NCJ Number
182047
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2000 Pages: 1-31
Date Published
March 2000
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This paper explores the relationships and experiences of a group of young Latina women.
Abstract
Material for this article was drawn from an ongoing comparative qualitative study of ethnic youth gangs in the San Francisco Bay area. Information highlights female gang members’ complex relationships with their families, with one another and with male counterparts. By focusing on the elaborate networks of support and strong attachments that women form, the article suggests a reexamination of the relationships between family and gang in the gang members’ lives. The article emphasizes that many of today’s popular assumptions about gangs, working-class youths, their families and their home lives oversimplify and underestimate the salience and the positive dimensions of immediate and extended kinship. It may be that the prominence of family relations in the accounts of these Latina gang members reflects the importance of family ties in women’s lives more generally. The data from this research call into question the conservatism in public policy attacks on contemporary families, as well as assumptions about the dichotomous nature of the peer-versus-family debate. Notes, tables, references