Eleven states and the federal government have laws permitting shared gang databases. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of large police departments nationwide found that nearly 350 had one. Yet from Boston to Chicago, from New York City to Washington, D.C., ardent abolitionists and casual critics alike have challenged the everyday use of these databases, citing concerns about due process, privacy rights, enhanced punishment and collateral consequences. Racial and ethnic disparities in the data are undoubtedly the biggest point of contention, to the extent that they forced Portland, Ore., to shut down its 20-year-old database in 2017.
We are criminologists who study gangs and criminal justice policy and practice. For over a decade, we have weighed the evidence on police gang databases. Our position has always been that those who advocate for such invasive measures must bear the burden of proof. But new evidence demands that we make the point clearer: If law enforcement wants data on gang members, it must first demonstrate its value for public safety.
Our recently published peer-reviewed study interrogated the California Gang Database, known as CalGang. The database consisted of 103,840 entries by 222 law enforcement agencies, which translated to about one-quarter of 1 percent of Californians being listed as gang members. The database was overwhelmingly composed of young, minority males — 94 percent male, 66 percent Hispanic and 23 percent Black.
By no means would we expect proportional gang involvement by age, gender and race/ethnicity; few socioeconomic outcomes yield demographic equality. Still, popular accounts of the disparities in CalGang ignore California’s aging white population and youthful Hispanic population as well as differences across cities. Teenagers and emerging adults, not senior citizens, are typical gang members, and San Diego’s gang dynamics are much different from San Francisco’s, according to criminological research. Hence, our study sought to look deeper and with more rigor.
We found that 1 percent of Black, 0.5 percent of Hispanic, 0.05 percent of white and 0.03 percent of Asian people in California were listed as gang members. Males were 15 times as likely to be listed in the database as females. Yet differentiating by race and ethnicity, and accounting for age differences in the population, Black and Hispanic males were 24 and 10 times as likely as white males to be listed in CalGang, whereas Asian males were about 40 percent less likely.
These results are generalized across more than 80 cities, but some really stuck out. In San Diego, for example, Black males were 175 times more likely to be listed in CalGang than white males. For Hispanic and Asian males, it was 34 and 12 times. The disparities are so large that they defy belief. Indeed, in Orange County, Huntington Beach has a higher Hispanic/white disparity than Santa Ana, even though Huntington Beach has been called “the skinhead capital” of the county and Santa Ana is 78 percent Latino with the majority being of Mexican descent.
California passed the Fair and Accurate Gang Database Act of 2017 to reform CalGang, mandating that the state’s Department of Justice assume control of it and police agencies publicly report gang member demographics. However, the number of agencies reporting to CalGang has halved since the law was enacted. It is implausible that agencies ceased gathering gang intelligence altogether, especially in areas plagued by entrenched gang activity, meaning that there is likely now a hodgepodge of shadow databases circumventing state governance and oversight. Despite the legislation, things might be getting worse, not better.
According to California’s attorney general, CalGang is intended to provide law enforcement investigators with “useful intelligence to solve crime and protect the public.” But does CalGang truly fulfill its mission? For that matter, does any gang database? Are our communities genuinely safer because they maintain a list of people that law enforcement defines as gang members?
Accountability and transparency are the only path forward. Law enforcement must be compelled to demonstrate the tangible benefits of gang databases — improving criminal investigations, getting people to leave gang life behind and, most importantly, thwarting gang violence to keep communities safe. If these databases cannot withstand the scrutiny of evidence-based evaluation, they should not be allowed to exist.
Public safety and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive. Our research shows that the integrity of the justice system and the trust of diverse communities depend on both, especially when lives are at stake.
David Pyrooz is a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. James Densley is a professor of criminal justice at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
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