Based on previous research, members of street gangs are more likely to be both perpetrators and victims of crime. In addition, many known risk factors seem to accumulate for street gang- affiliated youth. However, the importance of street gang affiliation seems to go beyond, for example, having criminally active friends. In this presentation, we utilize representative city samples collected from Nordic adolescents (aged 13–17) to investigate the degree to which theory-based criminological risk factors explain the link between street gang membership and criminal behavior and victimization experiences. Our analysis is based on Nordic data collected as part of the fourth International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD4) and logistic regression modelling utilizing the KHB decomposition method. The Eurogang measurement is used to identify adolescents’ street gang membership. In our empirical analysis, we examine the criminal behavior and victimization experiences among gang-affiliated and non-gang adolescents, and how key criminological theories help to understand the connection between adolescent street gangs and crime. In addition, we compare whether studied risk factors play a different role for criminal behavior and victimization experiences.