Abstract
Summary
Gangs are commonly presented in research as an attractive alternative for those who feel excluded and unrecognized in “ordinary” society. Gang life is volatile, however, and violence (open or suppressed) is more or less omnipresent. Exiting a gang seems to be motivated by both thoughts of a better life and disappointment in the gang's failure to meet hopes and expectations.
Findings
From an analysis of former gang members exit processes, this article investigates what about gang life was stressful and motivated participants dropout, how they coped with tensions, and elaborates how social work could use this tension productively to support people exiting gangs. The data consist primary of interviews with 20 former gang members and 42 professionals. Organizational theory was used in combination with theories on liminality and identity reformation to understand how tensions occurred in gang life, how they were managed, and what caused exit.
Applications
Social workers may help members exit from gangs by supporting and strengthening their motivations to leave, stimulating their self-reflection, and reminding them of their past transformative. Most important, gang members should be helped to recognize the positive urges that drew them towards gangs and refocus those wishes for community to general society.
Introduction
In his seminal work on street gangs, Thrasher (1927/1963) suggested that gangs form in interstitial (play) groups that manage conflicts through integration, close bonds, adopted identities, tradition, esprit de corps, and “ownership” of a specific area (turf). This understanding of the formation of gangs as an intersection of socio-economic situation, societal inequality, and individual and group aspirations still has relevance, despite its outdated middle-class values and blindness to structural racism (Hagedorn, 2010). Both criminality and the criminal justice system function in a societal compound of inequality, poverty, and racialized social control; relevant for research would then be one of how to represent and understand subordinated groups (Rios et al., 2017). Some researchers call for a broader analysis of the “situation complex” from which gangs emerge (Dimitriadis, 2006) and reject the demonizing of individual gang members, portraying them instead as “normal” young men trying to make sense of, resist, and cope in a dysfunctional and disorganized community (Brotherton, 2008; Contreras, 2013; Martinez, 2016).
However, a significant gap often appears between new entrants’ dreams of gang life and the realities they encounter, including disillusionment, internal feuds, and violence fatigue that can evoke a process of leaving (Carson & Vecchio, 2015; Decker et al., 2014). “Push and pull” factors such as judicial sanctions, disillusionment, maturation, victimization, role conflicts, supportive significant others, spirituality, and self-reflection and their interplay are recognized as important aspects of disengaging from gangs (Pyrooz & Decker, 2011; Tonks & Stephenson, 2019).
The role of social workers and other professionals in facilitating disengagement and desistance has been less studied (Weaver & McNeill, 2010). Rios et al.'s (2017) conceptualization of a sociological double consciousness can be helpful in social work research and practice with gangs, as an evolving reflective process in which the researcher/practitioner learns from and together with the participants, and ultimately merges the insider and outsider perspective to form a basis for transformative collective action (see also Fleisher, 1998).
This article aims to explore some of the internal tensions social workers encounter when interacting with gang members considering leaving the criminal life. The analysis probes into potential similarities between the initial social frictions that produce gangs and the subsequent internal tensions that, if not coped with and neutralized, can evolve into high levels of stress and conflict. The article concludes by discussing how professionals can acknowledge and work with these tensions to facilitate gang members’ disengagement and desistance from criminality.
The “gang issue” has been a recurring political and media priority in Sweden since the 1990s, when disputes first arose between biker groups newly admitted to the international Hell's Angels and Bandidos associations. At this time, there was disagreement over whether gangs even existed in the country. Some maintained that these groups were better described as loose networks (Sarnecki & Pettersson, 2001), and this casual appraisal may have allowed a lack of attention to the issue (Klein, 2001). However, around the turn of the millennium, territorial gangs resembling the street gangs defined by Klein et al. (2001) arose in some marginalized areas and, since then, the presence of different gangs in Sweden has been widely acknowledged. Gang-related use of aggravated violence, especially in marginalized neighborhoods, has resulted in a notably higher rate of lethal and non-lethal gun victimization among younger victims in Sweden, in comparison with other Western European countries (Sturup et al., 2019). Moreover, the increase in gang criminality and lethal shootings has led to urgent questions about the role of social work in preventing youth and young adults from joining and helping them in leaving gangs (SOU 2020:08, 2020). Today, there is an emergent field of collaborative social work practices in Sweden, especially in the bigger cities, aiming at gang interventions and supporting gang exits; relocation and identify protection is also provided when needed. With some exceptions (Alstam & Forkby, 2021; BRÅ, 2016), few studies have mapped gang-related social work and its various characteristics in Sweden.
