Working With Chinese Triad Youth Gangs: Correct Diagnosis and Strategic Intervention

Introduction

This case study originated from a murder in which a youth gang took turns torturing a 16-year-old gang member to death in Hong Kong. The gang decided to punish the victim after he advised a mentally retarded person who had been bullied by the gang to report the matter to the police. According to the court records, the offenders tortured the victim by various means that they learnt from movies and cartoons themed on Chinese Triad society. They punched the victim on his back and chest, followed by strikes with homemade kung-fu implements, an umbrella and a leather belt. They stabbed his hands while wedging his head between the legs of a stool. The victim was ordered to eat cigarette butts and apologise to everyone in the gang. The gang made up a Triad society poem in which all their nicknames were mentioned. They recited the poem and beat the victim when their names were pronounced. The beating continued until the victim fell unconscious. He died about an hour later. The next day, the gang met up again and placed the corpse in a cardboard box and sealed it with adhesive tape. The gangsters poured sulphuric acid over the corpse to conceal his identity and twice set him alight with paraffin. After they failed to burn the corpse completely, they put it in a rubbish bag and wrapped it in canvas. The canvas was then thrown into a larger bin, which was taken away by a rubbish truck.

In this case, 14 youth offenders were put on trial. Five of them were acquitted and nine (the interviewees in this study) were found guilty of murder, manslaughter, or serious assault. Because of the wicked and brutal killing involved, a government-commissioned research was conducted to find out the causes of the murder. The views of the murderers and their teachers, family members, and social workers were collected through focus interviews. It was discovered that the gang had been receiving social work services in a youth centre for a few months prior to the murder. This article aims to uncover the structure and activities of the youth gang and the gang intervention prior to the murder to find out what had gone wrong and identify the lessons that social workers can learn from the murder.

Literature Review

Method

This article adopted a case study approach because this method can derive in-depth understanding of the gang murder case within its real-world context. It relied on multiple sources of evidence, including court records, interviews with offenders, and interviews with social workers of a youth centre that the offenders frequented. The court records provided detailed information of the murder; the interviews with offenders provided information about the group dynamics and the youths’ behaviour; and the interviews with social workers provided information on the gang intervention to the youths prior to the murder.

All the nine convicted offenders were interviewed in jail on various issues. They comprised one female and eight male youths. Among them, two youths were identified as gang leaders, five youths as gang members (including one female), and the remaining two youths fulfilled the role of servant. At the time of the murder, the youths were aged between 14 and 17 years. During the interview, the respondents were aged between 17 and 20 years, and they were already serving their prison sentences. After the study was approved by the institutional ethics review committee, the research team sought informed consent from the youths or their guardian if they were not 18 years old. They were interviewed in jail by two interviewers, and each interview lasted for approximately 120 min. Given that the interviews took place in prisons, tape-recording was denied and interview notes were pencilled down. In order not to retraumatize the youths, they were not asked about the murder, but about the group and its group dynamics, including six major areas: (a) reasons for joining the group, (b) reasons for staying in the group, (c) daily group activities (legal and illegal), (d) group structure, (e) group norms, and (f) group members’ Triad affiliation. Semistructured interviewing technique was adopted.

The next set of 2-hr interviews was conducted on two social workers who worked with the youths who participated in the activities provided by a neighbourhood youth centre a few months prior to the murder. The social workers were interviewed in the youth centre, and prior consent was obtained. Through unstructured interviewing technique, they were asked about three major areas of intervention: (a) the kind of activities the young people attended in the youth centre, (b) the intervention plan with the group, and (c) the social workers’ perceptions of the youths.

The murder took place on May 14, 1997, and the interviews were conducted in 2000. The data had not been revealed publicly after the interviews because all the young people were below 21 years of age, the definition of adulthood in the criminal justice system of Hong Kong, and some of them were appealing against the sentence of life imprisonment. To avoid further damage to the young people and to prevent any possible impact on the appeal, the research data were sealed after the interviews. Through data mining, this case was uncovered 15 years later by one of the authors who was the principal investigator of the study. The objective is to help readers identify the lessons that we learnt from the (mis)intervention of social workers in working with the gang. As the number of interviews in the case study was very small, the principal investigator read through the interview transcripts himself for content analysis. Some discrepancy between the two groups of respondents in viewing whether the youth group was a gang was identified during the analysis. Such discrepancy, as the present article contends, led to inappropriate gang intervention as reported in this case study. The findings of both groups are reported in the next section.

