Civil Gang Injunction Effects

Civil Gang Injunction Effects
Author: Marc M. Collazo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Gang prevention
ISBN:

This hermeneutic phenomenological study aimed to assess the general effectiveness of civil gang injunctions based on community members' perceptions of their safety in Los Angeles County, California. The theory that served as the foundation for this study was social disorganization, as interpreted by Shaw and McKay (1972). It helped to gauge how well community members understood their lived experiences and perceived the effects of injunctions on their safety. The following question guided this study: Do local citizens believe communities are safer and more secure when civil gang injunctions are used? Eight community members from two Los County cities were chosen using a purposeful criterion and snowball sampling. One-on-one semistructured interviews were used to collect the data, and the researcher maintained reflective memos in the data analysis. The answer to the research question was both yes and no, and the application of social disorganization theory was both confirmed and disconfirmed. Safer neighborhoods served as confirmation of the social disorganization theory. Disconfirming the theory was indicated by gangs involved internal and external disruption: disturbing gang relationships with the community and other gangs, and disrupting gang culture and family ties. The findings also revealed that CGIs should not have an unlimited term because people can change, and those placed on CGIs are hampered access to meaningful employment.

Civil Gang Abatement

Civil Gang Abatement
Author: Edward L. Allan
Publisher: LFB Scholarly Publishing
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2004
Genre: Law
ISBN:

Civil gang abatement is an innovative remedy employing civil injunctions to combat public nuisance activity by gangs. This strategy has been promoted as a problem-oriented response to gang problems. Allan examines whether the process of acquiring a "gang injunction" incorporates the primary dimensions of problem-oriented responses: flexibility and community involvement. Flexibility is evident in the even distribution of initiatives among three categories: high-drug, high-crime, and high-disorder. Evidence of community involvement is weak, due to the lack of community organizations in gang-plagued neighborhoods, the low-profile nature of the initiatives, and the potential for retaliation against participants. Although the expectation for community involvement in gang injunction initiatives should be tempered, civil gang abatement is an appropriate approach to neighborhood gang problems.

Gang Injunctions and Abatement

Gang Injunctions and Abatement
Author: Matthew D. O'Deane
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 664
Release: 2011-12-20
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 146655410X

As gang violence continues to rise across the country and the world, police departments, prosecutors, and community members are seeking new methods to reduce the spread of gang-related criminal activity. Civil gang injunctions have become a growing feature of crime control programs in several states across the nation. Gang Injunctions and Abatement

"Saving the World, One Neighborhood at a Time"

Author: Matthew A Valasik
Publisher:
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN: 9781321301328

