Gang Behavior and the Control of Crime in the U.S. Inner City

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During the last thirty years, there has been a burgeoning of crime in U.S. inner city neighborhoods. Over this period, gang behavior is believed to have changed, with gangs becoming more intensely involved in income earning pursuits, especially in the sale of drugs. The level of police control in gang ridden neighborhoods has also deteriorated. This research will use recent sociological findings to model crime and gang behavior. The resulting theory will be useful in understanding the determinants of crime and in evaluating policies geared to halt the deterioration of inner cites in the United States. This project builds on the important recent sociological study by Martin Sanchez Jankowski, which provides a detailed portrait of the operation of teenage gangs in three U.S. cities. Gangs are portrayed as neighborhood militia, whose communities forbear their crimes in return for protection they afford against the depredation of outsiders. In contrast, the prevailing economic theory of crime, due to Gary Becker, ignores the role of the community in determining the level of criminal activity. This research will entail modifying the prevailing economic theory of crime to include the critical role of the community. Crime is not only due to the behavior of individual offenders, but also to the community's noncooperation with the police and the police's attendant loss of control of criminal activity. The theory predicts that in neighborhoods which are sufficiently rich, crime will not pay; in poorer neighborhoods, however, crime will pay, and the police will lose control in the sense that the community will not cooperate. Nevertheless, police monitoring and legal penalties still affect criminal activity. Crime is largely determined by the threshold at which the community will switch from protecting their neighborhood gangs to helping the police. A model is developed to analyze alternative crime control measures and to expand the research to study the interrelationships among crime and other inner city problems such as the disappearance of jobs, increased homelessness and the breakdown in family relations.