The labor market and gang membership in adulthood: is the availability, quality, and nature of legal work associated with adult gang involvement?

AbstractGang scholars generally contend that adult gang membership has grown more common in US cities since the 1970s. The greater presence of adult members is often attributed to conditions in the local labor market, an explanation that has been rarely tested. This research tests whether measures of the availability, quality, and nature of legal work are associated with the rate of adult gang membership among large US cities (N = 133). The current findings offer mixed support for the tested hypotheses and, in general, indicate that labor market conditions account for a small share of the variation in the rate of adult membership. Nonetheless, the current findings provide some support for measuring labor market conditions beyond simply the availability of work (e.g., rate of unemployment), for measures of the quality (e.g., extent of full-time employment) and the nature of work (e.g., degree of employment in service occupations) were no less important in explaining the rate of adult membership. The implic...