From an analysis of police databases from 1995 to 2016, an estimated 12,800 people (including gang members) were involved in organized crime in Sweden during this time period (Rostami et al., 2018): about 5,700 people in biker gangs, 5,100 associated with undefined criminal networks, 800 in street gangs with explicit insignia and a territorial group link, 700 partially organized and with long periods of documented criminality in different constellations, and 500 in Mafia organizations able to affect political, cultural, and economic structures. Across these groups, 90 to 95 per cent of the members were male, had a lower educational background, and (except in biker gangs) were much more likely to have a foreign background than the population average.
Facilitating desistance through social work
Desistance from gangs is a process that affects an individual's goals, norms and values, social bonds and relations, and daily activities. It is thus more complicated than just resisting criminal activities in general. Disengagement from a gang does not immediately lead to desistance from criminal activities or the evolution of the prosocial capacities needed to integrate into society (Densley, 2013). It is therefore crucial for exiters to find “hooks for change” to attach to their new identity, strengthen their motivation, and use as levers into their new circumstances (Giordano, Cernkovich & Rudolph, 2002; Sweeten, Pyrooz & Piquero, 2013). Both direct and indirect factors can influence this process. For example, a love relationship might not only occupy time otherwise spent with the gang, but also provide new relationships, social bonds, influences, and “replacement selves” to be activated outside of gang life (Forkby, Kuosmanen & Örnlind, 2020; Giordano et al., 2002).
Little is known with certainty about desistance processes or how they vary by aspects such as gender or ethnicity (Carson et al., 2013). They do seem to differ depending on the age of the individual, with younger offenders tending to leave more abruptly and older ones more gradually, often as a result of maturation (Decker, 2016). Studies, however, have pointed to the benefits of social workers’ efforts, especially with young offenders (Villeneuve et al., 2019), and suggest that, without support, people exiting from crime will most likely be highly ambivalent and unstable (McNeill & Weaver, 2010; Bolden, 2013). Social workers can therefore play a stabilizing role by providing a vicarious social bond through their relationship, as well as by bridging over to new relationships and facilitating preexisting ones (Alstam & Forkby, 2021). In their systematic review, Tonks and Stephenson (2019) show the importance of social workers’ seeing the individuals behind the gang member label, making them feel valued, and functioning as examples of another possible life. For “social rehabilitation,” a gang member who decides to change his life must be recognized and supported by both professionals and the law (McNeill, 2014).
Scholars have highlighted the need for autonomous social workers to support those who wish to desist from crime (Fenton, 2013) and show loyalty and encouragement (McNeill et al., 2008), especially as gang members tend to unify in the face of opposition (Hennigan & Spanovic, 2012). These social workers may be in a place to see gang members’ crises of doubt as crucial windows of opportunity to begin the exit process. Roman and co-authors (2017) similarly concluded that social workers should continue the interplay between push and pull factors, combining those that strengthen disillusionment with the gang with those that make another “ordinary” life attractive and providing gang members with both long-term and intensive opportunities to try out new prosocial roles.
Friction and tension management in gangs
Interstitiality is approached in this article as the friction between an individual's imagined gang and its associated myths, hopes, dreams, and expectations and the often harsh reality of their actual gang experience. Thrasher referred to interstitiality in a primarily socio-spatial sense and studied how gangs were formed out of play groups growing up in disorganized neighborhoods amidst wealthier and better organized areas of the city center and the suburbs. He noted a fundamental friction in spaces regulated by opposing interests, in which one set had greater economic resources and more reachable expectations of hegemonic ideas of successful lifestyles than another set. Youngsters experiencing multiple marginalizations feel the tension between their dreams and hopes of a dignified life and what they see as possible (Vigil, 2010). This tension may contribute to open and/or symbolic manifestations of resistance and a search for alternative and compensatory arenas for recognition and success (Miller, 2011, Whyte, 1993).