Findings of the Interviews With the Youths

Group Activities

Like other adolescents, the youths engaged in leisure activities to pass time, such as playing basketball and volunteering at the youth centre. The youth centre was one of the places of gathering for the youths—They loitered outside the venue even when it was closed. Particular members were surprisingly passionate about voluntary work, especially Leader B, who also encouraged the others to take part in volunteering. When asked, he admitted that participating in volunteering would compensate for the sin he committed in crime. Group leisure activities and having mutual friends initiated the formation of social groups, but without supervision by parents and schools they were easily influenced by delinquent others and by those with a Triad affiliation. The participation levels of each member appeared to depend on the activity that the gang chose to do, some individuals did not take part if the activity was illegal or might cause harm. Furthermore, the members’ attachment to others only seemed to be made on a superficial level where they enjoyed the company of each other but would not converse about personal problems. Some of them admitted being unable to tell “friend from foe” among the group.

In particular, this youth gang took part in both legal, or “healthy activities,” and illegal acts. However, there was a fine line between the morality and immorality of the activities that they were taking part in; for example, selling illegitimate goods to make a living and breaking the law for the greater good or simply because it was the lesser of two evils. Distribution of illegal goods and substances was popular among the gang because half of the respondents were invited by the Triad protectors to sell smuggled cigarettes, illegal petrol, and drugs in return for easy money. In addition, it was not uncommon for fights to occur, especially when the members requested help against an opponent or when these frontline soldiers were ordered to beat people by the Triad protectors, who recruited teenagers from the gang to strengthen their power through Leader A (see Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The gang structure and Triad affiliation.

Findings of Interviews With Social Workers

Through interviewing social workers of the youth centre where the youths often gathered, the researchers aimed to uncover three major aspects: social work activities, gang intervention, and social workers’ perceptions of the youths. The researcher found that the social workers recognised the youths as a group of healthy and energetic teens. There were three strategies in the intervention and activities provided. The first strategy was to channel their deviant energies to constructive means. The social workers organised the youths into a basketball team, which had regular practice sessions and games, so that their group cohesion could be established. The second strategy was to empower the youths through their participation in volunteer services. The youths volunteered in helping do some of the daily chores in the centre. In particular, they organised a summer hiking trip for other teenagers in the community (in which the female offender attended and met the gang for the first time). The workers hoped that the leadership and problem-solving skills of the youths could be enhanced through this event. The third strategy was to promote their sense of belonging and, therefore, their attachment to the centre. The youths were invited to help organise the youth centre’s open day, where some of the youths were involved as the master of ceremony and other celebrative tasks. Through these activities, the youths had established a spirited and active impression in the social workers’ minds, and hence they were granted a lot of opportunities to engage in the youth centre’s social and volunteer activities.

When we asked about the social workers’ perceptions of the youths, surprisingly, despite the youths’ frequent visits at the youth centre, the social workers failed to notice the youths’ Triad affiliations. During the interviews, when the researchers (after interviewing the youths in prison) named the youths as gangsters, the workers quickly responded, “Do not label the youths as gangsters; they are only a group of youths with minor deviant behaviour.” The social workers emphasised that the youths were just ordinary misbehaving adolescents. They were simply naughty but nonetheless lively and constructive in terms of volunteering at the youth centre. The workers refused to categorise the youths as a gang.

Discussion: Misconceptions in Intervention With Youth Gangs

In Hong Kong, government-funded youth services are conducted by professional social workers. Youth centre is a neighbourhood service centre for ordinary young people aged 6 to 24 years. Based on their needs, the centre provides guidance, counselling, support, socialisation, and developmental services. Leisure activities, interest groups, and volunteer programmes are also organised as a means of social intervention and community connection (Choi & Lo, 2004; Social Welfare Department, HKSAR Government, n.d.). With a membership system, young people can join the centre voluntarily. In this case study, four misconceptions in gang intervention with youth centre work have been identified. First, as some of them had Triad affiliation and active gang involvement, the youths were not just a group of deviant teenagers but were also a youth gang. Second, because this was a gang, the social workers should not group them but should instead degroup them to avoid contamination. Third, diagnosis is different from labelling. Without the correct diagnosis of this youth group, intervention will inevitably go wrong. With a correct diagnosis, services can be tailor-made to suit the youths’ specific needs and to delabel them. Fourth, when the youths are diagnosed as a gang, outreach social work instead of centre work should be provided. The social workers should reach out to the gangland to uncover their Triad affiliation and criminal involvement. These misconceptions will be discussed below.

In the field of gang intervention, the matter of categorising and identifying the problems of the gang youth is essential because it determines how an individual could be helped through effective service. In this case study, there was a misconception of the practice of diagnosis to be synonymous with the practice of labelling, resulting in the social workers failure to diagnose the youth group as a youth gang. In order not to label the youths, the social workers essentially acknowledged that the youths were not a high-risk group in need of a special gang intervention strategy. Rather, they targeted their specific youth needs, such as realizing their own strengths and life expectations, developing their life goal and career plan, and empowering them through volunteer services.

