Gangs in the United States

This is the story of Alex Sanchez, a former member of one of the most violent street gangs in the country, who after turning his life around became the executive director of Homies Unidos—a group devoted to the prevention of gang violence.

In June of 2009, however, Sanchez found himself in serious trouble when the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles indicted him for ordering a hit against a member of MS-13, the very same gang he once belonged to. Prosecutors claimed that Sanchez never left MS-13 at all. And they say they have the recorded phone conversations to prove it.

Still, for some, the prosecution’s case was hardly airtight. For example, the feds had been monitoring Sanchez’s phone conversations for nearly a decade without making any attempt to curtail his activities.

The Alex Sanchez Case and the MS-13 Gang

By Edward Humes. He is based in Southern California, is a Pulitzer Prize – winning journalist and the author of ten nonfiction books (2011)

Over the years, Alex Sanchez had skillfully used his “street cred” as a former MS-13 gang member to persuade hundreds of young people to steer clear of gang life. Now, after listening to several secretly recorded phone conversations, prosecutors charge that those efforts were all just an elaborate front.

(…) “Today in Los Angeles, where the MS-13 gang was formed, we are holding its leaders accountable for the violence and intimidation they have used to bring terror to the citizens living and working within the gang’s territory,” then-U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien told reporters. The indictments marked the latest assault in a nine-year war on MS-13 by the FBI, which had used 21 court-ordered wiretaps to monitor thousands of phone conversations.

The wiretaps had already helped build an earlier state case against the alleged top shot-caller for MS-13 in Los Angeles. (It also appears that the FBI had made informants out of the alleged “CEO” of MS-13’s worldwide operations, as well as his second-in-command.) Now the recordings were being used in an effort to bring down Sanchez, a poster boy for the gang-prevention efforts that many law enforcement officials reflexively distrusted.
The latest indictments charged that the defendants had conspired to engage in extortion, drug dealing, robbery, witness intimidation, and seven murders. The complaint also described a failed conspiracy to assassinate one of the government’s top gang experts, Detective Frank Flores of the Los Angeles Police Department.

This was a major breakthrough in the fight against MS-13, proclaimed then-LAPD Chief William Bratton, speaking at O’Brien’s press conference. He branded the gang “a cancer … that lacks a single redeeming quality.” And yet no aspect of the story drew as much attention as the charges against Sanchez.

Over the years, Sanchez—who is now 39 years old, a father of three, and executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of Homies Unidos, an organization devoted to reducing gang violence—had skillfully used his “street cred” to persuade hundreds of young people to steer clear of gang life. Local politicians, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, sang his praises and tasked him with helping to write Los Angeles’s gang-intervention policy, adopted by the city council in 2008. Inner-city principals begged Sanchez to speak at their schools. The California Wellness Foundation supported his gang-intervention efforts with a $240,000 grant. And he had been honored with both the Lottie Wexler Peace and Justice Award (joining Phil Donahue and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, among others) and the Martin Luther King Legacy Association’s Drum Major award for community service.
But now police and prosecutors were saying that it was all just an elaborate front. And, they said, they had the recorded phone conversations to prove it.

It seemed like an open-and-shut case. But in the weeks and months that followed the indictments, new questions threatened to undermine the prosecution’s pat narrative. These were questions about missing government witnesses, mistaken identities, overlooked evidence, the qualifications of reputed gang experts, and the gray areas that anti-gang activists such as Sanchez must, of necessity, operate in.

Meanwhile, community leaders who had known Sanchez for years rallied to his defense. Among them was former state Sen. Tom Hayden, who went so far as to offer up his home as collateral to bail Sanchez out of jail. Also, Thomas Parker, a former FBI field office manager, sent a letter to the court: “I felt, and still feel strongly,” he wrote, “that Alex was destined for greater things and a life dedicated to anti-violence leadership.”

Then, in response to some prodding from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the trial judge in the case, U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real, reversed his initial rulings that kept Sanchez jailed and—over the vociferous objections of prosecutors—set bail at $2 million. Sanchez’s supporters had raised more than that already, so he was subsequently released after spending seven months in jail.

