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Gang Mentality

Police say Portland, Ore., gang violence is exploding. A landmark report shows just the opposite.

Clay Mosher
Clay Mosher

Turn on the TV news and you’d have reason to believe gang violence in Portland, Ore., is out of control. Terse warnings from police and fallout from three recent high-profile shootings have prompted alarming reports in the media of a recent surge in gang activity.

But amid the rhetoric and media heat, a far more complicated picture emerges when the numbers are examined.

Clay Mosher, a professor of sociology at WSU-Vancouver and author of a gang assessment for Clark County law enforcement in 2012, says various agencies label gang-related crime differently—and often liberally. “Most crimes committed by gang members are not committed for the gang. But they can get coded as a gang-related crime,” Mosher said.

Learn more about efforts to measure gang activity

A Booming Business: Using Jailed Migrants as a Pool of Cheap Labor

Clay Mosher
Clay Mosher

As the federal government cracks down on immigrants in the country illegally and forbids businesses to hire them, it is relying on tens of thousands of those immigrants each year to provide essential labor — usually for $1 a day or less — at the detention centers where they are held when caught by the authorities.

This work program is facing increasing resistance from detainees and criticism from immigrant advocates. In April, a lawsuit accused immigration authorities in Tacoma, Wash., of putting detainees in solitary confinement after they staged a work stoppage and hunger strike.

Detention centers are low-margin businesses, where every cent counts, said Clayton J. Mosher, professor of sociology at WSU Vancouver, who specializes in the economics of prisons. Two private prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, control most of the immigrant detention market. Many such companies struggled in the late 1990s amid a glut of private prison construction, with more facilities built than could be filled, but a spike in immigrant detention after Sept. 11 helped revitalize the industry.

Read more about detained immigrants, working for the United States in The New York Times (subscription required)

Workplace violence remains ‘extremely rare,’ say Vancouver-area experts

Clay Mosher
Clay Mosher

“This could be just a blip,” WSU sociologist Clay Mosher said after two workplace shootings and one drug-related shooting in two days in Vancouver left three people dead and three injured.

“You could see this many things in this many days…. Then you could see nothing for quite some time,” said Mosher, who analyzes crime trends and teaches criminology at WSU Vancouver. It’s possible that our society is growing accustomed to hearing about random gun violence breaking out anywhere and everywhere.

Read more about trends in violent crime