Author: Greg Scott

Title: ‘It’s a sucker’s outfit’: How urban gangs enable and impede the reintegration of ex-convicts

This scholarly journal is looking at how gangs affects ex-gang member’s life after they have been released from jail and gone back to their neighborhoods. So, I would say that the research question is “how do drug-dealing gangs shape the pre- and post-carceral lives of male ex-convicts in Chicago”. The type of data needed for this research is Acts, Behavior, and Events. The author wants to see what these ex-convicts do after they come out of jail. So, the look at their acts, behaviors, and any event that is going on. Given that the data collection method the author used was an Ethnography. He conducted 18 ethnographies with former and gang affiliates. But he also conducted an additional 85 interviews. The method for data analysis is qualitative. The act, behaviors, and events where described in words therefore make the information qualitative. The results of this study were that these ex-convicts where being exploited on both sides of the end. They faced poverty and institutionalized racism so they would join a gang and once they were inside they realized that the gang was just as exploitative as the mainstream institutions. This is great for my project because it gives me another perspective on what I can look at when I do my project. This is a new possibility on why people leave gangs because they are being exploited and I had never thought about that and will further investigate the exploitation.

Author: Edward Orozco Flores and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Title: Chicano Gang Members in Recovery: The Public Talk of Negotiating Chicano

MasculinitiesThis article is about former gang members. In this journal, there are two recovery programs that gang members could join, Homeboy Industries and Victory Outreach. The authors were looking at these two programs and how they engage Chicano gang masculinity. A lot of the time when these gang members leave the gang live they feel like they’re not masculine. These programs help them realize what it means to be a man. Things like getting a job and providing for ones on family. The research question for this study is “How do ex-gang members deal with the idea of masculinity after they leave the gang?”. The type of data needed for this study was acts, behaviors, or events. This is the type of data we need because this type of data will tell us what these ex-gang members were doing at these programs. The data gathering method that was used was an Ethnography. One of the authors Edward Orozco spent 18 months 245 hours spent on Homeboy Industries and 195 hours in Victory Outreach. He observed the men’s interactions in these spaces. When the author was doing this some of the themes he found were addiction and recovery. He coded for hegemonic masculine constructions. At Victory Outreach, he heard a lot of them say “man of god” and for Homeboy Industries it was “family man. The type of data analysis used for this study is qualitative data. There was a lot of speech in the ethnography. This research was great the authors did a great job of explaining what their goal was and they executed it properly as well.  

Authors: David C. Pyrooz, Scott H. Decker, Vincent J. Webb

Title: The Ties That Bind Desistance From Gangs

This study focuses on Gang members and their desistance from the gang. This journal three processes during this research which are onset, persistence, and desistance. So, the research question for this journal is “How can we get members to desist from gang life to lower victimization and delinquency?”.  These authors believe that when people are in a gang they tend to commit more crimes so they wanted to figure out why gang members desisted from a gang. The type of data used in this article is Report of acts, behaviors, and events. They asked the people “currently in a gang” or “ever been a gang member”. So, these people had to report their actions whether they were in a gang. Out of all the people they asked which were 239 individuals. 153 of them said they were currently in a gang and 83 of them said they were former gang members. The data gathering method they used was Public records. They got their data from Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM). ADAM got their data from a juvenile detention facility. The arrestees were interviewed within 48 hours of booking. This sample better reflected the streets because they were interviewed so early in the process so they had just come from the streets.  I think this research overall is great they start with a topic and turn it into a research question and they get data to see if they can answer their research question. It shows me a way that I can do my research project because my research question is like this one.  I want to do something similar but I’m sure I’ll get different results.

Title: The Value of Comparisons in Street Gang Research

Author: Malcom W. Klein

Klein, Malcom W. 2005. “The Value of Comparisons in Street Gang Research.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 21 (2): 135-152. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1043986204272911

This is a research proposal lays out the foundation for a research project that wants to compare studies in street gang research. Some of the studies the author lays out that he wants to compare are gang member’s vs non-gang youth, cross gang-comparisons, comparisons across locations, and historical comparisons.  The research question for this proposal I believe is “Is gang research more productive if it has comparisons to other research?”  The author believes that gang research is much more productive when you can compare different researches. The type of data that Malcom will be using Expert Knowledge, Hidden Social Patterns, Acts Behaviors and Events, and Demographic data. He will use all these types so of data because he is comparing different studies and those studies have different types of data. His colleagues wrote articles about gang members and non-gang youth, this would be considered expert knowledge. He used Demographic data to look comparisons across gang locations. Meaning that he looked at gangs from different locations like Los Angeles and Boston. The different data collection methods that he used is Ethnography, Public and Private records, and In-depth interviews. The author has already found these methods for his sources. He has This proposal is useful because it gives me an idea on how to do the proposal myself. The author of this proposal starts out with his research question and what he is going to try and accomplish. Then he lays out the five topics that he will discuss and underneath those topics he puts the resources that he will use to support his ideas. Once he does the actual research it will be easy for him to do because he has a path that he has planned.

