problem cities.

For both decades, the increases just cited are a direct product of national surveys conducted in 1995

and 1996 by the National Youth Gang Center (1997,

1999), funded by the U.S. Department of Justice.

These surveys contained questions designed to elicit

information on the existence of gang-problem localities in the past. In the 1995 survey, the major question used to obtain this information was phrased as

follows: “On the basis of your personal knowledge

and information you may be able to obtain from

persons familiar with past time periods, please indicate the time period or periods when your jurisdiction experienced youth gang problems.” The 1996

survey included two questions on prior gang problems. The first was, “Have you had youth gang

problems in your jurisdiction prior to 1996?” The

second was, “If you answered yes to question one,

approximately what year did gangs begin to pose a

problem in your jurisdiction?”

Respondents in 127 of the 1,492 cities that reported

gang problems in the 1995 survey also reported that

gang problems were present in their jurisdictions

during the 1970’s. Of these, 59 had not been recorded in the major dataset of this study. In the 1996

survey, 321 respondents who reported the presence

of gang problems prior to 1996 also reported gang

problems for the 1970’s. Of these, 10 had not been

recorded in the dataset. Thus, data derived from the

two NYGC surveys accounted for the entire difference (69 cities) between the figures for the number

of gang cities in the 1970’s reported in table 8 (1995

data) and those in table 26 (1998 data).

For the 1980’s, the figure of 373 for the number of

gang cities not included in the 1995 tabulations was

also derived from the two NYGC surveys. In the

1995 survey, respondents representing 1,492 urban

jurisdictions reported the presence of youth gang

problems. Of these, 545 respondents reported gang

problems in their cities in the 1980’s, of which 235

had not been recorded in this study’s dataset. The

1996 survey reported 898 cities with gang problems

during that year, with 331 respondents naming a

year in the 1980’s as the time these problems were

first observed. Of these, 138 were not included in

the study’s 1995 dataset. Adding 235 and 138 produces 373, the number of cities added to the 1980’s

figures on the basis of 1998 data.

Thus, the addition of almost 450 gang cities to the

number of cities reported for the 1970’s and 1980’s

on the basis of 1998 data was due entirely to information obtained by the two NYGC surveys. It was

the extensive coverage and inclusion of relevant

inquiries that accounted for the increase, since no

real increase could have occurred.

Sharp Increases in the Number of

Gang Cities in Individual States

Tables 8 (1995 data) and 26 (1998 data) rank the

50 States according to the number of gang cities

reported in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Of the 2

States that entered or left the top 10, Oklahoma

(33 gang cities) fell from 9th place with 33 gang

cities (1995 data) to 18th place with 45 cities (1998

data). Oregon, the new top 10 entry, rose precipitously, rising from 29th place with 16 cities (1995

data) to 9th place with 68 cities (1998 data). As

noted earlier, the cumulative total of all gang cities

in table 26 was more than 70 percent larger than the

total shown in table 8. Individual States showed

larger increases. A comparison of city rankings by

State based on 1995 data with those based on 1998

data shows that the State of Oregon, with 16 gang

cities and a rank of 29 in table 8, added 52 cities to

reach a total of 68 in table 26—an increase of 4.25

times, or 325 percent. As a result, Oregon reached

a rank of nine. What accounted for this precipitous

increase? Table 32 lists the four States that showed

the highest percentage increases in the number of

gang cities (1998 data compared with 1995 data).

These States were Oregon, Utah, Iowa, and Washington. Increases ranged from 171 percent (2.7

times) for Iowa and Washington to 325 percent
71

(4.2 times) for Oregon. The basis for the increases is

revealed clearly by the data in the last column of the

table, which shows that more than 90 percent of the

156 cities newly reported for 1998 were obtained by

the NYGC surveys. In the case of Iowa, all of the

24 new cities were reported in the NYGC surveys.

These figures provide evidence that the locality coverage of the NYGC surveys was more extensive

than that of previous surveys and suggest that the

precipitous increases shown here were a direct product of the design and implementation of the NYGC

surveys.