In social work practice, there is a distinct difference between the concept of diagnosing and labelling. Labelling refers to a social interactional process of attaching stigmatising remarks onto an individual, which in-turn carries heavy discriminatory or prejudicial consequences. The labelling process suggests that an individual’s primary deviation would lead to social penalty and further deviation to stronger penalty, social rejection, and even formal community sanction. Eventually, the individuals would strengthen their deviant conduct as a reaction to stigmatisation and ultimately accept their deviant status (Becker, 1963). In contrast, diagnosis is to identify the youths’ personal problem and the cause of the problem. With the correct diagnosis, social workers assign a correct label to the youths so that they can receive appropriate gang service, which includes the social workers’ specially designed programmes and activities to delabel the gang (see Figure 2).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Diagnosis of and intervention with delinquent youth groups.

As there is no universal consensus on the definition of youth gangs (Klein, 2007), the demarcation between deviant youths and youth gang is blurred. The murder triggered a government-commissioned inquiry in which a task force (Task Force, 2000) constructed a typology of deviant youths, youth gangs, and Triad criminal gangs (see Figure 3), and a diagnostic tool (see the appendix). Triad criminal gangs are organised criminal groups who constantly make use of young people to commit crime so as to waive their criminal liability. As such, they often recruit young people as new blood through youth gangs, which they control by Triad norms and subculture (Lo, 1993). Given that the Triads are professional criminals, they are the target of the police. Because youth gangs are linked with Triads and some members occasionally commit crime as instructed, they are the target of social workers. Deviant youths can be any ordinary youths who, even though do not have a Triad association, commit delinquency because of the storming transitional period in adolescence. They often engage in ordinary social activities but sometimes misbehave or break the law to face life frustrations or seek adventure to fulfil psychological needs (for a detail discussion of the typology, see Lo, 2012, p. 558). In the present study, most of the respondents exhibited deviant behaviours. Two thirds of the youths were affiliated with Triads (see Figure 1), and some had regularly engaged in criminal activities as instructed by Triads. Based on the diagnostic tool outlined in the appendix, the Task Force (2000) diagnosed the youth group in this case study as a youth gang. Training workshops were organised for social workers who worked with potential youth gangs.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

A typology of delinquent youth groups.

Another lesson that we learnt is about gang intervention: Youth centre is no panacea for a youth gang, and social workers should reach out to work in the gangland. The youths had been hanging out in the youth centre for a few months prior to the murder. The social workers were aware of their deviant behaviours but the only regular contact that they had with the social workers was at the youth centre. Without entry into the gang territory, they were oblivious to the youth gang’s affiliation with the Triads. The social workers did not understand other sides of the lives of the youths—the side that was deeply affected by their Triad connections. Although not all the members had the protection of Triads, most of them had. This Triad connection was not known to the social workers due to its secretive nature. The side that was known to the social workers was the normal and brighter side, during which the youths engage in volunteering, basketball games, and other social and recreational activities. However, it was nonetheless the mysterious darker side during which the youths engage in various illicit activities that posed a threat to themselves and the community. Such pattern is consistent with that of gangs reported in the literature. For instance, youth gangs in Chicago and London were involved in stealing, burglary, violence, and drug taking, and simultaneously actively engaged in sports such as football, basketball, and boxing (Sanders, 2005; Thrasher, 1963). Hence, without sufficient on-site knowledge, the social workers could not make a correct diagnosis or detect the Triad elements in the youths because of limited contact in situ in the gangland.

Outreach social work is not a precourt or court diversion programme (Lo, Maxwell, & Wong, 2006). Outreach workers’ intensive contacts with youth groups in the gangland are definitely not easy and simple. In the first place, sensitive observation and proactive relationship-building skills are required to understand their interactions and group dynamics. Substantial time is then required to reduce the youths’ suspicion and resistance, so that trustful relationships can be developed. To maintain the relationships, programmes are tailor-made to cater to their psychological needs and recreational interests (Wan, Chuk, & Chan, 2010; Working Group on Operational Manual of Co-ordinating Committee on Outreaching Social Work, 1988). Most importantly, to induce changes in the target youths, accurate assessment of the youth groups and the use of de-grouping and group transformation techniques (Lo, 1992, 1993; Spergel, 1995, p.251) are essential. The lack of intensive outreach in the case study had evidently undermined the social workers’ judgement of the risks faced by the youths, resulting in inappropriate intervention as discussed below.