Early Precursors of Gang Membership: A Study of Seattle Youth

Karl G. Hill, Christina Lui, and J. David Hawkins

This study focuses on Seattle’s youth. It was done by the Seattle Social Development Project. This study looked at the behaviors between kids that are in gangs and kids that are not. The study was done in the 90’s. The research question for this research study is “Why do some youth join gangs while others do not?”.  So, the topic would be gangs and their decisions on why they want to join a gang. This is a good question to answer because this way we can know how to prevent the youth from joining them. The type of data used for this study is Acts, Behaviors, and Events. I would use this data because the surveyor wants to know if the children are involved in a gang or what kind of crimes they have committed. The data gathering method they used for this study was surveys and questioners. There were 808 kids that took these surveys.  The type of data analysis they used was categorical data. They were asked whether they were male or female.  They were also asked their age and what ethnicity they were. Overall I think this was a good study. I want to do something like this. I want to look at gang members and interview do them and ask them why they joined gangs. I will use this information to shape my research study. Something I think they did well was the use of graphs to show their results.

International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology

Vol. 5

Why American boys join street gangs

Stanley S. Taylor

http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/IJSA/article-full-text-pdf/837FD2641401

This scholarly journal is about young boys and what drives them to join a gang. But in this specific study they want to look at young boys to see the paths they take and how they end up in a gang. Not a lot of studies have been done on boys and gangs. Most of the studies are when the gang member is already established and is older. The topic for this journal is young boys and joining gangs. The research question is “What are the social factors that a young boy lacks that makes them join a gang”. We want to know what these kids are thinking so the data we need to do this research project are personal feelings because we want to know how these kids felt growing up. We will also use Hidden Social Patterns so we can see what these participants all have in common. The data gathering method they used for this project was in depth interviews. This is the best way to get information for this study. The researcher wants to know about the participants past so this is the best way. The type of Data Analysis method for this journal is qualitative. Each of the respondents were asked a set of open and closed ended questions and they were encouraged to answer freely and clarify anything they wanted to. Overall I think this was good research they did a good job at being specific on what they wanted to find. They were also great at executing the research itself.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Volume 96 Number 5

Identity Fusion: The Interplay of Personal and Social Identities in Extreme Group Behavior

Authors: William B. Swann Jr., Angel Gomez, D. Connor Seyle, J. Fransisco Morales, and Carmen Huici

This article is about “The authors purpose that when people become fused with a group, their personal and social identities become functionally equivalent. Two hypotheses follow from this proposition. First, activating either personal or social identities of fused persons should increase their willingness to endorse extreme behaviors on behalf of the group. Second, because personal as well as social identities support group related behaviors of fused person”.  I think the research topic for this article is seeing how people interact when they get infused with a certain group of people. So, the research question would be Do personal identities get influenced negatively by the people you associate yourself with? The type of data needed for this research question is Personal and Psychological Traits, Self-Identity, and Deeply Held Opinions and Attitudes. These types have to do with Identity and that is what the research question is trying to get at. The type of methods the authors use surveys and questionnaires, psychological scales, and focus groups. The data analysis method they used is ordinal and categorical data. I think the authors did a great job with their research. They conducted a lot of good studies to back up what they were trying to prove. I think it is helpful to have more than one author so you can conduct more research and get different point of views on the topic you are looking at. They did a great job at following the six research steps.

Restoration Ecology Volume 10, Number 1, March 2002

The journal of the society for ecological restoration

Nitrogen Farming: Harvesting a Different Crop

Donald L.Hey

This journal is about the streams of “North America that convey excessive amounts of nitrate-nitrogen, and the effects which range from eutrophication of local surface waters to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. An alternative solution is needed. One possibility is “nitrogen farming”. Nitrogen farms could employ restored wetlands in flood plains and on bottomlands to remove the excess nitrate-nitrogen and, at the same time, provide the landowner an alternative crop”.  So, the topic is nitrogen and the harm it can do to the earth.  While the research question is “What is a solution to the excessive amounts of nitrate-nitrogen in American river?” The different types of data that would be needed would be expert knowledge, opinions, reports of acts, and economic figures. The data gathering methods we see in this journal are public and private records. In this journal, there are a lot of graphs and maps showing the effects of the nitrogen. The data analysis method that the author uses is numeric data to tell how much nitrogen is being put into our soil.   Overall I think the author did a great job following the six steps he had a topic he wanted to research so he came up with a research question he also picked what type of data he needed and where he was going to get this data. Finally, he chose what data analysis method he would use. Something useful I got out of this is his use of maps and bar graphs makes his research clearer.  The images help me understand what he is trying to portray with his research. I will try to do that in my research.