Summary

A major objective of this Report has been to replace a widespread but essentially undocumented

impression that crime by youth gangs was proliferating and getting worse with concrete statistical

evidence. In the course of the study, several other

objectives assumed increasing importance. One of

these objectives concerns methods of data collection. How does one go about acquiring reliable

information on the changing prevalence of youthgang localities over an extended time period (a

difficult enterprise with few established guidelines)? Another objective concerns accuracy of

information. On what grounds can one evaluate

collected information as reasonably accurate and

complete? Do the numbers of gang-problem localities tabulated here correspond reasonably well to

the actual number of such localities, past and

present?

Voluminous evidence with respect to the first objective is presented throughout the Report. On the most

inclusive level, the 1998 data identify approximately

3,700 gang-problem localities—cities, towns, villages,

counties, parishes—that reported gang problems by

mid-1998. This compares with a figure of about 371

gang localities reported for the 1970’s—an increase of

about 10 times. Similar increases in numbers were

reported for individual States, regions, and population categories. The presentation of these data fulfilled the major objective of the Report. The second

objective, the development of methods for collecting

reliable information on gang-problem localities, is

discussed in considerable detail in the “An Explosion

of Youth Gang Problems in the United States” chapter and appendix A.

The third objective, increasing the accuracy of collected data, is the principal concern of the section

entitled “Data-Collection Methods and the Growth

of Gang Problems.” The issue of accuracy is examined by analyzing three sets of calculations: the yearly

rates of reports listing identified gang-problem localities, the process of discovering gang-problem localities known to local observers but not included in

nationally disseminated reports, and the phenomenon

of States that showed exceptionally large increases in

the number of gang cities during a relatively short

time period.

Table 32: States With Highest Percentage Increases in Number of Gang Cities, 1996–98

Number Number

of Gang of Gang Number

Cities in Cities in of New Percent

1995 1998 Gang Cities, Increase

State (1995 Data) (1998 Data) 1996–98 1996–98 Number Percent

Oregon 16 68 52 325% 48 92.3%

Utah 10 37 27 270.0 21 77.8

Iowa 14 38 24 171.4 24 100

Washington 31 84 53 171.0 49 92.5

Total 71 227 156 219.7 142 91.0

* National Youth Gang Center.

Gang Cities Reported

by NYGC* Survey
72

Evidence based on the first set of calculations

showed that the more frequently surveys were

conducted during the 1970–98 study period, the

greater the likelihood that new gang localities would

be recorded. The second set of calculations showed

that substantial increases in the numbers of gang

localities reported for previous decades resulted

from more extensive coverage and greater specificity

of inquiries in more recent surveys. The third set of

calculations showed that some of the most striking

increases in the numbers of gang localities in particular States resulted from more extensive survey

coverage rather than actual increases in the numbers

of new gang localities.

The implications of these findings with respect to

the accuracy of collected data can be summarized as

follows: the more studies conducted, the greater the

likelihood of accurate data; surveys inquiring about

past time periods in addition to current periods fill

information gaps and provide greater accuracy; the

more extensive the coverage of existing localities,

the greater the likelihood of accurate prevalence

figures. Increases in both the numbers and quality

of more recent surveys enhance confidence in the

validity of the figures presented here and strengthen

the likelihood that the data in this Report accurately

represent empirical reality.

How does the three-decade period preceding the

year 2000 fit into the overall history of the Nation’s

experience with youth gangs? The landscape of

gang localities is constantly shifting; past research

has rightly characterized the presence of gang problems as a wax-and-wane phenomenon. The prevalence of gangs during particular time periods and in

particular localities continues to change. New gangs

form, existing gangs divide, separate gangs consolidate, and older gangs dissolve.

In comparing different historical periods, three logical situations can be distinguished with respect to

gang problems. First, there are periods during which

the number of gangs that form and the number that

dissolve are relatively equal, resulting in a fairly

stable number of gang localities and little change in

their prevalence. Second, there are periods when the

number of dissolving gangs outnumbers those coming into existence, producing a decrease in prevalence. Third, there are periods during which the

number of gangs forming and continuing to function

outnumbers those that are dissolving, resulting in

an overall increase of gangs and gang localities.

There can be little doubt that the time period covered by this study—from the beginning of the 1970’s

to the end of the 1990’s—fits the third situation and

can be fairly characterized as a period of unprecedented growth in the number of youth gangs and

the number of localities with gang problems. While

there have been some decreases in particular localities and during particular times, the overall trend

has been one of expanding and continuing growth.

