Old heads tell their stories

Abstract

Based on life history interviews with twenty veteran leaders of New York City's street gangs, a comparative analysis is made of the jacket gangs of the 1970's, the drug gangs of the 1980's and the street organizations of today. The data from these personal narratives (Reissman 1994) are supplemented by participant and non-participant observations of current group activities and film footage of past gang­related events to provide an historical account of evolving youth street subcultural practices. The article argues that agency and empowerment, largely overlooked categories of gang analyses, exposes the poverty of conventional gang theory and the delinquency-centered criteria of gang studies.