His trial was supposed to begin this month. But now, as a result of another Ninth Circuit ruling, it probably won’t happen until summer. And so the central conundrum remains: Just who exactly is this guy they call Rebelde?
A short, husky fellow with a trim goatee and mustache, Sanchez usually wears a neat suit and tie to court, hiding what is left of the gang tattoos he has tried to erase through a series of long, painful laser treatments. He tends to be soft-spoken. But on occasion his voice will slip into edgier, more commanding tones, as it did during the calls that the FBI recorded. (…)

Sanchez began working at his father’s glass-blowing shop. He also volunteered to help get Homies Unidos off the ground in Los Angeles, and within a decade he became its executive director.

Early on, much of his work with Homies Unidos involved negotiating gang truces and tamping down violence. (Once, he said, he engineered a three-way conference call to help stop a gang war.) But this work also brought him into conflict with the LAPD’s anti-gang efforts in the Rampart Division, where scandal erupted in the 1990s over abuses by its since-disbanded gang detail. Officers in that detail had accused Homies Unidos and similar groups of using gang truces as a ruse to try to unite rival groups of thugs into a “super gang.” Sanchez, in turn, testified about the alleged police harassment of young Latinos during a 1999 meeting of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, and at a subsequent legislative subcommittee hearing chaired by then–state Senator Hayden at a city church. A few months later, just as Sanchez was about to testify as an alibi witness in a drive-by shooting case, LAPD officers arrested him for an immigration violation, even though city policy prohibited the police department from enforcing immigration laws. Given his criminal record, his prospects looked grim.

Yet remarkably, after a two-year legal battle, Sanchez managed to secure a grant of asylum and permanent U.S. residency. This occurred after credible threats coming out of El Salvador strongly suggested that gang members would try to kill Sanchez if he ever went back. Also cited as a contributing factor was the exemplary life Sanchez had led since his return to the United States. Various local luminaries championed his cause, including defense attorney Mark Geragos, who represented Sanchez pro bono, and Villaraigosa, then running for his first term as mayor.

In the racketeering case now before Judge Real, this rough chronology essentially stands undisputed—except for one glaring detail: Sanchez insists that when he re-entered the states in 1995, his transformation into an anti-gang activist was both sincere and unwavering. The prosecution tells a very different story.

“[Sanchez] has, in fact, continued to maintain his position in MS-13,” Elizabeth Carpenter, an assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the case, said during a bail hearing. “He has not changed. He has not left his old life. … His supporters do not know about Alex Sanchez’s double life. … They’ve been duped by his public face.”

Not so, counters Jorja Leap. A reserve LAPD officer who teaches social welfare at UCLA, she became a friend and supporter of Sanchez when they worked together on Mayor Villaraigosa’s gang policy at city hall. “The bottom line is that Alex saves people,” she says. “I know former gang members who are thugs and manipulators, and I know others with integrity. Alex has integrity.”

The gang names in the 16-count RICO indictment read more like a cast of Disney cartoon characters than a list of dangerous criminals. Among them are Gato, Salty, Shyboy, Skinny, Creeper, Grumpy, Tears, Little Man, and Pain.
Each of the defendants stands accused of an overreaching racketeering count linking them to MS-13’s alleged drug and extortion activities-a charging tactic that prosecutors developed soon after Congress passed the federal RICO Act in 1970 as a tool to combat the Mafia. Each racketeering count carries a possible life sentence. The remaining 15 counts charge specific defendants with eight murder plots, seven actual murders, and numerous acts of robbery, extortion, drug trafficking, and witness intimidation. The indictment is further broken down into 158 overt acts.

Paul Cortez Jovel, a.k.a. Little Man, is named in ten of these overt acts, which include the murder of a rival gang member. Facing the same number of allegations is Pedro Lopez, a.k.a. Grumpy, who’s accused of murdering a gang rival and ordering the execution of LAPD’s Detective Flores. The case laid out in the indictment against Sanchez, though, boils down to just one overt act, arising from the four fateful phone calls that the FBI listened in on.
In advancing the prosecution’s interpretation of those calls, Detective Flores’s testimony has been pivotal. An L.A. native who grew up in the same neighborhoods where MS-13 members hung out, Flores has testified as an expert witness in more than a hundred MS-13 cases across the country. But that didn’t stop Sanchez’s defense attorney, Kerry Bensinger, from trying to have Flores disqualified through a Daubert hearing. Bensinger, who serves on the indigent defense panel for the Central District, noted that the detective lacked academic credentials and had done no formal research. Flores’s expert testimony, he thus concluded, amounted to little more than parroting what gang members had told him during police interviews. Judge Real rejected this line of reasoning, ruling that under federal law a police detective’s knowledge and on-the-job experience is sufficient to justify an expert witness designation. But Real also dealt the prosecution a blow, ruling that Flores cannot testify in a single trial both as an expert witness and as the target of a murder conspiracy; unless prosecutors find another expert, the judge said, he will strike the conspiracy count. Both sides have appealed that ruling, which resulted in the latest trial delay.

