What proportion of adolescents join gangs?
In the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative sample of 9,000 youth between the ages of 12 and 16, 8 percent had belonged to a gang by age 17, (Snyder and Sickmund, 2006, p. 70). However, only 3 percent indicated that they were gang members in the first survey year, 1997, when the sample averaged 14 years of age (Bjerregaard, Forthcoming, p. 15). Of course, the proportion of youth who join a gang is higher in gang-problem cities. For example, a survey of nearly 6,000 eighth graders conducted in 11 cities known to be gang-problem localities found that 11 percent were currently gang members (17 percent said they had belonged to a gang at some point in their young lives) (Esbensen and Deschenes, 1998). It should also be noted that the prevalence of gang membership varies by locality and is typically higher in areas with longer-standing gang problems. Thus, gang membership is yet higher among representative samples of high-risk youth in large cities, rangin
