Selection, stability, and spuriousness: Testing Gottfredson and Hirschi's propositions to reinterpret street gangs in self‐control perspective*.

Overlooked in the extensive literature on self‐control theory are propositions with respect to street gangs. In Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) perspective, gangs are loose confederations of youth with low self‐control and their criminological relevance is attributable to "politics and romance" rather than to rigorous empirical research. Prior research is limited by the use of cross‐sectional data, which takes on added importance in light of recent findings on self‐control instability. Using six waves of panel data from a large sample of youth, we test three propositions: gang membership is endogenous to self‐control (selection), self‐control is unrelated to gang membership (stability), and self‐control confounds the well‐established link between gang membership and delinquency (spuriousness). The main findings from stabilized inverse propensity‐weighted multilevel structural equation models are that 1) self‐control is one, but not the only, source of selection into gangs; 2) levels of self‐control worsen during active periods of gang membership; and 3) gang membership maintains a direct association with delinquency, as well as an indirect association operating through self‐control. The empirical evidence does not support reinterpreting gangs in self‐control perspective, instead pointing to the continued relevance of the group context to criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]