RT Article
T1 Gang Membership and Mental Health During the Transition to Adulthood
JF Journal of quantitative criminology
VO 38
IS 3
SP 567
OP 596
A1 Baćak, Valerio
A2 DeWitt, Samuel E.
A2 Reid, Shannon Elizabeth
LA English
YR 2022
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1884548539
AB Objectives There is an increasing understanding that mental health may be a collateral consequence of joining a gang. The objective of the present study is to assess the effect of gang joining on a set of diverse mental health outcomes that include depression, anxiety, hostility, and paranoid ideation. Methods To reduce bias in our comparisons, we balance gang-joiner and gang-abstainer groups by applying the entropy balancing algorithm to longitudinal data from the Pathways to Desistance study. Results The results indicate that joining a gang is implicated in poor outcomes for all four measures of mental health considered in our analysis. The observed associations persist both at the first and second wave after joining a gang. Conclusions To understand more comprehensively both the short- and long-term consequences of gang joining, scholars of crime and justice must expand their focus to include mental health—not solely as a predictor of group offending but also as its consequence. Future studies should also consider mental health in the context of gang desistance.
K1 Entropy balancing
K1 Life Course
K1 Mental Health
K1 Gang joining
DO 10.1007/s10940-021-09502-z