In multiple courtroom battles, Flores has portrayed the FBI-recorded phone calls as clear evidence of criminal activity. Sanchez’s statement that Camarón had to “face the consequences,” for example, was gang code for ordering his murder, Flores maintains. In another conversation Sanchez complained about fake papers he said Camarón was passing around to gang members that purported to show Sanchez was an FBI snitch. Sanchez then indicated that he planned to send a copy of the papers to Little Man—MS-13’s main shot-caller in L.A.—as a way, Flores has opined, to “reinforce Sanchez’s order” to have Camarón killed.

Another exchange Flores cites has Sanchez asking MS-13 members for names and phone numbers of gang leaders in El Salvador. “These people haven’t heard our position,” Sanchez says on the recording, “and these people still have some respect for me.” To Flores, this proves Sanchez remained an active gang member. And finally, Sanchez in one call addresses Zombie, the gang member who allegedly did the actual killing, saying, “We have said it, we go to war.” Sanchez then says Zombie should “have the last word,” which Flores also interprets as an order to kill.

But Bensinger also has an expert in his corner. His name is Gregory Boyle, a Roman Catholic priest who founded HomeBoy Industries—a nationally known gang-intervention program. Boyle contends that the government’s case against Sanchez depends on a tortured interpretation of what was said on the tapes, and on taking excerpts out of context.
Take the exchange in which Sanchez uses the word consequences. In a sworn affidavit, Boyle says that listening to the entire conversation makes it clear that Sanchez is referring only to withholding money, not to killing anyone. As Sanchez is heard to say in Spanish: “The homies from Normandie said that no one is going to send any money to that motherfucker [Camar&Atild#243n] because … he has always talked shit about all of us.”

Another conversation may indicate that Sanchez simply wanted to involve Little Man to help debunk Camarón’s claims. “I have them [the papers] right here in my hands, man,” Sanchez says. “And tonight I’m going to show them to Little Man, and I’m going to ask [him to] call you, and I’m going to show them to all the homies I can show them to … so they can see them and call you and tell you the same thing I’m telling you right now, these papers are fake.”
When Sanchez says “these people still have some respect for me,” Boyle argues that only a former gang member would have to claim that people “still” respected him. And if Sanchez had never left the fold, Boyle asserts, he wouldn’t have needed to ask for the names of gang leaders in El Salvador and how to get in touch with them—he’d already know.

Even the remarks where Sanchez declares “war” and says Zombie should have the “last word” seem, to Boyle, when taken in context, to be much less sinister than the prosecution claims.

“We can defend you,” Sanchez tells Zombie. “We are all doing that. And we have said it, we go to war. … You see? So then we were very clear yesterday, and we already told everybody … that this motherfucker has nothing to do with this clique. That [he] is on his own there. … We actually need you to have the last word … so these guys hear from your own mouth, the things this son of a bitch is making up. … You need to speak. …You see, we have told this guy off, man. We are not going to send him money or any other shit! Nothing! Nothing, man!”

Boyle also cites a recorded exchange that didn’t make it into the prosecution’s briefs. In it, a gang member tells Sanchez to butt out of MS-13’s business because he is “no longer active.” And the speaker giving this advice? None other than Camar&Ati#243n, just days before he was murdered.

“I don’t know why … you get involved in things when you are no longer active, man!” Camarón says. “If you told [someone] that I’m working with the FBI, then you know what, you are getting me involved,” Sanchez responds.

Bensinger argues that if Sanchez is no longer active, he cannot be a shot-caller, cannot have ordered a hit, and cannot be guilty as charged.

Another issue complicating the prosecution’s case has to do with the identity of Zombie, the alleged triggerman. According to the complaint, he’s a notorious gangster in El Salvador whose real name is Juan Bonilla. But as it happens, at least two MS-13 members go by Zombie, and the other Zombie—Ricardo Treminio Hernandez, who has not been named as a suspect in the killing—insists it’s his voice that’s on the recording. Meanwhile, Bonilla—who cooperated with prosecutors and in exchange received unspecified “special privileges” until he reportedly escaped from a Salvadoran jail—is now unaccounted for.