Except for a few attempts to describe gangs as relatively strictly controlled (business) structures (e.g., Sanchez-Jankowski, 1991), most research reveals that the notion of gangs as formal organizations with a strict order of command, detailed regulations, and required behaviors is a fiction (Densley, 2012, Rostami et al., 2012). On the contrary, most gangs would be better described as organic associations and dynamic sites of continual restructuring, constantly coping with challenges and tensions in a volatile environment, competing interests from other groups, and internal struggles for group and individual gains, status, and reputation (Anderson, 1999, Hagedorn, 1994, Weisel, 2002).
To keep from falling apart, gangs—like every system—need mechanisms and techniques to cope with tensions and conflict. Instead of formal rules and rational problem-solving of traditional work organizations, organic associations require a glue of social relations, member commitment, trust, and relatively harmonious co-existence between individual and group goals. In the absence of these necessary factors, group survival is threatened, and individuals might desire to opt out (Grey & Garsten, 2001). This implies that tools for neutralizing and managing tensions are crucial not only to the gang's survival but also to the members’ continuing activity, productivity, and belief in the gang's worth (Forkby, Kuosmanen & Örnlind, 2020).
Although the structure and regulations of group processes differ among various types of gangs and criminal associations, one thing remains constant: the use of violence to resolve troublesome contacts and/or to proactively build up group and individual reputations (Decker & Pyrooz, 2012). The actual effectiveness of violence in neutralizing tensions is dubious, however, since it easily leads to more tensions and exaggerated conflicts. In Bateson's (1999) terminology, violence may cause a situation of symmetrical schismogenesis, in which actors become trapped in a mutually re-enforced cycle of violence that eventually threatens their own existence.
Theoretically, gangs’ and individual members’ activities can be understood as field-specific, with defined fields structuring positions and distributing status and resources among the actors (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984). Newcomers have to learn the specific codes, values, and manners necessary to pass as a legitimate player. Because such fields are structured hierarchically, actors compete over field-specific resources to gain status and respect. Significant values in the field contribute to this competition. For example, hyper-masculine values such as strength, toughness, and domination (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) bolster the combative atmosphere and make the competition even stronger (Forkby, Kuosmanen & Örnlind, 2020). Rituals may also hold the group together by focusing participants’ attention on customary behaviors in a common event (e.g., a party) that produces collective emotional energy through chains of predictable and satisfying interactions (Collins, 1981). However, rituals are tied to their defining context and may lose their functional, emotional, and cognitive value when this context is changed. For example, when a gang shifts too far away from the expected ideals of brotherhood (“communitas”; Turner, 2012), collective rituals lose any collective function beyond momentary arousal.
Methods
This study included in-depth individual interviews with 20 former gang members (all male, aged early 20s to about 40) and 42 individual or group interviews with 14 prison employees, 14 probation officers, and representatives of 14 local exit support units and seven NGOs. The analysis was also informed by an evaluation of the Passus exit programme in Sweden, including narrative data from 27 former gang members and eight staff members (Alstam & Forkby, 2021). We sought variety in gang experience by including members of biker groups, street gangs, Mafia structures, and other criminal networks. We also included a broad variety of professionals involved in supporting exit processes or responsible for specialized treatment programmes, security assessment, prison guarding, daily contact and motivation, coordination, and occupational training. These professionals were also contact points for our recruitment of former gang associates and were asked to provide information to potential participants and return contact information in case of agreement.
Most interviews with the group of 20 took place at a room at the university, or at prison without prison staff present. Those who could decide on a place were offered the ability to do so, with three of the interviews, respectively, being conducted in a participant's home, at a café, and in a car at a car park. To ensure that the participants felt comfortable and aware of their rights, they were asked about their feelings during the interview and reminded of their right to withdraw their consent and refrain from answering certain questions. All interviews but one (in which notes were taken) were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.
The participants were given space in all interviews to present themselves as they wished, and the researchers generally took on a facilitating role to introduce new themes (according to an interview guide), pose follow-up questions, and stimulate participants’ elaboration on different topics. The interviews were also interrelated, so that various topics informed each other as they emerged.
Interviews with former gang members took a narrative approach aimed to gain insight into individual life trajectories (e.g., transitions through childhood, school, gang association, and work), processes (e.g., formation of identity or manliness), turning points, and how these all related to gang structures and dynamics (Carlsson & Sarnecki, 2015, Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). A general aim was to understand how members’ identities and masculinities were (re)constructed during the different phases of joining, being part of, and leaving a gang. The relations between gangs’ and members’ hopes and expectations and how these were realized over time became an important analytical theme of this article.
