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Contents

Street gangs

Organized gangs

Prison gangs

In the armed forces

Illegal immigration

References

See also

Street gangs

When one conjures up an image of street gangs in the U.S. it is usually influenced by media portrayals of gun-toting youths engaged in disputes over territory and disrespect.^[1] The most publicized street gangs in the U.S. are African-American, however, black gangs were not recognised as a social problem until after the great migration of the 1910s.^[2] An exception was however noted in 1853 Philadelphia.^[3]
The history of European-American youth gangs extends as far back as the 1780s. Although lacking a definition, the gangs then were characterized by young people hanging out on street corners.^[4]
It is thought these early groups formed to protect their localities from other similar groups of youths. Herbert Asbury^[5] depicted some of these groups in his history of white gangs in the Five Points district of New York. He described how gangs of boys would fight for control of street corners and open lots. The book later became basis for the Martin Scorsese motion picture Gangs of New York.
Gangs in the 19th Century were often multi-ethnic as neighborhoods did not display the social polarization that has segregated different ethnic groups in the postmodern city (see Edward Soja). A host of European nationalities including English, Scottish, Irish and German could be found in the same neighborhoods. This made territoriality for gangs much more important than ethnic homogeneity.^2[6]
There were an estimated 25,000 gangs and more than 750,000 gang members active across the USA in 2004, up from 731,500 in 2002.^[7] By 1999, Hispanics accounted for 46% of all gang members, Blacks 31%, Whites 13%, and Asian 7%.^[8]
According to a ''Texas Monthly'' article by Skip Hollandsworth, many street gangs in Texas have no organized command structures. Individual "cliques" of gangs, defined by streets, parts of streets, apartment complexes, or parts of apartment complexes, act as individual groups. Texas "Cliques" tend to be headed by leaders called "OG"s (short for "original gangster"s) and each "clique" performs a specific activity or set of activities, such as controlling trafficking of recreational drugs and managing prostitution in a given area.^[9]

Organized gangs

Hallsworth and Young (2005)^[10] describe an organized gang as a group of individuals for whom involvement in crime is for personal gain (mostly financial, though could be otherwise, sexual gratification as with child pedophile rings). For most, crime is their ‘occupation’. These groups operate almost exclusively in the grey and illegal marketplace where market transactions are unregulated by the law.
Transnational organized crime groups may be involved in crimes ranging from drug trafficking, human trafficking, piracy, money laundering, extortion, and gambling, to acts of terrorism, to political assassination. The complexity and seriousness of the crimes committed by global crime groups pose a threat not only to law enforcement but to democracy and legitimate economic development as well.^[11]
Criminal organizations exercise disproportionate control over the illegal means and forces of crime production. Members are likely to have mutated out of gang-members who are often used to service their needs. Motives that impel membership of these groups are similar to those that motivate business people in the legitimate economy.
Organized crime groups are not homogeneous. Some will be amateur affairs operated and managed by incompetent people. Others, however, will demonstrate more market acumen and more ruthlessness. These individuals may be difficult to trace because they will be more competent at hiding their activities. They may also have the financial muscle to acquire considerable legal protection through well paid lawyers and accountants.
There are numerous organized crime groups and they can be found in the majority of small to medium sized cities at varying degrees of size and organization. All large cities will house some kind of organized crime group. A further distinction could be made with what are often termed organized crime syndicates.
There are a number of widely known crime organizations as such whose operations span the world. Perhaps the most famous are the Italian Mafia (often portrayed in New York mob movies), The Irish Mafia, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza and Russian Mafia. Other large cities also play host to unique types of organized criminals. For example, London's traditional East End crime families and the infamous Kray Twins and Bostons Irish Mob portrayed in another Martin Scorsese film, "The Departed."

Prison gangs

A prison gang is a gang that is started in a prison. Some prison gangs are transplanted from the street, and in some occasions, prison gangs "outgrow" the penitentiary and engage in criminal activities on the outside. Many prison gangs are racially oriented. Gang umbrella organizations like the Folk Nation and People Nation have originated in prisons.^[12]
One prominent example of a prison gang is the Aryan Brotherhood. On July 28, 2006, after a six year federal investigation, four leaders of the gang, a violent white supremacist prison gang, were convicted of racketeering, murder, and conspiracy charges. Founded in the mid 1960's, the gang, known as the 'Brand' or the 'Rock' in the federal and state prison systems, is famous for being affiliated with the white supremacist paramilitary hate group the Aryan Nations, with the Nazi Low Riders prison gang acting as the Aryan Brotherhood's foot soldiers. Besides fostering pseudo-theological hate, racism, sexism, violence, and intimidation, the Aryan Brotherhood is involved in drug trafficking, extortion, gambling, protection rackets, and murder inside and outside of prisons.^[13]
In the mid-1980s, the Aryan League, an alliance between the Aryan Brotherhood and Public Enemy No.1, formed. The sub-gangs (in collaboration with their wives and girlfriends who take jobs at banks, mortgage companies, and motor vehicle departments) work together in identity theft schemes. White supremacist gang gaining clout after forging alliance with Aryan Brotherhood Money from the identity theft operations is used to fund the gangs' methamphetamine business. A gang hit list discovered in the Buena Park investigation has police worried that the gangs are using stolen credit information to learn the addresses of police and their families.
Once out of prison, gang members tend to regroup on the outside and often cross gang lines to further their criminal careers. One example of this is David Lind, an Aryan Brotherhood member, who joined the Wonderland Gang with several non-AB fellow prison inmates in 1981. Post prison gang activities can be brutal, as evidenced by the ruthless quadruple murder of the Wonderland gang (see "Wonderland Murders") which Lind narrowly escaped.
There has been a long running racial tension between African American and Mexican American prison gangs and significant riots in California prisons where Mexican inmates and African Americans have targeted each other particularly, based on racial reasons.^[14] According to gang experts and law enforcement agents, a longstanding race war between the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerilla family, a rival African American prison gang, has generated such intense racial hatred among Mexican Mafia leaders, or shot callers, that they have issued a "green light" on all blacks. A sort of gang-life fatwah, this amounts to a standing authorization for Latino gang members to prove their mettle by terrorizing or even murdering any blacks sighted in a neighborhood claimed by a gang loyal to the Mexican Mafia.^[15]