During Sanchez’s first two bail hearings, Judge Real heard only Flores’s interpretation of the wiretapped calls. But after the Ninth Circuit weighed in on Bensinger’s appeal, Real granted Sanchez a third bail hearing. The judge then convened an unusual closed session to consult with, among others, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s director of anti-gang operations, Bruce K. Riordan (who has since joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles). The records from that hearing remain sealed, but when it was over Sanchez was freed on the $2 million bail that his supporters pledged in cash and real estate.

Will the prosecution submit additional evidence against Sanchez at trial? Some defense motions hint at possible testimony by paid informants such as Nelson Comandari, the heir of wealthy Salvadorans who is often described as MS-13’s CEO, and his lieutenant Jorge Pineda, who cooperated in obtaining some 500 consensual recordings of gang calls that the feds have code-named “Gold Dust.” Although both Comandari and Pineda were allegedly party to recorded conversations in which murders were plotted, neither has been charged in the racketeering case.

“Look, here’s the problem,” says UCLA’s Leap. “MS-13 has electroshock value. It’s very big in the FBI right now. Then you’ve got transcripts that are open to interpretation. Then you’ve got a cop [Flores] who is intent on proving he’s right. And you have a government that understands neither the nature of MS-13, nor what Alex Sanchez is doing. You want to talk about the perfect storm? There it is.”

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

See Also

• Legal Topics.

Fictive Kinship; Juvenile Delinquency; Neighborhood; Runaway Youths

Racketeering; Vagrancy.

Further Reading (Books)

1998 national youth gang survey: summary. (2000).washington, dc: u.s. dept. of justice, office of justice programs, office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention. bjerregaard, b., and lizotte, a. j. (2001). “gun ownership and gang membership.” in the modern gang reader, 2nd ed., ed. j. miller, c. l. maxson, and m. w. klein. los angeles: roxbury.

blumstein, a. (2000). the crime drop in america, ed. a.blumstein and j. wallman. new york: cambridge university press.

brown, w. (1998). “the fight for survival: african-american gang members and their families in a segregated society.” juvenile and family court journal 49:1-14.

bursik, r. j. jr., and grasmick, h. g. (1993). neighborhoods and crime. new york: lexington books.

campbell, a. (1984). the girls in the gang. new york:basil blackwell.

cavan, r., and cavan, j. t. (1968). delinquency andcrime: cross-cultural perspectives. monterey, ca: brooks/cole.

cloward, r. a., and ohlin, l. b. (1960). delinquency andopportunity. new york: free press.

cohen, a. k. (1955). delinquent boys. glencoe, il: thefree press.

covey, h. c.; menard, s.; and franzese, r. j. (1992). juvenile gangs. springfield, il: thomas books.

curry, g. d. (2001). “female gang involvement.” in themodern gang reader, 2nd ed., ed. j. miller, c. l. maxson, and m. w. klein. los angeles: roxbury.

decker, s. h., and van winkle, b. (1996). life in thegang: family, friends and violence. new york: cambridge university press.

esbensen, f. (2000). “preventing adolescent gang involvement.” u.s. office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention juvenile justice bulletin, september. washington: u.s. department of justice.

Further Reading (Books 2)

esbensen, f.; deschenes, e. p.; and winfree l. t. jr.(1999). “differences between gang girls and gang boys: results from a multisite survey.” youth & society 31:27-29.

esbensen, f., and winfree, l. t. jr. (1998). “race and gender differences between gang and non-gang youths.” in the modern gang reader, 2nd ed., ed. j. miller, c. l. maxson, and m. w. klein. los angeles: roxbury.

fleisher, m. s. (1998). dead end kids. madison: university of wisconsin press.

gordon, r. m. (1998). “street gangs and criminal business organisations: a canadian perspective.” in gangs and youth subcultures: international explorations, ed. k. hazlehurst and c. hazlehurst. new jersey: transaction publishers.

harris, m. g. (1988). cholas: latino girls and gangs. newyork: ams press.

holyst, b. (1982). comparative criminology. lexington,ma: lexington books.

howell, j. c., and gleason, d. k. (2001). “youth gangdrug trafficking.” in the modern gang reader, 2nd ed., ed. j. miller, c. l. maxson and m. w. klein. los angeles: roxbury.

