GANGS POSE A serious problem for American society. Despite an overall drop in the U.S. crime rate, gang-related crime remains high. A nationwide survey by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1996 showed that gang problems were getting worse in about 50 percent of communities. A 1997 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report states that gang membership in the nation had grown to about six hundred thousand by that year and that violent street gangs were operating in 94 percent of all medium-size and large cities. While fewer than half of American cities reported gang activity twenty years ago, it now appears to exist in every major city.

Early gangs

Street gangs are not a new problem; they have a long and troubling history in the United States. The earliest known American gangs formed in the 1780s, just after the end of the Revolutionary War. Like their contemporary counterparts, most...