Interviews with professionals were oriented towards their experiences in supporting exit processes, their occupational roles, their dilemmas in balancing security with support, and other related factors (reported in Alstam & Forkby, 2021). Although this article concentrates on former gang members’ experiences, the professional interviews were important for exploring and testing ideas in an ongoing validation.
The data were analyzed using two general strategies: narrative and thematic. The narrative strategy used a step-wise process in which the interviews were read in full more than once. This provided a general idea of gang members’ important life stages and surrounding contexts. In the next step, the individual life trajectories were compared to find common patterns and variations. Each step of this process included interpretations and connections to theoretical perspectives. The software tool N’Vivo facilitated coding, retrieval, and finding similarities and variations within the whole data set. A theoretical model, further refined during the process, was constructed to guide the analysis by, for example, relating some basic features of organizational life to the data. The recurring hope of reciprocal relations and internal solidarity (the “brotherhood idea”) was analytically tried against the group's functions and forms and further tested by questions about tensions and their management.
As previous research has shown, clear differences exist between and within different types of gangs, such as bikers, street gangs, or right-wing groups. However, although these differences exist in the actual content of various gangs’ activities and organization, they were not obvious in this overall analysis of the tensions in gang life, their possible triggers, or individual members’ motives for leaving.
Results
We present the results of the analysis starting with how the tensions emerged, followed by how they were coped with, and what could lead to a tension overload causing dropout. Finally, ways that social work can support exit processes by acknowledging friction are elaborated.
Emerging tensions
Crucial to individuals’ initial willingness to join a gang was the vision of a world in which they could attain their hopes and dreams of economic, social, and personal gains. The common denominator was a longing to become “someone”: to earn respect and recognition as an accepted part of a group united by social bonds and a common oath, similar to Thrasher's notion of what made gangs attractive in the 1920s.
The motivating factors—hopes for community and success—reflect the existential needs and hopes of many young people on the threshold of adulthood (Honneth, 2007), but was exaggerated within the gang. The dream of brotherhood resembles what Turner (2012) explored as “communitas,” in which everyone is equal and stands up for each other in solidarity, was, however, incompatible with their opportunities in ordinary society. Especially for those who formed a gang with their peer group, the initial phases included a great deal of innovation and experimentation, unregulated by the restrictions of everyday life, which served to build both group and individual reputations and identities. In this way, the gang made possible an arena for transitions and transformations in the margins of their social fabric (Vigil, 2010). If you joined that name, then ‘Wow, it's the Snakes!’ It's about the reputation. If a gang has a strong and good reputation, then you’re drawn to it. Before we joined, it was ‘Oh, have you heard about the Snakes? Hell, they are mean, they have done this and that. They are behind those shootings, have you heard about that?’ Oh, hell, how bad they are; I wish I could join, I thought. (Ex-member/ leader of a street gang)
It did not, however, take long before they encountered challenges to this initial enthusiasm, whether they were a part of an upcoming “entrepreneurial” group or an established one (e.g., a biker group). The entrepreneurs often experienced some initial success (“It was so easy”), but were then recognized as a threat and confronted by other gangs. Many experienced disputes over leadership, with some calling for more designated roles and hierarchical structures and others urging for the opposite.
The appointment of leaders and the increase in conduct regulation may be understood as ways to both protect the gang against external threats and control members from acting on self-interest. Thus, a strategy of defence against outside threats was also used to deal with tensions emerging within the gang. However, such a strategy also signaled the gradual transformation of the group from a brotherhood bound by reciprocity, mutual obligation, and respect to an association governed by more formal roles and rules. Former members could therefore describe themselves as constantly negotiating between the pressures of maintaining communitas and those of coping with external conditions (see Meira, 2014).
A man with experiences in various gang constellations and football groups related how such memberships gave him a long-needed sense of coherence in life. He was given defined roles with responsibilities over tasks central to the groups’ survival, but came to realize that these groups, especially those with less developed organizational structures, were fragile because of internal fragmentation. He told: It evolved into subgroups within the group. One small gang here, and one little one there, and another one there. And this, I would say, is all about money. This, I would say – the root of 99 per cent of all the problems with shootings and things in this town – is money above all.
