The core function of organized crime is the selling of protection. Protection can be real, against third-party crime, or manufactured by the organized crime groups themselves. Mafias and gangs emerge in areas of weak state control, because of prohibition and geographic, ethnic, or social isolation. Although competition is considered good in economics, in the case of organized crime the predator...

In open-access settings, high-quality resources are lucrative, yet fencing out potential entrants may be very costly. I examine the endogenous creation of property rights, focusing on the incentives that resource quality provides to close the commons. Analytical examples explore the incentives of locals to increase or decrease the strength of property rights conditional on how locals and nonloc...

This study examined the role of adaptation in the first year of middle school (Grade 6, age 11) to affiliation with gangs by the last year of middle school (Grade 8, age 13). The sample consisted of 714 European American (EA) and African American (AA) boys and girls. Specifically, academic grades, reports of antisocial behavior, and peer relations in 6th grade were used to predict multiple meas...

The experience, observations, local knowledge, and historical perspective of working police officers and others with routine contact with offenders, communities, and criminal organizations may represent an important underutilized resource for describing, understanding, and crafting interventions aimed at crime problems. Mapping and other informationcollecting and -ordering techniques, usually a...

OBJECTIVES To describe the sources that active offenders in Trinidad and Tobago use to obtain firearms and report their motivations for obtaining them. To estimate relationships between gang involvement, drug selling, and firearm ownership (or possession). SETTING Port of Spain (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago). METHODS A cross-sectional research design was used to collect self-report data ...

BACKGROUND Youth violence in general and gang violence in particular continues to be a pernicious problem facing the majority of large U.S. cities. Attempts to reduce youth violence are hindered by the absence of a shared framework that crosses multiple disciplines. OBJECTIVE The goal of the Youth Violence Systems Project (YVSP) is to help communities strategize for and achieve sustained redu...