While violence across the United States has declined dramatically over the past two decades, gang-related crimes remain at unacceptably high rates, especially within the city of Los Angeles, America's gang capital. Gang-related crimes generally involve groups of individuals and have a strong territorial component, lending themselves to geographically targeted interventions. A strategy that has charmed law enforcement agencies with its ability to take advantage of both the social and spatial features of a gang is the civil gang injunction (CGI). Essentially, a CGI is a tailored restraining order against a gang, prohibiting its members from engaging in specific nuisance behaviors within a demarcated geographical region, termed a "safety-zone." Evaluations suggest that CGIs are effective at reducing serious crime and residents' fears; yet, CGIs remain a time-consuming and costly strategy with an unstudied mechanism for why they work. Do CGIs influence how gang members associate and where they hangout? And, more importantly, how do CGIs contribute to changes in gang violence? Using the framework of routine activities theory, this dissertation focuses on the relationship between CGIs, gang members' patterns of association and lethal violence. To address these questions I utilize two unique datasets: homicide case files and field identification (FI) cards gathered from the Hollenbeck Community Policing Area of the Los Angeles Police Department. My first chapter utilizes social network and spatial analyses to investigate the patterns of association among enjoined gang members at the individual- and group-level. I examine both the characteristics of enjoined gangs' social networks, ascertaining their influence in disrupting social ties, as well as examining the geographic characteristics of FIs to discern if enjoined gangs have changed the spatial patterns of their associations. My second chapter looks at both the homicide trends over the last decade and the disparities between non-gang and gang homicides, both enjoined and non-enjoined, to consider how CGIs influence the characteristics of violence. Lastly, in my third chapter I construct a turf-based spatial typology of gang homicide to investigate the impact that CGIs have on the mobility patterns of participants involved in gang-related homicides. If CGIs influence gangs' spatial patterns of association by discouraging members from congregating in public, then a CGI in theory shifts members' activity and travel patterns, suggesting that gang homicides involving enjoined gang members would experience a different mobility pattern than gang homicides involving only non-enjoined gang members. Results from this dissertation indicate that CGIs are able to influence the patterns of association of individual gang members, particularly in the short-run. Conversely, at the group-level, enjoined gangs do not always respond as predicted by the rational of a CGI, with a gang's social network either being disrupted, with members' social ties losing connectedness, or a gang's social network converges, with members' social ties increasing in connectedness. It also appears that while CGIs are able to dislodge enjoined members from their gang's hangouts, a CGI actually constrains the overall mobility of enjoined gang members, reducing the likelihood that enjoined gang members are venturing outside of their gang's claimed turf. In relation to influencing the overall patterns of gang violence, the findings suggest that CGIs could be shifting enjoined gang homicides away from the street and into less public spaces, along with involving fewer suspects and victims. Results also indicate that the presence of CGIs in Hollenbeck has impacted the mobility patterns of participants who are involved in a gang homicide. Specifically, an increase in internal gang homicides and a reduction in predatory gang homicides were observed in the data. These findings are consistent with earlier results indicating that the mobility of an enjoined gang member is restricted by the presence of a CGI. Overall, the goal of this dissertation is to provide both scholars and criminal justice professionals with a better understanding of CGIs, and ascertain if they are an appropriate strategy to disrupt a gang's patterns of association and diminish their opportunities to participate in violent acts.

Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries

Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries
Author: Ana Muñiz
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2015-08-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 081356977X

Based on five years of ethnography, archival research, census data analysis, and interviews, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries reveals how the LAPD, city prosecutors, and business owners struggled to control who should be considered “dangerous” and how they should be policed in Los Angeles. Sociologist Ana Muñiz shows how these influential groups used policies and everyday procedures to criminalize behaviors commonly associated with blacks and Latinos and to promote an exceedingly aggressive form of policing. Muñiz illuminates the degree to which the definitions of “gangs” and “deviants” are politically constructed labels born of public policy and court decisions, offering an innovative look at the process of criminalization and underscoring the ways in which a politically powerful coalition can define deviant behavior. As she does so, Muñiz also highlights the various grassroots challenges to such policies and the efforts to call attention to their racist effects. Muñiz describes the fight over two very different methods of policing: community policing (in which the police and the community work together) and the “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” approach (which aggressively polices minor infractions—such as loitering—to deter more serious crime). Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries also explores the history of the area to explain how Cadillac-Corning became viewed by outsiders as a “violent neighborhood” and how the city’s first gang injunction—a restraining order aimed at alleged gang members—solidified this negative image. As a result, Muñiz shows, Cadillac-Corning and other sections became a test site for repressive practices that eventually spread to the rest of the city.

Glendale Boulevard Corridor Gang Injunction

Glendale Boulevard Corridor Gang Injunction
Author: Sophia Viscarra-Estrada
Publisher:
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2016
Genre: Discrimination in law enforcement
ISBN: 9781339715520

Abstract: The purpose of this project was to conduct a case study on the use of the public nuisance law used to obtain a civil gang injunction for Echo Park, California. This case study will discuss the origins of gang injunctions and will focus on the Glendale Boulevard corridor gang injunction enacted on September 26, 2013. A literature review was performed to understand the policies that led up to the formation of gang injunctions as well as current research discussing the impact it has on increasing public safety. The analysis was based on the two theoretical propositions: (1) gang injunctions further marginalize at-risk and gang-involved Latino youth by subjecting them to guilt by association and limiting their sources for social and cultural capita; and (2) injunctions are not always placed in communities because of high crime rates in the area. There are economically advantaged groups that may have an interest in developing and gentrifying the community and this can displace the less advantaged long-time residents of color. The findings from the case study are discussed.

Proactive Policing

Proactive Policing
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2018-03-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0309467136

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.