Self-control, differential association, and gang membership: A theoretical and empirical extension of the literature Jason Kissner a, ⁎, David C. Pyrooz b a Department of Criminology, California State University, Fresno, 2576 East San Ramon MS/ST 104, Fresno, CA 93740, United States b School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 85069, United States abstract Using data gathered from a sample of two hundred jail inmates housed in a large California city, this research extends the still nascent literature on the self-control/gang membership association. The article begins by first articulating more comprehensively than earlier research Gottfredson and Hirschi's theoretical justification for expecting a self-control/gang membership link. Next, an examination is undertaken of the relative independent influences on gang membership of self-control and a series of measures, derived from differential association theory, that mainly tap familial gang involvement. On the whole, logistic regression models suggested that self-control exerted an effect on gang membership that was almost entirely independent of, but also modest in comparison to, familial gang involvement effects, although the results also indicated the insignificance of self-control upon controlling for a series of differential association measures. Finally, theoretical implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are offered. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Gang membership presents a problem of considerable magnitude. The most recent national data suggested that there were approxi- mately 760,000 active gang members in the United States (Egley & Ritz, 2006)—a figure roughly equivalent to the population of San Francisco. Cause for concern regarding this figure is increased when one recognizes that several studies had indicated that gang members were responsible for a disproportionate share of criminal activity (e.g., Esbensen & Huizinga, 1993; Gordon et al., 2004; Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, Smith, & Tobin, 2003). Given that gang membership's facilitation of criminal behavior is well established (see Krohn & Thornberry, 2008, for a review), it is unsurprising that several studies had examined the degree to which various individual risk factors predict gang membership (see Howell & Egley, 2005 for a review). Given these studies, since self-control's association with criminal behavior is also widely documented (see, e.g., Pratt & Cullen, 2000), it is somewhat surprising that to date only a handful of studies (Childs, 2005; Esbensen & Weerman, 2006; Esbensen, Winfree, He, & Taylor, 2001; Hope, 2003; Hope & Damphousse, 2002; Lynskey, Winfree, Esbensen, & Clason, 2000) have explicitly focused on the self-control/gang membership associa- tion. In this article, an attempt is made to extend the rather sparse literature regarding self-control's (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) association with gang membership. In particular, this study focused on extending the literature by exploring the relative independent influences of self-control and differential association measures on gang membership in a cross-sectional context. Related theoretical goals also informed the study. The opening section contends that a more comprehensive presentation than has so far been offered of Gottfredson and Hirschi's theoretical justification for expecting a self-control/gang membership association sheds additional light on what is at stake from an ex- planatory standpoint with respect to the gang membership phenom- enon no matter the degree to which their perspective is valid. In addition, the application of differential association theory to the explanation of gang membership is developed in a fashion that is in part intended to underscore the notion that differential association theory can, unlike self-control theory, accommodate the possibility that at least some of the “facilitation effect” associated with gang membership can be explained in terms of cooperative behavior. Thus, to the extent that differential association measures prove to significantly predict gang membership net of self-control, there will be that much more reason to investigate their potential more closely. Gottfredson and Hirschi's theoretical justification for the application of the self-control construct to the explanation of gang membership Hirschi and Gottfredson (1994) defined self-control “as the tendency to avoid acts whose long-term costs exceed their momentary advantages” (p. 3; see also Hirschi, 2004, which offered a broader definition of self-control that took into account variation in the short- term costs constraining actors). Given this construal of self-control, the application of the construct to the explanation of gang membership Journal of Criminal Justice 37 (2009) 478–487 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 559 278 2369; fax: +1 559 278 7265. E-mail address: mkissner@csufresno.edu (J. Kissner). 0047-2352/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2009.07.008 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Criminal Justice