Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 19:258–280, 2009 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1091-1359 print/1540-3556 online DOI: 10.1080/10911350802694766 Contemporary Patterns of Female Gangs in Correctional Settings MICHAEL LAUDERDALE School of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas MICHELLE BURMAN Doctoral Candidate, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas This article addresses the current state of female participation in street and prison gangs. Data come predominantly from interviews with observers (correctional officials) and from the authors’ expe- riences in working with correctional, police, and school personnel. The methodology used is an opportunity sample. The article reviews the literature on gangs and addresses why early studies showed few females in gangs and then typically in defined peripheral roles. KEYWORDS Gangs, female gangs, correctional settings, security threat groups INTRODUCTION Males form gangs. Today, neighborhoods, schools, and correctional insti- tutions struggle with these informal social groups that direct males toward committing illegal acts including violence, drug trade, and extortion. Gangs can be pervasive and extremely threatening—so much so that correctional facilities refer to them as security threat groups (STGs) to lessen their psy- chological impact. Some gangs are neighborhood-based and last only a few years. Others will last more than a generation, acknowledging veterans and holding a territory. Gangs may extend beyond a single neighborhoodand use economic activities to impact those social institutions seeking to eliminate or control them (e.g., crime syndicates such as the Mafia and groups in Mexico that war with local and federal authorities to control the drug trade and the movement of drugs into the United States). During the last 5 years, some cities, such as Nuevo Laredo, appear to be mostly in the control of Address correspondence to Michael Lauderdale, School of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin, 1925 San Jacinto Boulevard, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: [email protected] 258 Female Gangs in Correctional Settings 259 competing drug gangs that have weaponry that exceeds that of municipal police authorities. Gangs cross city, state, and country borders. One gang, Mara Salva- trucha, or MS-13 as it is commonly known, developed as a result of the civil war and unrest in El Salvador during the 1980s and early 1990s that drove many to emigrate primarily to Washington, DC, and the Rampart area of Los Angeles. When these refugees were not accepted by the Hispanic commu- nity, they formed their own group to protect themselves from and challenge other Hispanic gangs, primarily the 18th Street Gang in Los Angeles. The gang has now spread beyond these borders, claiming an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 members internationally. In all these gangs, little is known about, or perhaps less attention is paid to, the role of females. This article examines just that. POPULAR NOTIONS ABOUT GANGS When one thinks of gangs, the usual notion is an entity such as the Mafia deeply involved in highly organized illegal activities such as narcotics, smug- gling, and gambling. Since the 1980s, a public assumption of the manifes- tation of gangs has been of street gangs such as the Crips and Bloods as popularized through movies, including ‘‘Colors’’ and ‘‘Boyz ‘n the Hood.’’ These are gangs that are neighborhood-based, wear distinctive clothing, are visible and violent, and have limited female involvement in restricted roles. Through all of this public interest and media focus—actually fascination— citizens, youth, and current and potential researchers are made aware of the reality, characteristics, and activities of gangs. However, much of this attention with lurid media reports of gang activities may or may not be an accurate depiction of gangs, their activities, and their members. Especially the emphasis on violence, high activity, romanticism, and male membership may not be wholly accurate. Public awareness of gangs has been significant throughout the twentieth century. At the turn of the century, many of the themes of popular, Western pulp fiction focused upon gangs such as the James Gang, the Wild Bunch, or the Hole in the Wall Gang. Both news reports and light fiction focused upon stories of conflict among mostly young men in the new communities developing in the American West. People being uprooted and moving into new settings was a theme not only in the West but also in the growing cities of the East. Herbert Asbury wrote a popular series of articles in the 1920s about street gangs developing in the early and mid-century years of the nineteenth century in New York City, and parts of his story were used in the movie, ‘‘Gangs of New York’’ (Scorsese, DiCaprio, et al., 2002), which received several Academy Award nominations. During the Depression, gangs of bank robbers