Gang

A gang is a group of individuals who share a common identity and, in current usage, engage in illegal activities. Historically the term referred to both criminal groups and ordinary groups of friends, such as Our Gang.

Most commonly, the word "gang" refers to street gangs (a.k.a. youth gangs), groups who take over territory ("turf") in a particular city, sometimes simply for lack of something better to do, often being involved in "providing protection" (in fact, a thin cover for extortion), or in other criminal activity. Since roughly the 1970s, street gangs have been strongly connected with drug sales (especially crack cocaine). Gangs have been known to claim colors such as red or blue, a trend that started as far back as the late 1700s and early 1800s with Mexican banditos and roving marauders in the Southwest/Western United States. (In the United States, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, "gang colors" can refer to the entire design of a gang jacket.)

Gangs often spread by a parent or family moving out of the gang neighborhood, and the children taking the gang culture and lore with them to a new area and recruiting new members for their old gang. This concept has been referred to as satellite gangs. Some offshoots of the original Norteño/Sureño concept include Crips and the Bloods, African American gang members. Other large street gangs include the Aryan Brotherhood, a mostly prison-based white power gang, the Nazi Low Riders, or NLR, the Latin Kings, the Black Gangster Disciples of Chicago, and Los Angeles-based 18th Street gang. In the 1980s, other gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha and the Asian Boyz emerged, especially from Southern California.

Apart from street gangs, there are motorcycle gangs (such as Hell's Angels), prison gangs (such as the Mexican prison gang Eme), organized criminal mafias (a term deriving originally from the Italian, but now also applied to the Russian Mafia), and Asian criminal gangs (such as Chinese triads and the Japanese yakuza).

The word "gang" generally appears in a pejorative context, though within "the gang" itself members may adopt the phrase in proud identity or defiance.

See also

• Ghetto Brothers
• Hooliganism
• Subculture
• Peer group

External Links

• Joan W. Moore and James F. Short, Jr., "Definitions of Gangs"
• Gangs
• Gangs in the Schools
• Learning from Gangs: The Mexican American Experience

Alternate meanings

• A gang is the collective noun for elk.