A broad body of research has examined the theoretical and empirical linkages between neighborhood characteristics, social processes, and aggregate crime patterns (Anderson, 1999; Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Sampson & Groves, 1989). Less attention has been paid to gangs in the resurgence of research on neigh- borhoods and violence (Decker, Melde, & Pyrooz, 2013). Further, much of the neighborhoods research focuses on gangs as dependent variables, seeking to explain the emergence of gangs (Tita, Cohen, & Engberg, 2005) or spatial dis- tribution of gang homicide (Rosenfeld, Bray, & Egley, 1999). The dearth of research in this area is surprising given that a rich body of fieldwork identifies the importance of gangs in neighborhood social organization and urban vio- lence (e.g. Decker & van Winkle, 1996; Harding, 2010; Thrasher, 1927; Venkatesh, 1997). A small body of quantitative studies has demonstrated that gang activity clusters within disadvantaged neighborhoods, but it is unclear how residential gang membership contributes to violence within and around neighborhood borders net of the structural conditions of communities.
The present study examines the effect of residential gang membership on differential neighborhood gun assault rates and contributes to the extant liter- ature on neighborhood violence and gangs in several important ways. First, we consider the spatial interdependence in residential gang membership and the location and concentration of gun assaults. Prior work has focused on gang ter- ritory as an independent, homogeneous measure rather than measuring the number of individuals that belong to gangs (Tita & Ridgeway, 2007), the den- sity of which may vary dramatically across neighborhoods regardless of the number of gangs that are active in a neighborhood. In addition, research has traditionally focused on more refined units-of-analysis such as street corners or gang territory, and has been centered on the consequences of gang activity for more global measures of crime within communities (e.g. Kennedy, Braga, & Piehl, 1997; Robinson et al., 2009; Taniguchi, Ratcliffe, & Taylor, 2011). This latter body of work has not paid enough attention to the impact of gang mem- bership on nonlethal gun violence.
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