In the armed forces

The FBI’s 2007 report on gang membership in the military states that the militarism's recruit screening process is ineffective, allows gang members/extremists to enter the military, and lists at least eight instances in the last three years in which gang members have obtained military weapons for their illegal enterprises.^[16] ''"Gang Activity in the U.S. Armed Forces Increasing"'', dated January 12, 2007, states that street gangs including the Bloods, Crips, Black Disciples, Gangster Disciples, Hells Angels, Latin Kings, The 18th Street Gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Mexican Mafia, Maravilla, Nortenos, Surenos, Vice Lords, Black P. StonesS.W.P and various white supremacist groups have been documented on military installations both domestic and international although recruiting gang members violates military regulations.^[17]
The FBI believes that gang members may enlist in the military to escape their current environment or gang lifestyle. Some gang members may also enlist to receive weapons, combat, and convoy support training; to obtain access to weapons and explosives; or as an alternative to incarceration. Upon discharge, they may employ their military training against law enforcement officials and rival gang members. Such military training could ultimately result in more organized, sophisticated, and deadly gangs, as well as an increase in deadly assaults on law enforcement officers. .^[18]
A January, 2007 article in the Chicago Sun-Times reports that gang members in the military are involved in the theft and sale of military weapons, ammunition, and equipment, including body armor. According to a conversation recorded by an undercover FBI agent, one U.S. soldier may have stolen military body armor with intentions to supply Chicago gangs with the stolen equipment.^[19] The Sun-Times began investigating the gang activity in the military after receiving photos of gang graffiti showing up in Iraq. A 2006 Sun-Times article reports that gangs encourage members to enter the military to learn urban warfare techniques to teach other gang members.^[20]
In 2006, Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, said there is an online network of gangs and extremists, and that: "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military."^[21]

Illegal immigration

One of the concerns of increased illegal immigration is gang related activity - as proved by programs such as Operation Community Shield, which has detained over fourteen hundred illegal immigrant gang members.^[22] MS13 publicly declared that it targets the Minutemen, civilians who take it upon themselves to control the border, to "teach them a lesson",^[23] possibly due to their smuggling of various Central/South Americans (mostly other gang members), drugs, and weapons across the border.^[24] A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the twenty thousand member 18th Street Gang in California is illegal. Testimony Heather Mac Donald Barbara and David P. Mikkelsen, authors of ''Snopes'', state that 18th Street likely has the highest membership rate including illegal aliens of the California gangs [1].

References

1. Muncie, J. (2000) "Youth & Crime" 2nd Edition, Sage, ISBN=
2. Adamson, Christopher(2000), "Defensive localisms in white and black: a comparative history of European-American and African American youth gangs", Ethnic and Racial Studies 23 (2): 272-298.
3. Davis, Susan, G. (1982), "Making night hideous":Christmas revelry and public order in nineteenth-century Philadelphia', American Quarterly, 34 (2): 185-199
4. Meranze, M. (1996), Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 978-0807822777
5. Asbury, H. (1928) ''The Gangs of New York : An Informal History of the Underworld''. Reprinted in original format 1989 Dorset Press; ISBN 0-88029-429-9. Republished in 2001 with a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges
6. Klein, M.W., Kerner, H.J., Maxson, C.L. & Weitekamp, G.M. (2001)(eds) "The Eurogang Paradox":Street Gangs and Youth Groups in the U.S. and Europe', Kluwer Academic Publications, ISBN=0792368444
7. Measuring the Extent of Gang Problems—National Youth Gang Survey Analysis
8. Into the Abyss: The Racial and Ethnic Composition of Gangs
9. "Southwest Houston After Dark," ''Texas Monthly'', December 2006
10. Rationalisation of current research on guns, gangs and other weapons:Phase 1 Ben Marshall, Barry Webb, Nick Tilley
11. Journal Article Excerpt, , Louise, Shelley, Journal of International Affairs,
12. Street Gangs — Chicago Based or Influenced, People Nation and Folk Nation, http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/gangs/chicago.html
13. Brotherhood of Hate
14. Racial segregation continues in California prisons
15. There’s a Zone in L.A. Where Blacks Risk Death if They Enter
16. Army defends recruit screening process Leo Shane III
17. Intelligence Assessment - Gang-Related Activity in the US Armed Forces Increasing
18. Gang Activity in the U.S. Military Rod Powers
19. FBI details threat from gangs in military: Says members of Illinois Frank Main
20. Chicago Gang Graffiti Showing Up In Iraq
21. Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts John Kifner
22.
23. Gang will target Minuteman vigil on Mexico border Jerry Seper
24. Al Qaeda seeks tie to local gangs Jerry Seper

See also

★ Subculture

★ Gangster

★ Gangs in England

★ Gangs in New Zealand

★ List of California street gangs