and bootleggers captured the public’s attention and earned 260 M. Lauderdale and M. Burman notoriety. A popular Broadway play in the early 1960s, ‘‘West Side Story,’’ looked at youth involved in ethnic and territorial conflicts in Manhattan; another movie, ‘‘Blackboard Jungle,’’ had as part of its theme gang activity in New York public schools, and Marlon Brando’s ‘‘The Wild One’’ established the concept of the motorcycle gang. One constant in all of these were settings where persons were mobile and moving into new settings. Throughout these popular and historical accounts of gangs, females, if present, usually played auxiliary roles. There may be an exception now and again, such as the purported equivalence of Bonnie Parker to Clyde Barrow in the mobile, bank-robbing gang of the Great Depression, but usually the female was an accompaniment, not a leader or major initiator of plans and activity. The female consoled the male, hid the weapons, and drove the car. They did not form gangs, either as mixed-gender gangs or exclusively female, and were not leaders of gangs. ACADEMIC STUDIES OF GANGS The academic research examination of gangs began with the School of Sociology at the University of Chicago (Park & Burgess, 1969; Park, Burgess, et al., 1925; Shaw, Zorbaugh, et al., 1929; Zorbaugh, 1957). Direct obser- vations of street gangs were made as were interviews of gang members in new neighborhoods populated by migrants and in the same settings by re- searchers, as early social workers were engaged in creating settlement homes to address the conditions of need and anomie among poverty residents. Among the prominent findings for our purposes here was that gangs appear in the interstitial areas of society. Youth who are not in school or have little extracurricular involvement in the school or community-sanctioned organi- zations, including employment, are those most likely to be involved in gangs. The second finding is that girls were rarely noted as being gang members or no reference at all was made of all-girl gangs. From the 1920s until the 1990s, the findings were that there were exceedingly few female gangs and that the usual presence of females in gangs was as auxiliaries to males. Specifically, Thrasher in his 1920s study of more than 1,000 gangs reports only six gangs and perhaps only two as true all-girl gangs. Girls were seen in gangs but only in certain roles, and the usual role for girls was carrying weapons for the boys or perhaps driving a car and providing sexual favors. Other researchers arrived at similar conclusions (Mann, 1984; Miller, Harvard Law School Center for Criminal Justice, et al., 1975; Miller & United States Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2001; Short & Strodtbeck, 1965). The Social Psychology of Gangs in the Fifties and Sixties One aspect of the study of gangs is the fact that gang numbers and public and scientific attention to gangs is episodic. There are substantial reports Female Gangs in Correctional Settings 261 of gangs in New York City in the mid- and early 1800s, as the city grew rapidly, swelled by millions of immigrants coming from Europe. There were many reports of gangs in the American West after the Civil War, with its disruption of community life in the South and the great westward migration. In the early 1910s and 1920s, as America urbanized and industrialized, gangs became especially evident in the newly appearing cities such as Chicago. In the depths of the Great Depression, with male unemployment running in the 20% range, gangs were a great concern, and Whyte’s (1958) study of street life in Boston for low-income youth presented participation in gangs as part of the standard coming-to-adult passage of American culture. Gangs were understood by academic researchers and professionals such as neighborhood social workers, police, and correctional personnel as somewhat episodic and as a common theme in certain situations. Coinciding with popular attention devoted to gangs after World War II again in newly developing communities with population migration was the scientific study of group formation that had important implications for understandings of gangs. The works of Bales (1955); Hare (1962); Sherif and Sherif (1964); and Sherif et al. (1965) supported the notion that peo- ple, males and females, naturally formed groups. If there were no social structure, including norms and roles, people in interaction soon formed them, and the distinction between groups and gangs was one of whether the norms of the groups were in accord with or violated social norms. Such findings supported the notion that females as much as males readily form social groupings, and thus, one should expect to find female gangs and substantial participation of females in mixed male and female gangs. Yet most of the empirical studies of the 1960s and 1970s found, as did earlier researchers, few examples of girl gangs and only in the same roles as found previously (Short and Strodtbeck, 1965).