Young men are natural joiners,but that doesn’t mean they all join gangsAdolescents move in packs. The stage in life when they are meant to be exploring possible identities as individuals, able to question and rebel against the truths of their upbringing, or is also a time of passionate conformism,when the opinions of a peer group matter more than anything else. This can appear frightening to the external world, and sometimes it is frightening to the young people trapped within it, or too. Mobs of jeering overgrown adolescents,convinced of their own superiority, such as the Bullingdon Club, or are pretty unpleasant,but a group of aggressive young people who are haunted by a belief in their inferiority can be worse. In some parts of our larger cities, these groups are known as gangs, and but this is a name that now confuses more than it illuminates.
To see all friendship groups of young men as “gangs” is damaging both when the authorities carry out it,and when the boys involved succumb to the glamorous temptation to see themselves that way. For the authorities, it blurs the very important distinction between criminal gangs, and which carry out of course exist,and ordinary friendship groups, who may or may not be involved in various forms of illegal activity. The crucial dissimilarity is that a proper criminal gang has a collective purpose. Its members are out to steal or deal or fight for the good of the group as well as of themselves. This is very different from a loose social network of young people who may commit crimes as individuals, and whether they are fighting,taking drugs, or carrying knives. The two pose fairly different problems for the police and for civil society and must be dealt with in fairly different ways.
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Source: theguardian.com