Why Youth Join Gangs and Somalis’ Approachto Gang Prevention and Intervention

In recent years, youth gangs have been an issue of social concern in Somalia. From this concern comes a desire to conduct research about gangs, their formation, and what can be done to intervene with them. Researchers’ recommendations can lead to success for organized crime groups in the country.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate why youth join gangs and Somali’s approach to gang prevention and intervention.Design/methodology: A qualitative method has been used for the data collection; different focus groups and a total of 10 key informative interviews have been conducted with Mogadishu residents. Three key variables were investigated namely: joining, prevention, and intervention to gangs based on the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) process. transcripts were used to analyze data.Findings The findings of this study indicate that youth join gangs because of a lack of parental guidance and support, peer-to-peer influence, drugs addiction, the presence of gangs in the area, political interest, and so on.Research limitations/implications. This study only emphasized Somali Gangs; thus, the findings of the present study may not be applicable to other countries.Originality/value: Limited studies have been conducted to investigate why youth join gangs and how the government can build gang prevention and intervention services in Somalia.