It Started with the Hats: The Life Experiences of Boston's Founding Street Gang Members

by Paul F. Joyce, J. Larry Mayes (Foreword by)

Overview

In the late 1980s, the introduction of crack cocaine and easy access to guns led to the emergence of the street gang culture and an explosion of gun violence in Boston. Black and Latino youth were both perpetrators and victims of firearm violence as the city grappled with a staggering number of shootings and homicides. Officers within the Boston Police Department struggled to find new and creative ways to combat the growing violence and neutralize gang influence. Paul Joyce was one of those officers.

Throughout his extensive career with the Boston Police, Joyce was at the forefront of the Department’s anti-gang and youth violence initiatives, including during the height of gang and gun violence in the late 1980s through early 1990s. Later in his career, after thirty-one years in policing, Joyce transitioned to academia as a criminologist, seeking to better understand the lives of the gang members he had encountered during his time as an officer. He interviewed thirty Black and Latino men who witnessed and led the emergence of the street gang phenomenon in Boston. Joyce’s strong relationship with community leaders led to the recruitment of the men, who ultimately entrusted him with their life stories and their inner worlds. Using the men’s own words to describe the tragedies they endured, the crimes they committed, and the penalties they paid, Joyce now shares their stories of life before, during, and after gang membership.

Joyce examines the influences that motivated the men toward joining gangs, their gang experiences, and the turning points that shaped their paths later in life, whether leading to desistance from or continued persistence in criminal behavior. Joyce explores their lives from childhood into adulthood, providing a deep analysis of the factors that influenced the entire trajectory of gang members’ lives. By utilizing this life-course approach, Joyce adds to the discourse regarding what influences a gang member’s ability or inability to transition out of criminality and the gang life.

This uniquely candid look at gang membership, humanized by the perspectives of the men who experienced it, provides invaluable insight into the complex interplay of the social, cultural, and personal factors that shape individuals’ life courses. This, in turn, has important implications regarding the types of outside interventions that would be the most effective in making a positive difference in the lives of current and former gang members.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809339440
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	08/19/2024
Series:	Perspectives on Crime and Justice
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Paul F. Joyce is assistant professor and chair of the criminal justice and criminology department at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI. He was a police officer for more than thirty-one years, including twenty-eight years with the Boston Police Department, policing street gangs and developing strategies to address youth gang violence.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: The Importance of Studying Gang Membership over the Life Course

As a former police officer in the City of Boston, I have seen firsthand the consequences of gang involvement. In 1988, I was a member of a plainclothes unit assigned to suppress the escalating gang violence that was beginning to overwhelm both the police department and the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, and the South End. Over the next two years, I witnessed the carnage that took place among Black and Latino youth who were involved in the street gang lifestyle. By 1990, the annual number of homicides had reached 152, the highest ever in the City of Boston, with the vast majority involving crack cocaine, street gangs, and illegal firearms, or some combination thereof.

In the late 1980s, Boston Police Department (BPD) crime strategies primarily involved suppression tactics. The initial denial of the gang problem combined with the surging levels of violence left no other options at that time. In dealing with gang members at the street level, the potential for hostility and violence was ever-present and always at the forefront of our minds. However, there were occasions when interactions with some gang members were less tense, and even cordial, which allowed us to get to know them on a more personal level. Having knowledge of their stories and experiences changed what was a straightforward, clearly-defined mindset of “us against them” into one that was more open to understanding the human side of gang membership. I found out from the men I interviewed for this study that some of them had shared a somewhat similar perspective of the police during this time.

For example, according to John (age forty-three at the time of his interview, and a former member of the A St. Assassins), “It was a time of cops and robbers. It was our job to be criminals, and it was you all’s job to catch us. I don’t know if you hated us, but we didn’t hate you. We was like—some cops were assholes, but just like there were some gang members who were assholes.”

Beginning with my times as a plainclothes officer, most of my policing career was spent connected to Boston’s street gang culture through enforcement, intervention, and prevention initiatives. Through these experiences, I learned that some gang members had the ability to alter the direction of their lives. I directly observed the positive changes that could occur when gang members were willing to accept the services and mentorship support provided through prisoner reentry initiatives or took advantage of programs that offered employment opportunities and life skills training. But, even with these firsthand experiences, I still did not understand the underlying influences and mechanisms that led to this discernable shift in behavior. I could not articulate how or when change happened. Thus, from a personal as well as a research perspective, there was a great deal to learn in order to understand the lives of serious and violent gang members as they moved from adolescence into adulthood.

