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17 Youth Violence & Juv. Just. 3 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/yvja17 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Youth Violence and juvenile justice 2019, Vol. 17(l) 3-23 @ The Author(s) 2017 Gangs in School: ExploringArilresgudin: Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions the Experiences of DOI: 10. 1177/1541204017739678 journals.sagepub.com/home/yvi Gang-involved Youth OSAGE Dena C. Carson and Finn-Aage Esbensen2 Abstract This study explores three questions: (1) What are the criteria that current or formerly gang- involved youth use to identify the presence of gangs in school? (2) Do gang activities produce incivilities and victimizations within the school context? and (3) What is the impact of a gang presence on youth in the school, specifically with respect to the presence or absence of fear? We examine the influence of gangs in schools through qualitative analysis of 180 in-depth semistructured interviews. The sample includes youth with varying levels of gang involvement who attended schools across the United States. Youth relied on personal knowledge and visual cues to identify gangs in their school. Despite the occurrence of vicarious victimizations and incivilities at the hands of gang youth, respondents indicated that gangs did not impact their school life. These youth frequently used normalization and delimitation processes to deal with gangs in their school. Keywords school violence, gangs, fear of crime, school disorder Introduction Concern regarding the presence of gangs and gang activity in America's schools is not a new phenomenon. Reports of the existence of gangs in urban schools (including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles) began appearing in the 1970s and 1980s (Miller, 1975; Moore, 1991; Spergel, 1995; Vigil, 1988). Official data, however, indicate that the prevalence of gangs in schools has been decreasing since the 1990s. According to the School Crime Supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in 2013, about 12% of students in the United States reported that gangs were present at their school, down from the 1995 estimate of 28% (Zhang, Musu-Gillette, & Oudekerk, 2016). These results mirror research on school-based victimization and delinquency, in general, noting a steady decline since the 1990s. 'Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA 2 University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA Corresponding Author: Dena C. Carson, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, 420 University Boulevard, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA. Email: carsond@iupui.edu

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