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Gangs as contractors: the social organization of American Taiwanese youth gangs in Southern California

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Abstract

This paper examines the organizational structure and operations of Taiwanese organized crime and youth gangs in Southern California. In-depth interviews were used as the principle method of research. In contrast to transnational criminal conspiracy claims and the La Cosa Nostra model of vertically integrated organizations, our findings suggest that these criminal groups consist of discrete local Taiwanese youth gangs which operate as largely independent economic units that show no substantive and operational ties to criminal organizations in Taiwan. The formation of Taiwanese criminal organizations and gangs in Southern California is primarily governed by the availability of financial opportunities. Furthermore, both the inter-gang relations and intra-gang structures exhibit a distinct form of contractor arrangement which consists of market-like weak ties that are simultaneously circumscribed by the criminal embeddedness. We argue that that these economic weak ties, which seem to render conventionally understood criminal organizational boundaries administratively less meaningful, still function as an operationally significant governance mechanism of the organizational structures of American Taiwanese youth gangs. In addition, the paper discusses the implications that the embeddedness has on the somewhat paradoxical and incoherent organizational structure.

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Notes

  1. See Tsunokai and Kposowa (2002) and Zhang and Chin (2003) for more extensive reviews of the current literature on Asian gangs and transnational crime in the United States.

  2. See Chin (2003) for a detailed account of the structure and operations of the United Bamboo, the Four Seas, and other criminal organizations and gangs in Taiwan.

  3. See Polanyi (1944) for the process of the historical disembedding of economic institutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, California State University, SN 311, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA, 91330, USA

    Kay Kei-ho Pih

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA

    Akihiko Hirose

  3. Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    KuoRay Mao

Authors
  1. Kay Kei-ho Pih
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  2. Akihiko Hirose
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  3. KuoRay Mao
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Correspondence to Kay Kei-ho Pih.

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Pih, K.Kh., Hirose, A. & Mao, K. Gangs as contractors: the social organization of American Taiwanese youth gangs in Southern California. Trends Organ Crim 13, 115–133 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-010-9095-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-010-9095-8

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