Can emotional skills predict gang membership?

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Can emotional skills predict gang membership?

In 2017, it was estimated by the Children’s Commissioner (2017) that over 46,000 children between the ages of 10 and 18 years are involved in gangs in the UK. Even though this problem is increasing in severity with a number of fatal stabbings having taken place in England in the last few years, psychological understanding of gang membership is currently limited (Wood & Alleyne, 2010). In an effort to alleviate this shortcoming, recent research has attempted to shed some light on the emotional risk factors of gang membership by reviewing and summarising existing research (Mallion & Wood, 2018). It is known that emotional processes guide moral reasoning (Dhingra, Debowska, Sharratt, Hyland, & Kola-Palmer, 2015), aid decision making (Modecki, Zimmer-Gembeck, & Guerra, 2017) and support behavioural regulation (Coffman, Melde, & Esbensen, 2015); And we also know that deficits in emotional competence can cause offending behaviour (e.g., Day, 2009; Ward & Nee, 2009). There has been an increasing recognition of the influence that emotional processes can have on other risk factors of offending behaviour, that is social and cognitive factors (Ward, 2017).