{"id":3246,"date":"2012-12-19T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T09:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/&#038;p=3246"},"modified":"2015-10-13T19:39:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T19:39:01","slug":"what-stringer-bell-can-teach-us-about-gangs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2012\/12\/19\/what-stringer-bell-can-teach-us-about-gangs\/","title":{"rendered":"What Stringer Bell Can Teach Us about Gangs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='citation'>\n    <span class='authors'>James Densley, <\/span><span class='link'><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.1525\/sp.2012.59.3.301\">&ldquo;Street Gang Recruitment: Signaling, Screening, and Selection,&rdquo; <em>Social Problems<\/em>,<\/a><\/span><span class='year'> September 2012<\/span><\/div>\n<p>Just over a year ago, the UK was rocked by five days of rioting and looting that spanned across London and forty-six other local areas. Denouncing the violence as evidence of uncontrolled mobs, Prime Minister David Cameron and Tory politicians declared an \u201call-out war on gangs and gang culture.\u201d Yet the prevailing stereotype of chaotic, irrationally violent gangs has meant that the ensuing government policies have largely failed. Some have even backfired.<\/p>\n<p>In this recent research (<em>Social Problems<\/em>, September 2012), Oxford\u2019s James Densley outlines the real operation of gang violence. Examining gang recruitment in London, Densley argues that gangs actually place a premium on a potential recruit\u2019s established reputation for using effective, yet \u201cdisciplined violence.\u201d By recruiting talented but discerning fighters, a gang increases its own collective reputation for violence, thus limiting the <em>actual<\/em> amount of violence in which its members will need to engage. Fear over fists, if you will. Furthermore, Densley refers to instances in which gangs have actually \u201ctaken out\u201d their members with reputations for indiscriminate violence\u2014these unpredictable members were more of a liability than an asset to the group.<\/p>\n<p>A far cry from the image of riotous youth, the portrait that Densley paints of the \u201cideal\u201d gang recruit most closely hews to \u201cThe Wire\u2019s\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stringer_Bell\">Stringer Bell<\/a>, who ran his gang\u2019s meetings with Roberts\u2019 Rules of Order, than the \u201cferal underclass\u201d that politicians and pundits love to villainize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Densley, &ldquo;Street Gang Recruitment: Signaling, Screening, and Selection,&rdquo; Social Problems, September 2012 Just over a year ago, the UK was rocked by five days of rioting and looting that spanned across London and forty-six other local areas. Denouncing the violence as evidence of uncontrolled mobs, Prime Minister David Cameron and Tory politicians declared an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,15],"tags":[37337,430,19069,133],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","tag-crime","tag-gangs","tag-rational-actor-model","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8319,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions\/8319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}