How long will this phase continue, and what will

follow it? The “Trend Prospects for Gang Localities”

chapter addresses this issue. It concludes that the

next phase may be a leveling off of gang problems or

even a reduction in the prevalence of gang problems

in the United States.

One thing is sure. In the future, the Nation will not

know which of these outcomes has in fact occurred

unless the practice of conducting comprehensive and

high-quality gang surveys, developed during the

study period, continues. The data presented in this

Report will enable future surveys to measure trends

in the scope and character of youth gang problems

in the United States with more precision than was

previously possible.
73

Endnotes

1. Among the few researchers who have provided data on

trends in the numbers of gang cities are Malcolm Klein

and G. David Curry. Klein (1995, p. 91) provided figures

on the number of gang cities between two periods designated as “before 1961” and “up to 1992.” His figures are

cited in the “Gang Localities in the United States: A

Quarter-Century Report” chapter of the present Report.

Curry and colleagues trace changes in numbers of gang

cities in several reports, including a section on “Changes

in the Gang Problem over Time” (Curry et al., 1992).

They compare Curry’s own 1992 data on numbers of

gang cities with those reported by Walter Miller in 1975

and 1982, Jerome Needle and William Stapleton in 1983,

and Curry and Irving Spergel in 1988. Curry also includes several tables in a section entitled “Reported

Changes in the Number of Jurisdictions With Gang

Problems” (1996). No study available by 1995 reports or

analyzes trends in gang counties or includes breakdowns

by regions or population categories.

2. See Miller, 1975, 1976, 1982.

3. See Miller, 1982, pp. 4–5. Of the 18 substantive topics

listed as “major questions,” the present Report directly

addresses only two: “Where are youth gangs located?” and

“What regions and cities show the highest concentration of

gangs?” However, 15 of the 33 tables in the 1982 report

present data that deal directly or indirectly with localities.

4. Methodologically oriented readers will note that none

of the many locality units counted and tabulated in this

Report were obtained by sampling—a procedure widely

used in a type of research known as survey research.

Sampling is a procedure for ascertaining the size of a set

of units without actually counting them. A familiar example is national-level opinion polling, which attempts to

determine opinions and preferences of very large numbers of people—often the entire adult population of the

United States—by questioning a very small part of that

population. Elaborate statistical techniques are used to

reach conclusions about the opinions of the larger populations by eliciting the opinions of the people in a small

subset. A common type of national opinion poll may base

its findings on answers to questions by a subset of a national population group (e.g., all registered voters) as small

as 0.00001 or 0.00002 percent of the total population.

Sampling based on a simple random selection of units in

the subset to be queried produces the most accurate results when certain statistical criteria are met and when

all units in the larger population (the universe) have an

equal chance of becoming part of the population subset

or sample. It is a useful method of gathering information

in situations where the individual identities of the people

(or units) included in the larger population but excluded

from the sample are not important. For example, the

population of registered voters in the United States in

1996 was 127.615 million. When a Los Angeles Times national opinion poll sampled 1,392 registered voters, the

identity of 127.614 million, or 99.9999 percent of the

registered voters, was unknown.

While sampling may be an appropriate technique in studies where it is not necessary to know the actual identity

of all units in a designated population (see, for example,

research proposed on page 7), this is certainly not the

case in the present study, where the objective is to count

and identify all known gang-problem localities in the

United States. The use of sampling in this situation would

produce counts that included many unidentified localities.

Knowing the names of reported gang localities is essential

to the aims and methods of the present study. The following examples illustrate why sampling is not an appropriate method in the present situation.

The primary audience for this study consists largely of

persons who are affiliated with identified States, cities,

towns, and counties and whose major concern is the

youth gang situation in their own jurisdiction. The listings

of all known gang localities in appendixes D and E enable

readers to scan a list of names to see whether their localities are included. They can also examine sections of the

Report that analyze the seriousness, duration, and prospects of local gang problems and the standings of States

and counties ranked according to the numbers of gang

localities in each. All these analyses require specific identification of localities.

