Global cities – global gangs | openDemocracy

Global cities – global gangs | openDemocracy:

Traditional criminology has focused on street gangs in the granular, turf-gang model. However, in recent years criminologists have recognized that gangs have become global enterprises. In 2007, prominent criminologist John Hagedorn released a seminal compilation titled Gangs in the Global City (See John Hagedorn, Gangs in the Global City: Alternatives to Traditional Criminology). Utilizing the ‘global city’ framework developed earlier by Saskia Sassen, Hagedorn and his colleagues argued three points diverging from traditional criminology: gangs are institutionalized in social environments, gangs are globalized and can be found in increasingly globalized urban spaces, and gangs are ‘social actors’ whose identities are formed by identity-based repression, participation in the underground economy, and constructions of gender.