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Wiley InterScience | |||||||||||||||
  CriminologyVolume 39 Issue 1, Pages 37 - 74 Published Online: 7 Mar 2006 © 2009 American Society of Criminology
Abstract | References | Full Text: PDF (Size: 2099K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A POLICE GANG UNIT: AN EXAMINATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS* * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1998 annual meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This research was funded in part by Grant 95-IJ-CX-0057 from the National Institute of Justice. I would like to thank Robert Bursik, Jr. and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Charles Katz is Assistant Professor in the Administration of Justice Department at Arizona State University West. His research interests include the police response to gangs, community and problem-oriented policing, drug use patterns among arrestees, and organizational theory. Copyright 2001 by the American Society of Criminology ABSTRACTAlthough researchers have begun to document the programs and activities performed by police gang units, little research has examined why police gang units are created and why they have responded to local gang problems in the way they have over the past 10 years. Using a multimethodological research design, the present study examines the factors that shaped a Midwestern police department's response to its community's gang problem. The results from the present study lend support for the institutional perspective. The data suggest that the gang unit was created as a consequence of pressures placed on the police department from various powerful elements within the community and that, once created, the unit's response was largely driven by its need to achieve and maintain organizational legitimacy. | 
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