Coping with tensions
To survive as constellations that allow individual and collective expectations to be realized, yet still function in a competitive environment, gangs need structural devices to define what activities should be undertaken, how, and by whom. Too much structure, however, could transform the gang into a “regular” organization, without the initial appeal of its mythical character. Interviewees commonly expressed the importance of the brotherhood as an entity separate from ordinary society, and many were disillusioned when the reality failed to measure up to the ideal.
Three basic elements functioned to address tensions: leadership, rituals, and mediation. Each of these could be quite frail depending on the maturity of the association (biker gangs seemed to have a more varied repertoire of tools to stabilize their formation than street gangs), the specific context, and the individual characteristics of the players.
Good leaders were distinguished from bad in these constellations as supportive, considerate, and strong as opposed to self-serving, exploitive, weak, or cruel. Leaders able to access, control, and amplify both their softer and harsher sides could use their various qualities strategically to assert and retain power. A former leader of a street gang explained the balance between capacities needed to survive: You said that you have always been a considerate person, but at the same time you had a reputation for not backing off. Was it that rumour that made it possible to be soft? Yes, I used to say that a dog that barks doesn’t bite. I have been at a lot of meetings and told people that I just want to listen, we are not here for trouble, we can solve this. And when I talk like that, they start to raise their voices, take it as a weakness. So, I stand up and grab him by the throat, ‘You son of bitch, I’ll break every bone in your body, I’ll drink your blood, I’ll eat your flesh – who the hell do you think you are?’ Then they stand there. They thought they could get on top of me because I’m friendly, I am nice. I do try to make peace using that weapon.
Another party ritual seemingly meant to uphold the unity of a larger body is seen most obviously in biker communities. Local groups regularly host events and invite affiliated groups in the larger association. As soon as you get a front patch attached and a Swedish label on your back, you are obliged to travel around and show yourself, meet people around, and show the club [colours]. So, you have to send at least two, three members to every party you are invited to. Are there many parties? Yes, it is like a party every weekend.
Other, more criminal activities than partying also had ritualistic dimensions and served similar functions. A warehouse burglary for example—through its distinct phases of planning, execution, and evaluation—served to focus members’ attention and increase their sense of engagement and collective joy in achieving a shared goal and “being parts of a coordinated body.”
Over time, gang rituals lost their power to maintain members’ initial (re)actualization of brotherhood. The rituals retained the essential ingredients but were drained of their emotional uniting function and were experienced as routine and necessary obligations.
First, it was difficult to find a person who both parties in conflict could trust, especially if violence had already been committed and suspicion was widespread. People with the right mediation skills and a reputation for being trustworthy were very few and might not be available or willing to intervene. Second, opponents were unlikely to agree to “sitting down and talking” if they thought they risked losing more through mediation than they could gain through other methods.
Nevertheless, one interviewee had served several times as a mediator “both over money and over lives.” This role required, first and foremost, strong social skills: he could “talk the talk” and never tried to deceive anyone. He perceived himself as the criminals’ internal police and explained the skills and attributes fundamental to his position: he could talk reasonably, be empathetic, take each party's perspectives into consideration, and be willing to admit his own failures. Because I can talk. You can’t send a carpenter to do an electrician's work. It is a bad choice to send ‘aggressive Joe’ who can talk for two minutes, and then hit them if he doesn’t get what he wants. A meeting is a meeting, one must be able to meet, otherwise you can’t solve anything [….] I used to say that the greatest strength is to admit that you are wrong. I try to explain to the guys I meet that there are always two sides to the coin. (Former member of a biker gang)
Tension overload
A friendly conjunction of individual and group aspirations towards freedom, experimentation, excitement, and expressions of manliness and success is not easy to achieve under threats from competitive and hierarchical internal and external logics. While some will profit (maybe temporarily) and be strengthened in their commitment to stay if they gain more influence, there will always also be those who experience emptiness, loss, and disappointment and will search for a way out.