klein, m. w. (1995). the american street gang. newyork: oxford university press.

kroeker, m., and haut, f. (1995). “a tale of two cities:the street gangs of paris and los angeles.” police chief 62:32-38.

mares, d. (2001). “gangsters or lager louts? workingclass street gangs in manchester.” in the eurogang paradox: street gangs and youth groups in the us and europe, ed. m. w. klein, h. kerner, c. l. maxson, and e. weitkamp. dordrecht, netherlands: kluwer academic publishers.

miller, j. (2001). one of the guys: girls, gangs, and gender. new york: oxford university press.

miller, w. b. (1958). “lower class culture as generatingmilieu of gang delinquency.” journal of social issues 14:5-19.

miller, w. b. (1973). “the molls.” society 2:23-35.

miller, w. b. (1975). “violence by youth gangs as a crimeproblem in major american cities.” national institute for juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, us justice department. washington, dc: us government printing office.

Further Reading (Articles)

miller, w. b. (1980). “gangs, groups, and serious youthcrime.” in critical issues in juvenile delinquency, ed. d. schichor and d. h. kelly. lexington, ma: dc health.

moore, j. w. (1991). going down to the barrio. philadelphia: temple university press.

morash, m. (1983). “gangs, groups and delinquency.”british journal of criminology 23:309-331.

pearson, g. (1983). hooligan: a history of respectablefears. london: macmillan.

peterson, d.; miller, j.; and esbensen, f. (2001). “the impact of sex composition on gangs and gang member delinquency.” criminology 39:411-439.

sanchez-jankowski, m. (1991). islands in the street: gangs and american urban society. berkley: university of california press.

sanders, w. b. (1994). gang-bangs and drive-bys:grounded culture and juvenile gang violence. new york: aldine de gruyter.

spergel, i. a. (1990). “youth gangs: continuity andchange.” in crime and justice: a review of research, vol. 12, ed. m. tonry and n. morris. chicago: university of chicago press.

spergel, i. a. (1995). the youth gang problem. new york:oxford university press.

stack, c. b. (1974). all our kin: strategies for survival in a black community. new york: harper and row.

sullivan, m. l. (1989). “getting paid”: youth crime andwork in the inner city. ithaca, ny: cornell university press.

tertilt, h. (2001). “patterns of ethnic violence in a frankfurt street gang.” in the eurogang paradox: street gangs and youth groups in the us and europe, ed. m. w. klein, h. kerner, c. l. maxson, and e. weitekamp. dordrecht, netherlands: kluwer academic publishers.

thornberry, t. p. (2001). “membership in youth gangs and involvement in serious and violent offending.” in the modern gang reader, 2nd ed., ed. j. miller, c. l. maxson, and m. w. klein. los angeles: roxbury.

thrasher, f. m. (1927). the gang: a study of 1,313 gangs in chicago. chicago: university of chicago press.

venkatesh, s. a. (2000). american project: the rise andfall of a modern ghetto. cambridge: harvard university press.

vigil, j. d. (1988). barrio gangs: streetlife and identity insouthern california. austin: university of texas press.

zatz, m. s., and portillos, e. l. (2000). “voices from thebarrio: chicano/a gangs, families, and communities.” criminology 38:369-401.

bill mccarthy monica j. martin

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Gangs in State Statute Topics

Introduction to Gangs (State statute topic)

The purpose of Gangs is to provide a broad appreciation of the Gangs legal topic. Select from the list of U.S. legal topics for information (other than Gangs).

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Further Reading

• Information about Gangs in the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law.

Youth Gangs in relation to Crime and Race

Youth Gangs is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Youth gangs constitute a different subculture in American society. They have existed for years among virtually all ethnic groups, and they continue to expand, recruit, and commit a variety of illegal offenses in diverse neighborhoods across the country. While there has been a problem in social science research with defining gangs, a list of general characteristics for youth gangs has survived from the onset of the 20th century to the present day. Those characteristics include age, clothing, symbols, and deviant behavior. Youth gangs differ from adult gangs not only with respect to characteristics such as age, symbols, and clothing but also in terms of the relationships between members. Youth associate with each other for legitimate and non-gang-related relations, including social, educational, and sports-related activities.

