“Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Bullying Will Get Me Bangin’”: Bullying Involvement and Adolescent Gang Joining

• Author: Dana Peterson,Walter W. Shelley
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204018809841
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Date: 01 October 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

“Sticks and Stones May Break

My Bones, But Bullying Will

Get Me Bangin’”: Bullying

Involvement and Adolescent

Gang Joining

Walter W. Shelley

1

and Dana Peterson

1

Abstract

Studies have shown that adolescents’ involvement in bullying (as perpetrators, victims, or both) is

related to more negative outcomes than noninvolvement, and a small subset of studies has con-

nected bullying to the specific outcome of gang involvement. However, most of these studies have

been cross-sectional and have not examined causal pathways by which bullying and gang involvement

may be related. Furthermore, some studies find sex differences in prevalence, type, and outcomes of

bullying as well as in the relationship between bullying and gang involvement, suggesting important

prevention implications, yet this remains under examined. Our study explicitly examines these issues

identifying the overlap in bullying outcomes with antecedent gang risk factors, and suggesting

potential direct and indirect effects of bullying on gang involvement; we test these relationships, and

potential sex differences, using longitudinal data from the second National Evaluation of Gang

Resistance Education and Training to overcome limitations of prior research. Consistent with our

expectations, we find that (1) bully-victims exhibit the highest levels of risk; (2) bullies, victims, and

bully-victims have increased odds of later gang joining, compared to uninvolved youth; (3) the

inclusion of risk factors partially mediates the effect of bullying involvement on gang onset for bullies

and victims and fully mediates the effect for bully-victims; and (4) some evidence of sex differences

exists. Given these insights, greater connections between bullying and gang prevention efforts may

be worthwhile.

Keywords

youth gangs, bullying, victimization, school safety, juvenile well-being

Bullying is a relatively common occurrence in adolescence that prior to about the 1990s in the

United States was considered relatively benign (Nansel et al., 2001; Pinker, 2011; Walton, 2005). As

1

School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Walter W. Shelley, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, 135 Western Ave., Draper

Hall 219, Albany, NY 12222, USA.

Email: wshelley@albany.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2019, Vol. 17(4) 385-412

ªThe Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204018809841

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attention to the prevalence, causes, and consequences of bullying has grown since the early 1990s, it

has been recognized that, despite its “normalization,” bullying has often serious consequences for

youth, including delinquency and, potentially, gang involvement. Today, bullying is considered by

students, parents, and educators to be one of the most prominent social issues facing school-aged

youth in the United States (Hong & Espelage, 2012), and in fact, public perceptions are that bullying

is an increasingly serious problem, which in turn increase perceptions that local schools are unsafe

(Shelley et al., 2017). Estimates from 2005 to 2011 (the time period covered in the current study)

reveal that 28–32%of 12- to 18-year-olds reported having been bullied at or on the way to or from

school and 4–9%had been cyberbullied (Robers, Kemp, Rathbun, & Morgan, 2014). Because boys

and girls who are perpetrators and/or victims of bullying experience more negative psychological,

educational, social, and behavioral outcomes (though specific outcomes may vary by sex) than

uninvolved youth, researchers, policy makers, and program providers, especially school-based, have

paid increasing attention to bullying behaviors.

A relatively overlooked aspect of bullying involvement is its potential for leading adolescents to

associate with gangs. Gangs may be attractive to youth who experience or engage in bullying; for

example, youth who have been bullied may seek the protective aspects of gang involvement and

youth who engage in bullying may seek an environment supportive of deviance. Furthermore, the

consequences of bullying identified in prior research may provide a pathway to gang involvement,

albeit potentially different pathways for boys than girls. Given the further deleterious consequences

of adolescents’ involvement in gangs, even for short periods (e.g., greater delinquency, substance

use, and violence; being unintended and intended targets of violence; and higher odds of school

dropout, teen parenthood, and adult unstable employment and arrests; Esbensen & Huizinga, 1993;

Krohn, Ward, Thornberry, Lizotte, & Chu, 2011; Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, Smith, & Tobin,

2003), connections between bullying and gang involvement are worth exploring.

While a few studies have examined the associa tion between bullying experiences an d gang

involvement, findings have been equivocal (Bradshaw & Waasdorp, 2009; Forber-Pratt, Aragon,

& Espelage, 2014). Further, these studies have relied nearly exclusively on cross-sectional data,

limiting their ability to determine causal ordering in the relationship, that is, whether bullying

experiences predict gang involveme nt rather than being correlational or th e other way around.

Finally, although some prior bullying perpetration and victimization studies have found sex differ-

ences in prevalence, type, and outcomes of bullying involvement, additional research is needed to

confirm and extend those findings, including examining whether bullying is similarly related to gang

involvement for males and females.

Given the prevalence and salience of bullying in adolescent males’ and females’ lives, the

association between factors representing bullying’s negative consequences and gang membership,

and the additional negative consequences of gang involvement, examining bullying as a risk factor

for or pathway to gang membership is a potentially valuable, yet overlooked, mechanism. Granted,

concerted efforts are already underway to combat both bullying and gang involvement; however,

these efforts have generally been parallel rather than coordinated. If bullying perpetration and/or

victimization provide pathways to gang involvement, it is important in both bullying and gang

prevention efforts to recognize and interrupt these mechanisms. In addition, identifying whether

pathways differ by sex can provide insight into gender-neutral versus gender-specific/-sensitive

prevention programming (Petersen & Howell, 2013).

The current study, therefore, seeks to answer several questions: Is involvement in bullying, as

perpetrator, victim, or both, predictive of later gang involvement, taking into account known risk

factors for adolescent gang membership? Do gang risk factors mediate the relationship between

bullying and gang involvement? Are particular types of bullying involvement particularly salient to

later gang joining? And, do these relationships vary in important ways by sex? To answer these

questions, we employ longitudinal data from a multisite, diverse sample of 3,820 students, allowing

386 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 17(4)