Weak Ties with Strong Links: Gang Entry through School Peers’ Older Brothers
Previously circulated as From Friends to ‘Family’: Schools, Neighborhoods, and Gang Recruitment
How do criminal networks reach younger members, and what role do school peers’ family ties play? I combine novel Swedish police data on participants in criminal networks with population registers covering families, schools, neighborhoods, and criminal histories. I study male students in grade 7, at ages 13–14, and leverage cohort-to-cohort variation within schools and neighborhoods in exposure to school peers whose older brothers have prior gang-related offending. A 5 percentage point increase in exposure raises the probability of subsequently being listed in the police Gang Register by about 19 percent relative to the mean, and exposure accounts for about a tenth of all listings. Additional analyses suggest that weak ties alone can raise general offending but that entry into criminal networks depends on the strong links to peers’ older brothers.