Abstract
A minority of adolescents are part of street-oriented groups in which illegal
behaviour is common, groups that can be referred to as ‘youth
gangs’ or ‘troublesome youth groups’. Such groups are
a well-known phenomenon in the United States and recently have been reported in a
number of European nations. Relatively few researchers, however, have endeavoured to
explore such youth gangs from a comparative perspective. In this article, we examine
characteristics of American and Dutch gangs and gang members. These cross-national
comparisons are based on two school samples of 11-16-year-old youths in the USA
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