The proliferation of youth gangs since 1980 has fueled the public’s fear and magnified possible misconceptions about youth gangs. To address the mounting concern about youth gangs, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP’s) Youth Gang Series delves into many of the key issues related to youth gangs. The series considers issues such as gang migration, gang growth, female involvement with gangs, homicide, drugs and violence, and the needs of communities and youth who live in the presence of youth gangs.

Nationally representative data on the extent and nature of youth gang involvement in drug trafficking, as perceived by law enforcement agencies, are available for the first time. Based on results from the 1996 Youth Gang Survey, this Bulletin provides baseline data and analysis on the epidemiology of youth gang drug trafficking, including age, sex, and race/ethnicity of involved gang members; the relative extent of the problem in urban, suburban, and rural areas; and the involvement of youth gangs in other crimes. 

This Bulletin specifically examines several issues related to youth gang drug trafficking (see Howell and Decker, 1999; Klein, 1995; Klein, Maxson, and Cunningham, 1991; Moore, 1990). Some researchers contend that many youth gangs were transformed into drug trafficking operations during the crack cocaine epidemic in the latter part of the 1980’s. Others contend that the extent of youth gang involvement in drug trafficking is unclear (for a review of this literature, see Howell and Decker, 1999). The present analysis will address the involvement of youth gangs and gang members in drug trafficking. However, the connection between youth gang drug trafficking and other crimes remains unclear. According to popular perception, youth gangs are directly involved with drug sales, and drug sales inevitably lead to other crimes. While several gang studies have found a weak causal relationship between youth gang involvement in drug sales and violent crime, other studies have shown the transformation of youth gang wars into drug wars. From existing studies, it has been difficult to distinguish traditional youth gangs from drug gangs. National data relevant to these and other issues are now available for the first time. 

Responses to the 1996 National Youth Gang Survey (Moore and Terrett, 1998; National Youth Gang Center, 1999a), conducted by the National Youth Gang Center (NYGC), were analyzed for this Bulletin. The survey gathered data from law enforcement agencies on two measures of youth gang drug trafficking: gang member involvement in drug sales and gang control of drug distribution. "Distribution" implies organizational management and control, as opposed to individual involvement in selling drugs directly to individual buyers. Unfortunately, the wording of the survey question on gang control of drug distribution may not have elicited responses that distinguished between street-level control of drug sales to individual buyers and organizational control of drug distribution by gangs. The 1997 National Youth Gang Survey asked respondents to report on the distribution of drugs for the purpose of generating profits for the gang. Analysis of these data is under way. Nevertheless, the 1996 survey provides information on the age, gender, and race/ethnicity of youth gang members and on the demographic characteristics of responding jurisdictions. The survey data also permit an examination of the interrelationship of youth gangs, drug trafficking, and other crime involvement. 

Law enforcement agencies continue to be the best and most widely used source of national information available on gangs. However, this source has some important limitations (Curry, Ball, and Decker, 1996; Maxson, 1992; Maxson, 1998). First, many agencies do not collect gang data in a standardized manner. Automated gang databases are becoming more common, but they are typically used for gathering criminal intelligence rather than recording gang crime. Local law enforcement databases are designed to track and support apprehension of individual gang members–not to compile gang crime statistics. Second, law enforcement agencies are sometimes affected and constrained by political considerations (e.g., when they are pressured politically to pursue certain types of crimes), and a gang problem may tend to be either denied or exaggerated (Huff, 1989). Third, agencies and individuals within agencies often have different definitions of what constitutes a gang or a gang incident, and perceptions of the problem vary with the expertise and experience of the observer. Varying definitions of youth gangs continue to complicate analysis of comparative gang data. Fourth, police normally investigate crimes, not gangs. Compiling national gang data through surveys of law enforcement agencies involves asking the agencies "to provide . . . a service they may not routinely provide for local assessment and policy making" (Curry, Ball, and Decker, 1996, p. 33).

Youth Gang Drug Trafficking	Juvenile Justice Bulletin   ·  December 1999