lin

Modern gangs cannot be understood from the street. The sociologists and such don't get this. To some extent a crip or AB local could best be viewed like mushrooms...fruiting bodies extended from the underground core: which is in prison. Prison is a clearinghouse and headquarters for gangs and much of the leadership lives there. A lot of gang formation (notably white gangs) actually formed out of the experience of being outnumbered in prison, then extended outwards, incorporating various bike groups and crews into something more cohesive.

captain_ipa

depends on the gang, man. I used to chill with one set that was black and mexican and there was a russian kid in it too. It all depends on the area you're in.

__________________
-The Captain
Hitting Harder Than the Kid With the Golden Arm

adsophilos

Good morning, MissMaria;

The Conventional Wisdom on multi-ethnic gangs may be in for a change. Or perhaps this is a local perversion.

For some time, now, the Southwest area of Las Vegas has seen violence well out of proportion to the population, the average income and the crime rate relative to other parts of the city. The above-the-fold criminals, killers nearly as vicious as they werre shortsighted, have included a couple of wannabe rappers and a former national figure in bodybuilding.

But many of the purse snatchings and home invasions are laid at the feet of an anonymous crew of juveniles who, mostly, just go to the same schools and live in the area.

Oh, and they all grew up watching the same teevee shows and listening to the same music.

When we were growing up, we all wanted to rule the school. Thirty years ago, we wrote (e.g.) "-76- Rules". Adolescents still use this syntax.

Start with angry adolescents. Learn their environment in detail. You can create a gang which makes sense in prose. To that extent, it might lack for authenticity. The gang mentality lets rage trump rationale. Just listen to the arrestees on Cops, who will say anything to get over. Make your gangsters a little irrational, so that we readers want to reach in, slap them, and shout, "Just WHAT did you really expect?!!!"

And don't worry that the Bloods or the Crips will sue for defamation. The truth would only hurt them.

Arin

City of God is a movie about gang wars in Rio in the 70's and 80's. It goes into pretty good detail about the sectioning off of the areas of the slums, who joins the gangs, how they move up in the ranks, etc.. I don't know if Brazilian gangs are exactly what you're looking for, but you can definitely use it as a template if need be.

__________________
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The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

HarryG

Gangs are not a recent phenomenon, despite the publicity over the recent gang killings among the youth of the UK, mainly in London and mainly among black youngsters.

I spent my younger teenage years in central Scotland, living on a rough housing estate for most of the time. Each area, usually a number of streets enclosed by some sort of boundary, had at least two gangs, one Protestant and one Catholic.

Membership of your appropriate gang was obligatory; you could not survive on your own. Everybody knew exactly which gang to join.

I was going to say that we did not have access to firearms as they do nowadays, but that simply wasn’t true. Every farmer had an array of shotguns that were easily stolen, gun shops didn’t even have alarms, local mines stored their explosives in wooden sheds at the pithead, the ‘experts’ kept the detonators in their garden sheds, and you could walk into army bases at any time and walk out with a 303. And our older brothers, doing their National Service, were bringing home all sorts of stuff.

But we didn’t want to kill our enemies then, a good kicking was quite appropriate, and knives were only used against deserving adults.

Membership ceased around 17 to 18 years, when we got married or went into higher education, that’s if we hadn’t been caught and were in Borstal.

I think it was always thus.