THE COMPANY YOU KEEP? THE SPILLOVER EFFECTS OF GANG MEMBERSHIP ON INDIVIDUAL GUNSHOT VICTIMIZATION IN A CO‐OFFENDING NETWORK

• Author: ANDREW V. PAPACHRISTOS,ANTHONY A. BRAGA,ERIC PIZA,LEIGH S. GROSSMAN
• Date: 01 November 2015
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12091

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP? THE SPILLOVER

EFFECTS OF GANG MEMBERSHIP ON INDIVIDUAL

GUNSHOT VICTIMIZATION IN A CO-OFFENDING

NETWORK∗

ANDREW V. PAPACHRISTOS,1ANTHONY A. BRAGA,2,3

ERIC PIZA,4and LEIGH S. GROSSMAN2

1Department of Sociology, Yale University

2School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University

3John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

4Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration, John

Jay College of Criminal Justice

KEYWORDS: street gangs, social networks, gun violence

The effects of gang membership on individual social, behavior, cognitive, and health

outcomes are well documented. Yet, research consistently has shown that gang mem-

bership and the boundaries of gangs are often fluid and amorphous. The current study

examines how social proximity to a gang member in one’s co-offending network in-

fluences the probability of being a gunshot victim. We re-create and analyze the social

network of all individuals who were arrested, summonsed for a quality-of-life viola-

tion, and subjected to noncustodial police contacts in Newark, New Jersey, during a

1-year time period (N =10,531). A descriptive network analysis finds an extreme con-

centration of fatal and nonfatal gunshot injuries within a small social network: Nearly

one third of all shootings in Newark occur in a network that contains less than 4 percent

of the city’s total population. Furthermore, a series of logistic regression models finds

that being directly or indirectly linked to a gang member in one’s co-offending network

has a significant effect on one’s probability of being a gunshot victim. Implications of

these findings for the study of gangs, gun violence, and a public health approach to

violence are discussed.

On a brisk October day in 2014, “Greg,” a 24-year-old Black male member of the

G-Shine Bloods, and “Tony,” a 23-year-old Black male nongang associate, were standing

in front of a carwash near Spencer Street and Alexander Street in the Vailsburg neigh-

borhood of Newark, New Jersey.1A blue BMW with tinted windows containing members

∗This study was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award to

the first author. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the Victoria Foundation,

Nicholson Foundation, Prudential, Schumann Family Fund, and The Community Fund for New

Jersey in the completion of this research. Direct correspondence to Andrew V. Papachristos,

Department of Sociology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208265, New Haven, CT 06520 (e-mail:

andrew.papachristos@yale.edu).

1. We have changed the names of the participants and some of the details of this incident to ensure

anonymity.

C2015 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12091

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 53 Number 4 624–649 2015 624

GANG MEMBERSHIP, NETWORKS, & VICTIMIZATION 625

of the 793 Bloods, who are rivals of the G-Shines, cruised down Spencer Street and pulled

over not far from where Greg and Tony were standing. At least one member of the

793 Bloods leaned through the window with a .40-caliber handgun and opened fire on

Greg and Tony, wounding both men nonfatally in their legs. Although the exact motive

of the shooting is unclear, police believe it was related to an ongoing drug-turf–related

dispute between the G-Shines and 793 Bloods.

The shooting of a gang member by another gang member is a frequent occurrence in

many U.S. cities; research has underscored that gang membership is strongly associated

with heightened levels of violent victimization (Peterson, Taylor, and Esbensen, 2004;

Pyrooz, Moule, and Decker, 2014; Thornberry, 1998). Regardless of the particular situa-

tion, gang membership seems to carry with it elevated risks derived from group processes

within the gang, gang lifestyle and behaviors, or simply the aggregation of high-risk indi-

viduals who join such groups (see Thornberry et al., 2003, for a summary of this debate).

Greg’s victimization fits exactly such an academic—and often policy—narrative of a vic-

tim whose gang membership enhanced his probability of getting shot.

But, how do we explain Tony’s victimization? If one considers the boundaries of the

G-Shines to be a rigid wall demarking member from nonmember, then Tony would be

a “bystander” or “third party” to the event that was driven by a gang-level dispute—an

individual whose routine activities placed him in a risky situation and thus exposed him

to gang violence (see Spano, Freilich, and Bolland, 2008). Tony’s connection to G-Shine

was secondary, and he was not (to the best of anyone’s knowledge) involved in the dis-

pute that led to the shooting. Tony just happened to be with Greg that day. At the same

time, however, Tony was directly linked to Greg who was a member of G-Shine. In fact,

Tony was stopped by the police with Greg just a month before the shooting. This connec-

tion gives Tony an indirect connection to G-Shine through his past (potentially criminal)

association with Greg. Perhaps in this situation, the known effects of gang membership as-

sociated with Greg extended to Tony indirectly through their criminal connection. Stated

more generally, maybe the known risks associated with gang membership can extend be-

yond individual gang members to affect others in their social networks.

The current study attempts to answer this question by examining how social proximity

to a gang member in one’s co-offending network—literally, how close one is to a gang

member—relates to the probability of being a gunshot victim. Gun violence itself tends

to concentrate within small networks, and recent studies have begun to uncover the effect

of the placement of individuals within such networks on the probability of being a victim

(Papachristos, Braga, and Hureau, 2012; Papachristos and Wildeman, 2014). This study

extends this scholarship by assessing how the presence of another risk factor—in this

case, gang membership—might also affect victimization. As in the case of Tony and Greg,

we hypothesize that the negative effects of gang membership can and do reach beyond

gang members to include others to whom they are connected. We maintain that such

effects would be especially acute within behavioral and association networks, such as co-

offending networks, that heighten potential exposure not only to risky individuals but also

to risky situations and encounters.

We test this hypothesis by re-creating and analyzing the co-offending networks among

all individuals who were arrested, summonsed for quality-of-life violations, and subjected

to noncustodial police contacts in the City of Newark during a 1-year time period. De-

scriptive network analysis finds an extreme concentration of fatal and nonfatal gun-

shot injuries within co-offending networks in Newark: Nearly one third of all fatal and