Street gangs are really fascinating, and aren't, like, "well-oiled crime machines" in general.
Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down.
The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them.
As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs.
So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members.
You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang.
Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime.
Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.
It's fairly common historically for gangs to arise out of organized communal self-defense that itself happens in response to some threat. Once the threat is gone, the structure remains in place and members keep looking for ways to apply their newly acquired skills, with protection racket being a popular choice.
Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down.
The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them.
As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs.
So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members.
You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang.
Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime.
Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.