Research on leaving gangs and desisting from criminality has shown exit triggers similar to those reported by our interviewees: the gang did not meet expectations of imagined brotherhood, the life of a criminal was one of high stress, and other important goals such as one's future and responsibility for children became more important than gang affiliations (e.g., Klein and Maxson, 2010, Kreager et al., 2010, Sweeten et al., 2013). In short, the social bonds that kept the group united lost their meaning; even if the exiters could look nostalgically back on the initial promises and loyalty, their actual experiences told another story, while other obligations and considerations became more important.
Many participants gave vivid examples of how violence, including constant threats from enemies (and sometimes purported allies), became an inescapable part of their lives. One participant looked back on what he had lost through violence: It has cost me two bullets, one here and one there. But I have not backed down; on the contrary – if you pull a gun, you have to shoot me. And if you don’t shoot me, I’ll take you out. That was the reason. Two times I have walked straight into death. You got tired? Yes, of course. You know, stabbed, shot, a lot of shit. The murder commission seven times. So, it ain’t fun. And there are a lot of dark sides. The club [bikers] is absolutely not what it was before.
A common neutralization technique (Sykes & Matza, 1957) was to blame the rules of the game, which allowed participants to distance their “real” selves from the violence they committed. While this strategy functioned for some, at least temporarily, to legitimize acts of violence, others had more difficulty neutralizing their self-blame and empathy with the victims as one former member of a street gang now working with supporting exit recall: “… and what hell has one achieved? He, who I hit, did I break his head? I wonder what his mother thought and felt.” Such considerations and neutralization techniques imply a contradictory logic from which the challenging tensions of gang life emerge, become inescapable, and can intensify over time.
Lastly, tension overload can be understood in retrospect. Several former gang members described their exit as leading first to a state of confusion after leaving the life they knew to embark on an undecided future. This was followed, however, by a radical decrease in stress. Yes, I feel at ease now. I feel that it is nice now. I have a sense that I don’t need to stress. It's quite nice just to take it easy. It feels like I have been stressing all my life. It feels like I have been on a train all my life. (Former member of a street gang)
Supporting a new identity
Most of the participants first maintained that they had left the gang completely through their own decision and efforts, perhaps recognizing support from family and close relationships. After further elaboration, many eventually talked about professionals whose assistance they had appreciated. These could include social workers, police, teachers, or youth workers; however, it was not the specific title or agency s/he represented that was appreciated, but rather what that professional had shown in terms of personal engagement, trustworthiness, and perseverance—holding out a hope for change.
The period of seeking a new identity, of being “betwixt and between” the gang and ordinary society, may be seen as a liminal (transfer) phase. Using Arbuckle's (1996) conceptualization, exit from gangs can be supported through the phases of separation (strengthening the motivation for the decision), liminality (stimulating reflections on the self and transformative learning from the past), and re-aggregation (reconnecting the individual to ordinary society). One participant described this journey through liminality as feeling that he had lost his identity when he left the gang. This loss led to a desperate search for something new to cling on to—that is, not just new things to be occupied with but, more importantly, someone new to be.
The interviewed professionals described how desistance is a process that requires long-term support and a varied toolbox of methods to be used according to time and need. In similar terms as the exiters had used, the professionals maintained that supporting life and identity transformation processes required to be a “personalized professional.” Constructing functional and acceptable equivalences to the accustomed norms of gang life, creating space for a liminal transformation from the known to the possible, building trustworthy relations, and within them gradually introducing different content have all been shown to give potential gang exiters the hope of social re-integration, another social identity, and the chance to redeem themselves by giving back, doing good, and finally desisting from gangs and crime (Maruna, 2001; Mørck, Hartvig & Bildstedfelt, 2020; Søgaard et al., 2016).
In practice, this type of social work would simultaneously focus on providing safe living conditions, protect from retribution from former associates, addiction treatment, secure identity, network support, and so forth, and facilitate exiting members’ active reflections upon different aspects of liminality, including the positive aspects of gang life that they will need to replace. It would be helpful for many exiting members to identify their existential needs (belongingness, mutuality, a dignified life), what circumstances caused them to search for ways to meet these needs in a gang community, and how these needs were translated within the tense gang environment. Such an attempt would involve a form of social work that is engaged in transformative social bonds based on a foundation of sameness and mutuality, while counteracting alienation and estrangement. This process entails ethical issues regarding what taking responsibility means; whose needs are recognized; and which societal contribution the individual is aiming for. In this support the social worker facilitates “secondary desistence,” as the individual shifts focus from how to make sense of himself to reconstructing his identity in a process of becoming (Graham & McNeill, 2017); that is, the social worker helps exiters to clarify the current influences in their lives and build up other ways to exercise control and choice (Porporino & Fabiano, 2008).
