Juvenile delinquency: gang membership and recidivist behavior.

Summary We integrate into the traditional model of delinquency a specificity of juvenile delinquency, namely the fact that, generally, juvenile delinquents act in gangs. In doing so, we break with the Beckerian model based on the assumption that delinquents are isolated individuals, and we follow the line of integrative theories. More precisely, the objective of our work is to study the influence of gangs on adolescents' decision to commit an offence and, if necessary, to re-offend. To this end, we use a theoretical and empirical analysis. Theoretically, our research has two objectives. The first objective is to explain the sociologists' finding that gang affiliation induces adolescents to commit crimes. To do this, we use economic models, not used in the economics of delinquency, and demonstrate, using an original model, that in some cases an individual criminal sanction may be ineffective in diverting a gang member from delinquency. The second objective is to study whether gang affiliation can affect the outcome of a delinquent career. Empirically, we seek to test the validity of our theoretical predictions using an original database tracking the judicial careers of 535 juvenile offenders. Our results highlight the ineffectiveness of repressive policies in the context of gangs, which leads us to advocate other forms of policies to fight juvenile delinquency.