This book represents three years of studying and reconstructing the lives of thirty Black and Latino men, aged thirty-five to fifty-four at the time of their interviews in the mid-2010s, who witnessed and led the emergence of the street gang culture in Boston during the late 1980s through 1990s. It builds on the work of some of the most respected gang scholars, including Vigil, Padilla, Moore, Hagedorn, Decker and Van Winkle, Miller and others, who developed strong relationships with gang-involved individuals who shared with them their innermost gang experiences. What makes my contribution noteworthy is that I utilize approximately 1,300 pages of transcript taken from in-depth, one-on-one retrospective interviews of a group of serious and violent offenders in which they detail their life experiences from childhood through adulthood. More specifically, I use the words and experiences of twenty-eight former Boston gang members and two neighborhood street criminals to connect all of their life phases, including the influences that led to gang membership, the origins of the gang, the gang experience, the turning points and events that caused them to either desist from or persist in criminal and deviant behavior, and the long-term impact of gang membership on their lives.
 
[end of excerpt]

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Foreword
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Importance of Studying Gang Membership over the Life Course
1. Finding and Contacting the Men: Methods of Study
2. Setting the Foundation for Gang Membership: Neighborhood, Family, and Education
3. Tracing the Origins of Boston’s Late-1980s Street Gangs
4. It’s Our Time: Life in the Gang
5. Leaving the Gang Life and Crime
6. No Escape from the Gang Life and Crime
7. Concluding Thoughts
Epilogue

Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book packs a punch. Joyce pulls back the curtain on Boston’s gangland to unveil the trials and tribulations of the boys who were there when it started and the men they became. Having policed the city for 28 years before undertaking his graduate training in criminology, Joyce is uniquely positioned to tell this story in the pursuit of a safer future for youth in Boston and beyond.”—David C. Pyrooz, author of On Gangs and Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons

“Paul F. Joyce was a Boston Police Department street cop in the late 80s and 90s, the most violent period in Boston’s long history. He played a critical role in creating multi-disciplinary partnerships, formed to address the violence in a comprehensive approach: prevention, intervention, and enforcement. Paul had a passion in those days for thinking outside the box and identifying novel solutions to deep-seated problems. His passion continues, as evidenced by his detailed research into the lives of young people who were caught up in the gang life years ago—those who successfully transitioned from that life and those that did not. Joyce’s ability to connect with these men and report in their own words what made the difference is a valuable, powerful work which should serve as a guide for assisting individuals in desisting from crime.”—Paul F. Evans, former Boston police commissioner

“Most of the people in the community I serve in Roxbury, MA, agree on what ‘bad’ cops look like. We’ve seen the unjust and lethal damage they’ve done to Black bodies and the trust they’ve betrayed. Paul Joyce is the epitome of a good cop. His work on the front lines of Boston’s gang violence revealed a cop who was tough but fair, who did not shirk his responsibility, and who managed to see the humanity in everyone he dealt with, regardless of the circumstances. In his book, Joyce amplifies the voices of those once at the epicenter of countless deadly urban storms, men who have lived hard lives, seen evil and death, survived against the greatest of odds, and have much to teach the rest of us. I am honored to endorse this book. The story it tells is more important today than ever before.”—Reverend Liz Walker, former pastor of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church, founder of “Can We Talk…”

“Paul Joyce has long realized that violence and its causes are complicated, and they sit well beyond the act that caused the harm and devastation. As a police officer and member of the Boston Police Department’s Command Staff, I was fortunate to witness and learn from his approach and thoughtfulness firsthand. This book allows the reader to experience his observations and writing through an academic and human lens simultaneously. His candid interviews are a reminder that none of us are just ‘one thing,’ and that entrance into and exit from an unhealthy, reckless, and violent lifestyle is a complicated journey.”—Daniel P. Mulhern, former director of public safety for the City of Boston and former chief of the gang unit for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office

“If we are to make progress as a society against the scourge of gang violence, we must learn from those front-line personnel whose lived experiences give them rare insight into the forces that promote as well as those that alleviate the resort to guns as a solution to life challenges. Paul Joyce, former gang officer and superintendent for the Boston Police, has written that rarest of books: one that combines firsthand experience with hundreds of gang members—and the hard and patient listening that goes with hearing their stories—with the insights that have been developed by leading scholars of gang life. Joyce, with this book, now joins the ranks of those who shed crucial and illuminating light on the real world of gangs. If policymakers and practitioners would only listen to what Joyce has learned, we would greatly increase our chances in society of saving lives and restoring communities.”—Ron Corbett, former acting commissioner, Massachusetts Probation Service

“In this book, Joyce weaves historical narrative on gangs in Boston during the 1980s and 1990s with life histories of men who were active in the gang during those decades. In doing so, he creates an incredibly rich portrait of Boston gangs during this time. This work advances our knowledge on the long-term consequences of gang membership and involvement in crime.”—Dena C. Carson, associate professor, Indiana University Indianapolis

“Creating pathways out of gang life, or the elimination of gangs altogether, requires an all-community response. As evidenced by the stories and experiences of these young men, it is not an impossible dream.”—Marilyn Chase, Massachusetts Health and Human Services assistant secretary (ret.)

From the Publisher