Back in the 1960s, domestic poverty was a hot political topic. In the 2000s, it’s not. Compassion fatigue at work, I guess. Nonetheless, urban poverty is still there, even if the politicians and the press are tired of it.

One thing from the inner cities that still gets some attention, other than rap music, is the street gang problem. Here in Essex County (Newark, NJ area), we recently had an interesting gang incident. A ghetto kid held up a local grocery and was unlucky enough to still be there when the police arrived. The kid got a little stupid and tried to rough up one of the cops. Had he stayed calm, he would have been out on bail. But, because of his disrespect, the charges got jacked up to second degree. So the kid was gonna be stuck in the county jail for a while.

Here in Essex, we have two county jails; basically one for the Bloods and one for the Crips. That’s not how it was planned, but that’s how it works out these days. Well, the kid in question was put in the Bloods jail, but after a week he told the corrections officers that he was uncomfortable because he was really a Crip. So, he got a bus ride out to the Crips jail. Within an hour of his arrival, a greeting committee rejected his credentials and told him that he’d have to be initiated into the Crips right then and there. I.e., three minutes of pure gang brutality. He agreed and the beating got under way. Unfortunately, after it was over, he was dead. Moral of the story: if you’re gonna pledge a street gang, don’t wait until you’re in prison. Get it done on the street where maybe some of your initiators haven’t been in jail yet and aren’t quite as tough and nasty.

Yes, sorry, that’s a bit cynical of me. The real point here is that the inner cities remain a fault line in the American Dream. Yea, people out there in their Hummers and McMansions don’t seem to be very worried, given that urban folk don’t appear to be doing any rioting these days. That tiff out in Los Angeles in ‘92 turned out to be an isolated incident after all. Ravaging hordes of urban poor aren’t looting and pillaging the suburbs, thank goodness. But the most desperate and dangerous faction, i.e. young men in the 15 to 25 age group, are increasingly turning to street gangs in order to give social and economic meaning to their lives.

Government reports estimate that the total gang population in the U.S. went from around 100,000 in 1980 to over 800,000 in the late 1990s. These studies say that gang membership and activity levels stabilized after 1995, but haven’t really gone down since then. A preliminary survey showed somewhat increased activity in 2002 (when the economy got worse). The number of gangs and gang members has gone down somewhat outside of the major cities, but appears to still be growing within them.

If we assume the number of gang members nationwide to be around 800,000, and about 66% of them are in cities of over 25,000 population (as per a recent government report), then about 530,000 urban males are presently gang members. The US Census indicates that there are about 6 million males between the ages of 15 and 24 in the central cities. So, it’s not far from the mark to say that an average of one in ten young men in the cities are gang members. In the poorest neighborhoods, that number is probably a lot higher. Maybe one in three, perhaps every other young guy in some places.

Scary stuff. There are various projects and programs to keep kids from joining street gangs, and our law enforcement agencies are working hard to bust them when they go over the line — and going over the line with drugs and violence is basically what the gangs are about. (Yes, I know that gang members talk about “love”, but I’ll pick money over love as the main incentive any day — for anything!). Unfortunately, all of the government and foundation-funded programs started thus far are just a spit in the wind. The gang problem hugely outweighs any effect that a nice group of social workers can have by giving presentations to eighth graders, or even what our police and prosecutors and prisons can do on the law enforcement end.

The gang phenomenon basically represents the outcasts of our American society and economy getting organized. So far, they’re not into any political or quasi-religious stuff; their efforts seem mostly aimed at making a living, not unlike the Cosa Nostra of old. Interestingly enough, they are getting more technologically sophisticated; in New Jersey, the Conrail Boyz were experts at using radios and night vision scopes to break into railroad train cars filled with high-value electronics, cigarettes, and other fence-able items. The State busted them a little while ago, but another generation of Boyz seem to have sprung up in place of the original crew. Once the idea is out there, it’s hard to stamp out.

So far, politics and perverted religion and terrorism is not a gang thing (although the Five Percenters are getting into a quasi-Islamic fundamentalist thing these days). But what if at some point they take a page from Hamas and Al Qaeda, after things continue to get worse in their neighborhoods and schools, after they become even more convinced that they have no role to play in our economic and social institutions … not a pretty thought.