The 'Triadisation' of Youth Gangs in Singapore: conceptualizing co-offending in the youth gangs-organised crime nexus

• In Event: Gang Transitions: Initiation, Desistance, and Disengagement

Abstract

Against a background of a series of gang clashes and knife-violence involving youth gang members in Singapore, this research examines the phenomenon of youth gangs and its relationship with the more institutionalized secret societies arguing that these purportedly distinct entities as popularly portrayed, are in reality both structurally and symbiotically linked to each other. It seeks to understand the processes and mechanisms by and through which youth gang members are subject to what Lo (2012) had termed as “triadization” even as it examines the relative influence of out-group gang affiliations and in-group organizational features on gang members’ criminality at both the individual and extended co-offending levels. The research also examines the significance of race as an ideology and operating mechanism in the triadization of racial minority youth gang members and argues that their experiences qualitatively differ from those of their Chinese majority counterparts due to the perpetuation of racialised hierarchies within the gang context in Singapore. The inclusion of race as an analytic category is an important contribution to the youth gang-adult criminal association nexus discussions.

Author

• Narayanan Ganapathy, National University of Singapore