The social workers’ original strategies were to channel the youths’ deviant energies to constructive means, empower them through participation in volunteer services, and promote their sense of belonging and attachment to the youth centre. They organised and promoted participation in volunteer programmes to enhance their self-esteem and self-efficacy (Lo, Cheng, Wong, Rochelle, & Kwok, 2011), as well as to develop interpersonal skills to prepare them to find a place in adult society. Although it was appropriate to encourage the youths to participate in the youth centre’s volunteer programme to help them overcome their delinquency, the present study found that the hiking that the youths volunteered to organise introduced an opportunity for the only female offender of the case study, who was once an innocent 14-year-old child, to be exposed to a group of gang youths. After befriending and increased social interactions with fellow gang members, it was only a mere 2 months after her association with these deviant peers that she participated in the homicide. The failure on the social workers’ part to recognise the Triad affiliation of some of the youth gang members caused contamination of other ordinary youths, such as this girl, in the neighbourhood as the youth gang continued to expand naturally via youth centre activities. Thus, it was absolutely necessary for the social workers to tailor-make specific volunteer programmes for the youths based on the correct diagnosis that it was a youth gang and not an ordinary deviant youth group (see Figure 3).

Gang culture is an attractive way to build relationships and identity for youths, but joining a youth gang introduces members to more deviant behaviour through association with delinquent peers (Howell, 2003; Thornberry et al., 2003). To avoid contamination of other youths by the gang, separating ordinary teenagers away from the gang youths should be of paramount importance in planning a community programme. Under this rationale, if the gang youths are to organise a volunteer service for the community, the service recipients should be adults, rather than teenagers, living in the neighbourhood. As such, the possibility of the teenagers being recruited into the gang and the susceptibility of Triad influences would be significantly reduced. The volunteer programmes provided to other target groups, such as adults and elderly people, could offer similar channels to empower the gang youths with skills and knowledge through learning to organise meaningful events for people in the neighbourhood (Tam, 2012), thereby minimizing the risk of what could be called deviancy training (Dodge, Dishion, & Lansford, 2006). For instance, the gang youths could organise a festive event in an elderly home such that they could sing and dance with the elderly during New Year holidays, or simply chat with them to share their stories. This volunteer event would promote mutual understanding between members of two generations. The elderly would see the constructive side of the youths, while the youths would see the suffering and resilience of their parents through interaction with the elderly.

Conclusion

This article differentiates deviant youth groups and youth gangs in Hong Kong. Because of the survival of Triad societies, Triad members will recruit young people through youth gangs so as to provide them with sufficient manpower. This provides new blood for organised crime and enables Triad societies to survive over time. Although not all gang youths are Triad members, the existence of some Triad-affiliated members in the gang has created a channel for the Triadisation of criminal values and behaviour (Lo, 2012). Engagement in delinquent acts predicts a future in youth gang subculture (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960) and, therefore, more involvement in the subculture means that more crimes committed and there is a higher risk of stigmatisation, which pushes individuals to pursue criminal paths due to weakened bonds between youths and social institutions (Thrasher, 1963). Therefore, social workers should aim to alter the gang dynamics and its relationship with Triad society.

Ignorant of the counter nature of the gang’s lifestyle, social workers may commit a mistake in granting a youth gang permission to organise events for other teenagers in the neighbourhood. These events may serve as pathways for new recruitment to the gang. The misinterpretation of the gang’s behaviour on the part of the social workers may contribute to the expansion of the youth gang in congested neighbourhoods, such as Hong Kong’s housing estates. The lack of proper intervention strategies, such as de-grouping (Yablonsky, 1962) and other suppression, treatment, and prevention activities (Goldstein & Huff, 1993; Huff, 2002; Klein, 1971; Loeber & Farrington, 1998; Spergel, 1995), further spurs the development of youth gangs in the community because students in their teen years are more vulnerable to similarly youth activities, such as volunteer services and sports activities. Without an early identification, correct diagnosis and proper preventive strategies from social workers, the spread of criminal elements among young people in the gangland becomes inevitable.

Findings of this study suggest that social work services for at-risk youth should be outreach in nature. Coincidentally, based on the Hong Kong experiences, outreach youth services have been formally established in different Asian cities since the early 2000s, such as the Community Youth Work Teams in Macau in 2004, the Youth Go in Singapore in 2010, and the Youth Zone in Guangzhou in 2016. The similarity among these four jurisdictions is that they all employ professionally trained social workers to run the outreach services. The International Conference on Outreach Work was held in Hong Kong in 2015, with the active participation of 219 Asian youth workers. Being the first outreach youth work conference in Asia, it specifically addressed issues related to Triad-sponsored youth gangs, violence, and female delinquency, signifying the generalizability of this working approach in Chinese communities.

Limitations of this article have to be noted. It reports data from only one murder case that happened two decades ago. However, as Flyvbjerg (2006) contended,

a discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and that a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. In social science, a greater number of good case studies could help remedy this situation. (p.242)

To date, not many case studies on Triad society have been published because its covert nature presents many restrictions to the availability of reliable data. Even less is known about gang intervention with Triad youth gangs. By interviewing the gang youths and their social workers, this case study connects both subjects and adds the missing link on how social workers should work with Triad youth gangs.