The Robin Hood Syndrome:

Street gangs pose serious threats to their members, to their victims, and to communities at large. The behavior problems associated with gangs are many and varied. Suggested causes for the emergence of gangs are complicated, and many of them are interdependent. Interventions planned to rehabilitate individuals and to weaken the power of the gang are numerous. Research shows that few of these interventions demonstrate consistent or long-lasting effects. This paper investigates the gang as a complex adaptive system (CAS). It defines some of the characteristic behaviors of CASs, describes how these behaviors can be observed in street gangs, posits a CAS-based causal mechanism for gang behavior (Robin Hood Syndrome), suggests interventions that are consistent with the CAS model, and makes recommendations for further research in the area. Introduction Street gangs appear to be an enormous problem in the U.S., but the scope of the problem is unknown. Reliable figures are not available, but sources estimate that 250,000 persons belonged to 5,000 street gangs in the U.S. in 1991 (Brantley & DiRosa, 1994; Hunzeker, 1993). According to an internal report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Investigative Division in 1992, gang related homicides increased over 250 percent from 1979 to 1990 (Brantley & DiRosa, 1994). Operational definitions of gang membership and gang behavior are inconsistent and frequently unclear (McConnel, 1994). At the National Drug Intelligence Center Street Gang Symposium in Washington, D. C. in 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice defined a street gang as: • A group or association of three or more persons who may have a common identifying sign, symbol or name, and who individually or collectively engage in, or have engaged in, criminal activity, or as a juvenile commits an act that if committed by an adult would be a criminal act. In describing the FBI response to the gang situation, Brantley and DiRosa (1994), define a gang as: • A group of three or more individuals bonded together by race, national origin, culture, or territory, who associate on a continual basis for the purpose of committing criminal acts. They point out that "territory" in the definition might be geographic territory, a claim to a particular form of criminal activity, or any other identifier that is common to the members of the group. These definitions establish the two fundamental identifying criteria for gangs: group coherence and criminal activity. This simple definition, however, does not account for the complex phenomenon that terrorizes neighborhoods and