Limitations of the study
All studies have limitations. The first to consider here is the context. We included former members of both established and emerging gangs in Sweden, which were an unrecognized phenomenon for much of the 20th century. Some of the tensions discussed might be explained by this specific turbulent phase in which several groups were established, earned a market position, formed their collective identities, and encountered resistance. Although research reports similar tensions in gangs in other countries, those that potentially motivate exit and the specific mechanisms, maturity, and means of conflict resolution might vary among associations elsewhere.
Another shortcoming refers to the retrospective character of the study, since the participants were not part of a gang at the time for the interviews, we could not study the gang actual gang dynamics where and when they were played out but had to rely upon the interviewees remembrances and narratives. However, even if an ethnographic approach would provide in situ knowledge, it would be hard to account for longer processes, including exiting. Also, the arenas needed to be covered would have to be multiple and hard to access, because of the habitus of different gangs where the street often just plays a minor role.
The sample size was normal for qualitative studies, but not sufficient to allow statistical generalization. While this was not the purpose of the study, further testing with larger samples would be welcome.
Conclusion and discussion
This article aimed to understand how internal tensions in gangs and the mechanisms for managing these tensions might be important in the process of leaving a gang. Gangs are confronted with constant, often conflicting, challenges to maintain an ideal space of brotherhood, true relations (communitas), and mutual enhancement in the face of internal and external competition over resources and recognition.
The findings are summarized in Figure 1, which outlines the dynamics between the attractive myths of communitas that initially motivate gangs, the subsequent tensions that arise, and the eventual mechanisms that are meant to deal with tensions but subvert the original quest for brotherhood. All but a very few of the former gang members in our study had experienced multiple severe childhood adversities. Understandably, their desire for an alternative family was strong, and the gang was seen as one in which individual and collective dreams, desires, and homosocial recognition would function side-by-side and in reciprocity.
Tension management emerging from frictions between the communitas and social field codes.
The essential conditions for the realization of gang aspirations conflict with the liminality of actual gang life, which is a state of competition with unsecured power relations and few regulations on the behavior of market players. The friction between the myth of brotherhood and the field requirements results in omnipresent tensions that create challenges, both internal (from other members wanting to fulfill their desires to the expense of others) and external (from other gangs and police surveillance), leading to an unstable balance of power.
For groups with longer histories and more established market positions (biker groups and Mafia structures), this balance was supported by more routinized behaviors, while new entrepreneurs (often street gangs) had to be innovative and create rules ad hoc. Nevertheless, all groups, old and new, required continual tension management, often relying on direct or indirect violence in a competition for dominance, although negotiated resolutions and strategies were also possible.
Thinking about gang life in terms of liminality may open a path for a more complex, multi-dimensional and integrated approach that might further general desistance from crime theories of ageing, maturation, social bonds, and transitions in life (Laub & Sampson, 2001; Rocque, 2017). For instance, life-course categories such as onset, continuity, and desistance may be complemented with life-world concepts such as hope, promises, communitas, loss, and injury. For effective social work practice with gang members, a combination of different knowledge traditions could be helpful in organizing preventive work, developing prosocial institutions, and fostering a sensitivity to the tensions of gang life and the hopes that motivate young men to join gangs. This form of social work practice calls for a sociological double consciousness with exiting gang members that provides an opportunity to rework more fundamental desires for recognition, rather than focusing too much on individual deficits and fixed categories, which would run the risk of reinforcing the old identity.
Such a strategy would agree with Roman et al. (2017), who suggested “leveraging [the] pushes and pulls of gang disengagement” to combine what strengthens an exiter's doubts and disillusions about gang life with what attracts him to joining a normative lifestyle and learning more prosocial roles.
Footnotes
Research ethics
The main study was approved by the ethical committee in Gothenburg (case no: 786-15) and the Passsus evaluation by the Ethical Review Agency (case no: 2019-02360).
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Swedish Prison and Probation Services [2013-024486].
Declarations of Conflict of Interests
The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
