Gang entry and exit - A study of previous gang members in Sweden

Abstract: Serious violence that is connected to gangs has escalated drastically in Sweden in the past years. I argue that understanding the values and attractions of joining a criminal gang are crucial in order to prevent further recruitment. In order to successfully reintegrate previous gang members, increased knowledge of the exit-process is needed. Hence, this thesis is based on interviews with eight defectors from gangs. They were asked to talk about their experiences when entering, leaving, and living a life without gangs. As narrating these experiences, I strived to capture how they described different elements of street culture in their stories. The vantage point of analysis in this thesis is narrative criminology combined with Bourdieusian criminology. These theories offer fruitful tools when striving to understand how people ascribe meaning to their actions and experiences, and how they describe an embodied character of the street. This study will show that being a part of a gang is, however, more than committing crimes together. When gang members are deep in the street culture, they have started to identify themselves with the street culture and created a street habitus. The interviewees have experienced a lot of violence, both as offenders but also as victims. The violence might be grueling, but it might also not go along with future plans and one’s identity. Leaving a gang is a complex and difficult process. In total, seven different narratives were identified in the analysis. It can be argued that the identified narratives serve several purposes and that they sometimes lack a coda or conclusion. Hence, a lot of the interpretive work is left to the listeners and readers to decide.