Another reason that locality identities are needed relates

to the analyses of trends and rates. These require knowing the population figures for specific cities, counties,

regions, and States—figures that can be obtained only if

the names of the localities are known. Locality population
74

figures are essential to the many analyses in the Report

that measure changes between the 1970’s and 1990’s. For

example, all of the findings on increases in the numbers of

smaller gang cities, and in the numbers of gang localities

in the South, require information on their populations in

both decades. Assigning localities to specified population

categories plays a major role in the analyses in the “Regional Trends in Gang Cities,” “Trends in Size of Gang

Cities,” and “Summary and Explanations” chapters of this

Report. An additional reason for identifying all gang

localities involves information on the exact geographic

location of gang-problem cities and towns. For example,

the analysis of predicted growth rates in the “Trend Prospects for Gang Localities” chapter requires information

on the location of smaller cities in order to distinguish

communities located in or near metropolitan areas (e.g.,

suburban satellites of large cities) from those located

outside of urban areas. Without knowing their names,

such an analysis would not have been possible. None of

the three objectives just cited could have been achieved if

the localities involved were not identified. Thus, sampling

would not have been an appropriate technique for the

present study.

5. The issue of definition of “youth gang” is treated

extensively in other works. Among the more recent discussions are those of Irving Spergel (1995, pp. 16–25)

and Malcolm Klein (1995, pp. 20–30). Spergel uses the

term “youth gang” to refer to the unit under consideration, while Klein uses the term “street gang.” This difference in referring to the major object of concern reflects a

longstanding controversy which, at the time of writing,

is far from resolution. One of the major sources of contention concerns the role of age in defining gangs; for the

proponents of the “street gang” usage, age is not a major

consideration; for those using the term “youth gang,” age

is a major distinguishing characteristic. Miller presents a

conception of youth gangs as one type of “law-violating

youth group” and a definition derived from interview

responses of 300 respondents (1982, pp. 16–22). Curry

includes an excellent discussion of the definition issue

(1996, pp. 31–34).

6. A comprehensive collection of articles and excerpts

relevant to the issues involved in attempting to develop

a widely accepted or uniform definition of the term

“gang” is contained in a set of documents compiled by

NYGC for its Gang-Related Data Collection and Analysis Focus Group (National Youth Gang Center, 1996),

whose first meeting was held in Washington, DC, in

September 1996. A major objective of this group was to

address the issue of what David Curry calls “a universal

legal definition of ‘gang.’” This 700-page volume contains

26 separate documents presenting different approaches to

the problem of developing a uniform definition. A good

example of the flavor and intensity of efforts to achieve a

reasonable consensus on the definition issue is contained

in Spergel and Bobrowski (1989), an edited transcript of

a Chicago conference on developing uniform definitional

criteria. Both law enforcement personnel and academicians attended this conference, and the numerous disagreements and confrontations among participants are

clearly evident in the published volume. Curry’s discussion of “Differences in Definition” (1996) is especially

noteworthy. After completing national gang surveys in

1992 and 1994, Curry felt strongly that without a uniform or universally accepted definition of “gang,” all of

the collected statistical data on gang prevalence, numbers,

and other quantitative variables would be suspect because

of a virtual certainty that units designated as gangs by

different agencies and sources would not be mutually

comparable. Curry recommended a renewed effort to

achieve a uniform definition. A few years later, however,

his hope that such a definition could be developed had

waned, and in his 1996 report he wrote, “the struggle for

a universal legal definition is commendable, but the legal

realities do not make this struggle a promising one.”

7. See Miller, 1982, pp. 10–15, for details on characteristics of survey respondents.

8. See Miller, 1982, pp. 20–22. Approximately 1,400 definitional elements were provided by respondents. The six

gang criteria cited most frequently were being organized,

having identifiable leadership, identifying with a territory,

associating continuously, having a specific purpose, and

engaging in illegal activities. The three criteria with an

agreement level of more than 90 percent were leadership,

continuous association, and having a purpose.

9. This figure for the total number of cities in the United

States in 1970 and subsequent figures for the total number of counties are taken from table 420, “County,

Municipal, and Township Governments, 1972, and Their

Population, 1970, by Population Size Groups” (Bureau of

the Census, 1974, p. 262). The Bureau of the Census uses

several terms and definitions for referring to numbers of

cities, towns, and counties. Table 420 designates city units

as “municipalities and townships,” which are defined as

localities with municipal or township governments. The

census also uses the term “incorporated places” for places

reported to the Bureau as “legally in existence under the

laws of their respective States as cities, boroughs, towns,

and villages.” This usage is found in the table entitled,

“Incorporated Places, by Population Size: 1960 to 1990,”

(Bureau of the Census, 1993, p. 24, table 45). Data derived from both of these usages are employed in this Report. Because of its focus on long-term trends, only those

census tabulations that permit direct comparisons

between the 1980’s and 1990’s can be used here. The

“municipalities and townships” definition is used for most

tabulations, but the “incorporated places” definition is

also used. In some cases, differences between tabulations

based on the two different types of unit produce statistical

discrepancies. For example, on the basis of “municipalities and townships,” the total number of U.S. cities and
75

towns in 1992 was 35,935 (Bureau of the Census, 1993,

table 420); on the basis of incorporated places, the number was 19,290 (Bureau of the Census, 1993, table 45).

