Street Gangs and Legal Order

Extract

[...] Hence, understanding the legal order allows us toin fine to better explore every legal phenomenon linked to the social. Therefore, following the conceptual framework that we have just exposed above, we can now move to the very heart of our work. II. Development A. Street gangs facing the acceptance of social rules and norms In order to better consider the social phenomenon of street gangs from the heuristic perspective of Guy Rocher, we will take up point by point the characteristics of his concept of the legal order to better understand our object of study. [...]

[...] This is what we will appreciate now in the next sub-part. D. Street gangs and social cohesion: the response of state agents In his fourth point, Guy Rocher shows that the legal order must be considered by the fact that: « The three functions listed in 2°24 can be fulfilled by different agents or devices, or by the same ones. What is important, however, to recognize the existence of a legal order, is that these three functions - and not just one or two - are exercised25. [...]

[...] By taking the greatest possible distance, the fact of considering street gangs in relation to the legal order allows us, in our opinion, to concretely account for the general notion of legal pluralism. Indeed, Guy Rocher's conception allows for crystallizing a way of interpreting the entanglement of the legal in a social formation. In other words, the fact of placing logics of struggle against groups that are against the norm and order makes it possible to appreciate the social logics at work in a society. [...]

[...] The frequency of violence can confer a certain notoriety, which to some extent conditions the way these groups are perceived by social agents, generating the image of groups with a criminal orientation.40 (Guay, Fredette, 2010) This distinction seemed interesting to formulate in that it actually explains the complexity of combating street gangs for law enforcement agents. In this sense, the penetration of street gangs into society and the different social roles of gang members somehow obliges the rules to evolve like the agents. In fact, the purely repressive having reached its limits, social investment can therefore be a new factor to try to curb the social phenomenon of gangs. Conclusion Robert Ezra Park highlighted as early as 1927 that street gangs: « emerge spontaneously, but only in favorable conditions and in a defined environment? [...]

[...] These policies were designed to curb gang involvement and de-escalate gang violence. The legislation includes civil gang injunctions, the development of gang databases, as well as training and strengthening of gang units. In reality, these policies have led to an annual increase in the number of agents in anti-gang units tasked with mitigating gang involvement and gang crime. However, the strategies of the agents are often focused on stopping, detaining, and arresting individuals who often fit certain stereotypes13 (Jobard et al., 2012). [...]