Prospective Childhood Risk Factors for Gang Involvement Among North American Indigenous Adolescents

• Author: Les B. Whitbeck,Kelley J. Sittner,Dane S. Hautala
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204015585173
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Prospective Childhood Risk

Factors for Gang Involvement

Among North American

Indigenous Adolescents

Dane S. Hautala

1

, Kelley J. Sittner

2

,

and Les B. Whitbeck

1

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine prospective childhood risk factors for gang involvement

across the course of adolescence among a large 8-year longitudinal sample of 646 Indigenous (i.e.,

American Indian and Canadian First Nations) youth residing on reservation/reserve land in the

Midwest of the United States and Canada. Risk factors at the first wave of the study (ages 10–12)

were used to predict gang involvement (i.e., gang membership and initiation) in subsequent waves

(ages 11–18). A total of 6.7% of the participants reported gang membership and 9.1% reported gang

initiation during the study. Risk factors were distributed across developmental domains (e.g., family,

school, peer, and individual) with those in the early delinquency domain having the strongest and

most consistent effects. Moreover, the results indicate that the cumulative number of risk factors in

childhood increases the probability of subsequent gang involvement. Culturally relevant implications

and prevention/intervention strategies are discussed.

Keywords

American Indian, First Nations, gang membership, risk factors, longitudinal

Research on North American Indigenous (i.e., American Indian/Alaska Native and Canadian

First Nations) populations has been largely absent from the mainstream criminological literature

in general, and the gang literature specifically. Youth gangs, however, have been identified as an

emergent and growing issue for tribal communities (Major, Egley, Howell, Mendenhall, &

Armstrong, 2004), and are estimated to be present on approximately one-quarter of United States

reservations (Major & Egley, 2002). Findings from cross -sectional studies indicate that 5 – 27%

(Donnermeyer, Edwards, Chavez, & Beuvais, 1996; Freng, Davis, McCord, & Roussell, 2012;

Whitbeck, Hoyt, Chen, & Stubben, 2002) of Indigenous adolescents r eport gang membership

1

Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA

2

Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

Corresponding Author:

Dane S. Hautala, Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 204 Benton Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA.

Email: dane.hautala@huskers.unl.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2016, Vol. 14(4) 390-410

ªThe Author(s) 2015

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204015585173

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during adolescence. Recent evidence from Whitbeck, Sittner Hartshorn, and Walls (2014) further

indicates that upwards of two thirds of Indigenous adolescents reported being aware of gangs on

their reservation/reserves. Despite this high prevalence and recent emergence, little is known

about gang involvement among this group and risk factors that propel these youth into gangs.

Given that gang membership often precedes many short-terms consequences such as violent

victimization (Taylor, Peterson, Esbensen, & Freng, 2007) and long-term consequences such

as arrest, early parenthood, and dropping out of school (Kr ohn, Ward, Thornberry, Lizotte, &

Chu, 2011; Pyrooz, 2014), research is warrantedonriskfactorsforganginvolvementamong

Indigenous youth.

Compared to their urban counterparts, the emergence of gangs on reservation/reserve land is a

relatively recent phenomenon (Hailer & Hart, 1999) which is believed to have started in the mid-

1990s, and continues to show growth (Major et al., 2004). Indigenous gangs tend to be smaller in

size, less organized, and less violent than urban gangs (Hailer & Hart, 1999; Major & Egley,

2002). There is, however, evidence to suggest that this picture is chan ging. For example, the

2011 National Gang Threat Assessment (National Gang Intelligence Center, 2011) noted that

some Indigenous gangs ‘‘are involved in serious crimes and violent activities and utilize Indian

reservations to facilitate and expand their drug operation’’ (p. 34). Moreover, the 2011 National

Gang Threat Assessment identified the Native Mob as one of the largest and most violent Indigen-

ous gangs in the United States and the regions in which the current study tak es place. Thus, as

Hailer and Hart (1999) argued, Indigenous gangs appear to be transitional and evolving from small

disorganized groups to organized gangs centered on criminal activity. Becaus e Indigenous gangs

are in their early developmental stages, prevention, and intervention programs may be highly

effective at thwarting long-term growth and organization of gangs. To achieve this goal, sound

empirical research is needed to better understand the issue at hand.

Perhaps the biggest limitation of previous Indigenous youth gang studies is the reliance on cross-

sectional data. An implicit assumption of the ‘‘risk factor’’ concept is that risk factors precede the

actual outcomes they are expected to predict (Farrington, 2000). This indicates that prospective

longitudinal designs are necessary in order to establish the temporal ordering between risk factors

and subsequent gang involvement (Krohn & Thornberry, 2008). In addition, gang membership itself

may influence predictor variables in important ways (e.g., Drake & Melde, 2014), making inferences

from cross-sectional designs problematic. No longitudinal gang data, however, currently exist for

rural and/or reservation/reserve communities. Given the dearth of data and methodological limita-

tions of the existing Indigenous and rural gang literature (e.g., small and unrepresentative samples,

cross-sectional designs, and reliance on law enforcement data), it is unclear whether risk factors for

gang involvement among urban adolescents operate similarly for rural, reservation-residing Indigen-

ous adolescents.

Taken together, these recent findings underscore the need to examine early prospective risk fac-

tors that are amenable to prevention and intervention efforts, which have yet to be thoroughly devel-

oped for Indigenous adolescent gang involvement. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine

prospective childhood risk factors of later gang involvement (i.e., membership and initiation) among

a large eight-wave/8-year longitudinal sample (N¼646) of Indigenous adolescents residing on

reservation/reserve land in the Midwest of the United States and Canada. Because Indigenous (Freng

et al., 2012) and non-Indigenous (Klein & Maxson, 2006) youth are most vulnerable to joining gangs

at the ages of 13–15, we focused on risk factors in late childhood (ages 10–12 years). In this article,

we address several of the gaps in the Indigenous gang literature. First, we report on the longitudinal

prevalence of gang involvement across adolescence (ages 11–18). Second, we examine a wider

range of risk factors across multiple developmental domains (e.g., family, school, peer, and individ-

ual), than has been previously examined for Indigenous youth. Third, we assess the effect of accu-

mulated risk across risk factors, which has been shown to be a robust predictor of gang involvement

Hautala et al. 391