The total county population using the municipal unit

basis was 224.9 million (Bureau of the Census, 1993,

table 473); on the basis of the all-State population, 248.7

million. This discrepancy results from a counting convention used by the census. The census enumerates governed

localities for three types of units—counties, municipalities, and townships. In some instances, county and

municipal governments are consolidated. In these cases,

the census designates the consolidated units as municipal

rather than county units, thus reducing the population

totals for counties. As a consequence, as noted in footnote

2 to table 5, county population figures based on the municipal government tabulations are 10 percent lower than

the total county population reported elsewhere by the

census. See the footnotes for tables 4, 5, and 22.

10. Since there are no established procedures for dealing

with the city-county issue in the context of counting gang

localities, the author submitted these counting rules to

several researchers who have conducted gang-locality

surveys. All of those contacted confirmed the acceptability of the rules as formulated here. David Curry, who has

had more experience in conducting gang-locality surveys

than any other researcher, was particularly positive in

validating the rules.

11. With respect to this and other calculations in which

differences between two or more sets of figures are calculated and reported, the author considered the option of

applying tests of statistical significance to the many sets

of differing values in this Report. Initial calculations showing time-period differences between comparable units were

subjected to nonparametric tests, using the SPSS software

package (Release 6.0). All of the initial tests produced

significance levels well beyond the 0.01 probability level,

and the author decided that such tests would contribute

little to the import of the many statistics-based findings in

the Report. The large differences between most sets of

measures in subsequent tables appear to confirm that using

tests to validate statistical significance is unnecessary.

12. One of the few studies that focuses directly on the

gang county as a unit was conducted by Claire Johnson

and her colleagues for the Institute of Law and Justice

(Johnson, 1995). Johnson mailed questionnaires to prosecutors’ offices in 368 counties; gang problems were reported for 192. Johnson contacted all offices in the 175

largest counties and sampled smaller counties. There was

no attempt to conduct an exhaustive survey of all U.S.

counties. Spergel and Curry’s 1988 survey (Spergel et al.,

1990) includes a list of 22 gang counties as part of their

larger survey of gang cities. Using county lists developed

in part from the dataset of the present study, John Moore

and his associates in the National Youth Gang Center

sent survey schedules to 1,300 county sheriff’s departments. Of these, 515 reported gang problems in their

counties (National Youth Gang Center, 1997, pp. 9–12);

220 of these counties were not included in the dataset

used in the present Report.

13. Curry (1996, table 7) reviewed the number of gang

cities reported in national surveys between 1975 and

1995. Starting with six gang cities identified by Miller in

1975, Curry traces the number of gang cities, both specified and estimated, reported in subsequent years. Miller’s

1982 study was based on a count of 201 identified gang

cities, and an estimated total of 286 cities, in 1980.

Spergel and Curry reported 68 cities in 1988. Curry

reported 110 gang cities in 1992 and 760 in 1994. Klein

reported 766 gang cities by the end of 1991 and estimated

the existence of 800 or more. Following Curry’s tabulation, John P. Moore and his colleagues, using lists developed in part from the dataset of the present study, sent

surveys to 2,820 city police departments, 1,492 of which

reported gang problems in their cities (National Youth

Gang Center, 1997:9–12). Of these cities, 594 were not

included in the dataset of the present Report.

14. See note 12.

15. The subregions or divisions of the United States are

shown in figure 15, page 31.

16. See note 9.

17. The distribution of the cities in the 1970’s and early

1990’s takes the form of a bell curve, also known as a

normal or Gaussian distribution curve. Exploration of a

normal probability distribution may be found in any introductory statistics text.

