A Primer on Street Gangs in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean

Street gangs across the Caribbean are receiving increased attention from local, regional, and international organizations. This is mainly because formal mechanisms of social control in the region, such as the police and courts, struggle to effectively respond to gangs and gang-related problems—problems that disproportionately lower the quality of life. This chapter examines the scope and nature of street gangs, gang members, and gang crime focused on the Eastern and Southern Caribbean, bringing together the limited empirical work in this area. We discuss definitional issues surrounding this topic and present the results of contemporary research examining the prevalence of gang involvement, characteristics of gang members, risk and protective factors associated with gang membership, gang organizational structure, gangs and offending, and regional responses to gangs.