Gangs At the End of the Urban Crisis Era

References for Gangs in the Urban Crisis Era

This is the map of the concentration of urban poverty in Chicago in 1980 from the Chicago Area Fact Book.

Notice the absolute increase in urban poverty in just those areas where the gangs were strongest.

With the spread of poverty, the gangs spread as well. While William Julius Wilson argued that work had "disappeared" what really happened was that legal work was being replaced by illegal work. The factory was gone, but the dopehouse was poised to take its place.

Instead of going away, the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, and Black Stone Rangers continued and transformed into economic organiztions. The Latin Kings and other Latino gangs similarly dug in, although Latino neighborhoods would be the target of gentrification in the 1990s.

The leadership of Chicago's gangs had mostly been incarcerated in the 1970s. But instead of weakening the gangs, prison strengthened them, both in the prisons and in the neighborhrood.

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