18. The trend noted here, an increase in the numbers and

proportions of smaller cities with gang problems, was just

getting under way in the late 1970’s. In comparing the

size of gang cities in States with gang problems, the author was surprised to find small gang cities disproportionately prevalent in California. “If one assumes that . . .

developments in California represent the wave of the

future for the rest of the country, this may presage a new

national development whereby problems with youth

gangs will break out of their traditional location in the

largest cities and appear with increasing frequency in

smaller localities as well” (Miller, 1982, p. 33). Present

data confirm this prediction.

19. For a discussion of the reasons for formulating these

explanations, see the “Possible Explanations for Gang

Trends” section on pages 9–10.

20. One of several theories attempting to explain increases in drug trading by Los Angeles gangs in the

1980’s was reported in 1996 by Gary Webb (1998), then
76

a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. Webb’s newspaper series and book raise the possibility that the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) supported Nicaraguan drug

dealers who sold crack cocaine to Los Angeles, street

gangs in the 1980’s to raise money for the CIA-backed

Contras, who were fighting the Marxist Sandinista government. The validity of this theory was denied by the

CIA and other Federal officials, and both the facts and

interpretations of Webb’s story were disputed by other

writers. Despite this, these allegations were taken seriously enough to produce formal investigations by the

CIA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Intelligence Committees of both the House and Senate of the

U.S. Congress.

21. See Howell, 1996 and 1997.

22. The urban riots of the 1960’s and the role of youth

gangs in the riots are discussed in some detail in Miller,

1981, pp. 314–315.

23. The role of the Federal Government in granting large

sums of money to urban youth gangs, primarily through

the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was established by the U.S. Congress to spearhead the Federal

War on Poverty, is described in detail in Richard Posten’s

1971 book The Gang and the Establishment: A Story of Conflict Arising Out of the Federal and Private Financing of Urban

Street Gangs. Figures cited in Posten’s book document

about $1.6 million in grants to gangs in New York, and

Chicago; a single Chicago gang, the Blackstone Rangers,

received an O.E.O. grant of $927,341 in April 1968

(Posten, 1971:235).

24. Characteristics of female-based or female-headed households in inner-city communities and their relation to youth

gangs are discussed briefly in Miller (1958, pp. 13–14), and

in some detail in Miller (1959, pp. 225–229).

25. The earlier term “broken home” was supplanted in

later years by terms such as “single parent families,”

“fatherless families,” and “female-headed households.”

26. See table 80, “Children Under 18 Years Old, by Presence of Parents, 1970 to 1992” (Bureau of the Census,

1993, p. 64).

27. See table 43, “Household and Family Characteristics

of Black Persons: 1990” (Bureau of the Census, 1992,

p. 56).

28. A preliminary research design, based on the proposed

research described here, was developed and partially

tested by NYGC but the research itself has not been

completed.

29. William J. Bratton, Commissioner of Police, New

York City, quoted in Butterfield, 1996.

30. Jack Levin, Professor of Criminology and Director,

Program for the Study of Violence and Social Conflict,

Northeastern University, quoted in the Boston Herald,

February 20, 1996 (Flynn, 1996).

31. See, for example, Wolfgang, M.E., and Serracuti, F.

1967. The Subculture of Violence. London, England:

Tavistock Publications, Ltd., p. 258.

32. DiIulio, Jr., Professor of Political Science, Princeton

University, quoted in Newsweek, December 4, 1995

(Morgenthau, 1995).

33. James A. Fox, Dean, College of Criminal Justice,

Northeastern University, quoted in Newsweek, December

4, 1995 (Morgenthau, 1995).

34. Miller’s (1982) prediction that gang problems would

worsen in coming years was derived from a detailed analysis reported in Miller (1975, pp. 55–73). The discussion

addressed five major questions: (1) How does the seriousness of current gang problems compare with those of the

recent (10–15 years) past? (2) How do respondents in

gang-problem cities perceive the future of gang problems

in their cities? (3) What are the major factors (e.g., social,

economic, demographic) seen by respondents as influencing the future of gang violence? (4) What do population

projections for the youth (approximately ages 12–18)

category portend for the future of gang and other youth

violence? (5) What is the likelihood that gang problems

will develop in cities not now experiencing such problems?

