NCJ Number
128710
Date Published
1991
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This study compares the nature of criminal gangs historically in India and the United States and assesses whether gangs and their activities conform to the definition of urban guerilla warfare.
Abstract
Criminal gangs, both in India and the United States, have been composed of persons from the lower socioeconomic classes who have been unable to meet their social and economic needs through the normative social interactions and economic transactions of the dominant society. Gang members are thus alienated from the structures of the dominant society. In forming their own subcultural structures of socialization and economic survival, gangs attempt to meet the total needs of their members. Conflict with the dominant society emerges as gangs reject legitimate income-producing employment to engage in illegitimate income-producing activities such as drug dealing, robbery, burglary, and auto theft. The violence of gangs tends to be turned inward, however, against its own kind, i.e., against other gang members and their own members who violate gang norms. Gangs use many of the tactics of urban guerillas; presumably they would need only an ideology of prosocial systematic self-help to become guerillas by most definitions. To an extent this already exists, as gangs' priorities and ideologies of self-help conflict with the normative values and structures of the dominant society. They lack, however, a persistent political focus that would threaten local governments, although the battle for dominance in neighborhoods between normative citizens and gang members could be considered a type of politically oriented guerilla warfare. 15 footnotes