"This important new work by critically the acclaimed sociologist and author of Dangerous Society makes it clear that girls and young women have become a real force in the drug culture and in 1990s urban gang life. Girls, Gangs, Women and Drugs is based on a decade of field work undertaken in the city of Detroit by one of America's foremost gang experts and his team of researchers. In the course of this investigation, Taylor and his staff interviewed hundreds of girls and young women. Based on what they learned, Dr. Taylor has prepared this spell-binding account of drugs, money, sex, and violence. He commands the reader's attention as complex webs of female gang life and drug culture are unraveled." "Girls, Gangs, Women, and Drugs is a book about women, young and old; it is about gangs; it is a book about their survival in a society that has abandoned them; it is a book about women in the criminal justice system; it is about judges, attorneys, administrators of the court, and correctional officers; it is about the women who serve on the police force. It focuses on a large segment of Detroit's female population and how these women see what they are doing as committing acts of self-empowerment - the personal pursuit of their own version of the American Dream." "Girls, Gangs, Women, and Drugs takes a close look at the hard economic realities of life on the street and the women who must encounter them every day. Its message is clear: female involvement with drugs and gangs is yet another facet of America's decaying urban culture, one that commands our immediate attention."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Looking at female gang members in a small-to-medium-size urban area, this study notes the lack of all-female gangs and conflicting views on the equal status of females in gender-mixed groups. It investigates the level at which black females are involved in the informal drug economy and the possible time dimension aspects of Merton's innovator.

"Female Gangs in America" challenges a long tradition of "color them male" scholarship about gangs in our country by exploring the experiences of girls in gangs. Recognizing that girls have long been "present but invisible" in American gang life, this book offers the first comprehensive collection of essays every published on the topic. The chapters are linked by interpretive essays that explore issues like girls' violence, ethnic variations in girls' gang behavior, gender differences in female and male experiences of gang life, and the role of economic marginalization in the lives of girls in gangs. -- From publisher's description.

A discussion of drugs and gangs, how they relate to each other, and how young people can protect themselves from dangerous involvement.

One of the Guysexamines the causes, nature, and meaning of female gang involvement. Miller situates the study of female gang membership in the context of current directions in feminist scholarship and current research on both gangs and female criminal offenders. The body of the book draws on interviews from girls in two mid-sized midwestern cities with relatively new gang histories, St. Louis, Missouri and Columbus, Ohio. It discusses how and why girls join gangs, the nature of girls' involvement in gangs (including initiation rituals, gang rules, inter-gang-rivalries, and criminal activities), and how gang involvement shapes girls' participation in delinquency and their risk of victimization, as well as the ways their gender affects this experience.

Dismissed by the police as mere adjuncts to or gofers for male gangs, girl gang members are in fact often as emotionally closed off and dangerous as their male counterparts. Carrying razor blades in their mouths and guns in their jackets for defense, they initiate drive-by shootings, carry out car jackings, stomp outsiders who stumble onto or dare to enter the neighborhood, viciously retaliate against other gangs and ferociously guard their home turf. But Sikes also captures the differences that distinguish girl gangs-abortion, teen pregnancy and teen motherhood, endless beatings and the humiliation of being forced to have sex with a lineup of male gangbangers during initiation, haphazardly raising kids in a household of drugs and guns with a part-time boyfriend off gangbanging himself. Veteran journalist Gini Sikes spends a year in the ghettos following the lives of several key gang members in South Central Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Milwaukee. In 8 Ball Chicks, we discover the fear and desperate desire for respect and status that drive girls into gangs in the first place--and the dreams and ambitions that occasionally help them to escape the catch-22 of their existence.

This vital resource offers an intervention designed to help divert young women from engaging in girl gang culture by providing them with the opportunities to explore alternative options for themselves that ensure a sense of self-worth and belonging in a non-aggressive culture where crime in not integral to their self-definition. This unique resource will give your school access to tools and evidence-based solutions that educate students about the risks of gang culture and provide them with strategies to rationalise and reject anti-social and offending behaviours. This essential resource will enable you to: identify the existence of both girl and boy gangs in school; develop whole school curriculum offering effective teaching and learning about gang issues; adopt a holistic approach to tackling gang culture including parents, community groups and local agencies; secure help for the most vulnerable students; and, prepare staff to deal with the difficulties that arise in tackling these issues.