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Youth Gangs in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also

White Gangs in relation to Crime and Race

White Gangs is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Although the number of gangs in general greatly expanded during the 20th century, such gangs have earlier roots in U.S. history. The spread of the industrial revolution during the 1800s contributed to their growth, as did increased immigration. This section examines the historical background of White gangs, explores their roots in the values underlying slavery, describes the Christian Identity movement, and briefly reviews the state of White gangs in America. America’s first White gangs began in urban centers in the Northeast along Euroethnic divisions. They bonded together based on common language, culture, and their connection to their region or country of origin. Each major wave of first-generation Euroethnic gangs acted as a resistance movement to thwart the loss of their ethnic identity through assimilation and as protection against violent discrimination from native-born Americans.

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about White Gangs in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also

African American Gangs in relation to Crime and Race

African American Gangs is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: As society changes, so do the perception and defining characteristics of what constitutes a gang. In 1971, Klein defined a gang as an identifiable group of youngsters who are generally perceived as a distinct aggregation by others within their neighborhoods and who recognize themselves as a denotable group that has been involved in enough delinquent incidents to call forth a consistently negative response from neighborhood residents and/or law enforcement agencies. Triplett (2004) notes that some law enforcement agencies define a gang simply as three or more youth ages 14 to 24 who associate with each other primarily to commit crimes. The media have contributed to perceptions of African American gang members and their involvement in urban violence. This section presents historical and contemporary information on African American gangs in America, focusing in particular on the Crips and Bloods, two of the most prominent African American gangs today.

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about African American Gangs in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also

Prevention of Youth Gangs in relation to Crime and Race

Prevention of Youth Gangs is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Race and ethnicity have significant implications for the prevention of youth gangs. Structural factors that researchers identify as predicting risk of gang formation include minority segregation among the urban underclass. In addition, many of the named gangs, such as the Bloods, Crips, and Latin Kings, fall along racial and ethnic lines. Efforts to prevent youth gangs are impaired by several factors. First of all, society and law enforcement have struggled to adequately define youth gangs. Second, the line between youth gangs and other groups designated as “gangs” often becomes blurred, leading to the term gang being applied to groups that often exclude youth. Third, the youth gang problem is not amenable to simple suppres-sive law enforcement measures, which may actually reinforce gang cohesion. The first American gangs comprised youths from European immigrant families. Today, African American and Hispanic/Latina/o gangs are generally more numerous than other racial and ethnic groups.

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Prevention of Youth Gangs in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also

Asian American Gangs in relation to Crime and Race

Asian American Gangs is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Asian American gangs, operating in U.S. cities since at least the 1960s, attracted police and media attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s when their members were involved in violent, headline-grabbing incidents in New York City and San Francisco. In the 1990s, sociologists began contributing insights into gang-related activities of young Asians in North America. This section examines explanations that academics, law enforcement authorities, and the media have offered for Asian gang activity since the 1960s, including their connection to adult criminal organizations; social and cultural factors leading to Asian gang formation and participation; and similarities and contrasts between Asian American gangs and gangs from other ethnic groups
, and between gangs within different Asian subcultures. Asian American gangs formed and began to operate in the Chinatown neighborhoods of New York City and San Francisco in the mid-1960s. The timing makes sense: Prior to 1965, U.S.

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Asian American Gangs in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also

Female Gangs in relation to Crime and Race

Female Gangs is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Much of the literature available on gangs has largely ignored the presence and significance of female gangs. Historically, researchers viewed female gangs as poor imitations of male gangs. The study of female gangs has become increasingly important because of the rise in the number of female gangs in recent years. It is appropriate that female gangs be included in this body of work because of the prevalent role that race plays in the makeup of both male and female gangs and because of the proliferation of the female gang in modern society. The recent history of female gangs can be traced back to the 1960s when female members acted as helpmates to male gang members.

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Female Gangs in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also

Gangs in the Criminal Justice System

This section covers the topics below related with Gangs :

Corrections

Inmates in relation with Gangs

Offenders

Juvenile Justice

Juvenile Delinquency

Gangs

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

See Also

• Corrections
• Inmates
• Offenders
• Juvenile Justice
• Juvenile Delinquency
• Gangs

Cuff Links Gang (in Politics)

Related to political science, the following is a definition of Cuff Links Gang in the U.S. practice of politics: According to Time, this refers to the group of friends who helped Franklin D. Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 “and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign.”

The gift of cuff links to political operatives has since become a sign of being an early insider with a politician.

Resources

See Also

• Corrections
• Inmates
• Offenders