Since much of the information supporting the problems

will worsen prediction was provided by respondents (see

tables 24 and 25, Miller 1975, pp. 67–68), a similar analysis

is not possible for the present Report. Data with respect to

the fifth question, the likelihood of future gang problems in

currently gang-free cities, was provided by respondents in

the 1995 National Youth Gang Survey (National Youth

Gang Center, 1997, p. 15). Responses by 1,379 respondents were as follows: likelihood high, 7 percent; medium,

30 percent; low, 55 percent; none, 8 percent. The opinion

of more than two-thirds of these respondents, then, supports a prediction that the increase in gang problems will

slow down.

35. As shown in figure 6 and elsewhere, the number of new

gang cities listed for the 1970’s was 201. Although these

cities are designated as new, they could be more accurately

designated as new in the 1970’s within the limits of the

dataset for this study, which began in the 1970’s and thus

does not distinguish between cities that first reported gang

problems during that decade and those that may have

reported problems before 1970. Malcolm Klein, in a publication that became available after the present analysis was

completed, indicates the presence of 94 gang cities up to

1970 (Klein, 1995, p. 29, figure 4.1). Subtracting this figure

from 201 produces an alternative figure of 107 for the

number of new gangs cities in the 1970’s. Using this figure
77

for the purpose of projection produces the 5- and 10-year

projections indicated in the text.

36. See note 9.

37. The following method was used to estimate the proportion of gang cities and towns with populations of 10,000

or less that were not located in areas near or part of larger

gang cities. A sample of 71 cities located in 26 States, about

one-quarter of the cities with populations of 10,000 and

smaller, was selected. DeLorme’s “Map-n-Go” program

was used to locate these cities. Two categories of cities were

distinguished—those within a major metropolitan area and

those located within 20 road miles of a larger city with

gang problems. Cities were located through a search function. The DeLorme program frames all major metropolitan

areas in the United States with black boundary lines. All

cities falling within these boundaries were coded as urban

area cities. For cities located outside these boundaries, a

trip-mileage function made it possible to locate all named

localities within 20 road miles of a larger gang-problem

city. Between 70 and 75 percent of the searched cities did

not fit either of these categories. In addition, the map

graphics made it fairly easy to identify villages and small

towns in rural and sparsely populated areas.

38. The process by which reduced growth leading to reductions in the number of gang cities could also produce

reductions in the overall scope of national gang problems

can be illustrated by a hypothetical scenario. If there are

2,000 gang cities in the United States in the year 2000 and

a loss of 500 gang cities by 2010, the number of gangs,

gang members, and gang crimes in the remaining 1,500

cities would have to expand radically in order to maintain

the same numbers as in 2000, let alone increase their numbers. Such radical expansion appears to be unlikely.

39. The 1996 National Youth Gang Survey (National Youth

Gang Center, 1999) records a figure of 4,824 gang

localities nationwide for the year 1996. This figure is an

amalgam of two components: 1,385 identified gang localities and 3,439 unidentified localities. The NYGC total for

gang cities includes 898 identified and 2,949 unidentified

cities and the total for gang counties includes 487 identified and 490 unidentified counties. The 3,439 unidentified

localities, 71 percent of the total, are a product of estimation procedures (see table 1, “Number of Jurisdictions

with Gangs in 1996: Reported Versus Estimated,” National Youth Gang Center, 1999, p. 8). Comparing these

NYGC figures with the three-decade cumulative figures

tabulated in the present Report (see the list on pages 67–

68 of the “1998 Update of Selected Data” chapter) produces the following breakout: 898 cities identified and

3,847 estimated by NYGC—2,547 cities identified by this

Report; 487 counties identified and 977 estimated by

NYGC—1,152 counties identified by this Report.

Comparing the NYGC and current Report figures shows

that the NYGC figures are 30 percent higher for both

identified and unidentified gang cities; 18 percent lower

for gang counties; and 23 percent higher for all localities.

Comparing identified localities only, the NYGC figure

for gang cities is 184 percent lower; for gang counties,

137 percent lower; and for all localities, 167 percent

lower. Although these comparisons may be instructive,

the two sets of figures are only indirectly comparable.

The NYGC survey and this Report employed different

methods of data collection, different time periods (1 year

versus 3 decades), and different methods of analysis,

including a different method of counting gang counties.

40. Postulating a time period during which the number

of gang localities was decreasing, the conclusion would

be that the more frequent the issuance of new reports, the

higher the likelihood of reported decreases in the number

of gang localities.
79

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